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While i sailing the pacific coast (will post pictures soon in another post), researched some fish species that can populate Pacific Ocean around the area of map and found: * Blue Mackerel * Hagfish * Bignose Shark * Bigeye Trevally * Blackfin seabass * Bludger * Blue Trevally * Bluefin Trevally * California Sheephead * Cocinero * Coho Salmon * Galapagos Shark * Giant Oceanic Manta Ray (same already in game) * Goblin Shark * Golden Trevally These different species can be implemented when Pacific officially opens, and maybe some kind of iteration with ports at Caribbean: fishes catched in one ocean can reach high values in the ports of the other side of land. So, if you catch a galapagos shark you can sell it at high values on the ports of Caribbean, as the same with fishes catched there and sold in Pacific. It is a interesting way to iteration between that places. Another idea is implement new types of wood more frequent at pacific coast (Maple, Cedar) to craft ships in Caribbean. It is just a "raw" idea to make iteration viable between the 2 places to increase trading.

Some ideas to perks to smugglers: 1) Master of disguise: you can use the flag of any nation, but lose the benefit of dont be attacked by ships of the same nation you sailing; 2 points 2) Black market operator: + 20% income when selling goods to ports of enemy nations and +10% income when selling to your nation ports; 2 points 3) Professional barter: -10% of goods prices in any ports; 1 point 4) Smuggler runner: + 1 knot in OW, +0,5 knots in battle ; 5 points also can be considered: 5) Stealth ship: turn the smuggler ship in a fake NPC (with no player name tag at all) turning the vessel exactly as you see one NPC trader in OW (8 points).

For me pirates attacking each can be an exploit. The way i understand it is that Pirates are considered a nation of their own, and nationals attacking each other is penalized. The reason I find pirates attacking each other as an exploit, is because in certain circumstances, it can be used as an escape mechanism. I also find it unfair that pirates can attack each other without penalty, and is a privilege that is not extended to people of different nations. For other nations, it is only achievable (without penalty) via duels. The poll is to determine how you feel about the current pirate v pirate battle mechanisms and when (or if) they should be allowed.

I just had a brilliant idea that would make players engage in pvp battles that's not port battles or screening fleets. A convoy of NPC trading ships sail from port A to port B. This will come with an announcement in the OW like when a conquest flag is bought. Enemy nations can intercept them and capture them for a great deal of resources and materials. (Line-ship constructions worth of cargo). If the convoy reaches its destination safely there will be upgrade and money rewards for protecting ships. As well as a huge abundance of resources in said port. (Crafters rejoice!) Cheers Fry.

Hello there gentlemen, Teleporting with cargo can be easily exploited : your capital is out of stock of iron/oak etc ? Teleport to your outpost the evening. The morning, buy everything, teleport back to capital. Sell. I believe it will be detrimental for gameplay, as owning ports and securing trade routes would mean nothing. So here we go, what do you think about it ? Should devs do something against it ? Some suggestions : - impose a tax on cargo on teleport, which make it far less lucrative. - increase teleport cooldown, which makes it less spammable. For example, once a day. - make it impossible to teleport with cargo, losing the cargo in the process - deleting teleport altogether (which raises issues of how travelling around that big map)

Gentlemen, currently we can send goods from a Free-Port to another Free-Port by Delivery-Contract as long as we have an Outpost in the receiving Port. This idea is good and quite reasonable. But I believe it is not enough to stimulate the economy. If we want to transport goods from one port to another we have to spend a lot of time for doing so. this limits the economy. So I thought about the Idea of sending traders from one outpost to another transporting goods. It's just a rough idea: It should be possible to load good into the hold of a trader and send him under AI command to another outpost Like the Delivery Contracts, it should take a reasonable time Like the Delivery Contracts, it should cost a reasonable amount of Gold I see one problem there: Currently, traders can be attacked in PvP. How to deal with this? Options: Add a chance that the trader is lost during sail. Reduce that chance by adding AI escorts on additional cost. Create an OpenWorld AI instance for that trader and allow to hire AI escorts on additional cost. If a trader is captured, I believe a lot of Human-Players destroy their goods in time, so the enemy won't get profit out of this. So should the AI. As a result, the capturing Ship won't get more loot out of this like he would get from a real AI one. Any other ideas on that? Or is this idea totally crap?

