Airship: Kingdoms Adrift News

[p]Greetings, Skyfarers![/p][p]Airship: Kingdoms Adrift has been a completed game for a while now, and by now, many of you know it well. While the team has since moved on to other projects, we’ve continued collecting feedback throughout. One of the earliest major issues, the December GPU performance bottleneck, was thankfully resolved. And since then, we’ve seen no reports of it reoccurring.[/p][p]Over the course of 2025, our full effort has gone into securing the funding needed to kickstart development of our next title. We’ll have good news to share about that later this year. But in the meantime, with some time and resources finally freed up, we want to revisit Kingdoms Adrift and fix what we can, especially things that we now understand better thanks to your feedback.[/p][p][/p][hr][/hr][p][/p][h3]Why a roadmap now?[/h3][p]To set the tone: this roadmap is not about transforming Kingdoms Adrift into the perfect game we dreamed of. Instead, it’s about making sure that anyone who discovers the game from today onwards can enjoy it for what it is, without being turned away by pain points that we can still realistically fix.[/p][p]This is our first title, and as we move on to the next big thing, we want Kingdoms Adrift to remain something we're proud of; something that invites new players into our world of fantasy flying ships, and, just maybe, earns a lifelong fan or two along the way.[/p][p][/p][hr][/hr][p][/p][h3]Coming Soon: First Steps[/h3][p]Better Troubleshooting Tools[/p][p]We’ll be introducing a new “Development Build” branch to help us and the community track down bugs more effectively. Unity doesn’t give us much to work with in terms of diagnostics unless we're running a full dev build, so this new branch will let us capture the data we need on your end when issues happen.[/p][p]We’re still a small team, and we simply don’t have the resources to replicate every hardware and gameplay setup — but this is a step toward better transparency and faster fixes.[/p][p]Community discussion[/p][p]Later in this article, we’ll share a full list of issues we plan to tackle — spanning both upcoming patches and longer-term goals. But we also want your help in deciding what comes first.[/p][p]We’ll be opening up individual discussions on each topic so we can walk through the ideas and proposed changes together with the community. You’ll be able to track progress and fix status in real time through a dedicated thread on our Discord, which will be kept up to date as work moves forward.[/p][p]https://discord.com/channels/824584233149923340/1413261736999518288[/p][p][/p][hr][/hr][p][/p][h3]Acknowledgement (and a Heads-Up)[/h3][p]This is going to be long and detailed. We recommend skimming for the topics that matter most to you. We'll break things into smaller update posts soon, so you can follow or deep dive into the areas that interest you most.[/p][p]The list of fixes and improvements that follows is based on a year of feedback, filtered down to issues mentioned repeatedly or that we believe we can realistically fix without exceeding our technical limits.[/p][p]If you believe we’ve missed something that is both important and achievable, please don’t hesitate to let us know in the comments.
[/p][hr][/hr][p][/p][h2]🛠️ Other Improvements[/h2]

• [p]Allow saving and auto-save beyond the point of no return[/p]
• [p]Automatically return players to the point of no return after the end credits
  Add more item recipes to production facilities[/p]
• [p]Enable recipe selection by clicking on ongoing productions[/p]
• [p]Link buyers and sellers in item info to their respective merchants[/p]
• [p]Ship selling now includes the value of onboard parts[/p]
• [p]Add an “X” button to close menus and UI windows more intuitively[/p]
• [p]Improve the tone and presentation of important pre-battle dialogue[/p]
• [p]Entering aggro range no longer cancels cruise mode[/p]
• [p]Fine-tune enemy spawn and detection ranges for smoother pacing[/p]
• [p]Increase engagement distance to give larger battles more space[/p]
• [p]Correct and update DLC descriptions[/p]
• [p]Add easier ways to access the map when many facilities are on-screen[/p]
• [p]Add a unique "conglomerate trophy" item for sale at Silberblum Store[/p]
• [p]Fix issue where disabling production notifications hides item rewards[/p]
• [p]Clarify that stripped ship parts are moved to the ship’s cargo, not the fleet cargo[/p]
• [p]Improve visibility range for certain quest-related encounters to make them easier to find[/p]
• [p]Display the map automatically when receiving quests[/p]

[p][/p][hr][/hr][p][/p][h2]🧩 Legacy Bugs That We Thought We Couldn’t Get Rid Of (But We Should Be Able To Now)[/h2]

• [p]Save loss and crash on "Continue"[/p]
• [p]Cadenza’s trait stops working after combat[/p]
• [p]Roadblock sometimes occurring after picking up Helmut[/p]
• [p]Captured ships not counted toward "Ships Owned" achievements[/p]
• [p]Boarding orders accelerate ships beyond their speed limits[/p]
• [p]Remove 3D render behind opening cinematic (causes performance issues)[/p]
• [p]Fix broken quest sequence in Helmut’s storyline[/p]
• [p]Officer discount traits not applied when they’re not in the active fleet[/p]
• [p]Remove context-sensitive prompts (WASD to move, Space to fire) after first display[/p]
• [p]Prevent sending ships to ports that are already full[/p]
• [p]Fix issue where sold ships still carry out freight routes[/p]
• [p]Make speed calculation and display consistent across all interfaces[/p]
• [p]Auto-hide initial combat prompts after a short time[/p]
• [p]Ensure conglomerate trophies have valid places to be sold[/p]
• [p]Ensure production notifications are fully disabled when toggled off[/p]
• [p]Clarify where stripped ship parts are stored (cargo vs. fleet)[/p]
• [p]Fix cases of data loss when using cloud save[/p]
• [p]Fix crash in the Logistics tab when using Simplified Chinese[/p]
• [p]Investigate and fix intermittent failures of the auto-buy feature[/p]
• [p]Correct inconsistent distance displays to ports[/p]
• [p]Fix issue where remote inventory transfers select the wrong ship[/p][p][/p]

