Rafts & Houseboats!

[LouisTBR]

With the addition of a revolutionised world, travel has been more important than ever. It seems only logical that, if a man can go alone over a mountain range for 1 season straight with nothing but rat meat, then we should be able to sail

My proposal: Rafts

Transportation Rafts

Docking Station:
A structure that can be placed on the edge of land, such as a beach. It extends into the water and allows boats to be moored.
Costs wood

Raft Base:
Simple floor pieces made from logs. Can support a structure such as walls (To be placed in water)

Mooring Hook:
A steel device, moors a raft at the dock. Required on both raft and dock piece to work.

Bamboo Walls:
Simple wall pieces, but thinner and only used on a boat. Costs less than a regular wall.

Bamboo Door:
Slow to open, but looks nice and is slimmer than a regular door.

Sail:
Must be placed central of the raft. Without these, the raft cannot travel. Requires logs and cotton.

Steering Wheel:
To be manned by any colonist. The higher 'Sailing' skill they have, the faster and more reliable your raft will be

Obviously this is fairly elaborate, and should be implemented either as a late game project or if the game changes to allow for more ocean-biome roaming

Houseboats!

Stasie:
A portable fridge/cooler. Unless your raft is giant, this will be required to keep food fresh and frozen

Fishing Rod:
A tool used to gather food out at sea. Can be used by a colonist with 'Fishing' skill. Other items can be caught too, like a good old-fashioned boot or a bucket of gold

Cannon:
Much like the mortar or turret on land, this classic sea defence deals devastating damage at the expense of a slow reload time. Yes, there would be pirates (Must be manned)

Treasure Chest:
Can be a crate or an elaborate pirate chest Can store double the amount of a single floor tile. Useful for compact, waterborne storage!

Planter:
Obviously fresh dirt is a pretty rare commodity in the ocean, so this compact planter filled with synth-grow will be your go-to tool!

Other Cool Boat Stuff

Blunderbuss:
Although not as efficient as a modern pistol, it can deal much better damage and spreads fire. Useful for incoming pirates!

Hook:
A hand implant. Lower manipulation for the user, but much better melee and a sick-ass pirate look

Pirate Hat:
Jack Sparrow-esc captain's hat, complete with an exotic feather

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To make this work, islands would need to be much more common. Also, water would need to be much more accessible and be worked on extremely. But, the prospect of an entirely new style of gameplay would bring more players to the game and give a refreshing new approach to Rimworld!

[Terra Mechanica]

Nice idea, but might I suggest having rowing and motors as possible options as well as sails?
(motors might be fuelled as well as powered, similar to a smithy or stove)

[Kirby23590]

Like this idea as well, along with it being a potential ideas for a mod maker.

Will there be motor boats & steam boats as well?

[DemonEinstein]

I'm currently working on a mod that is pretty much this. My take is a little different though, like thinking of the 'rafts' as 'ships' instead. The functionality is very much feasible to implement, and so far I have some of the basics finished. Still, there is a lot of room different ideas, so let me know if you think of anything good! 

[zgrssd]

Transportation Rafts sound like they would require a fully fleged vehicle System. It is baiscally just vehicles + water movement. This is something that seems to have been planned all along - we did have a Fuel bar on Caravans going back to Beta 18 after all - I am just not sure if it is still on the map as the feature addition seems to end around Release.
Of course the vehicle system propably requires a mount System first.

Houseboats would require soemthing more then even that: Mobile Bases. The whole Caravan and map System does not seem remotely suited for that. I predict it would be a pretty huge change.

The "other stuff" would be the easiest part. We can propably mod that stuff in right now.