[2020] Suggestion: Harpoons

Note: I dont know if this has been suggested before, but talking to friends, we think this would be a fun idea, especially when sky whales are added.

Harpoons would allow us to grapple onto things and pull them in. You could tow stuck ships out of a spot, or bring a ship that's out of range of your grapple closer. They would be tougher than grapples, enough that the Atlas Pulse couldn't knock it off ships (because, even though it's been useful to me, the Atlas Pulse seems a bit op.)

To get a harpoon off of a ship, you would have to dislodge it with either the pistol or the salvage tool. This would make pirate fights pretty interesting in my opinion.

And, as I said before with the towing idea, if Bossa does make a safe zone or trading zone as many people suggest, it could spawn a mini society. People trading goods for services. Say, towing a ship out of the ground will give each crew member that helped a Glider, or something deemed equal to the service. Perhaps a bunch of fuel?

The harpoon schematic could be fairly rare, being a rare spawn in Expanse but uncommon in Remnants. This would make it less valuable than a Glider, which can only be found naturally in the Badlands, but less common to griefers and pirates who've only just started playing. To keep people from using the harpoon and only the harpoon, perhaps there's a cool down time between using it, say 3 seconds? Or perhaps ammo that needs to be reloaded. Something as simple as 3 seconds would make the harpoon useful for hunting or battles, but not for traversing.

And once sky whales are put in, perhaps harpoons could be useful, as pistols may not be very effective, but cannons most certainly could be. But once the whale dies, it'll fall into the abyss. Which is where a harpoon come in. Maybe you could harpoon a whale, and once it dies, should your ship be solid enough to handle the weight, it'll reel the whale in a bit, and keep it there until you can get down and harvest it, or bring it in to do whatever else with.

TL;DR

Overall, harpoons are meant to be a more solid grapple hook, perhaps even mounted to a ship as a gun schematic. They could be used for good (services and trade) or evil (boarding ships with immunity to the atlas pulse.)