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In Mortimer and probably most capitals, the price of Rum is very high. This is because players place buy contracts for the rum that drops in the port, and then sell it for many times the buy price. This tactic is harmful to new players, as they end up paying nearly 300 reals per rum, or are forced to go without. Established players can craft their own rum, and often do, so it is only the new players that are being hurt by this. Yet, it is often the established players who are placing the buy contracts, looking to make a few reals at the expense of the new players of their own nation. I propose that buy contracts should not be able to be placed for rum.
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One of the major problems and frustrations with the market shortages is the people buying up resources via contracts. The problem is that people setup buy orders buying up all the daily produced resources at an undisclosed amounts. This allows people to setup orders leave the ports and come back at a later time to pick up what they bought and setup sell offers at insane ammounts from what they bought it for. This is creating shortages of major resources. It does not make sense to have the buy contracts if it is going to be abused in this way. Also, this allows for enemy nations to transfer money to alt characters that buy up all the resources as well (ie, a Pirate player has a USA alt account, trades money with that account and sets up buy contracts for all major resources (ie coal, fir and iron), sails it to a neutral port aand sails away with the resources to the pirate faction). This defeats the port capturing system. Im not saying this example is actually happening, but you can see the possibility of this being exploited. Also the buy contracts removes any need for traders to have outposts at the ports they have contracts in. This of course circumvents the need for pricey outposts. Therefore I propose either one or two of the following scenarios: - the removal of buy contracts all together - limiting a player to a certain amount of buy contracts (ie 2) as well as sell contracts (ie 5) - Limit the buy contracts to only manufactured goods that are needed for crafting ships (ie. fir frame parts, crafting notes, Tar) If something is not done about this problem, the manufacturing of ships and upgrades will become impossible at higher levels. With the removal or limitations on buy contracts a large factor with regards to supply shortages will start becoming a thing of the past, as it makes it more difficult for people to exploit the current economy system.
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As a new(returning) player, I looked forward to build and sell my wares across the land. Sadly I soon discovered that it was not possible for a couple of reason. - Short duration on contracts - exorbiant fees for placing contracts - contract limit of ten So I suggest that contract duration be at least a month, and that that they are changeable. Creating a contract is just a flat fee around the one hundred to one thousand mark. The fee to change a contract (pricing) should be even cheaper, maybe one hundred reals. The contract limit should be at least one hundred, maybe even a thousand, ensuring that a player is able to do business. That the taxes only be paid by the customer, and the tax amount is doubled (resulting in the same amount of taxes being paid on a purchase as the old system, thus preserving the real-sink that the developer have carefully calculated to be correct). Having alot more contracts, that can be cheaply placed, and with changeable price will allow the players that enjoy this sort of gameplay to really dig into it, and by doing so, making the game better for all. Buy contracts should have the full amount of reals needed placed in escrow, with remaining funds returned to the player on expiration or cancelation of the contract. Please add a comment. -
One thing that has bothered me for a long time is the lack of immersive life and meaningful activity in the OW. What I'm going to propose is something that will hopefully make even those "dead" NPC traders interesting to OW hunters, and at the same time something that may appeal to the aspiring merchant mogul. Traders all know the bore of sailing for a long time in the admittedly rather dull OW of Naval Action, and OW hunters all know how unsatisfactory it is to capture NPC traders even if they carry valuables, simply because it has no impact on enemy players, therefore I propose hauling contracts in three different variants: Internal hauling contract: The Player will use own ship(s) and crew. The ship(s) will be fully controlled by NPC on the OW from point A to point B as well as in potential instances. External hauling contract: The Player puts up a contract for goods to be transported to a specific port. Time limit as well as class range of ship(s) required specified by the Player. Ship(s) provided and controlled by the taker of the contract. Contracts can only be taken by same nation players having the specified ship class (and fleet) ready; you can't leave port without the right configuration. Payment on delivery. Upon failure, the contract taker will pay a compensation specified in the contract - the contract can't be taken if this amount is not owned. Escort hauling contract: The Player provides the hauling ship(s) from his own dock with his own crew. Time limit as well as escort class range of ship(s) required specified by the Player. Escort ship(s) provided and controlled by the contract taker who is to lead the hauler(s) to the destination. Contracts can only be taken by same nation players having the specified ship class (and fleet) ready; you can't leave port without the right configuration. Payment on delivery. Upon failure, the contract taker will pay a compensation specified in the contract - the contract can't be taken if this amount is not owned. Now, all of this will be very handy for the traders and crafters, but it will be a boon for the OW hunters as well. Instead of players being limited to one trade run at a time they can now delegate to NPC and other players willing to do the hauling/escorting. This will mean more traffic in the OW, and meaningful traffic at that. No longer will the hunters pass by those boring AI