People get bored and leave. When the game gets an update people come back to check it out then get bored and leave. When a large war is happening like the last spike in activity people play and get bored and leave. Simply put. No update, no war, no people.
The game is fundamentally flawed, if not the Russians it would have been another nation, the Russians simply did it the best. The game is solely centered around RVR every other activity in game is shallow and is a means to the end of RVR. The activity of RVR is one were you are incentivized to collect into one nation and kill all opposition effectively destroying the sole content of the game. I am not sure anything can actually be done about it as its so deeply imbedded into the game. Maybe if other activities were more fleshed out it would give people something else to do besides wait for the largest power to get bored to repeat the cycle but that is not the case.
Lines added on the Armor bars to show mast HP. The lines could work by changing color like modules. For masts with multiple sections could be split between the armor bars, left for top, mid for mid, and right for bot section.
This is how steam works. The poorer a region is typically the cheaper steam products are there. The devs have accepted that your not getting 33 pounds out of this guy. (I am not saying all Russians are roving bands of gopniks just some. pls no ban).
As far as I know. Each sail provides its own speed yes to one. Mast repair is the same as sail if you get dismasted during a sail repair it will still repair masts.
If deep water ships can use shallow ports then whats the point of shallows? You can already do this sort of thing as we can trade at sea. Have a player on a shallow ship like a t brig sail in, pick up the goods then sail out and trade the deep ship.