Trading Explained - Feedback welcome

[Never]

17 hours ago, BoatyMcBoatFace said:

Im not sure if you are even playing the game or even trading at all..... because i can guarantee you, it hardly is a 0 effort thing. In fact, it is a full day's literal work. And then you end up blowing all the days work on a ship and the mods you put on it. I didnt make 10m today but i spent 10m. 

 

If i cant fund my gameplay i simply will not play. I suppose people are happy with how brutally deserted was in mid 2018 and are eagerly trying to push it back into that ditch! 

I don't think I said it was zero effort, but it is very easy compared to other activities and more rewarding than most of what you can in the game; and in some cases the risk is basically zero.

Have you seen the port taxes? there's literal hundreds of millions being injected into the economy every day, and there is very little taking reales out of the economy. You can't have a balanced system like that. 

People are wary of selling their stuff for reales because what is worth 1 million today, might be worth 2 million next month. Some degree of inflation is normal but prices for most items that are commonly traded have already doubled and in some cases tripled already. That is going to get worse, I mean if people really think it's good for the server when they have to pay in the hundreds of thousands for enough repairs to go pvp out of a free port or pay something like 2 million for a decent ship upgrade and 3 to 4 million for an elite upgrade, then I guess it's no problem because that is where we are headed. 

If trading could be lucrative and rewarding in other aways other than just endless reales that will never leave the economy, then that might be a way to fix it. 

Edited January 20, 2020 by Never

[TheDread]

7 minutes ago, Never said:

Have you seen the port taxes? there's literal hundreds of millions being injected into the economy every day, and there is very little taking reales out of the economy. You can't have a balanced system like that. 

 

You are obviously not tooling up with seasoned woods.   A L'ocean's worth of wood costs 7 million to season if you wait 53 days.  9 million if you want it done in 40 days.    And millions more if you want to make it go faster.   That's where all of the multi-million dollar clan budgets are going ,at least for the big clans with the major ports.  There absolutely ARE sinks built into the game for reals.  

[BoatyMcBoatFace]

26 minutes ago, Never said:

I don't think I said it was zero effort, but it is very easy compared to other activities and more rewarding than most of what you can in the game; and in some cases the risk is basically zero.

Have you seen the port taxes? there's literal hundreds of millions being injected into the economy every day, and there is very little taking reales out of the economy. You can't have a balanced system like that. 

People are wary of selling their stuff for reales because what is worth 1 million today, might be worth 2 million next month. Some degree of inflation is normal but prices for most items that are commonly traded have already doubled and in some cases tripled already. That is going to get worse, I mean if people really think it's good for the server when they have to pay in the hundreds of thousands for enough repairs to go pvp out of a free port or pay something like 2 million for a decent ship upgrade and 3 to 4 million for an elite upgrade, then I guess it's no problem because that is where we are headed. 

If trading could be lucrative and rewarding in other aways other than just endless reales that will never leave the economy, then that might be a way to fix it. 

On one hand you are complaining there is too much money (according to you) and then you turn around and say people cannot afford to buy things with the new prices? Which is it? You cannot claim both things at the same time! 

 

You might put  cotton sails on your fir/fir ocean but i dont leave dock without any of my ships having 5-8m of upgrades on them, using last months prices. 

[Sea Fox]

Change game mechanics to be open season on traders. Problem solved 

[Gringo69rus]

there is only 1 option to fix the trade all those who whine here should go to sea and fight. Yes, the New Orleans has a profit, but there are a lot of players there and they trade and this is their gameplay, your gameplay is crying on the forum, I don’t ask to fix you ....
ps the new economy allows me not to carry remixes to the ports where I fight there is always a person who will sell me repairs for my ship 10 times more expensive, that's who the real evil is

[Never]

6 minutes ago, Gringo69rus said:

there is only 1 option to fix the trade all those who whine here should go to sea and fight. Yes, the New Orleans has a profit, but there are a lot of players there and they trade and this is their gameplay, your gameplay is crying on the forum, I don’t ask to fix you ....
ps the new economy allows me not to carry remixes to the ports where I fight there is always a person who will sell me repairs for my ship 10 times more expensive, that's who the real evil is

You make absolutely zero sense.

Why do you think repairs cost 10 times more? take your time and think about it. 

[van Veen]

On 1/18/2020 at 1:12 AM, admin said:

Captains. We got reports that trading is broken (too much money. Is it true? How is it broken?  Is it really really broken?

It is broken.

Trading routes are ok, so are the profit margins. The problem is that there is no dynamics. Supply and demand are constant no matter what. 

