Lots to go over in this update.
I know things have been quiet with the demo for a while -- this is not because of reduced development or abandonment or anything like that. Mainly I feel I've got it in a mostly functional state, and the bulk of work has moved on to new content. That said I am working on a patch to fix a few issues, and add a bit of functionality, some of which will be covered in this video.
A big blocker for early access naturally is that you need more ships. So a big piece of work lately has been on taking all the developments, changes, and systems developed through the demo, and applying them to the other ships. The Xebec is the main target of this currently -- and she's mostly been converted to the new sailing system, along with some minor model changes.
With this development, I'm well into a first pass at a shipyard system. How this will work is that you will need to either find a wreck in the world, or find somewhere to gain drawings of the ship in question, and then deliver these plans to a shipyard capable of building the given ship. This is intended to be a mostly culture based thing -- so Imperial ships can only be built at a port familiar with the construction methods.
Once the plans are delivered, there's a few ways to proceed. If you are flush with cash -- you can simply purchase the ship outright, but the costs will be high. The other method is a much smaller payment, with you supplying the construction materials yourself.
To make this work also required an overhaul to the contracts system, which was previously called tasks. While you can still take on contracts as normal, you can also purchase some goods outright, and transport them to the shipyard. The option to sell, plus regionalized/demand pricing is expected in the future. Another addition that goes along with this, is that you can both buy and sell provisions at ports as well -- so you won't get overloaded with oil any longer.
Building a ship is intended to be a slow process, so you don't have to deliver all goods at once -- you can deliver piecemeal, or make partial payments. I'm toying with the idea of having a visual staged contruction of each ship -- but that's a big project so I haven't decided.
You won't lose your existing ship -- but due to the scripting demands of playable ships, I expect only one will be active at a time, with the other going into storage. I know many people have been asking about customization, and I expect that this will happen at the shipyard as well. Don't expect full on sail by sail customization -- but I'm toying with the idea of preset rigging variants instead. Think of a xebec with mixed square and lateen sails, or caravel with bowsprit and headsail, etc. I'd like to add things like hull and sail colors, flags, figureheads, etc as well, but that's long term.