October 1 — steadier voyages and companions with minds of their own

This patch makes sailing and combat more dependable, gives passengers and crewmates clearer agency, and improves the information captains receive while planning a voyage.

Companions and passengers

• Passengers who are declined now wait at the inn for a while, so captains can return after making room aboard.
• Crewmates, passengers and emissaries now speak up before the captain attacks their country or home port. The captain can reconsider; proceeding causes the objecting character to leave and ends any commission entrusted to them.
• Characters whose occupied home is being liberated instead urge the captain to take the commission.
• Every departure receives a clear acknowledgement with the character's portrait, and the same departure and quest-failure rules cover timed events.
• East Asian pirates now draw from more appropriate regional identities and portraits, including Japanese wokou captains.

Sailing, combat and supplies

• Ship combat now ends only after a sustained disengagement, preventing battles from ending and immediately restarting.
• Ships once again shed momentum naturally. Sails provide no forward force into the wind, and additional headwind drag brings a vessel properly to a stop.
• Food and water endurance now comes from one authoritative calculation across loadouts, the status display and tooltips. It accounts for animals, passengers, the chef's skill and reduced food consumption by Muslim crewmates during Ramadan.
• Quest directions no longer describe the current port as being north of itself, and pirate-haven reports now include a useful direction as well as distance.
• Steam desktop builds release mouse focus correctly when moving to another monitor.

World and interface

• River cities use precomputed visual offsets so settlements no longer cover the channel they are meant to serve.
• Inland wonders use validated approach areas: they remain discoverable from a practical stretch of navigable water without appearing well before they reach the screen.
• Player-owned shipyards now recognize supplies sold in their own port before directing the captain elsewhere.
• Release checks now fail if a diagnostic fallback is exercised during automated gameplay, catching recoverable presentation errors before they reach players.

Thank you to everyone testing long voyages and sending precise reports. Those reports continue to catch the awkward states that only emerge after many days at sea.