Noclip is like the only advantage ships have, removing it will make them completely useless :p
But most importantly, ships have no avoidance mechanism so they keep bumping into each other needlessly even in the open sea which can't be good for a player's mental health ;)
Also, there seems to be some bug with ships being unable to leave depot if there is another ship stopped there.

Also, there seems to be some bug with ships being unable to leave depot if there is another ship stopped there.

This is actually a bug in the base game, which I can reproduce in 1.10.3. See #8578 for a fix.

This is a change that can break previous games - adapting ship routes to new conditions may be impossible or extremely time-consuming, so the player may lose the ability to play older saves on the newer versions.

In general, I am in favor of changes in the subject of ships, but I am not convinced if this form will be appropriate. If ships slow down by penetrating through each other, this would be at least acceptable (for players) - it will affect older games but won't break them. In new games, it will encourage you to build wider channels where there is more traffic, which is also not bad. However, if ships were to lock up, this is wrong.

What I think you should also pay attention to is the load generated by the ship's pathfinder. From my observations now pathfinder updates the routes of all ships at the same time, every 7 days. With a small number of ships and short distances between the buoys, it doesn't matter. But when there are a lot of ships and the distance between the buoys is considerable, the game starts cutting very clearly. The problem here, I believe, is that the computation is performed for all ships at the same time.
>Here< I have included tests showing the problem

Multiple docks ports - I would prefer an option that would explicitly allow only one ship to be moored at one quay.

Buoys - Their biggest drawback is that they simply litter the waters, especially their labels. In addition, their use can be cumbersome - it is easy to overlook one which can cause problems. I would be in favor of a direction of changes that would restrict the placement of buoys as much as possible, and not encourage the player to use them even more often.

Some time ago on the tt-forum I posted a proposal to create invisible buoys (Shipping Lanes), which, placed one after the other by pathfinder, could solve several problems at once. Without going into details:

• Significant pathfinder relief - would not have to update ship routes as long as the ship is moving away from the destination port, the player will not change orders or the ship's route will not be blocked
• No more blocking of ship routes - invisible buoys could only be removed / built up by the player using them
• Ships in both directions would follow separate lanes - the rule would be to avoid the buoys on the right side if possible
• Ships would still pass through each other (flaw / advantage) - it would still be possible to avoid this, but it would make it impossible to put the pathfinder to sleep during the voyage (I write as a theorist).
  More details on the forum >here<
  I don't insist that this is the best solution, I am just giving it for consideration.

I'm not aware of any way this can "lock up" ships, but I encourage anybody to try to create one using the deployment preview.

In the test savegame included in my PR, impact on ships out at sea was minimal, even with heavy traffic. The most noticeable change is at docks, locks, and canals. I agree that buoys are a clumsy method of control, but the clutter isn't bad if you turn off their labels in transparency settings.

A one-ship-per-dock restriction is out of scope of this PR, but there are significant problems with this because ships cannot be controlled as tightly as trains or road vehicles with one-way roads or signals, depot overflows, etc.

Pathfinder changes have been proposed and tried, but I talked with JGR recently and he said his implementation produced too many lockups to be suitable for trunk. This PR is an alternative proposal which does not preclude future changes.

I added a setting to allow users to toggle this setting. Maybe that makes this feature more palatable, since it won't be forced on anybody. I'm open to suggestions about the setting's location and category level (currently it's Advanced and in Vehicles > Routing), but I do think it should be on by default.

(Also, yes, my renewed interest in this PR was sparked by recent events...)

Pathfinder changes have been proposed and tried, but I talked with JGR recently and he said his implementation produced too many lockups to be suitable for trunk. This PR is an alternative proposal which does not preclude future changes.

Incidentally this turned out to be an implementation bug. With that fixed there don't appear to be any problems with it.

The "Ship avoid collisions" function that is available in the JGR version can be cumbersome. This one is - sorry - but even worse. Of the two bad things, I would prefer JGR's solution. At least on a straight way, they don't flow on each other.

Bumping this back to draft status because I failed to check aqueducts properly. Ships pile up thinking they're on the same tile, since aqueducts are wormholes. I will need to fix this before it is ready for review.

I also hope to do some pathfinder improvements for collision avoidance which would make this ship nerf more palatable.

2TallTyler: Bumping this back to draft status because I failed to check aqueducts properly. Ships pile up thinking they're on the same tile, since aqueducts are wormholes. I will need to fix this before it is ready for review.

There is also another problem when a group of ships is withdrawn to the depot - it takes a long time to get in and stop.

• send 20 or more ships to some buoy
• retreat all ships to the depot

2TallTyler: I also hope to do some pathfinder improvements for collision avoidance which would make this ship nerf more palatable.

The nice thing in JGRPP is that a ship that is faster can't overtake a slower one when no enought space for this and follows it. This is a good solution, because why should a large container ship stop for a small, fast boat? Ships also always travel at a distance from each other.

There is, however, a significant error in the way of passing ships: ships always turn left when passing each other, i.e. the traffic is left-hand. The problem is that all over the world, including England, there is always right-hand traffic, so ships should turn right when passing each other. It can usually be overtaken from either side.

In general this passing mechanism is very cumbersome on narrow routes (2 tiles).

Something that can help to avoid a collision without a direction change mechanism is the principle of passing the buoy on the right if possible (even if it is not written in the orders) - it would be a very beneficial change even after turning off this function. Sufficient for straight trails, but a problem on winding rivers still appear. Putting a lot of buoys and adding them all to the orders would be very entertaining, tiring over time and cluttering the game with a lot of buoy labels. :(

I have three ideas (probably not going to be easy):
1. Buoys-objects - a special type of buoy, which is not added to orders, but ships also try to pass them on the right - for the player, placing such objects in problematic places would be very easy.
2. Invisible buoys - (I know, I repeat myself, but I think it may be a good solution) they would be placed by a pathfinder one by one between the designated points of the route. Here, ships have always traveled on separate tracks, if track width permits. A great advantage of this solution would be a significant reduction in calculations for determining the path for ships. The second, equally great advantage would be to prevent malicious or inattentive players from interrupting the waterways.
3. Water routes - something that can be seen on the real maps. In the game, they would be a clue for the pathfinder. If available and close to the route, ships would go along these lines (construction like rails). The ships would also move on the right side of the line, or if that was not possible on the line. Again, it would be impossible for a malicious player to break the trail. Perhaps the burden on pathfinder could also be reduced.

I also think that this PR would be more friendly and less annoying for players if the ships, instead of stopping, would slow down (both when sailing in opposite directions), for example to 50-70% of their speed - a player would still see that it is worth building wider routes, reducing speed would also be logical. Perhaps instead of On/Off, you could add a setting for ships to slow down when passing 0-100%?

Another important thing related to this PR are also the costs of building canals, locks and viaducts. Currently they are very expensive and if a player is to be persuaded with this PR to build wider channels, these should be correspondingly cheaper. Of course, only after enabling this option.

Ship collision avoidance in JGRPP can be tuned to favor passing on the right. I think this pathfinding improvement will be needed to make this PR palatable to players, so I will close it (keeping the code in my branch) to avoid cluttering the PR list with unfinished drafts.