I've been thinking about this, from a technical perspective. The sea simulation is really impressive.
The objects in the game world can obviously be synchronized by standard client / server communications. But in order for things to look right, and in order for the game / combat physics to be viable, the simulation of the sea must be similiar / identical for connected clients in the same area of the map, at least.
I've been wondering what this means for the sea simulation. Maybe it is deterministic, and driven by seed values sent from server to clients. So client A and client B, at a given point in time, for an area of the sea, will have 'close enough' simulations of the sea that don't jar with the canonical positions of the relevant game objects (i.e. ships).
Have the devs ever written about the sea tech?
