A player's turn is conducted very simply in Shipyard. You select one of seven possible action spaces with your pawn (well, 8 if you are playing with more people, the additional one being "take 2 coins") and perform the related activity wherever it is located on the main board.

Every passenger on your ship gives one point when it sails, but other than the first captain (who is mandatory) the various crew members do absolutely nothing. There is also no real game difference between a cannon and a crane or a businessman and a soldier or a lifeboat and a lifebuoy...if there's a little picture of one of these things in the canal and you run over it you get one bonus point per item, that's all they do.

Wow, 6/10 seems really low to me, I absolutely loved this when I first played it!

What other optimization games are better in your opinion?

True, but I think it's important to note that almost half the spaces are unavailable to you each turn, because they're already occupied by the other players.

This is different than most rondel systems, and is a fantastic source of anguish and tension in the game.

This makes it sound like there's no difference to a player if they take a cannon or a crane, a businessman or a soldier.

In fact, it makes a huge difference. At any given time, some of those items will give points to the player, some will give huge points to the player, and some will score nothing.

It's the player who manages to best get those items that match his current situation that will do well. Again, this is another source of tension in the game.

I guess my point is this: why couldn't there be more to the game? Cranes and businessmen could give you more money when you use the resource rondel to sell goods, soldiers and cannons could give you extra points if you had more guns than the other players, smokestacks could actually produce more speed than sails, ship pieces could cost different amounts depending on how many attachments/items they have rather than all being the same. Instead, everything's the same and nothing interlocks...you just pick up the canal with the pictures that match your tiles.

I don't know if I'd call it a fantastic source of tension; it certainly speeds the game up by limiting your options but there was always another useful action available. The only time I felt tension was in the last couple turns when I was trying to squeeze in that final contract build before time ran out. Admittedly, we were only playing with 3 so maybe this becomes a bigger deal with more people.

Yes, but the situations are all so similar. There are contracts that give you extra points for having a soldier/cannon combo, but since the point values are nearly the same for everything there's almost no competition for the workers and items you need.

Youre not operating the ships -- youre a ship-builder -- you only take them out for a test-cruise. Having ships with cannons/cranes/merchants give you stuff doesnt make sense.

And smokestacks do produce more speed in the presence of a propeller.

a market for raw goods and shipmates

I'm actually very surprised at this, given how similar our top games are...it didn't bother you at all that you could put together an entire ship for free?

I totally agree with the review. It's very much a multi-player solitaire game and interacting with others is difficult/not effective. It's a bit like Stone Age and Agricola, you only take what you need for yourself. Why? Because when you want to irritate someone by taking (for example) an action he needs, you normally get something not optimal for yourself, and by that you'll likely only give a big advantage to the third person.

There really could not have been a worse time period to set this game in, which is some strange transitional period where we're going from iron-masted Windjammers to an ugly fantastical hybrid sailing steam ship that may or may not have a propeller on it. WTF??