A Cold Start Ocean Launch is when a new ocean is made available to players with the barest possible infrastructure.
When the Ice Ocean first opened for testing, Three Rings also used the experience to learn how to fire up new oceans without experienced players, shoppes, etc. "We want to work out how to start an Ocean cold and have it smoothly ramp up without any need for experienced migration and jump-starting," Captain Cleaver said at the time.
In Cobalt and Viridian Oceans, the cold start included:
- Sloops for 7,000 PoE (Cobalt) or 5,000 PoE and 20 doubloons (Viridian) at the palace shoppes.
- Bazaars on three islands to allow players to start stalls.
- Limited supplies of swill and small cannon balls for sale dockside from the palace.
- The three islands with bazaars had one shipyard stall to be used only for buying charts. (Players could open their own stalls if they wanted to build ships.)
At least one problem was a coalition of players buying out all the swill and cannon balls for sale at the palace. (There was no way to buy up all the sloops.)