Patch 30: Trading feedback

[admin]

15 minutes ago, SS Minnow said:

No, only had 239 in the chest.  We will retest the mission to get all screenshots.

will check  - 1000 doubloons should go into your chest or ship cargo.

[Dibbler (Retired)]

29 minutes ago, SS Minnow said:

 

 Cool that solves the Real trading hell some

[SS Minnow]

Update....a clanmate just completed the mission and was paid both reals and doubloons.

They went directly to his chest.  As i said i only had 239 in my chest.

The only difference is that I deleted my mission after taking it to make room for more.  He did not delete his mission.

[Archaos]

14 minutes ago, SS Minnow said:

Update....a clanmate just completed the mission and was paid both reals and doubloons.

They went directly to his chest.  As i said i only had 239 in my chest.

The only difference is that I deleted my mission after taking it to make room for more.  He did not delete his mission.

I just checked, had two of the same mission to deliver (one traded from an alt) and I received all rewards for both missions even though I only had mission for one.

[SS Minnow]

1 minute ago, Archaos said:

I just checked, had two of the same mission to deliver (one traded from an alt) and I received all rewards for both missions even though I only had mission for one.

Ty for testing.  I guess we still need to delete the mission before delivering the cargo to see for sure if that is the bug.

[SS Minnow]

Second Update:  Clanmate volunteered (thx to Evil) to test again.  He deleted his delivery mission and then delivered the cargo to Marsh.  Doubloons were not paid, reals were paid.

@adminThis confirms the bug occurs when you delete your delivery mission beforehand I believe.

We also tested doubloon missions from yesterday that were deleted.  This bug does not affect eco missions that were deleted yesterday before the patch.

Players that delete their delivery missions will be disappointed that no doubloons will be paid...so don't delete your missions until this is addressed.

Edited March 28, 2019 by SS Minnow

[angriff]

I think the economy missions that now give huge amounts of Reals instead of the separate currency of Doubloons has now made the trade game redundant to the point of irrelevant.  There will be very little need for large cargo fleets with escorts needed to make a marginal profit in long distance runs for Reals now.  Players can now individually make more Reals taking passengers or cargo on short runs than entire loads of Textile machinery over long distances without  a risked investment.

With the expected implementation of little need to run resources to shipbuilding ports in the coming patch for self sustaining upgraded clan ports, I feel there will not be cargo ships on the water at all anymore for PVP players to intercept.  

The ability to see port commerce has proved its ability to allow players to determine the best spots for the interception of merchants.  However, if merchants die commerce dies and there is no tax on cargo to show this type of commerce then it will fail to provide the necessary intelligence for stationing and intercept.

 

There does not seem to be a consistent advance here with this economy mission change toward a higher level  of the required interaction of different type of players.  Additionally since there is no tax on the cargo missions there is no income for clans in these ports. 

Edited March 29, 2019 by angriff

[SS Minnow]

@admin Could you please clarify if the intention is to have a maximum of 10 missions (battle missions + economy missions = 10 max).  We are unsure if economy missions can be deleted and still get the reals and doubloons rewards upon delivery.  Yesterday we tested deleted cargo missions and found doubloons not being paid, only reals paid.  So it is strange.  Should we test again today?

Preliminary feedback:

I believe the intention is to have doubloons worth approx. 100 reals.  The doubloon rewards have gone down and the real rewards way up, so that seems like the correct method.  Doubloon costs for buildings, ship crafting, clan econ missions, etc. did not seem to change at all.  Maybe the doubloon costs should be lowered a bit.  For example, I think it costs 75,000 doubloons for 5000 WO logs (or 15 doubloons per log).  That would be 1500 reals per WO log.  Does that seem too much?

The delivery missions seem to pay a disproportionate reward compared to delivering trade goods.  I would bump up the consumption prices and maybe lower the delivery rewards a bit.

Edited March 29, 2019 by SS Minnow

[Teutonic]

48 minutes ago, SS Minnow said:

  For example, I think it costs 75,000 doubloons for 5000 WO logs (or 15 doubloons per log).  That would be 1500 reals per WO log.  Does that seem too much?

Not sure on the rest of your post but currently WO is 50k doubloons for 5k.

In fact I do not believe there is any clan resource that is above a 50k doubloon fee. I still think it's expensive though.