Not sure about the supply of trade goods though. It seems they spawn at server maintenance and players who are online right after maintenance get to buy them. After that, they never spawn again, it seems. 

I don't know why the buy and sell contracts for trade goods were removed. To me this decision does not make sense. Please add them back into the game. 

• When we had contracts on trade goods, you could sell stuff in free towns to players from other nations while not being online at the same time. 
• The buy contract bid race emulates a dynamic demand lowering the profit margins which counters inflation. 

[Angus MacDuff]

On ‎1‎/‎17‎/‎2020 at 8:12 PM, admin said:

Captains. We got reports that trading is broken (too much money. Is it true? How is it broken?  Is it really really broken?

I don't think it is broken.  It is good that I can make the money that I need in order to purchase stuff.  Because I can make enough money in a few hours to last me for days, I am very happy with trading and I only do it when I need to (it's Naval Action...not Naval trading after all..).  It is certain that the players who focus on mainly trading are making ridiculous sums of money and that can lead to inflation.  I'm not even sure what damage they are doing with their multi-millions.  I still think the amount of investment in the seasoned wood process is far too high.  I don't even have a shed (no point spending the money, when I've never seen a (s) wood permit on the market). But maybe that is access to these permits as opposed to money problems.

[Teutonic]

8 hours ago, Never said:

You make absolutely zero sense.

Why do you think repairs cost 10 times more? take your time and think about it. 

1-2 weeks before the trade change, repairs were anywhere between 250-500 at la tortue, rum got down "almost" to 150 per.

last night they were:
Hull: 750 (ranging from 500-800 over the day)
Rig: 450 (ranging from 300-700 over the day)
Rum: 500 (ranging from 250-500 over the day)

when I look back even further, repairs were around that price a month after release. now this is clearly not a vast amount of data to make an argument. but I tend to base the "open economy" by La Tortue pricing, and at least based on that to me, prices didn't change all that much, and now i actually  have cash to afford to price of the good.

in Sweden, we have multiple clans that are quite competitive with pricing their goods for selling and so almost all our primary crafting/outpost ports have repairs around 150-200 and rum about 100. 

from a Swedish perspective goods are getting cheaper to buy, not more expensive.

Edited January 21, 2020 by Teutonic

[z4ys]

If you want cheap repairs come visit the open port Mantua. Its the better option to tumbado.

After a certain time the is no need to spend millions every day.

shipyard done

eco done

books done

whats left are guns, ships, reps and sometimes mods.

Edited January 21, 2020 by z4ys

[Never]

20 minutes ago, Teutonic said:

1-2 weeks before the trade change, repairs were anywhere between 250-500 at la tortue, rum got down "almost" to 150 per.

last night they were:
Hull: 750 (ranging from 500-800 over the day)
Rig: 450 (ranging from 300-700 over the day)
Rum: 500 (ranging from 250-500 over the day)

when I look back even further, repairs were around that price a month after release. now this is clearly not a vast amount of data to make an argument. but I tend to base the "open economy" by La Tortue pricing, and at least based on that to me, prices didn't change all that much, and now i actually  have cash to afford to price of the good.

in Sweden, we have multiple clans that are quite competitive with pricing their goods for selling and so almost all our primary crafting/outpost ports have repairs around 150-200 and rum about 100. 

from a Swedish perspective goods are getting cheaper to buy, not more expensive.

It's all very dependant on who the seller is and if the same people are bothering to move the repairs as their business. The prices do up and down, but looking at LT alone isn't a very broad pov. I've seen rum for 1k at several ports too. 

It isn't mainly about repairs though, prices of most good upgrades shot up by about 200-300%, for example. 

Then it isn't about that alone either, but having 100x more reals coming into the system that are going out is in itself an issue. The items that will be more affected are the ones in lower supply. Things like repairs and other stuff that can be obtained for a set price from the system will off course be less affected, depending on the specific situation. 

I wouldn't even say trade needs to be less lucrative but that it could be lucrative in a better way. Things like traders guilds have been proposed before with specific rewards for traders. I think the trade fix we got is lazy, just a quick patch up work that should not be expected to be a permanent fix. 

 

Edited January 21, 2020 by Never

[znôrt]

17 hours ago, van Veen said:

Not sure about the supply of trade goods though. It seems they spawn at server maintenance and players who are online right after maintenance get to buy them. After that, they never spawn again, it seems. 

