While not neccesarily the Deadliest Catch ships, it would be cool if the gameworld and ships at some point would support less obviously scripted and more dynamic gameplay, as in, you could use the fishing vessel(s) to go fish, ferries could open the doors and cars and people would drive in/out, tankers/freighters could get loaded/unloaded and displacement would adjust.
I've spent some time in Farming Simulator, and the latest edition is quite nice. That game is all about the player and theres no missions outside of challenges/tutorials. You make your own fields by plowing ground, seed, fertilize and harvest. Deliver harvest to various places depending on current price. Or the old 18 Wheels of Steel series, where game content also was created "on the go", the player had a truck and would decide which trailer to pull from where to where, depending on distance, time to deliver and content (some stuff could be more easily damaged than others).
Content like that would increase playtime a lot for many players who might not want to imagine all of it all the time, cannot or will not create it as a mission every time or doesent find enough custom missions after some time of playing. Other than the altering of displacement and behaviour models for ships based on cargo onboard, it should not take a lot of extra coding to implement something like that. I would not mind paying to get it as an expansion.
Imagine, youre in harbor piloting a pusher boat, you pull up your netbook/laptop (menu), see a list of possible jobs (generated by the game, random number of barges from random spot (preselected as possible barge spawn/delivery spot) to random (same kind) spot. Time limit (fitting to the job, depening on difficulty) and maximum damage rating before mission ends/fails. Reward, if needed, could be points based on speed/time and damage. Or, if more work was put into it, ingame money so one could buy fuel and upgrade (to better) ships. Port of Callish. But thats taking it a bit outside the game scope I guess. I must say it made Flight Simulator series more appealing in the long run when the thirdparty addons for passenger/freight pilot came out.
Sorry for semijacking the thread, I've thought about it before and now it just jumped out. On topic, it might be that the whole Deadliest Catch media circus would want the added exposure of being featured in this game, but to be honest I think they would rather charge a premium for vstep to use their ships. Might also not be possible due to contractual issues with the already mentioned Deadliest Catch game. Greenpeace (whom already have an interest in SSE) might also dislike it? I'm not sure how they feel about fishing other sealife than whales.