Apologies for the lengthy delay. There's been a death in the family, along with some personal struggles.
That said, development is progressing steadily.
I would like to introduce the Epitaphs. These are among the first overtly fantasy elements added, and I'd like to give a bit of an explanation as to what they are, and why I'm introducing them now.
While the world of Following Seas aims to be grounded in many areas, types of magic do exist. A big practitioner of these arts (prior to the collapse at least) was the Caelean culture. A cost of this is a struggle to maintain population numbers for reasons that may become clearer later -- but ultimately the effects of this were a somewhat distinct attitude towards death. Rather than practicing burial, or burnings as the Imperials do, instead bodies of (some) of the dead are ritualistically prepared, and animated. They are draped in ribbons, bearing texts that tell the story of who they were in life, their families, and notable events from their life.
Their purpose is to both act as walking gravestones, and to provide service in death to their descendants and people. Don't think of them as zombies or rotting corpses. They are closer to mummies, they don't stink or moan or eat brains or anything. In gameplay they function basically as robots that can automate some of your ship controls.
With all that said, these are intended to be the first kind of crew available to the player. I would like to expand this to include more varied human crew members eventually, but I'm not the best character artist or animator -- and these offer a simpler approach from a design perspective, and I feel have potential to be a bit interesting from a story perspective.
At this point, their capabilities are pretty limited, but more is intended, as well as a gradual dejankification. (Have I mentioned I'm not much of an animator?).
Commands can be issued from a radial menu, and currently allow for sail controls and pumping. An Epitaph can be directed to continually work the pumps until told differently, or you can queue up orders to manage the sails, furling or unfurling to any value without you needing to leave the helm. Soon to be added is capstan/windlass control, which aims to make precise harbour maneuvers easier, especially on the larger ships, as you can place the kedging anchor repeatedly without needing to wind it yourself.
You will be able to have multiple Epitaphs on a ship, but for practicalities sake don't expect realistic crew numbers. Each ship will have a preset number of crew stations, likely not exceeding a dozen or so for the bigger ships.