It’s been a while... but here’s the roadmap for improvements!

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.

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.

Why a roadmap now?

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.

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.

Coming Soon: First Steps

Better Troubleshooting Tools

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.

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.

Community discussion

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.

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.

https://discord.com/channels/824584233149923340/1413261736999518288

Acknowledgement (and a Heads-Up)

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.

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.

If you believe we’ve missed something that is both important and achievable, please don’t hesitate to let us know in the comments.

✨ Major Improvements

🔧 Addressing CPU performance in combat

Large battles and late-game ship configurations currently create heavy CPU load, especially during combat sequences. While the game doesn’t demand much from the GPU, we’ve found that CPU-bound performance is a key bottleneck. We're optimizing calculations related to damage, targeting, and AI logic to improve frame rate stability during combat.

⚔️ Improving combat engagement and interactivity

Many players have noted that combat can become passive or repetitive over time. We're looking into how we can make combat feel more responsive and dynamic. With more meaningful and hands-on control during battle, such as being able to aim and fire guns manually while putting point-defense on auto-fire at the same time.

📘 Improving feature discovery and tutorialization

A significant number of core mechanics, from trading automation to ship loadout strategies, are either poorly explained or not surfaced at all. We're working on adding better onboarding tools, contextual tips, and optional tutorials so players aren’t left guessing how major systems work.

📉 Addressing UI-related performance drops

Some menus, especially when managing fleets, cargo, or industry, can cause significant frame drops or UI lag, particularly later in the game. We’ll be profiling these interfaces and streamlining performance to ensure smooth navigation across all menus.

🚀 Reducing travel fatigue through fast travel between hubs

Travel becomes one of the most cited pain points in the late game. To reduce tedium without removing the feel of the world, we're implementing a fast travel option between major hub cities that the player has already visited. This will help reduce downtime when you're moving cargo, completing quests, or setting up trade routes.

⚙️ Expanding automation features

Automation is a central part of the late-game loop, but the current tools are too limited or unreliable. We’ll be implementing:

• Auto-sell functions so that goods can be offloaded without manual intervention

• “Maintain supply up to X” logic for transport routes and repeat production, making resource chains more sustainable and easier to manage

🧪 Adding a Sandbox Start option

We’re introducing a new starting mode that unlocks all commissions, exclusive stores, and ship models from the beginning. This will give players the freedom to experiment with fleet setups, ship loadouts, base building, and the full economy system right away, without needing to progress through the main story first.

Importantly, this mode still allows full story progression, meaning you can experience the narrative while having access to late-game tools and content from the start. It’s ideal for players who want to replay the game with more flexibility, or simply dive into the systems without early-game constraints.

🖱️ Click-to-command: Ship model targeting

Currently, players must rely on UI panels to issue commands or select targets. We’re improving interactivity by allowing players to click directly on ship models in combat to issue commands, change focus, or assign abilities. This should make combat feel more intuitive and hands-on.

📈 Overhauling the EXP and crew leveling system

The current experience and crew progression system lacks depth and clarity. We’re reviewing how EXP is earned, and exploring ways to give officers more meaningful context of growth. Rather than earning 1 exp per battle the way it currently is.

📦 Ship loadout templates

Setting up multiple ships with similar roles is tedious and repetitive. We’re adding a system to save and apply ship loadout templates, allowing players to quickly fit new ships or refit old ones without rebuilding them module by module.

🧭 Map-driven UX upgrades (without full overhaul)

While we know that the ideal solution would be a full rework of how the game’s economy and logistics systems are presented, we don’t currently have the resources to do a full overhaul. Instead, we're aiming to make the world map far more interactive, letting you do more directly from it, including managing fleets, cargo, and automation.

In parallel, we’ll link more screens together to reduce the number of clicks and context switches needed to manage your economy. You shouldn't have to remember which submenu holds the one toggle you're looking for, and we're working to make that smoother.

🌐 Additional Languages

Thai – As developers based in Thailand, this has always been a passion project for us. We’re proud to finally bring the game to Thai-speaking players in their native language.

German – We’ve seen a lot of demand for a German localization, and we hear you. While we couldn’t afford a full localization effort on our own, we’re actively seeking community support to make this happen — and we hope to spark it as a collaborative translation project. If you're interested in helping, let us know!

🛠️ Other Improvements

• Allow saving and auto-save beyond the point of no return

• Automatically return players to the point of no return after the end credits Add more item recipes to production facilities

• Enable recipe selection by clicking on ongoing productions

• Link buyers and sellers in item info to their respective merchants

• Ship selling now includes the value of onboard parts

• Add an “X” button to close menus and UI windows more intuitively

• Improve the tone and presentation of important pre-battle dialogue

• Entering aggro range no longer cancels cruise mode

• Fine-tune enemy spawn and detection ranges for smoother pacing

• Increase engagement distance to give larger battles more space

• Correct and update DLC descriptions

• Add easier ways to access the map when many facilities are on-screen

• Add a unique "conglomerate trophy" item for sale at Silberblum Store

• Fix issue where disabling production notifications hides item rewards

• Clarify that stripped ship parts are moved to the ship’s cargo, not the fleet cargo

• Improve visibility range for certain quest-related encounters to make them easier to find

• Display the map automatically when receiving quests

🧩 Legacy Bugs That We Thought We Couldn’t Get Rid Of (But We Should Be Able To Now)

• Save loss and crash on "Continue"

• Cadenza’s trait stops working after combat

• Roadblock sometimes occurring after picking up Helmut

• Captured ships not counted toward "Ships Owned" achievements

• Boarding orders accelerate ships beyond their speed limits

• Remove 3D render behind opening cinematic (causes performance issues)

• Fix broken quest sequence in Helmut’s storyline

• Officer discount traits not applied when they’re not in the active fleet

• Remove context-sensitive prompts (WASD to move, Space to fire) after first display

• Prevent sending ships to ports that are already full

• Fix issue where sold ships still carry out freight routes

• Make speed calculation and display consistent across all interfaces

• Auto-hide initial combat prompts after a short time

• Ensure conglomerate trophies have valid places to be sold

• Ensure production notifications are fully disabled when toggled off

• Clarify where stripped ship parts are stored (cargo vs. fleet)

• Fix cases of data loss when using cloud save

• Fix crash in the Logistics tab when using Simplified Chinese

• Investigate and fix intermittent failures of the auto-buy feature

• Correct inconsistent distance displays to ports

• Fix issue where remote inventory transfers select the wrong ship

💬 Let’s shape the future together

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.

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.