  

On 12/1/2019 at 6:12 PM, admin said:

 

• This allows you to buy the goods if you are in the port right after their delivery by NPCs

 

[znôrt]

my 5c: trading takes quite a few hours of gameplay to make enough to buy a decent ship that you can loose in minutes (as it should be, we don't want people be paranoid about loosing their precious ship, right?), and instead of buying some of the more affordable random crappy ships you are far better off simply capturing it. i've no idea where the problem is but that aspect of the game is just not working atm.

if traders do it for fun then i guess money shouldn't be a problem either, but the prices of ships and upgrades are really nuts. my impression is that there is a huge divide between those few veterans that know the ins and outs perfectly well and are able to exploit it and set the stakes for a vast majority that is completely oblivious to most of the content.

for me trading as it is is just something to be ignored. however, i do have the admirality connection and a couple dlc ships, so i can sustain my gameplay just fine just by playing how i like (in battle or looking for battle!), but i wonder how any new player will do without that, unless they're spoonfed and cared for by some clan.

[Liq]

On 1/15/2020 at 7:14 PM, Liq💋 said:

Didn't exactly know where to put it so posting it here.

Keep seeing lots of new players asking in help chat whether or not they could enter enemy ports (to deliver passengers / cargo). After telling them they need to be in a trader vessel to do so, they often complain and go "Oh my god, all the way from *KPR* to *Baracoa* for nothing.

I do think this really discourages new players. And I keep seeing it happen in Help Chat. There should be some sort of a warning message when taking passenger / cargo missions. I bet there are a few captains which left the game straight after realizing they had sailed all the way for nothing (and perhaps left a negative review?)

@admin this still keeps happening way too often

[Liq]

[Kubrat]

On 1/22/2020 at 6:39 PM, znôrt said:

my 5c: trading takes quite a few hours of gameplay to make enough to buy a decent ship that you can loose in minutes (as it should be, we don't want people be paranoid about loosing their precious ship, right?), and instead of buying some of the more affordable random crappy ships you are far better off simply capturing it. i've no idea where the problem is but that aspect of the game is just not working atm.

if traders do it for fun then i guess money shouldn't be a problem either, but the prices of ships and upgrades are really nuts. my impression is that there is a huge divide between those few veterans that know the ins and outs perfectly well and are able to exploit it and set the stakes for a vast majority that is completely oblivious to most of the content.

for me trading as it is is just something to be ignored. however, i do have the admirality connection and a couple dlc ships, so i can sustain my gameplay just fine just by playing how i like (in battle or looking for battle!), but i wonder how any new player will do without that, unless they're spoonfed and cared for by some clan.

Join a clan and your trader ships are free or free for the supply of woods, if the crafter is low on supply.  No one in my clan has to ask twice for a trader ship (or any ship actually that does not cost permits or doubloons).

 

[Kubrat]

On 1/22/2020 at 1:09 AM, van Veen said:

Not sure about the supply of trade goods though. It seems they spawn at server maintenance and players who are online right after maintenance get to buy them. After that, they never spawn again, it seems. 

This is not how it works.

The goods in a port re spawn throughout the day as NPCs come and go delivering things.  Make OPs at your chosen ports, then check in regularly and over time you can buildup stocks of profitable cargo that allow for fast profitable trades.  You only need 3-4 OPs in the right ports and you can reap millions regularly.  You can work out what those ports are:

1. By using the trader tool
2. By using the Felix's Map tools (https://na-map.netlify.com/)
3. Or just by being around a bit and figuring it out, doesn't take long.

At one one time I have 13-25m in goods scattered about and it is taking to time to move it that is the inhibitor, not the actual accessing of the goods.

I am not trying to be epeen when I say this. This works, you just have to work at it a little, and not expect it to fall into your lap, no disrespect intended.

[Sea Fox]

On 2/15/2020 at 8:52 AM, Liq💋 said:

Yeah I agree. Either starter ship should be Tcutter or Tbrig. Also DLC traders should be a thing......maybe just one DLC choice of one trade ship per day from t-linx to LGV. Then a separate DLC for indiaman or a like ship

[Sea Fox]

On 2/15/2020 at 8:52 AM, Liq💋 said:

 

T cutter would a allow fair amount of exploration to the map. Visit ports see what is going on in each port follow chat combat news while sailing. Making a little money along the way. Find danger zones find safer zones ect.

I retract my suggestion from above. Tsnow would be the idea starter ship. It is a ship that may be perceived as crap by a noob but is actually an overpowered deadly weapon in the hands of experience sailors. A good ship to learn the ropes!

Edited February 16, 2020 by Sea Fox

[Liq]