DEVELOPMENT PLAN #91 — Digging Floating Stones from Ruins: The Finite Relics Behind Every Airship
Contributed by: Takeshi Miyaoka on Monday, November 09 2026
Last modified on Monday, November 09 2026
This is a development plan: it describes something I want to build next. None of the systems described here are implemented yet, and the details are still under consideration and may change before they ship.
This morning's post (#90) added class badges such as Ship of the Line, Corvette and Brig to aircraft. Work is under way so that each of these three airship classes needs one floating stone to lift its hull. But the stones are limited, and right now there is no way to get more. Tonight's plan is to dig floating stones out of ancient ruins. It builds on the existing improvement item WLD-016 (obtaining floating stones by excavating ruins), and I have added this plan to that ticket. 
The aircraft list under "Add equipment" in the production window (a development Debug build, captured during the #90 verification). Ships badged "Ship of the Line (large airship)" are built with one large floating stone.
Where things stand: stones can be counted, but not addedFloating stones are not a resource balance; each one is an ancient relic with its own ID. They come in three sizes. A Ship of the Line uses one large stone, a Corvette one medium, and a Brig one small. Ordering a ship reserves one stone of the right size, and the finished ship carries it. A large stone cannot be used for a smaller ship, and engine-only craft such as gunships and transports need no stone. Using stones also requires the levitation-control research.
When a ship is retired or its platoon disbanded, its stone returns to a warehouse; when a ship is lost, the stone stays where it fell as a "wreck". The production window and military aircraft management open a read-only list of how many stones of each size are stored, reserved, mounted or wrecked. This floating-stone system (improvement item WLD-015) is still in progress.
New stones, however, only come from a scenario's starting placement. Research does not create them, and neither does discovering a ruin through exploration. Keeping industrial powers from building endless fleets is intentional, but as things stand, every lost ship leaves the sky a little emptier for good.
What I want to make interestingIf stones cannot be manufactured, I want the way to get more to sit in a few specific places. Which ruin holds stones of which size, and how many? How many days and how much money does it take to dig one out? Do you dig three small stones and field Brigs, or spend the time on one large stone for another Ship of the Line? Holding the province with the ruin becomes meaningful in itself.
Idea 1: buried stones are known on discoveryI am considering making some of the scenario's ruins stone deposits, with the size and number of buried stones fixed per ruin. Nothing is rolled. When exploration discovers a ruin, it shows its deposit, such as "1 large, 1 medium, 2 small". Because you know before digging, you can plan instead of gambling.
Idea 2: commission the dig one stone at a timeThe country that owns the ruin's province would choose one stone at a time and commission its excavation. Larger stones take more days and a higher daily cost, for example 20 days for small, 40 for medium and 80 for large. One dig at a time per ruin. Costs are paid daily, as with exploration; on days when you cannot pay, have no warehouse, or the province has changed hands, digging pauses and nothing is charged, and the screen says why. 
Concept mock (plan under consideration): an "Excavation" section in research management's document analysis, listing each ruin's deposit and dig progress. Ruin names, counts, days and costs are illustrative.
A finished stone enters the state warehouse in the ruin's region as "stored" and can be reserved for construction right away. A ruin that has been dug out is marked "Exhausted" and cannot be dug again. If another country takes the province, any unfinished dig stops and the remaining deposit becomes theirs to dig.
Idea 3: connecting a stone's whole lifeWith excavation, each floating stone gets a life you can follow by its ID: buried → stored → reserved → mounted → wreck. Today the only way back is from mounted to stored, when a ship is retired or disbanded. Excavation becomes the entrance from buried to stored, and after it I want to add recovery (BTL-015): getting stones back from the wrecks of ships that were shot down or forced to land. Recovery also ties in with the "forced landing" result from last night's air-defense plan (#89). 
Concept mock (plan under consideration): orange frames are the routes still to be built (excavation and recovery); the green frame is the route already in main. Counts are illustrative.
Never counting twiceThe ID of an excavated stone will be derived from the country, the ruin and the deposit number, so recalculating the same completion or reloading a save never adds another stone, and a ruin can never yield more than its deposit. Stones are the very cap on how many airships you can have, so this gets settled before the screens.
Implementation steps and related systemsThe planned order is: (1) defining each ruin's deposit in the scenario; (2) accepting digs under the same daily-payment contracts as exploration; (3) adding the stone to the warehouse on completion; (4) stopping and handing over when the province changes hands; (5) the Excavation section in document analysis and a "being dug" row in the floating-stone list (Japanese and English); and (6) save/load round-trip checks and the nightly 31-day comparison. WLD-015 must be finished first.
Where deposits are placed and how many stones they hold will be tuned in the scenario so the gap between countries does not grow too large. Besides recovery (BTL-015), transferring stones by treaty (DPL-030) and a technique that links several small stones to lift a larger ship (WLD-017) are also waiting as improvement items.
Tell me what you thinkWould knowing the deposit at discovery make planning more fun, or would not knowing until you dig be more exciting? Does choosing between quick small stones and a long dig for a large one sound interesting? I would love to hear your impressions.
Image 1 was captured from a development Debug build using the verification procedure; images 2 and 3 are concept mocks (plans under consideration). Numbers and names are illustrative, not actual game values.
This morning's post: DEVELOPMENT SNAPSHOT #90
Previous plan: DEVELOPMENT PLAN #89 — Meeting Raids from the Ground: Linking Guns, Spotters and Command
See the files currently available and the development status on the downloads page