New Screenshots

Route Planner

Added to 0.8.13 is the new Route Planner and Compass.  The Route Planner is accessible by a button in the upper right of the screen.  When open it shows a globe and your position, as well as the position of all other members in your squadron (squadron coming in 0.8.14).  You can then place waypoints on the globe to plan your navigation. 

This ties in with the new Compass feature.  The compass appears at the top of the screen, and not only shows cardinal directions, but also the next waypoint in your route, even if the next waypoint is located in a different zone.  The next waypoint also appears on the minimap when within range.  When you near a waypoint you'll be notified it has been reached, and the Compass automatically displays the next waypoint in your route. 

When the missions system is added (quests), it will integrate with the Route Planner, showing any mission destination. 

Food & Water

So in the last build the City Window has been entirely reworked.  It is now split between multiple windows, and makes a bit more sense.

Current development is on adding the food and water consumption feature.  Meals Ready to Eat and Water have been available items for a long time, are sold at every port, and you even start the game with some, but the crew currently don't use them.  In 0.8.12 the crew will need them though.

How this is expected to work, is while your ship is not in range of a port your crew will consume these food and water items at a rate of 1 ever 5 minutes for each 5 crew, rounded up.  So 5 crew will consume 1 food and 1 water, 6 crew will consume 2, 11 crew 3, etc.  When you are in range of a port this consumption is suspended (imagine the crew are going to shore and eating there, for example).

If you run out of either and the 5 minutes are up, a number of your crew will be injured.  As normal, your medical crew can treat them, but some of them may still die.  They are injured the same as injured crew from combat.

This will mean if you run out of supplies on a long voyage, you can run into some significant trouble.

When the Flotilla feature is eventually added, those ships will also consume the same supplies. 

Bug Reporting

The major feature being added to 0.8.10 is the ability to directly send bug reports while in the game.  To do so you click Menu then the Report Bug button.  This will be the most direct way of reporting an issue with the game. 

You'll be asked to explain the issue, such as a description and steps to reproduce.  Please be as descriptive as possible, as that will increase the likelihood the problem can be found and fixed.  If you don't know some of the information, that is fine too. 

Providing a Contact Email address is optional.  You probably won't be contacted, but it can be helpful if I have some questions about what you're reporting (such as if I'm unable to reproduce the reported problem).  Your contact email won't be used for any other purpose.  Yes we already ask for your email address when creating the account, but we don't want to contact you at that address for any reason other than related to your account, and many people sign up for games on email addresses they don't actually check that often. 

In addition there will be some other minor improvements, such as a bug fix for the recent resource gathering feature which prevented you from clicking on the same resource a second time, replacing the Sailing Quick Crew Button with a Gathering one, and some other minor performance improvements mostly on the server side. 

In the Future

The next major feature work is expected to be on the main City window.  I've gotten lots of complaints that it is unintuitive since it was added, and it has been planned to be replaced.  It will be broken up into several different windows.  There will be a window with primarily your city storage, one for outfitting your ship, one for managing all ships at the dock, and the Market window will be separated from all of them so you can move the Market window around freely. 

This will make the buttons on these windows make more sense, and free up some real estate for some new feature work coming later, specifically adding the option to change ship skins, finally name your ships (the feature is implemented everywhere for years except actually assigning the name doesn't currently work), some functionality specific to a new Missions feature (quests basically) where you'll carry specific people or items that are unique to that Mission.  Another similar feature I want to add is adding Lieutenants to your ships.  These will basically provide different bonuses to your ship, which increase with experience. 

After that I want to finally add the Trade Company feature, and expand the territory covered by the game.  The goal is to cover the West African coast and the North American east coast first, then expand out towards India and South America, and then finally to get to the starting positions for the 3 East Asian nations.  Last will be Australia and the west coast of the Americas (which I'm excited about as I live on the US west coast). 

Gunboat!

Currently adding the new Athens Class Gunboat!  Gunboats are small Corvette/Caravel sized vessels which have been fitted with a small number of over sized guns off a Ship of the Line.  The Athens Class, slightly smaller than a Baltimore, will be fitted two large cannons on each side, while still being fast and maneuverable like its small cousins.

The purpose of a Gunboat is to challenge much larger vessels with small relatively inexpensive craft.  Ideal when used in swarm tactics or augmenting additional firepower to a light fleet.  The Athens Class makes possible a fast moving fleet of small ships able to take on Ships of the Line and large Frigates.

The biggest vulnerability of the Athens Class is they are no more resistant to incoming ordinance than other ships of their size.  Use its small size and nimble nature to avoid shots rather than going toe to toe exchanging fire with large ships.  A lucky shot from a large ship may spell the end otherwise.  Fortunately they are very inexpensive compared to the large ships they are meant to take on.

Additionally coming in 0.8.9, already implemented is the new Christopher Class Heavy Cog.  This new ship is ideal for beginning captains, as it is an improvement over the Bremen Class Cog in practically every way, is pretty inexpensive, and has low skill requirements.

Fishing

Finally got around to adding the fishing mechanic.  Fish appear as a natural resource, and are depicted on the minimap as a turquoise circle.  When you approach the fish they can be seen swimming around in the water.

To collect the fish you go to the top right Resources tab and give them a click (same place you click on item drops).  This will open the Gathering window, which will tell you how many fish are available to gather.  Click on the Gather button to start catching the fish.  Make sure you assign crew to the Gathering role in the lower left Crew tab, or you won't catch any fish.  You're reminded of this in the instructions on the Gathering window. There will not be a quick crew button for assigning crew to the Gathering role, so you'll have to manually assign them.  EDIT: After testing of the feature on the live server since its release, it was decided to replace the Sailing Quick Crew button with a Gathering Quick Crew button for 0.8.10.

As you catch fish you'll get an event alert with how many you caught (an event alert is the kind of message you see when you're hit with a cannonball), and you'll see them appear in your cargo hold assuming you have enough space available.  Once all the fish have been caught the resource will disappear.  Pretty simple.  You're then free to sell them at markets, and eventually you'll be able to craft them into fish meat or other products.

To start with there will be Salmon and Great White Shark spawns.  More will be coming later.  This will all come in 0.8.8 which will be pushed to Steam in the next few days.  In addition 0.8.8 comes with some minor bug fixes, a rebalance to the Stone Cannonballs, and all new characters immediately have the skills to sail at least a Latina Class Caravel.

Edit: Also adding Bass fish spawns at launch now.  In addition, the Fishing and Advanced Fishing skills now apply a 10% speed boost to catching fish per level.  Broadopedia has been updated to state this.

Fire!