The Fleet Awakens

The vessel system began as transport infrastructure. It has become a game played across the water.

Builders can define ship prototypes with vedit, assign class, speed, armor, and data-driven interiors, then spawn a live boardable vessel. Players can browse shipyards, buy and christen a hull, issue deeds and helm permits, hire crew, install refits, purchase insurance, and carry cargo between ports.

Broadsides, boarding, and wreckage

Naval combat now resolves range, firing arcs, gunnery rolls, speed-based defense, armor absorption, section damage, reload time, and subsystem degradation. Bow damage can tear rigging; stern hits can foul the rudder. A sinking ship evacuates its rooms into the surrounding water and leaves salvageable wreckage.

NPC vessels can return fire. Crews defend chokepoints. Hostile boarders face Athletics and the actual water outside the hull. Ships can be repaired at sea, captured from an uncontested bridge, or plundered alongside—but every hostile path now respects the MUD’s mutual PvP consent rules.

A sea with an economy

Nine seeded commodities create different supplies and prices at each port. Buying drains stock, selling floods it, and same-port round trips lose money. Freight contracts use live prices and real wilderness distance. Hired sailmasters, gunners, bosuns, and quartermasters affect speed, accuracy, repairs, and cargo; unpaid wages can cost a captain the crew.

Piracy builds bounty, letters of marque legalize prizes, and wanted captains can be refused by port services. Storms, fog, bathymetry, groundings, crush depth, lookouts, and region-based encounters all read the existing wilderness instead of inventing a second ocean.

Built, tested, awaiting the voyage

The gameplay layer includes ownership, upgrades, trade, contracts, piracy, hazards, encounters, operator tools, MSDP ship data, and help for thirty-one new commands. Production-linked coverage reached 74 passing transport tests, with memory and PvP defects found and fixed by the harness.

The source milestone is code-complete and test-verified. Live harbor content, soak testing, performance measurement, and player beta remain on the launch checklist. The fleet has awakened in the engine room; its first public voyage will be announced when those gates are cleared.