Sailwind News

Major New Features

- New economy system: you can now buy and sell trade goods directly at the Sailwind office. The prices and availability will change over time based on a simulated supply and demand system. You will also have access to some information about the prices of goods on other islands, allowing more planning and predictability with trading.

- Currencies: each region now uses its own regional currency, and there is also a universal "gold" currency (at the moment only used for purchasing ships). You can exchange currencies at the Sailwind office in capital cities and several other islands. The exchange rate will vary over time, and your transactions will affect it as well. (if you load a previous save, your "old" gold will be converted automatically, with some amount split evenly between the three regional currencies, and new gold for larger amounts)

- Missions: missions are now integrated with the new economy system, using the market prices of goods to determine mission rewards and destinations. In general, you can expect more variety, such as some rare very high reward missions. Also, trans-oceaninc missions will now generally pay significantly less money.

Other New Features
- improved lighting effects with ambient occlusion and lantern shadows (optional, can be toggled in the settings menu)
- the port mission UI now has separate tabs for local and world missions
- crates of tobacco can now be bought and sold as a trade good on the market
- improved the tutorial hints to be more helpful
- various small UI improvements

Balance Changes
- local missions can now have up to 5 goods (6 for capital cities), but the amount is limited by your reputation (max 3 goods at the lowest level)
- world missions can have up to 12 goods
- when starting a new game, the moon phase will now be approaching full moon, to ensure the first several nights are bright

Bug Fixes
- improved the stability of the boat physics, possibly reducing the frequency of random glitches and crashes
- fixed some bugs causing the tutorial hints to show incorrect information in some situations
- various other minor bug fixes

The beta version of the upcoming economy update (0.20.b1) is now available on the beta channel.


The full patch notes for the update will be available on full release. For now, here are the main new features:

- New economy system: you can now buy and sell trade goods directly at the Sailwind office. The prices and availability will change over time based on a simulated supply and demand system. You will also have access to some information about the prices of goods on other islands, allowing more planning and predictability with trading.

- Currencies: each region now uses its own regional currency, and there is also a universal "gold" currency (at the moment only used for purchasing ships). You can exchange currencies at the Sailwind office in capital cities and several other islands. The exchange rate will vary over time, and your transactions will affect it as well. (if you load a previous save, your "old" gold will be converted automatically, with some amount split evenly between the three regional currencies, and new gold for larger amounts)

- Missions: missions are now integrated with the new economy system, using the market prices of goods to determine mission rewards and destinations. In general, you can expect more variety, such as some rare very high reward missions. Also, trans-oceaninc missions will now generally pay significantly less money. The goal with the new mission system is to encourage the player to gradually transition to trade for making most of their money.


Beta testing and feedback
The new economy is a complicated, dynamic system, which still requires some balancing and fine tuning. Major game-breaking bugs are also possible. The goal of this beta release is to gather some feedback to allow for better balancing and bug fixing before the full official release of the update. If you'd like to help out with testing, here are the most important points to focus on:

- trading: does it feel fair, interesting and realistic? Can you make a reasonable amount of profit through trading skillfully? Is it too hard, or too easy?

- missions: especially when starting a new game, are the mission rewards good? Is there enough variety? Any abnormal behavior, such as no/very few missions availalbe?


The best place to share your feedback is the #beta-general channel on the Sailwind Community Discord:
https://discord.gg/u4C8RQG6X9

* sometime in October

Hi guys, it's been a while since the last news post here. Just wanted to let everyone know that work on Sailwind continues as usual, and the next big update is expected to be ready sometime next month. It will include a major revamp of the economy system - the goal is to make buying and selling trade goods on the market the main way to make money in the game, encouraging the player to plan their routes more carefully and with more variety. The new system will include real time price changes based on local supply and demand, a new UI for tracking prices across different ports, and even local currencies.

I invite you to check out the Sailwind Community Discord, where you will always find the most recent development news and discussions.

Also, I've updated the development roadmap to include some information about the planned transition out of early access and into full release.

Balance Changes
- smoking tobacco now has a bigger effect on your sleep, depending on the type of tobacco
- increased the time it takes for one piece of tobacco to burn out completely
- slightly adjusted the shrouds on the kakam to make more room for square sails

Bug Fixes
- the pipe smoke now correctly follows the direction of the wind on a moving boat
- fixed a bug where some junk and gaff sails would turn randomly as if unaffected by wind, or would not turn at all in some cases
- removed the floating winches on the kakam
- fixed several bugs with winches visible even when no sails are attached to them
- removed the floating forestays on the NPC kakam

New Features
- added pipes and tobacco for smoking; they're available for purchase in the capital cities and several other towns
- more customization options available for the kakam
- sails and other custom parts now add weight to your boat
- junk and gaff sails now reef in the opposite direction (except Al'Ankh gaffs)
- the big ships can now be cleaned in shipyards for a fee

Balance Changes
- entering a shipyard no longer costs gold; you will now be charged the shipyard fee when confirming an order in the shipyard instead
- reduced the frequency and intensity of the water splash effect in calm water to make it slightly more realistic
- increased the range of the mouse sensitivity setting; this means you will most likely need to reduce your mouse sensitivity to match the previous setting

Bug Fixes
- you can now place maps on tables
- your food, water and energy should no longer decrease while in a shipyard
- fixed a bug where disabling control hints in the settings would hide item prices in shops
- your current alcohol level should now save correctly
- various other minor bug fixes