My dearest members of the Ships At War community,
I have some sad news in regards to the future development of SAW.
You might have noticed that the development of SAW has been quite slow in the past couple of months.
This slowdown came from some personal issues (corona, broken arm and now nerve damage) but most importantly the existential dread of SAW as a game.
My original vision for SAW back in january 2021 was: A small multiplayer game where each player builds a ship during battle and tries to sink the opponent. (Forts but on water)
However the game has become something drastically different and the Forts - High Seas DLC has made the original idea obsolete anyways. That means that some of the features which were planned for the original Idea no longer fit the game that SAW has become. (especially the multiplayer)
I have come to the unfortunate conclusion, that multiplayer will not be technically feasible because the ships are made out of too many moving parts.
I would have to make some fundamental changes to the way ships are build in order to allow multiplayer. This would make any and all current ship designs obsolete and unusable with just one patch...
After pondering on this decision for a long time, I came to the conclusion that, I will scrap multiplayer and rather embrace what the game has become: A small sandbox game with a lot of creative freedom.
I will also have to scrap mod support because the budget and time constraints do not allow for it.
tldr: Multiplayer, Mods & the DLC had to be removed from the roadmap due to technical & budget related issues.
The planned DLC content (modern weapons) will be included into the game for free.
My plan is it to :
1. polish SAW as much as possible (especially the editor)
2. implement new weapon types
3. add more ships
And release the game out of early access in Q4 of 2022.
I am sorry to let those of you down, who bought the game for the promised multiplayer.
Thank you for your understanding.
- Julian