Perhaps it was intended as one of those gold sink I have heard many players ask for ages ?
Perhaps it
is intended as a gold sink, but then, if that's the case, the rewards for doing so should be greater in another form. You don't just create a "gold sink" without giving something for that gold to sink into. Plain old ordinary "your gold vanishes and you get nothing in return" gold sinks are pointless, and they do nothing but cause players to feel as if they've been urinated upon.
In addition to the "risk vs. reward" issue, there's also the "time vs. reward" issue, which is an equation of how much time you have to spend doing something in order to glean some sort of meaningful reward for the time you have expended doing something.
It's pretty clear that the developers completely forgot that they were making a game, and instead went high and heavy on the realism. The problem with realism is that most people don't actually enjoy it in their games. Yes, there
are some people who want realism in their game... they're usually the same people who use phrases like "Realistically, zombies aren't that fast..." or "That couldn't really happen in real life..." and completely gloss over that we're not playing reality in any particular game.
When the amount of time and energy and money invested into something exceeds the potential reward for getting something back out of it, there's an issue. Now, sure, there's apparently a chance for X, Y, or Z to drop, but you still have the issue where you're basically paying via in-game currency to play.
In other threads, I've seen mention the issue of some people expecting it to be soloable, and frankly, given the reward, it really should be. Consider that if you had 5 people on your ship, and you manage to get 2,000 gold each. Whoo. Hoo.
There is definitely something wrong with the equation... and, also something wrong with the factors used when crafting stuff. It's sort of like the idea that you get 1 shaft from 1 piece of wood. The amount of things that go into making 1 match are a bit... odd.
They're in need of doing something about these things... things that had they not been in so much of a hurry to release this they might have learned in a focused testing group. But I digress...
Point is, there's something severely wrong with the implementation here.