traders without a second thought - perhaps they're carrying a precious load sent out by an enemy player! Furthermore, this addition would benefit from some changes to outpost management - these have already been partially requested - but I shall briefly outline how I envision it: All outpost warehouses, docks, and production buildings can be managed from anywhere - even at sea. This may sound unrealistic or immersion-breaking etc. but if you consider it for a while: does production stop when the owner is away? Is there no staff at hand that can see to it that it is kept up? We must imagine that the Player doesn't only control his navy officer (or equivalent) but also his estate and dock managers etc. It should also allow you to make hauling contracts anywhere, so you can get produced goods hauled from far away outposts without personally going there. Another thing that is connected to this is the "tow ship" mechanic. I think this has to be rethought. Either it should be the hardcore way, meaning it has to be sailed, if not by you or another player, then by NPC (similar to the hauling contracts with the possibility of a strong escort, while not having to do it yourself). The moderate version may be to make it take a very long time to reach its destination, though the more mechanics we have that bypass the OW, the more dead it will be. A hurdle to get past is of course the NPC pathfinding on the OW, but I have every confidence that this can be solved by the developers, and even that it is something that they intend to improve in any case. I'd love to hear your opinions on these suggestions. -
THE PROBLEM: One of the structural problems in the current economy appears to be the constraint the Euro Trader mechanic places on the growth of a nominally healthy contract market. Changes to the ET have been previously mentioned by @admin in the context of adjusting taxation: In order of priority the ET mechanic ought to be addressed first. At the present the ET places an effective boundary to price rises in core commodities used to craft ships and cannons. As the as the price of a contract to sell approaches 4x production costs the length of time to complete the contract increases. This is to be expected. But the result unfortunately appears to be that the maximum that a seller can charge and have the contract complete in a reasonable amount of time appears to range between 2x and 2.5x the production cost. This does not allow the merchant to factor in labor hours as a cost, and is not competitive vs the money to be made in the transport of dropped trade goods. It seems possible to consistently maximize hold values of trade goods at approximately 3x purchase price. This decreases the incentive for new entrants into contract markets where the ET is active. Why invest in production capacity to sell at contract when better money can be made elsewhere that does not require labor hours? There have been exceptions. There was a player who seemed to be consistently placing stone contracts Charleston at 8x production cost. I've concluded this was intended to exploit the ignorance of new players. Not all seal-clubbing occurs at sea. But then again, stone is a market with very little contract activity to begin with, which is what makes that sort of nonsense possible. The ET also appears to exacerbate price collapses in those resources where a healthy production capacity exists. As an example, the iron market is currently in overproduction in US ports and seems to consistently price below 2x production cost. But as the ET limits the price rises elsewhere there is not a lot of money to be made transporting iron out of the US reinforcement zones. The iron market is saturated and is likely to stay that way for a while as a result. Inventory appears to be getting dumped into port stocks, further depressing the possible contract price. A PROPOSAL: 1) The ET should automatically suspend operation in any port where the total sold count over time for all resource contracts reaches a set threshold. Reaching the threshold signals the existence of healthy contract markets and the ET is no longer necessary. Price rises in in production resources will then be mitigated by the entrance of new producers into the markets as the returns become competitive with dropped trade goods. Some server-side data collection will be necessary to establish the threshold, but one possible set-point might be an average of current sales contract volumes in from all capital ports on the Caribbean server. This might not work, however, on PvE, where the player population is probably too low for the average to have any meaning. 2) The ET should resume operation in any port where the total sold volume falls below the threshold. This provides a safety net in the event of a regional population collapse, allowing players to obtain resources, and limiting exploitation in markets with a limited number of sellers. 3) The UI should signal the presence of an active ET mechanic, with the appearance of some sort of flag in the shop screen. 4) Once the ET threshold has been successfully set the stamp tax can then be applied in the reinforcement zones to activate in concert with it. When this threshold is reached a healthy regional economy exists that will support taxation. The tax will now generate an outward pressure on player production toward ports outside of the reinforcement zones where applying the tax in the absence of a healthy economy would merely hasten implosion. AN OBSTACLE: There are not currently enough types of necessary or desirable production buildings. My thinking on this has shifted somewhat since posting here: At that point I thought it was possible for a non-alt player to compete in the economy against a player using one or more alts. I have since concluded that this is in reality quite difficult. Alts have an effect on the economy that reaches beyond direct competition against another player. They enable a player to opt out of contract markets, or exploit them without fulling participating. They can sell in a market, and in some cases manipulate it, but do not actually have to buy anything from it. Some players with alts might buy at contract but there is no inherent need to do so. Having (briefly) been the resource manager in one of the newer clans I am also not convinced that players with alts have any