Merchant ships spawn then instantly disappear.

Grace

Tokuno waters, Atlantic.  

I had noticed for quite sometime no merchant ships at all. Only pirates and beacons.  

Often I would see a ship appear, then disappear instantly and have noticed that these are 
merchant ships that are doing that.

If you are going to take merchant ships out of the area, why not just make it so they do not spawn
at all?

Otherwise, I am going to assume that they are supposed to indeed spawn and it is a bug
that they instantly disappear and hope you will fix this soon.

Please advise on this.

Thanks.

TimSt

I've noticed both merchant and pirate ships do that on Pacific. I took it as a safety feature to keep pirate ships from appearing suddenly then attacking while you are looting another ship.

Grace

I see, so they changed it.  Use to be if more than one pirate spawned they could all attack you
and it would be hard to fight them both off.  

So since they changed it, the seas are now safer, but no more merchants as the trade off.

I prefer how it was before and instead beefing up the encounters. 

TimSt

Don't get me wrong. If two or more pirate ships already exist when you come upon them they will still all attack. It is the sudden appearing ships that go poof or sail away.

Grace

Not in my experience, not since  the merchant ships spawn rate got changed.  I come upon
two pirate ships and engage with one the other sails away, rather quickly really.

Pawain

We have merchant and pirate ships on LS. Takes too long to find Beacons.

Since Popps had them change it so you lose Karma when killing merchants, I would prefer them to not be in Tram instead of Tokuno.

TimSt

Pawain said:

We have merchant and pirate ships on LS. Takes too long to find Beacons.

Since Popps had them change it so you lose Karma when killing merchants, I would prefer them to not be in Tram instead of Tokuno.

Just don't kill the merchants. They don't attack you unless you hurt them first. I get a lot of crafting materials from merchants while they are still milling about on the deck.

Pawain

I can't control the bloodlust. And you want me to just let them drown...

Seth

Actually, I discovered that there is no need to kill the crew. You just need to scuttle the ship without attacking the crew. Then board and take the items.

Robbers are not necessarily murderers.

There is also a nice trick regarding some advanced movement sonar sensor that Kyronix mentioned.