Dear Devs, I like and love the game in its status. Because of its working progress, I want to give you my feedback. I play Pirate. In every game, where a Pirate system is able to be played, i love to do so. And yes, I joined Pirates in NA aswell. But I didnt know, that they are a Nation - which is a totaly wrong understanding of what pirate was in the 16th to 18th century. If someone had told me before, that I can choose the "Nation" Pirate, I were joined france frist, scam all the Clans and players, kill some friendly mates and become pirate then. Because this is, what pirates did in those centuires. They never fight to own a harbour. They fight harbours to own more stuff. So here are my points: 1) Pirates shouldnt be able to own Ports. They only should be able to "raid" them for getting stuff out of it. Only 1-3 Hideouts which are only shown on Pirates map, should be owned by pirates. Not more not less. Because being a pirate is kind of a political statement. ATM Pirates are "friendly" to each other because they have to. This is FAAAAAAr away of beeing authentic. So here is the Idea: No Port Capture or battle for owned ports. 2) Be a Pirate : When I capture a ship from e.g. the Great Britains, I will steal the Flag and sail under my new fake flag. As long as i dont attack anyone - to get somethings like a criminal timer and be detected as "fake" Great Britain - i should be able to use every port / facility / chat or more from the Nation, i fake to sail for. Only when i get criminal flagged and or get killed, the flag should be gone. 3) Pirates should not be able to craft ships. They can dock at every harbour (fake flag at Point 2 explains why) and they can buy ships there or get into "deals" with clans of any nations to get ships. Also they should focus in raiding fleeds and capture ships. But Pirates should be able to upgrade or optimize their ships. e.g. enhance Speed and crew, better boarding abilities for fast travel Boardings at 6kn or something similar. Pirate ships should be a very scary thing in open world fights. And i dont mean, that they should be tanky or overpowered. They only need to have things, which nation ships dont have. 4) Turning into "Pirate" should be a penalty for players. So they should be thrown out of their "safed" life in a 150 member clan into a deep community of ugly, angry and beard people who kill each other for no reason, when the rum rations ran out. Learn how to sail, steal, fake flag, keeping morales up and get away with slaves / captured ships should be horrible hard for a normal player. But this should be all, what pirates should be able to do. Sitting in MT to craft things is dumb. No Pirate of our history books ever sit in a port and craft a plank for a ship. They all raid a port and take those ready build ships and the wife of the guy who crafted it. 5) Give pirates some capturing advantage but for. eg. let them be attacked from npc's aswell, when they get a criminal timer. Those timer should be there for 1-2 hours. 6) A Pirate need to learn everything new. Sailing Routes, noone know and all stuff like that. So take away the teleport to capitol function for Pirates. IMPORTANT: Pirates shouldnt be a Nation as they are atm. They should not have any friends in their own "Pirate faction" expect their Clan or ally mates. They should be able to fake flag. They should not be those pve focused Trader / Crafter / Labor hour seller as atm. Take all of the pirates harbours. Give them Hideouts. I saw so many pirates sailing around, who are no pirates and acting like Nation People... Organize political Port capturing Situations shouldnt be able... The Pirates atm are by far not authentic. Everyone who dont see this, should go back in the history lesson (no offense) Added Ideas by other players: From Hethwill: A successful raid by pirates should blast a city morale ( citizens are simply left to their own designs with the feeling their overlords cannot save them ) and turn it unaligned for a full maintenance cycle [ 1 full day after maintenance the port gets blocked to all actions, no entering the port ], and then returns to nation control as normal.

I think we should use low level notes at all levels of crafting. At high levels of crafting, all notes should be used. low level ships require low grade mid level ships require mid grade and low grade high level ships require high grade mid grade and low grade for example, upgrade could use 1 high note, 2 mid notes, and 3 low notes. a santisima could use 4 high notes, 3 mid notes, and 2 low notes. I think it would be a great way to give new players a meaningful way to earn money and contribute to the economy in a meaningful way. This could help a lot of people get over the initial economic hump, help them break into crafting, and encourage player retention.

