Officers
the equipment system wearing a personality
An officer is a name + portrait + one role + one bonus % + one flavor line (plus a cosmetic quirk with zero stat effect — "afraid of gulls" changes nothing but the log). Hire them at a port's tavern, assign them to a berth on your ship, and they quietly make you better at one thing. There's no upkeep and no wages: hire once, keep forever.
Roles
| Role | Bonus | Applies to |
|---|---|---|
| Sailing Master | −travel & explore time % | Every voyage leg |
| Bosun | +salvage yield % | Salvage-focus legs, and a rigged fishing net's haul |
| Cook | −ration consumption % | Hunt- & explore-focus legs |
| Gunner | +combat power % | Hunt-focus legs |
| Quartermaster | +cargo slots (flat) and +loot roll % | Global / hunt- & explore-focus loot |
Rarities
Rarity sets an officer's base bonus. Current design values:
| Rarity | Base bonus | Tavern odds (standard port) | Hire cost shape |
|---|---|---|---|
| Common | +5% | 70% | cheap |
| Skilled | +10% | 24% | ×5 |
| Expert | +16% | 5.5% | ×24 |
| Legendary | +25% | 0.5% (better taverns/events; some are island or boss drops) | ×100+ / not always buyable |
Legendaries are named characters with real flavor — One-Eyed Marta, Sailing Master, +25%: "She's never lost. The sea gets lost." — and each one is world-unique: only one of every hand-authored legendary can ever exist across the whole server, forever. Hire one and the name is gone for everyone else; dismiss it later and the lock still holds, so nobody can ever hire "another" One-Eyed Marta. Hiring one also announces it to the whole world in the public feed — the same world-first spirit as naming an island.
Leveling & growth
An officer only gains role XP while assigned to a berth and while you're sailing voyage legs that match their role — a reserve officer gives nothing and gains nothing. Growth is a slow, steady micro-bonus:
effective_bonus = base + 0.18% × (level − 1) → +8.82% at level 50
That means a well-loved Skilled officer crosses a fresh Expert's flat 16% by level 35, and keeps climbing past it — 18.82% at max level — loyalty is a real alternative to shopping, and your day-2 Cook can eventually outshine an Expert you'd have to buy new. Legendary's 25% floor is deliberately uncrossable, though: even a maxed Expert only reaches 24.82%, one level short of the level-50 cap that would need to tie it. Quartermaster's flat cargo bonus scales similarly: 4 / 8 / 12 / 20 slots by rarity, +1 per 10 levels.
Dismissing an officer refunds nothing (a confirm dialog is required) — this is deliberate, so players can't hire-and-dismiss to game the tavern market.
Tavern recruitment
Each port's tavern generates 3 candidate offers per day (rolled per-player, so there's no sniping war over a good roll). Rolling an offer picks rarity (port-weighted — The Meridian doubles Expert+ odds), then role, then generates the name, portrait, flavor line, and price. You can reroll all three offers for gold; the reroll cost doubles each time you use it that day, and resets at the next daily refresh. Better ports mean better pools, which is part of why The Meridian's tavern is worth the trip.
Officer trading between players is off in v0.1 — it's planned post-launch as an "officer contracts" market once the economy is stable enough to support it.
Berths
Berths are how many officers you can assign at once, and they scale with your ship, not your wallet. IdlePiracy now has six hulls — Shallop, Sloop, Schooner, Brigantine, Frigate, Galleon — and every tier up adds more berths alongside more cargo, more hull, and farther reach. A Shallop carries a single officer; a Galleon carries a full crew of specialists.
Berths are earned via ship upgrades only, and never sold. This is one of the hard lines in the fairness rulebook — paid officer berths would be pay-to-win, full stop.