Yes you're missing it. Every item is player made (few exceptions in recent years). This means if you're a warrior in combat you have a ship with like 20 items

Yes you're missing it. Every item is player made (few exceptions in recent years). This means if you're a warrior in combat you have a ship with like 20 items that were all hand-made, and to build the ship itself it went through 6 different stages and the raw materials probably changed hands 12 times. Logistics is everything too. Bad freight logistics loses wars.