Trading, banking and the European markets; an 18th century look at it. I’ve seen quite some discussion on these forums about how the current trading systems can be used to scam, how inflation of the current economy drives pricing of labour hours through the roof, that producing goods for markets are somewhat meaningless if demand and supply cannot be used to trade and that European traders magically have stock to start selling at certain economic thresholds, etc. Currently the only way to trade in the game is to sail in between the local markets of the caribbean and there is some interaction with European Traders in a basic fashion using certain thresholds in prices whilst buying goods. Trade can also be done through personal trading by players that are in the same port and exchange money and goods through a trading window. These are all good basics, however do not reflect the fleshed out situation we should like to see. However, let’s forget how things are now for a bit. Let’s imagine the world in the 18th century where our ships sail the oceans, where banks and stock markets under strong influence of the financial success of the Dutch with their East India trade in the 17th century start to dominate the capital and (government supported) companies start to take over the power of the guilds of the ancien régime. A time where financial systems start to appear between nations, instead of State regulated mercantilism and markets are fueled by a growing hunger in the European continent for products from across the globe, thus creating global commodity markets. A shift that fueled more trade on a global scale and the growing motivation why we sail our ships in this beautiful budding sandbox created by Game Labs. These backgrounds are the base of my suggestions to the developers to give our sandbox a good trading system where banking, commodity markets and European influences should be felt throughout our caribbean theatre. Questions arise: How do I trade with Europe? How can I trade with other Companies and players without being physically in the same port? How will I corner a market? How do I move my fast amounts of goods, my ship alone of those of my friends are not big enough?! How will I get paid? Etc. This is where my proposal of ideas of the commodity markets, banks, trading systems, warehousing and transportation come in. Commodity markets (production and consumption) Commodity markets were places where an abstraction of trade was created regardless of the actual whereabouts or physical location of the goods. Looking at the Amsterdam Stock Exchange (founded in 1602) its origins were a commodity exchange (Amsterdam Bourse) where a lot of complicated contract structures were already used, like short sales, forwarding contracts, futures, etc. Stuff we still find even now in our own time. A lot of the trade was done using a future contract (futures) where the goods were sold by the producer at a certain price today with payment and delivery in the future. This opened the opportunity to trade goods using these futures making sure that local coin influences and other market influences could be reduced or even speculated upon. A model that now has taken our modern economies not even for goods, but also for financial products to a rather impacting level to our regional economies, but that might be a story for another time. How will a commodity market work ingame? Trading through the Commodity markets and (Amsterdam) Stock Exchange. (trading) Selling goods at the Amsterdam Stock exchange are not real deposit of goods, but a "future" is created upon an agreed price when your goods sell and deliver in the future. In game I see it happen in the following way. Your goods are blocked in your warehouses and should be present (assuming we do not implement short selling). Futures are tradable between players and can be freely traded on the Stock exchange or underhanded, but have a date when they will be rendered effective and goods will either be returned to the producer when the future is not sold to anyone (or could be traded to European traders to free up warehousing), the goods will be sold to the buyer of the future or in some circumstances the goods will be offered to a European trader (see also warehousing and transportation). As a producer you will be getting the price stated as soon as the future is used to claim the goods by a player. By actually activating a future or waiting until its term expires, it will seal the deal and the possibility that goods will have to be transferred from one players warehouses to the other players warehouses and need to move across the Caribbean. This entire process will involve a bank, deposits and possibly AI fleets to move stuff, but more on that later. Note to the developers: As shipbuilding is an integral part of the game (but most was actually done in Europe and not the Caribbean), I foresee that our caribbean captains will actively participate in trading futures at the markets to acquire their own supplies also. This is not a problem and actually gives a player participation and not only a European Trader influence on the markets which can make a fun game in cornering markets, cashing in cheap futures and creating new higher prices ones. Warehousing (logistics) To keep goods stocked your need space in your warehouses. If you don’t have enough warehouses, you cannot hold the goods that you want to trade. Holding a lot futures but having no warehousing poses a serious threat that the futures goods will be offered towards European Trading companies that take the stock that cannot be stored at a considerable “Dutch” pricing, leaving the player that holds the future filling the financial gap between seller (the producer) and buyer (European trader). So players that cannot maintain their stocks have a problem. Warehousing also keeps the producers in check, as they still have to maintain the goods of their futures in their own warehouses, as the goods are not sold yet. Warehousing is the cap that keeps players from actually dominating markets (without huge investments in warehousing). Transportation (logistics) Goods have a physical location in the game and is stored in warehouses in your ports or outposts. When goods exchange hands towards other players or even to Europe, they have to move. This is where player fleets or even AI fleets come in. Trade lanes will start to appear and could be awesome hunting grounds for pirates to hurt those care-bearing nationalists! On the other hand those vigilant captains of our nation will have a purpose to protect their companies trading routes and their own goods in transfer, escorting those AI trading ships moving real goods they bought. Goods under transportation should be moved from the sellers warehouse to the harbours warehouses but have a limited time to be shipped by the buyer. As warehousing is, the logistical system of transportation (and the means to pay for AI fleets) will also pose a challenge to maintain the size of your trading empire. Banking (financial system) The trading process is pretty straight forward. Using futures to trade commodities, use warehousing to store commodities and set up transportation for the goods to move stuff by AI or players. The interplayer trading is arranged by this system but a system needs also be in place to also arrange the actual financial transactions. Welcome the the Bank of (Amsterdam)! A banking system like the the Dutch used with the Bank of Amsterdam and their stock- and commodity exchange was very advanced for its time, but remarkably straightforward nevertheless. Bullion (unminted gold) or other valuables was deposited by the merchant(companies) at the bank and financial contracts (like futures) were traded in arranging the financial transactions between the deposits of the buyers and the sellers. You deposit your gold to the bank and pay a periodical fee to maintain a banking presence as the bank has to maintain and protect your unminted gold deposits/bullion. With this stored wealth you can acquire goods that are traded and present in the warehouses of other players that have been sold using the futures system of the commodities market. Of course one should still be able to keep his own right to maintain his wealth and use the trading system as it is now in the game. Paying a bank a periodical fee to maintain the protection and maintenance of your bullion is like a real money sink; however, no bullion at the bank means no access to the trading through the commodity markets and you are on your own to get scammed! Money sink possibilities, financial control, and fun stuff to think about. Setting up a future will cost money. Setting up a buy/sell contract is also charged ingame. Maintaining a deposit at the Bank of (Amsterdam) costs money, they need to protect your bullion (e.g. unminted gold) and wealth and move it around to other deposits when trade happens. Trading with Europe and dealing with pesky non personal buyers using their “Dutch” pricing will pull goods from the Caribbean and maintain a healthy market. Warehousing could be expansive but also expensive to maintain. The ridiculous height of the transaction tax was a popular discussion subject in those Sunday afternoon pub visits after the morning's protestant church services in Amsterdam. Making (AI) trading fleets to transport your bought goods is expensive, not to speak of those insurances and protection! Developers could create a pretty European Traders AI for buying up futures of players to simulate scarcity situations in Europe. Parting thoughts A system like this should be pretty easy to implement for the developers and could be made as complicated or as simple as you’d want. It helps to give the developers more control over the markets and financial ingame state. For the players it will create an involved and rich sandbox feeling where the influence of the powers of Europe, the storing, trading and moving of actual goods with value and the huge financial interests of the colonial endeavours are a real “thing” to play with as a player. The system could be player based, but making warehouses for your the clan/company you are in, having clan/company deposits at the bank, trading goods through clan/company futures could be an awesome way to play with your friends and fellows. I hope the direction of thinking will inspire the developers to make something really fun and meaningful content to the sandbox and represent the ruthless trading and economical interests that were part of the Caribbean in the age of sail! Please feel free to add or comment.

