Ships in Roll20?

Hello all, new to Roll20.  I have figured out how to get maps in, tokens in, etc.  I am curious, though, how best to work ships in Roll20.  Ideally the ship would be able to move relative to the static background (say, docks and harbor), and the tokens on the ship would stick on the ship when it is moved.  Is there a way to do this in Roll20?  Thanks so much for your help!

There's no way to do that in roll20.  An API script might be build to manage it, but thats a Pro subscription perk, and you'd need someone who really knows their stuff to write it. A better solution would be to keep the ship stationary, and move the background. 

I've always wanted to write a script for inertial frames of reference, but haven't gotten around to it. The way I would handle this is by placing the ship on the Token Layer with the Tokens, be sure nobody has control of it (so it doesn't pop over other tokens), then when you want to move the ship and everything on it, drag select over the ship and it's contents, then move the whole group.  You'll probably want to hold alt while you drag so if things aren't precisely aligned, when you release, you don't get odd snapping behavior.  As long as the GM is the one moving the ship, it should work pretty well, though you might need to be circumspect in your selection of a boat graphic to make the drag selection easier.

The Aaron said: then when you want to move the ship and everything on it, drag select over the ship and it's contents, then move the whole group.   Oh yes, that would work. But I'd encourage you to look carefully at everyone's position each time before you move them. Because I guarantee you will fail to select everyone every now and then, and only move some of the tokens.

The Carry Tokens script would accomplish most of the behavior. The ship would still need to be created likely in the way that The Aaron explained with no one controlling it, and then using the script to attach the tokens to the ship. But that definitely would require Pro subscription for API access.

If your map background is a single image, it might be easier to put the ship on the token layer as The Aaron suggests and shift/adjust the position of the background map underneath.

Looks like a good discussion-answers already. I've experimented with and ran ships (in AD&D 2E, on Roll20) a couple of times.  I preferred the method of leaving the ship stationary in the middle, and changed the watery backgrounds as they moved along. When I tried moving the ship (a multiple-level, multi-deck ship of course), with all the pirates and PC's tokens, it was just more difficult to keep up with all the moving (for me the GM) plus on top of that I saw how the players also had to scroll and adjust their screens each movement. Check out Multi-sided Tokens (graphics including maps) on the Rollable Tokens feature. You can put multi-decks of the ship on one, and put multiple oceanic-backgrounds and seabeds on another (on map layer). Then GM can right-click and select the proper combination at any point. A canoe, a wagon on ground, a car with people in it, airplane, and most commonly asked riding-a-horse, are all possible to graphically represent and move-about the map in Roll20. But the larger the vessel, and when it gets as big as a SHIP, you the players and GM either have to zoom way out to Select-All and visualize the movement (on a huuuuuge Roll20 page by the way)... OR keep the static page frame of a more reasonable size and shift the underlying background to simulate the movement. As some people have said this later method may work better for your case but let us know which ways you try and how it goes.

Thanks for the awesome replies!  I ended up going with a ship token due to my noob factor and running out of time before the session.  I couldn't figure out how to make a token that wasn't round, so I just went with a round one with a background that matched my overall background.  I am loving R20 so I will figure out the bells and whistles eventually!  Thanks for your time, guys!