[Angus MacDuff]

1 minute ago, Teutonic said:

Not sure on the rest of your post but currently WO is 50k doubloons for 5k.

In fact I do not believe there is any clan resource that is above a 50k doubloon fee. I still think it's expensive though.

'Expensive" is only meaningful in the context of how easily Doubloons are acquired.  With @admin still tweaking this aspect of the game, I have no idea right now.  We really need a period of stability before anyone can say with authority, "this is too expensive'.

[SS Minnow]

7 minutes ago, Teutonic said:

In fact I do not believe there is any clan resource that is above a 50k doubloon fee.

Just checked, and this is true - 50k is the max price.  We checked all ports the first day of the patch and it was either LO or WO used to be 75k...now its changed to 50k.  Not sure that helps much with that price per log.

[angriff]

1 hour ago, SS Minnow said:

Just checked, and this is true - 50k is the max price.  We checked all ports the first day of the patch and it was either LO or WO used to be 75k...now its changed to 50k.  Not sure that helps much with that price per log.

I think raising the doubloons pricing  will only exaggerate the anti-DLC argument.

[Archaos]

Let me try and explain why I feel the adjustments made to missions in the recent hotfix have messed things up.

Since the resources wipe patch I have concentrated mainly on getting my economy and crafting up and running to test how it will work on release. My goals were to ensure I had a good income stream of Reals, access to as many rare woods as possible for crafting and a good base to craft from. I will state for the record here that I did have two alts in the same nation to assist in achieving these goals, but no other outside help from clan members.

Rare woods was my first concern and to get them I needed Doubloons, so I started doing delivery missions as I had already learned from the test server that they were relatively easy to do in safety in a Trader Lynx. So the Doubloons supply was sorted and I could make roughly 30k doubloons in 5 to 6 hours sailing (note you could not do this just afk sailing from A to B, you needed to pay attention and visit many ports). During my travels I located many ports that had clan resource missions.

Next problem was how to make Reals, I could do the trade runs but those came with risk as to make good money you needed to use larger ships and then you need to start thinking about protection. I tried a few short runs and I could turn a reasonable profit from them, but I thought I would be better off trying to be more productive to the community by supplying repairs to certain ports at a reasonable price, so I set up my crafting in Pedro Cay and started supplying repairs mainly to La Mona. Hull repairs cost me 86 Reals to make using free LH and I usually sold around 150 Reals which I felt was reasonable for the time and effort to make them and sail them to La Mona from Pedro Cay. Even at this price in was not unusual to be undercut. The changes to repairs used also dented this market quite a bit, but it was still a steady income and my reserves of Reals were starting to grow.

Now with my Reals and Doubloons coming in I started doing clan resource missions for rare woods. First one I got was for 5k Live Oak and I thought why not sell some of it as I am not yet ready to start ship building. I sold 1k of it to a fellow Brit player for 100 Reals a log only to find him next day advertising them for 150 Reals a log. I sold some more in KPR for 150k per log and left some for crafting. I then started getting other clan resource woods. The only one I was unable to source in the British nation was Teak.

So eventually I have it all set up, making doubloons was relatively easy but took some time, Reals was more of a struggle as the profit margins were slim selling repairs with the tax to pay and possibility of being undercut and having your repairs sit there unsold. Anyway only problem left to get my ship crafting up and running is permits. Some of these are behind PvP RNG so basically I can forget seeing them for a while (they even removed the button to pray to RNGesus) but more accessible permits could be obtained with Combat Medals and easiest way to get these was the Patrol zones, I had usually been able to hit tier 2 rewards in Nassau patrol previously, so I at least knew I could get them and luckily I saw a player offering CM's for doubloons and we worked out a trade of 40k doubloons for 40 CM, which was not bad as it equated to around 8 hours work to get the doubloons as opposed to probably 8 sessions in the patrol zone if I only hit tier 2 each time. I never really did any PvP in this time as I was concentrating on my Eco stuff. The other item I needed was VM's and luckily I am still LP for a few ports giving me 2 VM's a week.