I've been exploring for a while but am interesting in trying out some trading. Questions: 1) Links to some references, guides or tutorials. 2) Can I use a sell contract at any port? Or only those where I have an outpost? (And the resources in a warehouse) 3) Can I use a buy contract at any port? Thanks for any other tips or help you may provide.

Hello. I generally really like the idea of the trading/resource system as it is right now. Sure, it might need some tweaks here and there, but compared to the general MMO, it really stands out for me. But there is something that gets me worried, in terms of "it might make trading dull". As stated in this post: http://forum.game-labs.net/index.php?/topic/12052-public-api-for-naval-action/ server data such as item prices, item stock at ports etc. get exposed to the general public in order to make them able to develop web applications that contain live information of the game's market and economy. This seems like a good thing, but it could also take something from the game. When i first looked into the trading system, i got really excited. With an organized clan, you could always let your clanmates gather intel on where to get some cheap goods, where the demand is huge etc. etc. With the current api and amount of published market data however, sites such as http://www.navalactioncraft.com/map can completely do the job of gathering that information themselves, handing all the data to everyone without any effort. To me, this seems like a wasted potential. It tunes trading down to check some excel-ish sheet on some website, go for the item with the best profit/distance, sail there, sail back, get money. To me, the idea of trading become more of a "the better your (trading) clan is organized and the more effective you are at gaining intel on the current ecenomy, the better you do" seems way more appealing than just checking a website. We have similar "trading made simple" mechanics in other MMOs such as WoW (e.g. the addon "auctioneer"), but i think it fits those games way better, since trading is way more simple and not such a huge part of the game. In Naval Action, i'd like to see trading being almost a vital to the game as the combat. I sure understand that combat is still the main focus, but forcing you to work as a community in order to make trading worth the effort will prevent it from becoming a pure grind and more of a skill to master. Additionally, currently it seems kind of nonsense to me that you can just check a website for all the port's contents and item prices, while you have to visit a given port ingame to even see what it generally can produce and which goods it demands. If we allow websites to hand all that information to us, we could as well just see it on the ingame-map. I therefore added a poll to this suggestion, asking you if you share my opinion and if so, if you think it should be that way for all servers (answer 1), or optionally only for some (answer 2), or if you generally disagree (answer 3). Poll removed by mod team for being non-essential to the discussion.

