I have sailed my fare share and first I tought that it might be fun to have a sailing game. But to be honest, it's not. I tried the virtual sailor demo, and it was just what I tought, not so fun.
The reason for this is that in sailing, stearing the boat is not the main thing, not even the second. Only in a rough water it comes a bit intresting and demanding. Usually I leave that job to autopilot or someone else on board. And the speed is low. It doesn't feel like that when you are sailing, cause you need to do a lot of thingering to get it moving and when you do, you feel success. I doubt that you could get that fealing in a game. If there is going to be a sailboat in the game, then you need a timeskip function also
What this game needs is a lot more realistick navigation. A real looking marine chart of the area with fairways, a plotter with functions, and a radar that you can use. Example I use a Raymarine C-series and in that, you get the radar sweep over the chart. You can also accuire a target (cause the sweep is over the chart, you can spot the ships with ease) and then you get range, bearing, target speed, target direction (course), CPA (closest point of approach), and TCPA (time of closest point of approach). It is really useful, cause sailboats are slow and big ships looks slow (but they are not), so you tend to over estimate your speed when crossing a fairway.
Also the missions could be done so, that they would just tell you where is the destination, and then you would need to navigate there for your self (plan a route). If you have a ship that swims deep, you would need to stay in the fairways deep enough, or else you would crash.
