Monitoring the action

[Genma Saotome]

I'm curious Dev's... are you logging what's going on in the game? Doing any analysis?  If not I sincerely suggest you consider it.

How far are people sailing, on average, between ports?  How much money is being made (or lost) with each port call?  How much money do people have? What goods are being purchased and what's not being purchased?  How much shot is being fired by a ship in battles?  Which ports are busy, which are ignored?  What are the mix of ip locations (roughly speaking) by hour of the day by country they're sailing for?  Have you got a reasonably even balance at any given time? And so on.

This post isn't meant as a  criticism but speaking as one who was trained in Total Quality Control (TQC) you cannot improve (or fix) what you are not measuring.  You should be logging and analyzing a LOT OF STUFF.  You can take all of the crabbing you get from players and check the reality in the numbers.  Crabbing about things where the corresponding numbers are obviously showing there is a problem tends to highlight what's important to change.