As part of a nationwide initiative to support recognized Dutch shipbuilders, I have set up a production chain of small, medium and large carriages. These items need a lot of labour hours and are in high demand for any shipbuilder as large quantities are required. All products are offered at a fixed pricing, cheapest you can find, with the quality you desire. Selling prices to guild approved Dutch shipbuilders: Small carriages @419 Medium carriages @963 Large carriages @2691 Selling prices to non guild approved shipbuilders: Small carriages @1000 Medium carriages @2000 Large carriages @4000 I will buy at the following prices: Coal @22 Iron ore @81 Hemp @60 Oak log @38 Customers that sell to me at these prices have a privilege in receiving their products first. ** FAQ ** What are guild approved Dutch shipbuilders? A nationwide program is launched to ensure the Dutch shipbuilding to be the cheapest and best of them all. Contact Hugo van Groijt of the Hugo Republic Shipyards for more information on how to get your guild approval to profit from our cheap pricing. Who get the products first? We are a small production facility and orders are handled on the principles of first come first served and out of stock is out of stock. Orders of Guild Approved Dutch shipbuilders always have priority over other orders. Orders of customers that sell me raw resources for keeping my production alive have priority over other orders, How to order? You can post your order here in this thread or contact me ingame. Deliveries All orders are delivered in Willemstad or a Freeport of your choice. Delivering at a Freeport will incur extra costs for delivery and require time to organize.

[OJ] Oranje Flotilla is recruiting! What we offer: PVP, Leveling/missions/crafting, Trading, PVP, PVP Focus: Small Gang PVP, Port Battles Our Goals: Have a blast - We aim to create a cohesive group of dumpster babies that are able to come out of any fight on top. Losing ships will happen as we learn, if you are scared to lose some ships - this won't be the place for you. Our Numbers: 25+ Active Members TeamSpeak Required Our Experience: 15+ Port Captures Established Fleet Commander High level crafters Open Sea PVP Contacts: TwoVanBeardz in game or via my forum account. Die Antwoord (in game) Our Last Group photo: Thank you Orange is the New Black for your kind google images...

What i feel is missing is a way to trade with someone privately if both parties can`t be online at the same time... How about a contract that is limited to the other person, or a trade through ingame email that would create a pick up contract... It;s really a pain to sell a ship or supplies to someone not in your time zone.

British Marauders is a Panama Based Clan. Mostly American Players however we accept all nationalities. We have a TS. Were experienced and we accept new players!

At the moment , travel time is dead time. I propose that you should gain experience for travelling across the map. However, you should not get experience for sailing through the same areas over and over. If the map were discreetly divided into grid squares, then you could gain experience for travelling through a new grid square but not for one you've already visited (this could be reset perhaps once a week). This means that if you're just running missions in an area (e.g. Jamaica) you're not gaining much travel xp. I think we need to reward players for striking out and exploring new seas. It also seems unfair that traders, who sail vast distances to source goods, are not rewarded with xp for their time.