inherent incentive to cooperate in stocking a clan warehouse. But that is a separate issue. This ought to have been blindingly obvious at the time. But the effect wasn't completely clear until after I purchased the Admiralty DLC and discovered I could do something similar. The difference being the DLC provides a slight brake on this in the form of labor hours and outpost permits, but as a practical matter there is no difference between the two when considering the actual effect on the economy. Alts and the Admiralty DLC become weeds on the hull. The economy can tolerate a small amount of this but at some point, the drag created will cancel out any meaningful forward motion. Any sort of adjustments to the contract markets are unlikely to have a visible positive effect, as long as a players have a way to sell resources without being obligated to buy any. The number of types of useful player production buildings needs to be radically expanded. It probably ought to be at least double what can be controlled by a player using the Admiralty DLC, or a player using a single alt. The only other alternative to radically expanding the number buildings appears to be abandoning the contract system altogether. But this removes an entire tier of player-generated content from the game and seems to me to increase the onus on the developers to develop more.- 51 replies
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To mimic catastrophic change of authority upon a colony, I suggest that a Port goes under the following when it is conquered. 1. all ships being sold in the port are removed from the lists. They are not "stolen", they simply removed. Original owner can retrieve them. Kind of a "ship impounded" situation. 2. all Contracts are automatically removed from the lists with correspondent partial item quantities being "fulfilled". Example, a contract for 1000 Bananas that is yet at 300 out of 1000 will be removed from the lists and the contractor will be informed his contract has been partially fulfilled with the 300 units. These must be claimed, same as a fulfilled contract. Pros - new owners of the port hostile trade "take over" - more fierce defence of clan holdings Cons - ship business away from Safe Zones and Free Ports
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One of the issues we have now is that ports are useless - once you capture a port, you proffit of it for 1-2 days, until alts which sat there change nation. A solution to this issue, and a few others, is for a clan to have monopoly for buying part of resources from the port. Example shown below: In this case, smuggler of every nation can bid for 250 resources daily, Prussians can bid for 750 (their 500 plus 250 that smugglers can access), and clan can bid for 1k (their 250, plus 500 of prussia and 250 of smugglers). This will create different prices for nation, clan and smugglers, giving advantage to clan. It would probably set prices for clan at 150, for nation at 540 and for smugglers at 2740. It also fixes a few other issues and creates a few benefits: weaker nations are not completely locked out of strategic resources. We avoid snowballing effect, which made eg. Commonwealth die (due to lack of PvP marks for 1st rates, needed for training people to start winning in battle to get PvP marks) alts are no longer critical - they give you only a bit of advantage. This gives chance to new players, who don't have alts. it creates additional traffic around those ports (as without alt you can't teleport there)
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Spotted this quoted elsewhere and what follows is a possible partial explanation and at least a partial solution. I am not a zero-risk player but I started on PvE. I am a long-term Civilization player and I rather blundered into NA while looking for something more interesting than Sid Meyer's Pirates. I've never done anything even remotely similar to NA or online multiplayer. The US nation on PvE was a place to sort out the game mechanics. But there is structural obstacle in the economy that frankly contributes to boredom on PvE. It affects the Caribbean server as well, but less obviously so. I've posted about this before. There seems to be very little interest in the community on the matter. The bottom-up view on this is that the inability to see contract activity without visiting a port creates a functional bottleneck in player economic activity. It is probably not an issue with high server populations. But in a low population environment, either on the server as a whole, or in a particular region, it is going to be a game killer. The effect on PvE is that a player very rarely can get a contract filled outside of a national capital. At any price. It is a feedback loop. Since since the econ activity is in the Capital, that is where you do the contracts, and resulting in very little buy/sell activity outside of it. Which means a PvE player really can't get very far from a national capital if they are interested in at least some interaction with other players. I circuited Cuba scouting the area (from Charleston) and the Caribbean region was pretty much a player desert. My opinion, is that at a minimum, player buy/sell contracts need to be on equal footing in the trader tool with the port stock. I watch port stock looking for reasonable consistency in availability before I spend time sailing any distance. The same thing ought to be true of buy / sell contracts rather than the current complete crapshoot. It would be nice to see the same thing with ship sales but making contracts visible would remove the bottleneck. The econ activity would be present elsewhere to actually support shipyards outside the green zone. In the PvP environment it is possible to kludge around the problem by maxing out outpost permits. But addressing contract visibility would help here as well. Player activity would start to spread out beyond the green zones and at least some of the argument about green zone mechanics and OW incentives would become irrelevant. Including the argument over taxes. Would like at least a yes, this is on our radar, or we have this alternative in mind, or no. An explanation would be nice, but I can live with a flat no, and I will not quibble with that, or any explanation you offer. I suspect this is not a trivial coding project and it is your game.