But then comes the Hotfix and the delivery missions all reward cash with a few giving a token reward of additional 1k doubloons, so straight away my doubloon income stream is cut, this in turn affects my supply of clan resource woods. With the number of missions offering doubloons and the fixed amount of doubloons it will take me roughly 10 times as long to get the same number of doubloons. The other options to get doubloons are hunting traders which can be hit and miss, killing players which again is hit and miss and comes at great risk to ones self or doing group missions which requires other players and they are not the easiest of missions with a low rate of return on doubloons for time invested.

The changes to delivery missions now make getting reals very easy, on one alt I started off the day with around 400k Reals and just did passenger delivery missions for around 8 hours casually and by the time I finished for the night I had over 2 million Reals. So now there is no point in me making repairs and shipping them to La Mona so I may as well just save my materials and LH to use for my ship crafting. Making money at that sort of rate I can start buying what I need when I need it, but of course if others are doing the same we are likely to get rampant inflation. Anybody who does not have the time now to earn Reals will struggle as the people who do earn Reals will be able to price them out of the market. There will be less repairs produced so the price will go up, any crafted ships will be sold at exorbitant prices because people can pay them. Prices of rare woods will increase due to the reduced amount of doubloons coming into the market.

Apologies for this being long winded, but I hope that the Devs read it and take onboard that what was a semi-balanced system has been turned on its head by a single change and the repercussions do not only affect crafting and trading but PvP also. Maybe delivery missions gave too many doubloons to start with but that could have been tweaked rather than eliminated. I had warned about the delivery missions from when I tested them on the testbed server, but not many changes were made to them. Many players still felt investing 5 to 6 hours to earn 30k doubloons was not worth doing, so how are they going to make that many doubloons now?

[Teutonic]

2 minutes ago, Intrepido said:

The fix is simple.

Decrease the costs of rare woods (-20% is fine) and increase the variety of clan delivery missions (always 50.000 doubloons for 5.000 logs is not good when you dont need such quantities).

we could also further increase the variety of clan resources and the amount of ports that get them.

if it's 30-40 ports now, it should be 50-70 ports.

and all rare resources should have the chance to be part of these.

[Angus MacDuff]

Loving the new cargo missions.  You make good money and you still have to get out there and risk OW.  Good for everyone.

[Zlatkowar]

59 minutes ago, Angus MacDuff said:

Loving the new cargo missions.  You make good money and you still have to get out there and risk OW.  Good for everyone.

I don't share this thought.

[Archaos]

1 hour ago, Angus MacDuff said:

Loving the new cargo missions.  You make good money and you still have to get out there and risk OW.  Good for everyone.

Whats the point of all the money in the world if there is nothing to buy? Doubloons are rarer now, crafters cannot craft ships, people will just stockpile items now because there is no need to sell them. Why bother selling something for Reals when you could do a 5 minute run and make 50k Reals, you may as well save the item in case you need it later. 

They need a balance between the different currencies so each is earned with a bit of effort from different aspects of the game and players can trade between these currencies to cover aspects of the game they do not like doing. They almost had that balance when delivery missions paid doubloons, but they threw it away because people were crying for reals. Now people will have plenty of Reals but few doubloons, yet the price of clan resources remains the same. 

[Baptiste Gallouédec]

Cargo missions bring traders in ow, and offer an alternative to pay to make eventually peanuts profits if not intercepted (delivery missions we had until now). So if you are super poor you are not forced into pve to get enough to invest in trade goods that got profit nullified by taxes.

I think they may be more a pvp server feature as tradings goods are zero risks/loss in pve so cargo missions don't bring anything new for the peace server except maybe too much reals.

 

I think they can  bring a very positive dynamic on war server at least.

 

Next step is to settle players cargo delivery contracts, so you can pack for 800lb of any of your stuff, and set a contract any player can accept to deliver at your specified outpost.  He see only the cargo icon and can't unpack it so he is not tempted to keep it for himselft.  At targeted location he deliver like admiralty delivery. And the player that settled the offer will be able to see it unpacked on his warehouse next time he got at this location.

Some sort of über delivery for players ^^

Edited March 30, 2019 by Baptiste Gallouédec

[Angus MacDuff]

LOL, I have killed 3 player traders in the last hour.  All in unescorted TBrig or TSnow.  Escort your traders!