The last couple of patches introduced serveral production increases for a couple of materials. Balancing a dynamic economy is always a lot of work, especially if the players shall have impact in definining the prices. Instead of having to adjust the amount of production of several goods in the world manually every time people cry about a resource shortage, I would suggest, to implement a self regulating system to do so. If there is a shortage of a certain resource (either global or local), the economy would adjust on a smaller timescale by changing the prices (this is already implemented) and on a larger timescale by increasing the production facilities. The only thing that needs to be done is, to check for a certain harbour, if in the last couple of days the goods of a certain type have been sold out always. Then it would increase the production capacity slightly (maybe start with 10% per day). Also, if one good is not sold out, the production capacity should stagnate or decrease. This solution would scale slightly with the demand, also scales with the numbers of players but still lets opportunities open for traders to make profit from margins and resource shortages. Note: This is just a temporary fix for the resource complaints, I think a much more elaborated simulation model for the economy would greatly increase the whole game, but that needs some more thoughts. It should be created with the goal, that it is stable (self balancing), adaptive (regarding to player numbers) and fun.

(disclaimer: sorry for the wall-of-text and lack of TL; dr, but I feel this issue is one that needs to be looked at in-depth). I've only had the opportunity to do a little trading in the game so far. It seems extremely simplified (no more advanced than the system in Windward to be honest). And I honestly think it needs to be fleshed out quite a bit. But how? We were discussing this a bit a short while ago in O_Dingo77's stream on twitch and I had some ideas which we might be able to build upon. First off... what is trading? What do you expect when you hear that a game has trading? Most of us think something along the lines of: Buy item A at location X for low price. Transport item A from location X to location Y Sell item A for a high(er) price. Buy item B at location Y for low price. Transport item B from location Y to location X. Rinse _ Repeat Quite dull... basically you are a bus driver, doing something that even a basic bot could do. But I strongly believe that trading can be much more than that. Let me outline some ideas. Perishable items. In the Age of Sails there was no refrigeration. This is something we often don't even think about today. But transporting perishable goods on old sailships, relying on wind and weather to get to their destinations on time, was a race against time.Fruits and vegetables would rot. Same with meat (although they could salt the meat to make it last). Carrying perishable items should be rewarding, and further away from source you sell it the higher price (at the risk of entire shipment rotting if you get delayed) Warehousing. Buying and managing warehouses will allow us to stockpile resources. This means we could store items in expectation of an event to happen which will increase the prices on those wares. Or it could be items you initially planned to sell, but someone else saturated the market. So you put them in storage until the prices rise again.Having warehouses, perhaps even with a small running cost depending on the size, will open up some new ways to do trading. Especially long term investments (more on this below). It will also serve as a minor 'money sink', plus it also opens up another aspect to the game; plundering warehouses. While this is not beneficial for a trader, it does provide more content to the piracy game play, thus adding to the overall, intertwined game as a whole. Playing with politics. Countries wage wars. Ports were blockaded. Towns were raided. Poor harvests lead to famines and disease. Simply put, times were tough. As a trader these are potential opportunities to take advantage of. The cities should all be affected by various political situations.Will you attempt to be a blockade runner in a fast Lynx, offering weapons, food or medicines to a town in need? Knowing that a country is about to go to war, will you invest in the long-term and stockpile resources until the cost of war makes the price on horses, muskets and food start soaring? What about having your friends raid a town and steal all their food and supplies, and then you sail in as a saving angel with fresh supplies and wares for the town to buy, knowing that the prices will be high since they direly need them. Production / "Crafting". The key to trading is buying low and selling high. But instead of relying on what each port has to offer what about investing in your own sawmill, bakery, shipwright, smithy or even merchanthouse?For those familiar with Mount and Blade it had a very simple crafting system. You could invest in a bakery which made bread. But to keep that bakery running you needed to supply it with wheat. Another similar example is EVE Online. Although you don't own the factories, you could still buy (or invent) a blueprint then build items by providing the blueprint and the required materials and minerals. This could easily be done in Naval Action too. You buy a bakery in a town and it has a small running cost (employees and maintenance). Every few days (or weeks) it produces X amount of bread. The cost of producing the bread depends on the cost of the employees, maintenance and the cost of the raw materials (wheat or other corn). With a system where you can invest in your own "factories" that produce certain items you could start to create a network with other players, and thus begin the first steps towards a player driven economy. As an example: Your friend owns farmland in one town. You own a bakery or two. A third friend owns an iron mine. So your friend produces wheat. You make a contract where you will buy X amount of tonnes of wheat at a cost of X per tonne. You bring that wheat to your bakery which produces bread. Then you make a contract with your other friend where he will buy X amount of tonnes of bread at a cost of X per tonne since the workers in his mine need food to produce iron. This is a very simplified system, and surely can be more complex, but it illustrates how trading can be very, very interactive, provided the tools are in place. E.g. a contract system that ensures the players actually buy the X tonnes as agreed and that they get them at the agreed price. Breaking the contract should have consequences. E.g. a penalty fee involved at best, but might also mean that the "factory" is forcibly taken from the person who breaks the contract. And worst case, the person might be declared an outlaw! Smuggling wares. In some areas items might be considered contraband. While there might not be an active blockade in place (in which case it would be blockade running) there could still be authority ships operating under the flag of the respective nation which could routinely hail ships for inspection. Perhaps you just pirated some cargo from a merchant, or plundered a city. You are bound to have barrels and/or crates bearing the marks of the owner. No pirate ship sails with a hold full of empty barrels and crates to 'transfer' the goods over. Carrying such cargo which does not belong to you might cause an aggressive action from a navy ship which inspects your ship. Or your cargo might be illegal where you are trying to sell it. Perhaps gun trade is not permitted due to the political situation, and you are trying to bring muskets and cannons to the port. Having options to conceal your cargo with hidden cargo holds would allow you to mitigate the chance of discovery. Knowing what you can sell and where would be a key factor, and this could even open up for faction type gameplay where you build your standing with the criminal network in a city, which then opens up options to sell your smuggled cargo through a fence. Fleet bonuses. (Disclaimer: taking this example from Elite Dangerous) One thing that is very common with almost any game where you play as a trader is that you travel alone. Traders are often just sailing, flying or driving back and forth... often in 'semi autopilot' mode while watching Netflix or something else. It's not a very team-oriented activity in most games.In Elite Dangerous they did something controversial. They gave us 'money for nothing' when doing trading. How could they do such a thing and get away with it?!? The reason they did it was to encourage teaming up as traders and flying as convoys. So how does that work? The way it works it that you are in a group (called Wing in Elite) together with a friend, and you are both in the same system. When he sells his items to the market and gains a profit, you get a %-based amount of money depending on his profit. So if he sells something worth 1000, and gained 100 profit from it, then you get 20 as a bonus pay. Note, you get 20 out of thin air. It doesn't take 20 out of your friends profit, leaving him with 80. Nope... he gets +100 in profit, and you get +20 as a fleet bonus. But if YOU sell something as well, then your friend gets a bonus too! So if you both sell something and get +100 profit... then you BOTH get +20 in fleet bonus. Total profit per head is then +120, and the total profit between you is +240. Some might think of this as exploitable. But is it really? By being in a convoy you get the fleet bonus, sure... but keep in mind that you also saturate the market faster since you are delivering higher volumes of goods to the same locations. Personally I think this fleet bonus idea is great, and encourages teamplay as traders. But as I mentioned, it is a bit controversial and not everyone might agree with such a mechanic. So to conclude (since I am writing this from top of my head while at work and I need to head out ) There are MANY ways to make trading very interesting, intricate and intertwined with the rest of the gameplay (politics, factions, piracy, blockade running et.c.). I've only gone through the ones that came to my mind, and I am positive that you clever folk out there have many other brilliant ideas. Both new ideas and ideas that improve upon what I've gone through here. Lets try, together, to make trading in Naval Action more than just bus-driving. Thanks for reading!

