Improving waters, a few ideas

[Kamekono]

Here's a couple ideas I'd like to be considered to make lakes and coastal waters more appealing.

1. Farming options - Water edition
A. Molluscs farm.
Requires shallow fresh (mussel or lake snails) / salt (oyster) water. Slowly spawns molluscs over time. Allows to slowly raise the quality, for better molluscs and pearls.
B. Algae farm.
Grow kelp (and possibly more types of new algae). Could work similarly to crops or gardening.
C. Fish farm.
A "rabbit hatch for fish". Needs to be placed in deep water. Put in some fish (same kind), let it reproduce. Different fish require different water environments. Allows to slowly raise the quality through fodder, as well as farming fish eggs.
D. Crustacean farm.
Same as the Fish farm, but for crabs, lobsters, and shrimps. Might need a way to kill them safely though.

2. More aquatic animals
I'm not talking about land animals that can swim, like beaver, otters, and walruses. But rather fully aquatic ones (like the orcas and whales, but more common and less "end-gamey")
Critters: octopods, rays, and such.
Neutral animals: sea turtles, dolphins, narwhals, and so on.
Hostile animals: from small ones like water snakes, to larger ones like sharks or alligators.
New animals would also need useful recipes for their parts.

I hope with the new experimental world coming soon, we'll see some addition to the water enviroments, given they take up a lot of map space but right now are still kind of poor in content (other than some forageables).

[ZamAlex]

Any farms without walls will be ruined. Fishing nets and crab traps are permanently at stolen state, so there is no chances, sadly.

[SnuggleSnail]

the easiest and fastest way to improve water related activities is probably to remove the ocean
its been over 10 years they're not going to make it good lol

[Kamekono]

Any farms without walls will be ruined. Fishing nets and crab traps are permanently at stolen state, so there is no chances, sadly.

Hmm, I hadn't thought of that.

A few possible solutions come to mind, all requiring some work though.
A. "Proxy": the farm has a land component, which is what you truly interact (to use, destroy, steal, whatever). Imagine the fishing net floating in water, with a rope that leads to land to a pole (through palisades). You interact with the pole, as if you were reeling in the net or something.
B. "Water walls": a sort of wall in the water, which requires high strength and a sledgehammer to break. Could look like a series of buoys, or some other thing. To avoid it being used to block off rivers completely, make it require a minimum distance from shore (just like you can't build palisades right next to water). Could also require a minimum distance from other structures like it and/or have a maximum length, to avoid people walling off huge chunks of water.
C. "Watermill-like": turn the aforementioned farms into actual buildings, working just like the watermill. Not exactly what I hoped for, as it barely uses water, but still allows for the farming part.
D. ""Aquariums": turn them into the equivalent of rabbit hatches / chicken coops. Not great, as it's completely unlinked from water surfaces; it would still be a way to use quality (salt) water more, and add a new kind of farming, so better than nothing I guess.

I personally think option (A) or (B) are the way to go. (A) is surely the one with less impact on other parts of gameplay. (B) I'm sure would be used in unintended ways, which could be bad or good... experimentation would be need to see what happens.

the easiest and fastest way to improve water related activities is probably to remove the ocean
its been over 10 years they're not going to make it good lol

Removing something is not improving it.
Even if they removed oceans, all of these ideas (and the reasons for my suggestion) would still be applicable to large lakes.

[kaysaari]

Even as a mere aesthetic LARP item, aquariums would be dope as hell

[vipes]

If we're gonna have water walls then let us build homes on water too.

Edit: and add water-based siege weapons.

[Mr_Bober]

I wouldn't mind more water content. I also think only Knarrs should be allowed in very deep ocean.

[Jenno]

This thing needs more content.

[Kamekono]

This thing needs more content.

Yeah that too!
Sea urchins, maybe some corals, lots of things could be added to it. Hell even a new type of sand taken from the bottom of the sea?