Decentralised Economy

[Fellvred]

After the return of shipyards on the testbed it seems the concentration of the population around the capitals will be even more pronounced than before. These suggestions might hopefully reduce this and create a more organic spread of players on the open world

 

Resources -- At the moment there are no limits on resources coming out of a port so the vast majority of crafting, trading and sailing is done around each nation's capital. This leaves massive areas of the map feeling empty (meaning a lot of conquest battles could be undefended for a while). While I'm against hard limits on the number of buildings etc in a port I think a soft limit of some kind could be useful. For example, after a certain number of mines/farms/buildings have been built in a port (depending on the % of players in a nation/a certain number with buildings there?)  the cost in gold/LH will be increased and the amount of resources will be decreased on a sliding scale (depending on the size of the empire/number of ports/buildings present etc etc). 

This will help create shortages in ports with massive populations and push people towards other regions, as well as creating lots of opportunities for haulers, traders and pirates. If those nations and clans want to continue crafting ships in one central area the resources will have to be hauled from further afield to make it economically viable.

 

Buildings -- While it's nice to see new buildings I don't think it makes good sense ingame to make each player individually create their own dockyard or foundry to progress in their crafting. Most clans will have dedicated crafters so dockyards will just become a nuisance (if you personally don't have one) rather than something which adds to the gameplay - resources will simply be passed over to the crafters creating even more downtime between sailing/pvp. The current shipyards also tie players and clans to one area, if you've spent the last week getting a level 3 shipyard built you're not going to want to move any time soon or use up another building slot for another shipyard somewhere else.

Perhaps a shipyard or foundry needs to be a national project? Once a certain number of resources are taken to any port and 'paid in' to the shipyard building project a shipyard will appear in that port and be usable by anyone in that nation. This price could increase exponentially with numbers of shipyards and distance from capital etc. These projects might also need upkeep in the form of resources per week but i'll leave that to another time.

This would also help create new trading/crafting hubs in areas away from the capital.  Any comments/suggestions/insults welcome  

[Liq]

Yup I agree, we need more nation based events / nation joint-effort 
Encourages the people to work together to achieve a goal and therefore improoves communication

Although that might also backfire in a sense of oppinion conflicts, and the salt / toxicity being produced would not help

[Remus]

Agree whoelheartedly with the resources thing. I was thinking of a weekly calculation based on how much of a resource had been extracted in the previous 28 days (Weekly rather then daily change helps not penalise players who don't play every day; 28 day totals allows a prediction of what the following week's building % is likely to be, giving players the chance to move before the weekly change if they want). Extraction limits have to multiply up by something related to the number of players;I was thinking of active players on the server, but it could be per nation. It is building outputs which most need to be restricted imo. I'm not too botheresd either way about gold or LH increases.

For shipyards I am less sure. The purpose of the shipyard seems to be to tie up a building slot so if you want to build ships you have fewer slots for resource buildings - which seems a decent idea to me - but is let down by being able to harvest everything you need for ships and guns by rotating just 3 slots with cheap level 1 buildings.

Won't your plan for national shipyards encourage centralisation?

[Fellvred]

32 minutes ago, Remus said:

Won't your plan for national shipyards encourage centralisation?

I think it certainly would if resources were left as they are atm anyway but if there was enough of a push from lack of/cost of resources and the projects weren't too expensive to get started at the lower levels it could work. The Spanish, for example, would still have a central hub in Habana (for the largest shipyard with the most expensive resources/ships) but could also create hubs in ports like Ays, Trinidad, Salamanca etc as front line crafting areas (where resources may be much cheaper to produce) and reduce downtime between pvp battles etc. 

[Sir Texas Sir]

As for the Shipyard thing I don't think it shoudl be a national thing. I'm sorry I don't want to depend on others to make my cannons or ships.  I will depend on my clan mates though, but say I have a fall out with them (prob never happen) than I want the option to build stuff myself.   Now what I wouldn't mind seeing is the level of shipyard tied to the port.

Shallow Water Ports only level 1 shipyards can be built

Normal  Water ports up to level 2 shipyards an be built

Lineship deep water ports up to level 3 shipyards can be built.

 

Than again if these seeded woods don't work out I think they should make a Timber Yard for you to put in a port to get the woods it produce. One building for all woods type but you are limited on your labor hours what you can harvest or not.  The same goes for Mines in ports.  One building that can mine any metal/stone in that port.

[Ravern]

Good idea as you put it, but I can imagine the dev team seeing this and then adding resources to all buildings instead of what you suggest.

[Remus]

13 hours ago, Sir Texas Sir said:

Shallow Water Ports only level 1 shipyards can be built

I quite like the lidea of building level 2 shipyards in shallow ports, making frigates and listing them in the shop for the unwary to buy. Now, where's that devil emoji?