Yarrr !! OK now i have your attention.... Every pirate started their life as a National (Somewhere!) British, Spanish, Native Indian, Portugese etc. When you join the game you have no reputation, Good or Bad. Only through in game actions should you remain an honourable member of your Nation or through smuggling or piracy become known as Captain Crankey the Notorious British Pirate etc. Piracy was a label not a Nation. Players could Have Naval Rank earned through grinding and pvp against your Nations enemy shipping, Merchant standing earned through trading. Piracy would be a label of notoriety/lawfullness. Honour/Notoriety/Infamy earned by acts within the game, smuggling and piracy would give you bad notoriety and eventually earn you the title "Of ill repute","The smuggler","The Blackguard", "The Pirate", whilst intercepting pirates or smuggler activity would eventually earn you the title "The Honourable", "The Upstanding" etc Players with bad repute, would be limited to visiting Neutral(I prefer Unaligned) ports and National ports where the level of 'policing' would be sufficiently low enough for you to enter with a simple bribe to the harbour master to enter you as Captain 'Smith'. False papers, would give you a chance of appearing to be law abiding while on the high seas or entering ports.(Depending on the quality these could perhaps fool OW players into believing you are neutral or friendly at the very least law abiding, but if your papers fail then you are flagged as wanted or pirate to the investigating players ship who can then engage you. I would suggest the more notorious you become the harder it is to deceive without using the very best falsified signals or papers(Cost associated). Neutral Ports and Nation?? Players should choose their birth Nation. If not one of the main 8 then at least offer some viable 'others' with the odd port dotted around. I also would prefer to align all ports on the map to either the larger nations or perhaps little known local 'self styled governors/warlords' (Guild ownership possible perhaps at some point?) Even the meanest little hamlet would have been claimed perhaps tenuously at some point by one nation or another albeit 100 years earlier without seeing a uniform since. Neutral just sits badly with me. Everyone wanting to be a trader will just roll a neutral toon Yeuch EDIT: As I have made some sweeping statements above or put forward an idea without going into detail, I have been replying to different queries or questions regarding my ideas within the thread to clarify and expand on my OP. Already seeing some very good interpretations and suggestion to expand my initial thoughts

