Left: company level with an XP bar, and money. Middle: the company name (in the company color) above the calendar date and time ("Sat 1 Jan 2000, 14:30"). Right: the game speed buttons.
Calendar: a new company starts on 1 January 2000 at midnight. The clock runs 20 calendar minutes per second of play at 1x, matched to real ship speeds (a Scooter's 5.44 nm a second is about 16 knots), so voyages take realistic calendar times: Rome to Tunis about 20 hours, Shanghai to Rotterdam about a month; a calendar day passes in about 72 seconds. It follows the game speed (stops when paused). The route screen shows each leg's calendar time too ("1 min 1 s (about 20 h)"), a ship at sea shows when it arrives ("arrives 3 Jan 09:10"), and activity log lines are stamped with the calendar time.
Game speed: a button for each speed, Pause, 1x, 2x, 4x and 8x, up to the save's fastest game speed (chosen when founding it; a 2x save shows only Pause, 1x and 2x), with the current one highlighted; the F key steps through them in turn (back to Pause after the fastest), and Space pauses, then carries on at the speed it was paused from (neither while typing in a text box; in multiplayer only the host). Paused freezes the world; faster speeds run it that much faster (ships, breakdowns, XP, finances, prices); each session starts at 1x.
Esc (once nothing else wants it: an open popup or the Route Assignment screen close first) opens a menu over the dimmed game: Continue, Save ("Saved at..."), Settings, Exit to Menu and Exit to Desktop (both save first). In single player the game pauses while it's open and carries on at its speed after Continue (or Esc again); in multiplayer it keeps running. A joined player can't save (the host saves every company) and leaving keeps their company going; a host leaving ends the game for everyone, as Leave Game does.
Settings: a page over the dimmed menu in two tabs (Esc, X or a click outside closes it). General: "Ships seen from afar", one of Small dots (default: ships drawn their true size in the world, a 2 px dot once too small to make out), Bigger dots (5 px) or Ships grow as you zoom out; the Routes switch; Only my routes (off by default; on, the Routes switch draws only this player's own routes, not the other companies', players' or AI rivals', though anchored ships still keep off theirs); Day and night (on by default; off, it's always day: no dark side and no lights, the sun held still over the view's north-west so shadows fall south-east); Birds (on by default; off, no bird is drawn or can be clicked, though their calls still play); and the Tutorial switch in saves started with the tutorial. Audio: sliders 0-100% for Master, Sea and weather (the waves, wind and rain), Wildlife (the animals' calls) and Ship horns, each its own audio bus under Master (made by Settings). Routes and the tutorial are the company's, kept in its save.
Clicking the level (or its bar) opens a popup below it (click again to close): XP into the level and XP needed for the next, the company's XP per minute over the last 10 minutes, and "Coming up": the next level and the next few levels that unlock something (models, "+1 slot:...", "a new hub"), each with an estimate of how long until you reach it at that rate. Refreshes every second.
Maritime Empire