Econ

[Guest]

Suggestion:

 

After the tax was introduced to the game the devs need to take a second glance at both the prices and availability of trading goods. The profit margin for most tradegoods are around 50%, this sounds a lot. But then add both a purchase and a sales tax and you're ending up with not just a less lucrative traderun but also a lot less traffic in OW.

With the current patch two questions comes to mind:

1) Why trade at all? - The missions yields a larger profit (thankfully now it can pay it self off to do PvE, but what about PvP? I haven't done much else than PvE and sinking Moscalb and dron since the wipe and I really don't know how much that yielded since it was in hostility mission).

2) Why leave protected areas? Any incentive at all for moving through high risk corridors? Not at the moment.

 

As to solutions I come bearing with 2.

1) Increase profit yield from trading and make certain goods used in crafting available on more places in the server. Like 'Grietje van Dijks', 'Cartagena tar' etc and make them much heavier. My reasoning for this is both a question about getting traders out in the waters and a question about historical accuracy. To take Grietje van Dijks as an example: (bear in mind my dutch is a bit rusty) it means masters daughter. I have from day one found it a bit odd that 5 girls are used in the making of a bovenwinds refit (and ffs I got a perm warning point for suggesting slavetrading for highvalue shipping and perhaps an increase in LH.. Just imagine what would happen if I had suggested foul murder of 5 girls to make 1 refit for my reno?!!).

But disregarding the oddity of the commodity. The dutch didn't just settle in the dutch colonies. The entire carribean was in fact a melting pot of nationalities and languages (a real "frontier" society) where ppl moved a lot like grashoppers from colony to colony, some settled into successfull plantations (sugar plantations all used slavelabour) and some went on from one place to another after having overextensively farmed the soil on one island/plantation. This meant than in the danish colonies the ppl only consisted of 18-19% danes, 12-15% brits (mostly hailing from continental britain which is odd, but nvm that for now) and about 40-60% dutch (the exact number is convoluted by the arrival of french reformed huguenots in the 1680' and spanish jews in the decades after the war of the spanish succession). The net result was that the language(s) primarily spoken in administration and the markets of St.Croix, St. Jan and St. Thomas was dutch, german and danish. On the plantations of St. Croix it was mostly owned by danish/dutch planters and run by british foremans and Akwamanu/Luangan bombas.

Due to the cosmopolitan nature of the carribean it doesn't make sense to restrict certain goods based on nationality. It does make sense to make them difficult to obtain (thus strategic) but I would suggest making them available in more ports, making them far heavier and for the love of god make the copperplating craftable - it was NOT so difficult to make it.

My other suggestion is to basically make trading goods craftable in strategic locations around the map in order to promote both crafting and trading. For example make certain areas able to make tobacco and sugar as a trade ressource (but this time as a huge LH cost, especially sugar was labor intensive and required slave labor in order to keep production costs down). 

Carribean tradegoods were why the european nations established colonies in the west indies, it was to a large extent the reason why slavery became universally accepted at all (before the plantations of the west indies slavery was mostly a southern european/Iberian phenomenon) and I'd propose to make the capitals hubs for gathering these trade ressources and at fixed hours twice a week a trade convoy leaves the capital for the Atlantic - thus making it possible for players to intercept and loot the tradegoods before they reach their destination (again fixed locations on the atlantic). This can either be with the players goods in hold of an indiaman fleet or ai's with no risk for the involved players. I would prefer that payment for the tradegoods sold to the nations would be delivered upon delivery to the atlantic. Every ship that gets cought by enemy players constitutes a percentage (this means that for example 10 indiamans each constitutes 10% of the total shipping value) of the total amount to be deducted from the losing players payments.

[Teutonic]

I see a reason to help trading yes...but currently I still see some trade goods that are going for 100% profit (before taxes).

I apologize as I am not adding much, I do agree that trade goods should have be looked at though.

[Guest]

11 minutes ago, Teutonic said:

I see a reason to help trading yes...but currently I still see some trade goods that are going for 100% profit (before taxes).

I apologize as I am not adding much, I do agree that trade goods should have be looked at though.

No need to apologize and you do have a point.. some trade goods do still net a fine profit but the problem is partly the availability, the profitability (in general) and the need for incentives to go through less secure regions.

[Archaos]

What they really need to do is bring in a reason to trade rather than just trade for profit to fund PvP.  There should be a requirement for certain goods in certain ports and there should be consequences for not meeting that demand. That way it generates a reason to ship goods to that port while at the same time creating a supply and demand which will affect prices and hence create higher profit margins.

The current system just relies on you finding a trade item with a good profit margin and then shipping as much of it as possible at a time you are least likely to be intercepted. If it gets to dangerous you stop that route and move to another safer trade route. If there is supply and demand created at particular ports then people would have no option than to try and supply that port and if it was more dangerous then the price would rise to compensate for that danger.

For example, make ports require certain items weekly for port maintenance, if the maintenance is not met then there is a consequence for the port, maybe something like it is easier to raise hostility or one of the forts becomes inactive. 

Make trading a game in itself rather than just a way to make money.