[hr][/hr][p][/p][p]💬 Let’s shape the future together[/p][p]If you’ve made it this far, thank you. We’re reopening this journey not just to patch up what’s broken, but to make the experience more welcoming for every new commander who climbs aboard. Your insights have always guided us, and now, more than ever, we’re listening.[/p][p]Jump into the Discord thread, or share your thoughts here, tell us what matters most to you, let’s make this next chapter of Kingdoms Adrift and beyond something truly worthwhile.[/p]

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If you were thinking about getting the game, now is a great time to do so as we are part of the indie.io Publisher Sale! Catch the game on sale from April 11th through April 25th.

Check out other great indies on sale during the indie.io Publisher Sale to add them to your collection.

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https://store.steampowered.com/app/1597310/Airship_Kingdoms_Adrift/

If you were thinking about getting the game, now is a great time to do so as we are part of the Steam Spring Sale! Catch the game on sale from March 13th through the 20th.

Make sure to check out other great indie games on sale during the Spring Sale to add them to your collection.

Greetings Skyfareres!

As the year draws to a close, it has been two months since the release of the Logistic Update and a few weeks of subsequent adjustments. We’ve been gathering suggestions and feedback from all directions. By combining these insights with ongoing research and development for our next title, we’ve achieved breakthroughs on multiple fronts—some of which we’re excited to apply to Kingdoms Adrift.

Starting with this update, we will share more announcements and updates about our upcoming title’s progress alongside the improvements we’re making to Kingdoms Adrift. We’re also focusing on enhancing the game’s content and balancing to not only refine the experience for Kingdoms Adrift but also to serve as valuable lessons for our new project. Our goal is to make Kingdoms Adrift the best it can possibly be while laying the groundwork for what’s to come.

As mentioned previously, we always push the recent build into Beta for testing before the release and we could always use extra hands. Check out this community post on How to Access Beta: LINK

Let’s dive into the first improvement we’ve managed to accomplish in this update!

[h2]Update Note for 1.6.1.2[/h2]
Status:
LIVE NOW: 24th December 2024
Older Saves: Safe to continue

[h2]Improvements:[/h2]
[h3]Improvement #1 Offloading GPU with a new skybox renderer[/h3]
We’ve brought a new rendering pipeline from our "New Project" into Kingdoms Adrift. Initially, we thought it wouldn’t be compatible—but we were pleasantly surprised to find out otherwise. So, we thought, why not give it a go? The result was very satisfying with our test machine running constantly below 60°C (Default GPU fans threshold)

Previously, with our legacy skybox renderer (The temperature isn’t relevant here):


After implementing the new skybox renderer, we managed to shave off approximately 45% of the GPU load—quite the improvement!:


With this update, graphics cards equivalent to or above the game’s recommended specs should no longer require constant cooling in most cases. This means you can enjoy Kingdoms Adrift for longer sessions without worrying!

We’ve also been investigating other factors affecting late-game performance. While there’s limited optimization we can do with Unity Physics, we identified and addressed several script-related inefficiencies.

For example, The AI officers’ listener was repeatedly looping and recalculating ship part performance whenever a ship part was destroyed. This caused frame freezes, especially when multiple parts were destroyed simultaneously. Similar inefficiencies were found in the algorithms for target scanning and bullet spawning.

These discoveries wouldn’t have been possible without the support of our community—especially @ItsJustLuck on our official Discord server, who provided save files and insights into the core of these issues. Thanks again for your support!

[h3]Improvement #2: In-Game Difficulty Menu[/h3]
The title says it all! If you find the game too challenging or certain aspects aren’t to your liking, you can now adjust the difficulty. Simply access the settings menu and scroll to the bottom of the list to find the new difficulty options.


Once you open the menu, you’ll see a familiar difficulty settings interface, similar to the one available at the start of the game. Here, you can adjust the difficulty or switch to a custom difficulty mode. Please note that if you lower the difficulty, achievements will be disabled—even if you later increase the difficulty again.


[h3]Balancing and Bug Fixes:[/h3]

• Made freight quests a more viable source of income by increasing overall rewards by 50%.
  
• Fixed multiple crashes identified through automatic crash reports.
  

That’s it for this update! As mentioned earlier in this article, we’re now taking a closer look at Kingdoms Adrift’s balancing to see how we can shuffle things around and potentially add new elements. Feel free to drop by our Discord server and share your recommendations: LINK

On a completely unrelated note, a recent game trailer release has sparked quite the conversation, with some viewers commenting on how poorly the main protagonist seemed to have aged. Interestingly, we’ve had some similar discussions behind the scenes here at Revolution Industry! Let us know what you think :D



Cheers,

Jay

If you were thinking about getting the game, now is a great time to do so as we are part of the Steam Winter Sale! Catch the game on sale from December 19th until January 2nd!

Make sure to check out other great indie games on sale during the Winter Sale to add them to your collection.