23.16 Sinking - What to do Before and After

Sinking can happen quickly (in combat), or slowly (via unrepaired decay, over
time). Many things change when a ship sinks!


What Happens
------------
Any adventurer on board will die a horrible death.

Some, maybe even most, of your crew dies. That will cost you in lost morale and
experience.

The ship's strongbox may be emptied, the contents of the larder and the cargo
hold may be lost.

Ship's equipment will remain, such as the Cartographer's Desk, Beacon of
Iocolas, Bait Tank, or any ship's weapons.


How to Prepare
--------------
For adventurers: carry a Token of Charybdis. Use it BEFORE the ship goes down.

For your crew: make sure you have a nice full token store for your crew. You
can add to it by purchases at some harbours. All tokens will be tried, and
all of them will work! Each token used will save a shipmate, crewmate, or
swashbuckler who will then be available to continue service should you ever
salvage your ship. Make sure you have enough for the entire crew.

HARBOUR PROVISIONS will tell you if a given harbour sells crew tokens. To buy,
HARBOUR PURCHASE <#> TOKENS PROVISIONS FOR <shipnumber>

For your ship you may wish to hire a shipfitter to acquire a buoy for your 
ship. This item will assist in the retrieval of any cargo.


What to do Afterward
--------------------
The owner is able to go to any of the manmade harbours and do HARBOUR SALVAGE
<ship>. You will then have to pay a fee for the salvage job. The cost is
determined by how far out to sea your ship is from that harbour. Once you have
paid the harbour master to retrieve your ship you will just have to wait for
them to recover your lost vessel from the bottom of the ocean, which could take
several days to achieve.

Running your own salvage operations requires the ship's crew to consist of a deckhand with salvageops. The ship also must be outfitted with a salvage crane. As long as you have all of these requirements proceed to the location of the ship wreck which can be located by scanning the depths. Once located, lower your anchor above the sunken ship. Then proceed with the salvage operation.

Go refill your ship's larder, cargo hold, and token store as soon as possible!

Upon sinking with a buoy, you will be able to retrieve all of your cargo from your ship if you return to the location where your ship went down and SHIP BUOY ACTIVATE <buoy>. 

This can only be done by the owner of the sunken ship, or someone with Command rank 5. The entire cargo of the sunken ship will be transferred to the deck in a cargo box.

When the previously sunken ship and a ship with its cargo box on deck are in the same harbour, SHIP CARGOBOX TRANSFER to return the cargo to its owner.

SHIP BUOY LOCATE will give a buoy's ID, an approximate direction and distance, how many months remain on it, and which wreck it marks. 

This can be done by anyone who has captain permissions on the sunk ship at any time. When a buoy has less than 2 months remaining before it decays, anyone can locate it for dredging purposes.


Dry Docks and Harbour Damage
----------------------------
Ships in drydock will be impervious to all harm, will not have any cost
over time (either in gold or in stores), and will not count towards the number
of available berths in a harbour. Any hired hands aboard will lose a very small
amount of experience every Achaean day for as long as the ship remains
drydocked. 

Ships can be drydocked in a manmade harbour by the ship's owner, or will be automatically placed there by the harbourmaster after two years of continuous docking at the harbour. HARBOUR DRYDOCK while in a harbour will list the related commands. This is NOT available in natural harbours.

This same two year span affects the building damage taken by a ship left at harbour. Resetting this damage/drydocking timer will require either docking at a different harbour, or spending one third of an Achaean day at sea before re-docking at the same harbour.