Pretty much the title, it's silly that people can get a bunch of lowbies to repair their ship while attacking other players, and there being no recourse. There's already restrictions on lowbies operating cannons, so this seems like just an oversight to me.

pirates really love to take advantage of every little exploit they can find.

but because of how dead ocean contents are, along with older content, I wouldn't expect anything to change for a LONG time, we still got bugs from 2016 that haven't gotten fixed, "PLEASE TRY AGAIN", stuck on trying to get on the wheel, etc

Well, at least restrict it so they can only repair non-pirate and non-flagged ships or in other words, prevent them from lending an advantage to PvP.
Being able to repair for PvE purposes seem just fine in my opinion.

Why not? Are you worried you cannot sink the players boats fast enough? Lololol.

-1

You would NOT like it if you couldn't use this tactic against pirates. 

Imagine PA makes the change you want.... then you cant use your guildie's low-level toons to help you repair...

you played yourself. 

...if someone engages in pvp with you, they shouldn't be able to get healed by non flagged players. That seems pretty straightforward. Despite what seem to be your insinuations, I am not a pirate, and it is in fact pirates who take advantage of this to ensure that they are never in a fair fight even if they encounter other people with well-geared carracks.

I don't sail around with a squad full of lowbies to repair my ship at all times, unlike some pirates, so it wouldn't really impact me. I would feel pretty comfortable saying that this is also the state of things for most players when they venture onto the ocean.

Fair enough that you are not a pirate but why do you care if that is what they do? You have no need to sink them as all you need to do is swap server to get away from them. Alternatively if you want to engage in battle with them get your own gang of lowbies to repair your ship.

Well not everyone has an army of people who want to join in a fight against pirates, and I don't think "you can just also abuse the obvious oversight/exploit" is really a great answer anyway.

You're right that I can just channel hop, and ultimately that's what I do, because there's really not much point in trying to fight back in that sort of situation. But IMO that itself is a problem.