Ship repair

Ships may be repaired but it will be a lengthier process than in other games.

• Once repaired, ships can only be launched from land.

Harbors

Alpha-1 harbor early preview concept.

Harbors that are located in specific areas around the world along the coast and those are points of interest that get adopted by a node when they reach certain levels in proximity to that harbor, or if the node gets vasseled by a parent or sovereign node in relationship to their vassal owning that harbor. – Steven Sharif

Harbors appear along the coast as a result of a node being developed on or near to the coast. Harbors have a significant amount of influence over the waters.

• Harbors have a disembarkation zone that merchant ships can cross to be guided into the harbor.
  • Merchant ships can only be launched and received at harbors in a similar way that land caravans can only be launched and received at a caravanserai.
• Coastal nodes have hooks to points of interest that take control of harbors.
• Harbors will grant quests that are related to naval content.
• Harbors will provide a number of services including upgrades to ships.
• Harbors offer objective-based naval gameplay during node sieges.

There will be harbors that boats can go inside of those will be present along the coast. Harbors can pop up as a result of a node being developed nearby, if it's near the coast or if a node itself is on the coast it can have a harbor component to it. There will likely be quests that are granted from this harbor, specifically with regards to the sea and sea content; and what you can do in this harbor will be a lot of different things including upgrades to the boats. – Steven Sharif

Ship building

Naval concept art.

Ships are going to also have classes. Those classes are going to dictate the type of of attachments that can be applied and in what quantity. A military vessel type may have more capacity for weapon based attachments. A transport ship might have more capacity for defensive based attachments. And then you'll have more versatile ships that can share across those types. So in that sense you are constructing a componentized ship for the types of activities you intend to do: Are you a raider? Are you a mover of goods? Are you an adventurer? These types of things are going to inform your decision of what the attachments you're going to have in those three categories. – Steven Sharif

Ship building can be carried out by any player in possession of the right components, recipes, and an advanced enough node with a harbor.

• Various professions can craft ship components. These components can be sold to other players.
  • Previously it was stated that players utilize the ship components that are crafted by ship builders.

Ships are built in adherence to a recipe. That recipe requires components. Those components adhere to different crafting professions that require a player to intersect and/or craft or purchase those components from the different professions and then once they have those accumulated they can do the construction process through the recipe system at a harbor.

• Ships may only be crafted or upgraded in harbor crafting stations that are unlocked by the advancement of coastal nodes.

• Players can choose which "joints" get populated with either offensive weaponry, defensive, or utility attachments they want on their ship prior to construction completion. The types of attachments that are available are dictated by the ship's class. – Steven Sharif
  • Movement, Durability, Speed, Turn rate, Hit points, Defensive and Damage abilities.
  • Weapon slots.
  • Aesthetic customization.

There are absolutely attachments that can apply to the ship and some of those are decorative in nature. There are also slots that have utility aspects to them as well but are also decorative. – Steven Sharif

• Ships will likely not have closed spaces or internal compartments such as Captain's quarters.

We are trying to stay away from internal compartments within the ships because that presents a whole different type of user interface and flow that can be a bit cumbersome and problematic, especially in combat and in closed spaces. So we're trying to stay away from that under deck aspect and keep things all on deck for better readability on the player side. – Steven Sharif

Ship destructibility

Ship destruction at sea will leave its crew stranded, since ships (excluding Naval caravans) may only be summoned from a port or harbor.

• There is no "recall" (fast-travel) option to return to shore, however death by drowning will respawn the player on shore but will incur experience debt (and other death penalties).

We don't have a recall... There is consequence for you losing the means of your mobility and if you lost the means of that mobility then those consequences are it's going to take you longer to get to where you need to go, or you're going to have to suffer some experience debt. – Steven Sharif

• Dynamic destructibility of ships is under consideration.

I mean traditionally if we did not use dynamic destruction, that what we would use is decals to simulate damage on the ship based on an overall hit point value. At certain hit point values we would swap out the mesh to show a more destructive state potentially; and that and you know at that point for a user in regards to immersion you know both are very similar from the immersion factor right? – Steven Sharif

See also

• Ship building
• Item repair