It's probably a good idea yeah.
Probably not going to happen for technical reasons as it's really difficult to do.
That exists, though all ships can travel through shallows. Seeing as our maps aren't very big, and it's hard to make them big without making it difficult to run the game on anything but the most powerful computers, it's probably going to have to be that way. Otherwise the places where ships can go are very limited.
The AI is not finished, and is very likely to always be a bit behind as features need to be implemented first and then the AI needs to be adapted to take advantage of them. At the moment we don't have an AI programmer, so it might take a bit longer than usual for that reason.
Pathfinding is one of the harder parts of game development to get right, but it's certainly an issue we are aware of and working on.
Again, AI is always likely to lag behind a bit with new features.
You're welcome! A big part of why we do this is so that people can enjoy the game