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I posted a question about this in the " Public "API" for Naval Action" thread in developer announcements but the topic appears to have gone stale. Does current API data provide visibility for contract buy/sell prices? It shows up on http://www.navalactioncraft.com but that site does not appear to be currently maintained and is not displaying contracts on PvE that I know have been up for several days. If the public API works is there a tool somewhere that a non-coder can download and run to get at the data? I can handle csv files and spreadsheets. But I tried to follow the instructions in the developer thread and I couldn't get anything to work. The process is completely opaque. I don't need anything sophisticated or pretty. Just something that will cough a tab or comma delimited file without me having to figure out what a json is or how to read/modify it. Or a functioning alternative to the craft site?
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I just tried to place a contract, and even though the price showed were for 1 upgrade I automatically placed a contract for 10 upgrades (and ofc were deducted the asking price x10).. As the richest man on the server, this isn't an issue but it will stiffle the economy for all smaller players..
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FYI I had contract placed in Gustavia for barrels and I've cancelled it being in Orjenstad outpost. After teleporting to Gustavia items were not there/contract was not there... even after reloging
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Hello all! So i wanted to suggest an idea for Naval Action in which a player (Merchant/Trader Intended) could hire some muscle to help protect them when transporting their ships or goods. Now that the game mechanics have changed and that we cannot teleport with items in our cargohold it is now required that players physically transport these items to where they wish to craft or sell them. Goal: To provide a Job/Contract type system in which players can be hired at a cost to escort the player issuing the contract. The Idea: 1.) The Player wishing to start the contract (Merchant/Trader) gathers their assets at a port and decides whether they wish to risk transporting it solo or to hire some player escorts. 2.) The Player plots their route Port A (Where they want to start) to Port B (Where they want to finish) 3.) If the player chose to open an Escort Contract the player creates a contract and sets the starting port, ending port, number of players they're hiring, and reward price. 4.) In the port menu on the user interface a new button will be created called "Escort Missions" or "Escort Contracts" where players can click open/current mission contracts and ask to join. The current/open mission contracts will ONLY show the starting location and not the destination for safety reasons. 5.) The player who started the group (who owns the contract mission) will see the players asking to join their escort fleet and they can accept/decline the invitation. This will be a "handshaking" system where the player asking to join sends the request and the other player has to approve the request.When a player sends a request to join the escort fleet it will tell relay the player's name, rank, and current ship. Example Rear Admiral Woody051 would like to join your Escort Fleet. Current Ship: Constitution. ACCEPT / DECLINE 6.) Once the escort group is assembled they gather up and begin sailing towards the designated destination. Once they arrive the group leader can click fulfill contract and the members or the group will each receive their payout. Pros: Adds content to the game Encourages group gameplay Creates a new job for players as a way to earn income Assists in the dispersion of the in-game resources More assets can be transported if larger merchant fleets are organized Players are rewarded for positive gameplay Cons: Some merchants/traders are too paranoid about letting others knowing where they're going Restrictions must be in place so the escorts don't just sail ahead or not stay with the group Some players might just tell enemies where they're heading. Difficulty in determining fair reward prices for hired help Escorts might "tag" or attack ships along the way against the fleet's wishes. If any of you have ever played or are familiar with the game Silkroad Online you may already be familiar with a similar system. In Silkroad there is a 3 profession system. Traders/Merchants, Hunters, and Thieves. Traders trade goods between cities for profits. Thieves prey on traders and steal anything they can to sell on the black market and they kill hunters. Hunters are like a form of "police" per say as they go around hunting down thieves and they can be hired to follow and escort Traders.
