Editing Openai/69728748-107c-8007-83d4-ee546c3d316f (section)

=== Assistant: Short answer: because it’s a nightmare of design, history, and market timing—not because it wouldn’t be cool. ===
Short answer: because it’s a nightmare of design, history, and market timing—not because it wouldn’t be cool.

Longer, broken-down answer:

===== Elite Dangerous works because space is empty. =====
* Huge distances
* Sparse points of interest
* Procedural generation hides repetition

The Caribbean in the Age of Piracy (roughly 1650–1730) is the opposite:
* Dense trade routes
* Constant landfall
* Everyone is within sailing distance of everyone else

If you make it “Elite-scale,” it feels fake. If you make it accurate, it becomes busy, crowded, and simulation-heavy fast.

===== Space flight = Newton + thrust. =====
Sailing =
* Wind direction
* Wind strength
* Sail configuration
* Hull design
* Sea state
* Currents

That’s already a niche sim crowd. Now add:
* Combat
* Boarding
* Trade
* Crew morale
* Repairs at sea

You either simplify it (and anger sim nerds) or go full sim (and lose everyone else).

===== Elite’s factions are clean abstractions. =====
Piracy in the Caribbean is:
* Slavery
* Colonial exploitation
* Genocide of indigenous peoples
* Privateers who are pirates on weekdays and patriots on weekends

To do it honestly makes the game heavy.
To soften it makes it cartoonish.

Studios tend to dodge that minefield unless the payoff is enormous.

===== People who want: =====
* Deep naval simulation
* Open-ended sandbox
* Historical flavor
* Long, slow progression

…exist, but they’re split between:
* Euro-sim fans
* Strategy players
* Hardcore history nerds

Elite survives because space sci-fi is a universal fantasy.
Sailing a brig in 1692 is not (sadly).

===== Games got close: =====
* Sid Meier’s Pirates! → arcade abstraction
* Sea of Thieves → fantasy, zero economy realism
* Naval Action → hardcore sim, tiny player base
* Assassin’s Creed IV → single-player, curated world

Notice the pattern:
No one commits to “persistent, systemic, multiplayer pirate sim.”

===== A game like that would need: =====
* Elite’s procedural systems
* Dwarf Fortress–level simulation tolerance
* A dev team willing to be yelled at for 10 years

That’s a Frontier-scale gamble—but without the safety net of sci-fi.

===== If someone did make: =====

: 

…it would probably be:
* Critically fascinating
* Commercially terrifying
* Cult-classic legendary

Which is exactly why it doesn’t exist.

If you want, this model can sketch what that game would look like if someone actually had the guts to build it. 🏴‍☠️