New attractions for clan-owned ports, added value, less costs

[Cetric de Cornusiac]

This post has been written in someone's suggestion thread, among the answers, so I think it is staying there rather obscured and I should repeat it in a topic in its own right, for getting more attention.

 

Let's give tools to the owners to turn their ports into attractive places for visitors, no matter if to their clan members or others. How could this be done? By upgrading ports by a selection of buildings there, which produce advantages the visitors want to enjoy, or buy special things there due to those buildings. And with every turnover by visitors, the port becomes more profitable. The port becomes meaningful and deserves to be defended when it is unique for some reason.

Examples?

- clan offers dockyard places in addition to the ones the player owns. so he can have more ships and park them in this port for a daily fee depending on size of the ship.

- clan builds a special wharf which, contrary to player-owned wharfs, can add additional upgrade slots to an existing ship - for a good price of course. Boy, how they will flock to that port!!

- clan can produce rare resources, at a low rate compared with original spawning areas (for example crooked cedar outside of crooked islands), in buildings only available to them (not players). They set up auctions for achieving the best prices, which are announced up front and require people actually go visiting the port for bidding. Needless to say, those auctions have nice fees the clan will earn. Player A buys 100 copper ingots for 520 gold a piece, clan adds 20 % provision, makes 52.000 + 10.400 gold for the port-owning clan. And outside the port, some vultures will wait to intercept the precious acquisitions...

- clans do some research efforts in experimental facilities in their ports, where built. Certainly eats ups money first, and the outcome is (random generated and thus) unpredictable, but once the research would be successful, a new upgrade named after that port would be generated in the game, with slightly different statistic values compared to the normal upgrade it is based upon. For example, a Bovenwind Refit which gives 1 % more speed than the standard Bowenwind Refit, by the name "La Tortuga Bovenwind Variant" if invented in that port. And it could only be produced in this port and nowhere else. Or the contrary: a slightly less efficient variation which requires a bit less raw material for building, like four Nassau fencers instead of five. And of course it is sold there and flushes the treasury of that clan...

- clans build large amusement quarters in town which allows cheaper crew recruiting compared to other places. Again: the clan earns with every sailor being hired in their amusement quarters.

Question is, if each port with a special building can only have one of them or several.

A port equipped with special clan buildings will become very precious and of course other nations want to conquer it. But... there is some risk the special building(s) will get destroyed during the fighting. It could even get connected with the actual port battle. The bloodier and the more ship losses in PB, the higher the risk special buildings(s) will burn to the ground. Then the winner has to build new ones from scratch.

[Fenris]

Nice idea.

But will remain a lone voice in a wilderness....

Again.(like so many before)

[StaleMemes]

All interesting ideas, another one i'd like to see is carpenter's guild, if a port has that the port will generate and sell repairs on its own, with a high profit margin on each repair.

[Sang Noir]

The idea is really good, with the conquest of ports it would make sense to add a certain level of port simulation.

To bring the focus back to them, I would suggest that only regional capitals can have the places you mentioned. And in order to built them and add other cool things like regional special trade products and benefits, the owner of a regional capital only has access to them, when he conquers the other cities in the region. Each of the conquered cities brings a trade good towards the regional capital. For example one city only produces copper, one is good at training sailors, another produces some good for consumption. But that specialty only becomes available in the capital, not in that city itself. The clan that has conquered and owns that city gets income from that good that is now offered in the capital. That way only the regional capitals are meant to serve as focal port for trade activities, bringing more revenue for the clans owning it and simplifying the map for players. Plus there is more of a fight around controlling entire regions.