I said I would wait and give the ships some time so we can learn.
What I have learned is that I just completed one of my ships (all 30 ports) during a holiday season, and received over 500K products as reward. All it cost me was some coin and some patience. People DO sleep (sometimes 8hrs) they do work (most times 8 hrs.), and they do celebrate Christmas. In spite of all that my ship completed its journey. My problems with ships are as follows:
They are creating friction between long time friends and neighbors. I think it is terrible to unfriend someone because they went to visit Grandma. Also, that much daily attention to something sometimes is not something everyone wants. Messaging people is not the answer either. A game requiring that is wrongly designed. Now for the big rub. A train with a Black engine (just coins takes 7 days to complete). Sound familiar? Now hook up 18 long train cars (the one that brings the animals is not used in ships) @ 35 FC per car, costs 630FC. That equates to right at $100 US real money. So my ship that is ALREADY back in 4 days just netted me the same products as my 630FC train. Can anyone else see the problem. But wait a minute we want to allow skips, set our own itinerary, and get auto push to next port if hung over 12 hrs. That will make the ships even easier to out perform my trains and at NO cost to the owners of the ships. I think this is a problem that also needs to be addressed after the ships are sorted out. Just a suggestion, maybe adjust the output of trains by 4X to make it worth having expensive trains.
Now the last item is for the people actually loading the ships in their port. Yes there is no reward for the efforts which can be argued what is best. If you opened and clicked once to send the train on, that shouldn't be a problem helping that neighbor. Clicking it once for each container is testing that friendship some. But click on it 50 to 90 times to move out one train, is WAY TOO MUCH work to be considered as just friendship. There comes a point where compensation is due. If products are not the answer, maybe 3XP per container would be acceptable modeling it after helping your neighbors with their factories. Like I said, can be argued a couple of ways.
Thanks for listening, I will now return you to your farms to see if my ship is ready to be loaded.
Remember as the title stated. Just my opinion.