the graphics are eye-popping but i'm afraid i don't really get an idea of what your game plays like from the screens and the description. how will the RTS elements and the shooter elements work together? how "deep" will each of them be? i'm getting a sort of magic carpet vibe from it, is that about right?
I'll try to explain it as best I can.
There are 16 unit types in the game to be built, obviously they all work differently, but most of them are "harvester" type units.
Harvesters have an "area of influence", this is the number of surrounding tiles that they harvest resources from.
There are 4 different resources that "harvesters" can collect, Gold, Food, Wood, and Stone. These resources can be used to build other units AND they are used by the ship to restock/repair itself. For instance, the ship will passively consume Stone to refill it's Ammo Stockpiles, or Wood to repair itself. Food will heal your crew. You can turn these passive effects off in order to conserve resources, but you wouldn't want to play the entire game that way. Resources can also be traded for Gold which can be used to purchase other resources. The more scarce a resource, the more valuable it is.
In other words, the player must balance building colonies with the resources they need to maintain their ship. Get greedy and use too much Wood for instance, and you won't be able to repair between enemy encounters.
Another example of how the Unit building factors into the rest of the game would be the Temples and Magic System. When you start a stage, you have access to no spells, but by building a single Temple to any of the 4 Greek Elements you unlock that elements minor spell. Build another Temple to the same element and you unlock its major spell, and any temples built after that increase the power of the Major spell.
I would say that the RTS elements are fairly light, you build units, and you can repair units, but other than that you mostly let them to do their thing and then you check up on them once every in-game day to grab the resources they've collected. This facilitates exploration and expansion, which is necessary because you have to capture Obelisks that are strewn across the map. This dynamic obviously shifts if your units come under attack, in which case you need to defend them. Certain units provoke certain enemy types, for instance Watchtowers provoke Moths, or Churches agitate Bats.
As for the shooter elements, they're definitely "deeper" than your average shooter. The Airship is equipped with 4 weapons, all of which but one is context sensitive. The minigun can be fired in any direction, and instead of ammo it has a cool-down, making it a last resort kind of weapon. The Cannons are your bread and butter, they have a large reserve of ammo and fire quickly, but they can only be fired off the sides of your ship. The harpoon will track the cursor and is fairly powerful, but it is only fired from the front of the ship. Finally, the mines have a very short range, are extremely powerful, but can only be fired out the back of the ship, and have very limited ammo reserves. The idea is that the shooter mechanics force the player to come along broadside to an enemy and hammer them with their cannons.
Hopefully that gives you a better idea of how the game plays, I hope to have an instructional manual in the next week for the closed alpha, I'll probably go ahead and post it up here as well. If you have any more questions feel free to ask!