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So by making a contract for a resource, it seems you need to outbid another buyer, or get to wait until another buyer bought the amount he/she wanted. The bug I find in the WS market. And I tried it thouroughly by know, and I'm also not the only one that had this problem. There is one person in the nation that somehow doesn't need to bid more, to get higher on the buyerlist, that person can put a contract for the same price, and gets the topspot. And every time does so. Other way around, it simply puts me second, the way it should. I would really like the dev's to get a look into it. I already did a bug-report. And wonder if more people have this issue? Greets
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Hello people. I was discussed about labor contracts last ago and i'm "broken". Broken is too big word because it's just game, but when i check market i see only contracts for 800k+ each for 500 labor that me cancer. But i have idea - simply system on change market and prices. For now if you want sell labor hours, you must contact with player and trade with him 4 or more times. This takes too much time and you never know with who you trading. What is it about this system? Player for example, I want sell labor hours. I open bookmark for example new "ExChange" and i changing my labor hours on contract to sell it like normal item. I have 1000 labor hours , i change all on one labor contract with 1000 labor hours and i put this to market. For facilities and keep clear on market can change 100, 200,500,1000 and 1500 labor hours on contract. I hope devs will read this and change some Sorry for my suck English. Best Regards Triss
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I just put up a sell contract for Tobacco at $749/p in a consuming port that was not overstocked. While I could still sell directly for $750, the sell contract did not get full-filled. This looks like a bug to me.
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Previous discussion is at http://forum.game-labs.net/index.php?/topic/11063-max-amount-of-contracts/ As of 9.65 resource buildings have been added, which changes the picture and arguments presented in that topic. http://forum.game-labs.net/index.php?/topic/11791-patch-965-crew-and-resource-production/ I can name at least two reasons for this to change: To come to price equilibrium as fast as possible it should be possible for any player to perform any role in the market. Be it seller, buyer or market maker. To encourage open market trading. More can be found by reading up on how open markets function in real life, but I don't want to overextend just yet. For this to be achievable the maximum number of contracts needs to go. Please present cases where this would be a problem.
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Very simple suggestion: I think we should be allowed more contracts above the current limit of 5. I think the player economy would be more vibrant if we don't stifle the commerce between players by having a cap on trading contracts. I also think the game needs more gold sinks so... I think each contract should have a progressively higher "contract fee". Players can have lots of contracts but, eventually, they will become too expensive to maintain as the cost for contracts goes up. Inflation is very important to address. I know this game is alpha but this is the best time to handle economic changes and get inflation under control. Inflation is a major factor in new player retention.
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Hi All Ive had a bit of a search and couldnt find anyone suggesting this idea in the suggestions thread. Now we have a basic clan warehouse setup i was wondering if somewhere along the line a clan dockyard would be a viable option? It ties i to the clan warehouse where the stewards and shipwrights could allocate materials towards ships requested in clan by members, would be much more organisation and they could be stored and picked up by the member requested in the clan dockyard once the order is complete, take out the having to be online at the same time to exchange the ship, gold or goods. Clan dockyard deeds, ships built within the clan are licenced under the clan and have the clan stamp on them, so players or members cant defect and take clan resources, they can be released if allowed by 3 officers and then sold to others or on the shops, ships used by members moving through the ranks can return ships back to the dockyard for refitting and recommisioning with the repairs of durability, depending on how many durability left so like 1/5 then it will cost 4/5 of the resources to restore it to full durability, this will add quite a valuable tool to maintain control while allowing further organisation of clan ships, if anyone has anything to add or some different ideas please add to the conversation and see if we can get aomething like this up and running.
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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.
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Economy needs more then 5 sell contracts
Kiefer Cain posted a topic in Economy, Trading and Crafting
The game's economy needs to allow for more transactions between strangers (via the market). Currently, this isn't allowed to happen with the restrictive 5 contract limit. I am not certain why there is such a clamp-down on contracts. It isn't a true economy when participants are allotted a limited number of transactions. In the short-term, I would suggest opening the gate on sale contracts. Supplying the economy would be helped by allowing this. When I am not worried about prioritizing contracts per the profit margin, I can spread out my profit motive over a wider set of products. Meaning I (and others) won't only be placing high profit items up for sale contracts and there will be a lot more items up for sale. -
I heard some people complaining that it's not fair that richer players can buy off all the resources that are produced by one port. Well, one solution to that problem (if it is considered a problem) is to allow Buying Contracts only in ports where you have a warehouse. Since Warehouses are somewhat limited, and it's risky to set one up in every port, it would mean that Resources would mostly go to the storages, and then it would not be so much a matter of money, but about who is there first, or more frequently. Crafters could still for example put up Buying Contracts in the port where they craft, and give new players an incentive for making money in a way that is actually meaningful for their nation.