[Angus MacDuff]

1 hour ago, Archaos said:

Whats the point of all the money in the world if there is nothing to buy? Doubloons are rarer now, crafters cannot craft ships, people will just stockpile items now because there is no need to sell them. Why bother selling something for Reals when you could do a 5 minute run and make 50k Reals, you may as well save the item in case you need it later. 

You're right there.  Ive made a ton of reals in a short time.  Why would I do another (money) trade run.  I only have to transport mats now...and cargo missions.  What im seeing this morning is a lot of lone traders with these cargo missions.  Its cheap to just grab a TBrig and load it with two missions.  There is no investment and if you lose the ship to the wolves, so what?  Just go cap another AI trader and get a few more missions.  BTW, the cargo missions pay good Doubloons also.

[Archaos]

3 minutes ago, Angus MacDuff said:

BTW, the cargo missions pay good Doubloons also.

No they do not, about 1 in 3 missions pays an additional 1k doubloons to the reals reward, but there is not enough of them to efficiently gather enough doubloons to do the clan resource missions. On a 5 to 6 hour run previously I could have made 30k doubloons, now the same run will be lucky to pay out 5k doubloons, but will net me over 1 million reals. I did a load of trading to test it before and after this hotfix test it. 

[toblerone]

58 minutes ago, Baptiste Gallouédec said:

Next step is to settle players cargo delivery contracts, so you can pack for 800lb of any of your stuff, and set a contract any player can accept to deliver at your specified outpost.  

Do you really think that people will swallow the bait and come there in a full and slow trading ship? They could be carebears, but most of them are not idiots!

Edited March 30, 2019 by toblerone

[van der Clam]

On 3/29/2019 at 8:32 AM, SS Minnow said:

@admin Could you please clarify if the intention is to have a maximum of 10 missions (battle missions + economy missions = 10 max).  We are unsure if economy missions can be deleted and still get the reals and doubloons rewards upon delivery.  Yesterday we tested deleted cargo missions and found doubloons not being paid, only reals paid.  So it is strange.  Should we test again today?

Preliminary feedback:

I believe the intention is to have doubloons worth approx. 100 reals. ......

Personally, I believe the intent should be that deleting any mission means your intent is to cancel it and therefore should not be able to complete it. There is no other reason to delete a mission....unless it is to exploit something.

I like the 1dbl : 100 reals ratio. Now @admin should adjust all mission rewards to this ratio.

22 hours ago, Intrepido said:

The fix is simple.

Decrease the costs of rare woods (-20% is fine) and increase the variety of clan delivery missions (always 50.000 doubloons for 5.000 logs is not good when you dont need such quantities).

If clans/nations don't need this amount they could always sell it on the open market. 

3 hours ago, Angus MacDuff said:

Loving the new cargo missions.  You make good money and you still have to get out there and risk OW.  Good for everyone.

I like them also, however, I feel the reward is way too great, making Reals worthless now...again...and screwing up the market econ. By the 2nd day of deliveries, I was able to purchase nearly any player ship at any port. This will just push player ships to 10-50 mil now...and then when adjustment comes, seller won't change and things will be over priced again. Sure it will equalize someday, but I suggest it happens first with rewards.
On the other hand, I have not spreadsheeted the delivery mission to trading to see if it is a close relation or not....has anyone else priced a delivery mission rewards compared to trading profit?

[Slim McSauce]

High end rewards, but no high end market is going to cause a repeat of pre austerity inflation, every single time. There needs to be some big money sinks and investments to make or people will just aquire hundreds of millions and have the game beat.

[Baptiste Gallouédec]

On 3/30/2019 at 3:01 PM, toblerone said:

Do you really think that people will swallow the bait and come there in a full and slow trading ship? They could be carebears, but most of them are not idiots!

Do you really think someone will place a bait like that and wait 9 days in front of the delivery location in alt account ? If so he probably deserve the kill if he enjoy such boring playstyle. And this for an admiralty t-brig kill most of the time? (remember it's his own cargo + he pays for the contract)

 

People whine about being too poor and not able to get enough reals to play, devs fix it, other people whine they have too much money they don't know what to do with... 😕  maybe being able to buy expensive upgrades maybe ?  crafted ships ? permits ? doublons etc ... ?

Cargo delivery is great, tell me what wrong it do to you and to the game ?

Edited April 1, 2019 by Baptiste Gallouédec