Calling All Explorers, Soldiers, and Business-Men of the Seas! These Being of the Highest Order! Join the Nya Sverige Handelsföretag Before you leave because playing Sweden is virtually impossible, read this! We will be playing neutral simply because trading and exploring will be done at a much more efficient and productive rate than if we were at war with everybody. The soldiering aspect of the New Sweden Trading Company will come in the form of defence ships lending their superb fighting and sailing skills to the protection of the explorers or traders, or swearing allegiance to Sweden at the beginning. New Sweden Trading Company! Vällkommen till den Nya Sverige Handelsföretag! Ok, I won't try to continue in my mediocre Swedish abilities. I will, however, continue to tell you all about the wonderful opportunity you have to become a member of the greatest international -- yes, it is not just Swedish, although we are based there -- enterprise since IKEA! You will receive full trading rights in the new found land of the Caribbean and will be able to trade goods between those beautiful tropical ports. Naval Action has a lot to offer for us so take this once in a lifetime chance to become a member and partner in the Nya Sverige Trading Company! Why risk crossing the dread pirate Stede Bonnet? Why risk jibbing in a 15 knot wind storm? So you can get that gold! Why get that gold? Are you seriously asking that? So what the hell are you waiting for? Join the Steam Group Nya Sverige Trading Company or add Kmdr 1.GR Holm on Steam!

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Introduction: Hi there! My name is Willem Usselincx, founder of the West-Indische Compagnie. I would like to welcome you to this thread and if you have any questions feel free to leave a comment or message me! History: The Dutch West India Company was a chartered company (known as the "West-Indische Compagnie" in Dutch or just the simple abbreviation "WIC") of Dutch Merchants. Among its founding fathers was Willem Usselincx. On June 3, 1621 the company was granted a charter for a trade monopoly in the West Indies by the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands and given jurisdiction over the Atlantic Slave Trade, Brazil, the Caribbean, and North America. The area where the company could operate consisted of West Africa and the Americas, which included the Pacific Ocean and the eastern part of New Guinea. The intended purpose of the charter was to eliminate competition, particularly the Spanish and Portuguese, between the various trading ports established by the merchants. The company became instrumental in the Dutch Colonization of the Americas. The Trading Company: We accept anyone! Dutch or not the main language that will be spoken is English. So English is a requirement. We will be using Dutch Ships and we will mainly focus around Trading and Exploring. We aim for realism and historical accuracy. Our steam group: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/WICompagnie Are you interested in joining? Feel free to message me or add me as a friend on steam! This was it for now! Tune in later for more updates! I wish you good luck in the game and the best time possible! Sincerely, Usselincx

This (moderately) light armed (up to 14 guns?) ship was mainly used for hauling cargo. The fat belly design meant it could hold relatively much more cargo with to the amount of crew and had to pay less toll at the Denmark trading post. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluyt Previously suggested by Wind. German fluyt "Derfflinger" Pictures of the model of "Derfflinger". Model of a Dutch fluyt "Zeehaen" (Gurnard; fish that was commonly found in the surrounding seas): Model of another Dutch fluyt "Molen" (?), judging from the mill on the stern: Dutch fluyts at ArteX blog: "Heemskerk" & "Zeehaen", led by captain Abel Tasman further exploring of that's now known as Australia and New Zealand (other explorer of Australia was Willem de Vlamingh):