just like back in the 1700s

wew

Got frustrated by the info box covering up the points/gold.

the info panel for some of the upgrades are terrible, as they are blocking a good portion of the upgrade buttons and info.
I have no idea what fishing is for. But the game makes me freak out about not missing a fish.
The gold doesn't scale at the same pace as everything else so even though you are moving much faster, the ports are getting further away, but the increase for the gold per port isn't enough to off set the difference, it's out of balance.

One time, I was able to "spend a week in port" and get a special crew. just once, so I"m not sure what the drop rate? is on that or what triggers it to show up?

I think this game has huge potential, but it will need to get cleaned up some.

Surprised no one mentioned this before, but autosave would be nice. I had been playing for a couple of days and chrome crashed. Goodbye game.

That being said let us take a look at some of the other aspects of the game.
Graphics:
1. As other people have said it really could use some changes to the animation/visuals from time to time, You upgrade your ship (even with permanent upgrades) and everything always looks the same. Perhaps starting with a tiny ship and slowly building up?
2. The graphics are inconsistent between sailing mode and privateering mode. Even though the battles are automatic it would be great to see some interaction between the ships and to have slight changes to the ships you are fighting.
3. The fish.. They just appear to be random cutouts of random fish the type does not seem to matter. These fish end up looking very awkward just popping out over the ocean with the bright green click to catch sign. Consider putting a background box around them (maybe with some decorations).
4. The menus/interface feel very drab and don't seem to suit either the theme of piracy or of old time sailing vessels. Even as idle games go this makes the game feel more drab than it is.

Upgrades.
1. Yes you tell us what an upgrade 'does' and you give us a convoluted map to show us how this will actually impact the things that matter, but you don't really tell us what each upgrade will do or how much of an impact it will have, this makes buying upgrades difficult to strategize.
2. Clicking buy max gives us no idea how much we are actually about to spend until we spend it. This sucks.
3. The points and distances end up changing so wildly between runs it is very difficult to judge your own progress and to try to strategize.
4. There is no description on many of the lineage upgrades, there should always be information on how things are going to work.
5. There is no explanation of how retirement points are calculated or for that mater how the royal navy points are calculated. They pretty much just appear and you wait until you have what you want.. not so happy.
6 The battle upgrades seem overpowered at first (allowing you to smite the enemy quickly sometimes in one hit) but later become nearly useless.
7. It would also be nice to see the total number and total effect of each upgrade.

Gameplay.
1. Just like with the upgrades there seem to be a lot of things that aren't fully explained. How does the fishing bonus work? How does gold work? At first I thought gold was earned at harbors for presumably making a deliver or selling fish, but it sometimes randomly goes up. What impact do battle upgrades have? etc. etc. Assume we don't know what we are doing, because we don't. You give the option to turn off tips in the settings menu so please explain away until we click it.
2. As an idle game goes the random nature of the fish requires you to be active to get the bonus (which is unclear of its value and cause). The initial battles also require active play.
3. Speaking of battles, as none of the other upgrades seem to impact your ships battle ability (just the ones earned through battle) there is obviously a limit to your battle ability. I made it to level 90 and was just barely winning even with all level 90 items. Is there some other way to upgrade this or is it just what you get?
4. Fishing. Rather than showing us a fish perhaps giving us a button that allows us to go fishing and then showing us what we caught and the value of that thing. At least it seems more
reasonable to me.
5. Ports and special characters. So during my playthrough I earned sailor 7 or 8.. that is a lot of traveling, yet I only got 2 special characters. I don't know if these come at certain time intervals or if there is just a random chance, either way the frequency needs to be increased and really should be a factor of how far you have traveled.
6. Gold seems inordinately difficult to earn and I again emphasize we need to know how things are happening to have a strategy. Even after pumping my lineage upgrades way up I was still earning about the same amount of gold until the piracy started... However there is nothing telling me that is how I am earning it. I just suddenly noticed a bunch of extra gold.

I am sure there are probably other things, but those are just the ones that I can remember. Now, you may look at this list and at the score I gave and think "This person really doesn't like my game." On the contrary though, I actually really did enjoy the game while I was playing it. I wouldn't have taken the time to write as much if I didn't. I do, however think that it could be improved greatly and could be a really great idle game. I would like to seen an updated version and I don't want to discourage you, but I I think in the current state I am being fair and honest and that is how I roll.

All that being said I think anyone wanting to play this (or who have already started and are just looking for thoughts in the comments) should keep in mind that the game doesn't autosave (so save frequently if you have crashes, and save before you exit if you don't), some things take a long time to unlock, but more things do unlock as you play longer, if you are looking for an idle game that grips you with constant upgrades reaching massive proportions this really isn't it. As the author said in one of their comments for the greater part this is a very idle game there isn't a ton to do and it takes a long time. There isn't really any option to play it in an active sense (your autoclicker will do you no good here).