Sorry for the late reply.

So point after point. :)

> 1. Will the capacity of the ships be limited that only the necessary wares for one port building can be loaded?

in short: it is already limited - I don't have the numbers in front of me right now, but you can find the maximum value of wares that can be loaded in the conf file of the ships

> (#2) 2. Can the player select the number of soldiers for the expedition?

jepp that's something I would like to have as well and that I plan to implement. But to be honest: I am not yet sure how to implement it. Especially because it needs the "control number of stationed soldiers in ports and headquarters" feature to make sense. So this is low priority for now and will likely be an addon for later on.

> (#2) 3. Does the player know if there is an enemy nearby the discovered port space?

That depends. In general the answer is no, BUT you of course might say "no" to colonizating a port space in the first place to continue the expedition. That way you would see more of the island or coast or whereever you are currently shipping along.

I see this the most logical behaviour. So in general this depends on the vision range and the strategy how you guide your expedition.

> (#2) 4. I assume with the mentioned player commands during the expedition the player can control the direction the ship goes.

and 

> (#4) 1) How detailed will the control of the player be? IIRC, s2 let the player choose from 8 directions and the ship would land on a new port place. I liked that.

To be honest I am not yet sure how the best way looks like. The "sail to nearest port space in that direction" design would make things easier in first place, but would complicate it if there are some more port build spaces in a certain direction.

My idea was more along the lines of:
* Follow coast line to the left until you are back here or found a port build space
* Follow coast line to the right until you are back here or found a port build space
* Sail in direction XYZ until you find land - only available for the directions that are away from current coast

The only downside i see in this implementation is, that there is the need, that the player can switch the ships direction while it is on the sea, to reach every part of the map. But is this a downside? I am not sure. :)


> (#4) 2) What happens when a port place is occupied with a port already? I suggest that it should be possible to attack this port in some way, but not necessarily the other military buildings around it.

In general, this counts to "etc." on the flow chart for me, meaning: additional feature that will be implemented after THIS feature works as it should - so we better open another bug report for it.

However I already thought about it some time ago and am sure I wrote it down in the wiki or the forum, but... well I could not find it at the moment.

My idea was, to give the chance to colonize a port buildspace in enemy territory - no matter whether there is a port, another building or just nothing. The idea is:

* if the port can be build without destroying player mapobjects, but just taking some land -> do it.
* if the port space is blocked or in the near area are buildings that would be destroyed by the raise of the new port buildspace -> the soldiers can be sent out, to attack the militarysites that hold the presence over that area (including a port) - if those can be defeated: build the port, else: ship and wares lost? or shall it return?


That's it for now :) As always: Please comment!