The problem with plantations

[The Lamb]

I know Feniks - I see you sniffing around me Vaasburg warehouse quite often for bargains
The simpler solution be to bar plantation owners from the port markets where they operate.
I see one player who would have to commit more resources to merchant shipping at a glance

OR run them just like goldsmiths. I would make one change. A % of everyone's goods go to port automatically, the rest must be sold at another port. To keep stocks up at port and maybe down the road that % amount is set by governor.
OR
I saw someone else with a great idea too but i would modify the idea. What if plantations paid in tokens or chits (much like the old company's did) you would needed to have them exchanged to collect the GC (1 chit = 1 gc). They could be exchanged by your bank automatically once they arrive in hideout port. Remember there were no wire transfers back then. What this would mean is that everyone would get instant GC in their hideout port plantation, but for the rest of your plantations must transfer the chits in ships to your hideout port and must have bank at level (?).

Every plantation can only hold (x) amount of chits based on size. If your chit bank fills to capacity, your plantation production stops till you remove chits via fleets, but still uses resources for your workers health and happiness.
This would also mean that anyone who takes these chits in battle must also bring back to their home port to get GC. For pirates there would be a new Black Market voodoo that acts like a party trade card for chits.

Then you Add in a few voodoo to mess with things in the plantations, just like ships and ports. Maybe something like:
1. Spanish flu - % of workers plantation workers are dead due to sickness (like black death)
2. Bad politics - You cant use the local players market for 24 hours (like black list)
3. United Workers - Use % more resources per day for production. (like a few different ones )
4. Company Stores - Shows the total information of a players plantation. (like other fleet and voodoo info cards)

[Axy]

El Drake, wouldnt it be funnier if once you buy a permission you gain the token "RKO!". It would be infinite and it would say "any RKO! Tokens gives gives 10% of your profite to the pirates and 20% to the port governor. The rest goes to slaver sellers".

Or even better "any RKO! Token decresases production by 10%" meaning 21 plantations would be -210% production total.

Plantations are hard enough to start, if you want them to create "risk" you will also need to give them defenses. And that would be a whole new huge upgrade. Plus a few more billions to spend. Meaning only big big big players would run them, and that is bad. + slaver seller will never have problems, specially once CJ adds the life period of workers. Right now there are probably more important things, like that one regarding plunder battles CJ anounced some time ago.

Good plantations are only easy for big players, and even them probably think they arent that easy.
Why dont you guys first think of a way to defend plantations, then every single plantation owner will agree with raiding plantations and all you want. If not it will be like asking for plunders with no cannos defending, just attacking.

[Haron]

This is about what kind of game we want. I accept that we do not all want the same from the game. As for me, I want a game with a significant PvP portion. Where you have to do PvP of some kind to do well. Unfortunately, it seems the game is tilting more and more in the direction of an "idle builder game", where you just invest gold to get income. Over and over. With hardly any of your results depending on the actions of others.

I do not look at investments, because in my opinion, what matters is how a feature works once you have invested in it. And in my opinion, any feature which gives you a high income with no risk, is a bad feature, regardless of how much you originally had to pay to get that feature. It may be that the investment costs should be lower, but that is another debate. My point is: With ANY feature that gives you a high income, there should be an associated risk. Like there is for trading and to some extent piracy (piracy has lower income and lower risk, but it still has a risk).

[The Lamb]

AXY, i just agree with Feniks and Haron. With this being a sea faring pirate game, there shouldn't be any part that doesn't come with some form of risk of loosing your swag no matter how much you invest. Thats the risk.

I would say that the defense against plantation voodoo would be MB and CC's just like every thing else. Not every feature is meant to be for every player. Banks and Goldsmiths arent ment to be for new players with little gold, maybe plantations arent either.

I know you were joking about the decrease of income for each extra plantation, but that is actually a fantastic idea. It would allow for more players to have access to acres since it wouldn't make sence to have a plantation in every port. hhhmmmm. I you start loosing money due to "corruption" after say 10 ports, why have 12?

But i digress, to Harons point, there should not be any "untouchable" income in the game, and i would say most if not all should have to be, in one way or another, be on the high seas before collecting

[Captain dungeness]

I'm going to try to formalize this suggestion thread. Please add your thoughts on what I got right or wrong so far.

DEFINE THE PROBLEM:
Plantations don't have any risks associated with making lots of gold every day for the low cost of buying materials on the player market or sailing a few howkers. There is no way of directly interacting with another player's plantation and gold income. Indirectly, a pirate could attack the plantation's incoming supplies but this only serves to delay production slightly and the defender's gold income remains untouchable.

DESIRED OUTCOME:
A fair and interesting method for players to prevent and/or steal income made by another player's plantation. The defending player must have a way to prepare defenses against attacking pirates but not to an impossibly strong level. Attacking players need to benefit enough from the attack so that it is worth the risk/cost.

OPPORTUNITIES:
Solving this problem could make the economy more dynamic by allowing smaller players without plantations to gain resources from large player's plantations. Also this could help decentralize the gold coins from the super-rich players to newer players who haven't spent 2B gold on plantations. This could also add new and interesting voodoo card designs and opportunities.

CHALLENGES:
Combat on the shore has not been done in PG yet. Combat with a plantation may interfere with future plans for port combat between nations. The current Plantation system has "guard houses" which are not implemented yet and seem to be designed for natural disaster prevention rather than guarding from other players- this could get confusing.

Is this an accurate summary of what we are discussing?

[Captain dungeness]

I'm double-posting to separate the solutions from the problem statement.

POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS discussed so far:
-Prevent plantation goods from being sold for gold coins at the port they were produced.
-Random / voodoo-created Natural Disasters could interrupt plantation production or destroy plantation buildings.
-Player fleets could do battle with plantations and if the fleet wins it gets to plunder the plantation for loot.
-Players could have a more direct method to attack a player's warehouse or a specific resource in the warehouse.

MORE DETAIL on the idea of fleets battling plantations directly:
I imagine we could make plantations like a stationary fleet that is always available to be assaulted but make them very strong so that it takes many attacks to wear down the walls of the plantation and get in to steal the loot. There would be a button/link on the plunder page below Skirmish that says "Assault a plantation" where you could choose which plantation to assault and which of your fleets will fight. Your fleet will fire first since it has the element of surprise but then the plantation's fortifications will fire back with great force. You will need to assault the fort many times to create enough damage that you can eventually win the battle. Fortifications take time to repair so the defender can't instant-repair unless he uses a lot of turns. Once your fleet has damaged the fortification and won the battle you get to steal the last 48 hours of plantation production in gold coins from the defending player's on-hand cash or warehouse stock. This emulates how the plantation probably carries a gold stash from recently sold goods which hasn't made it back to the bank yet. Once the plantation's stash has been plundered the next successful assault within 48 hours only steals what gold has been produced since the last successful assault. I think fame should also be stolen in proportion to the gold taken from the plantation.

[Most Lee Harmless]

Will we see a compensatory reduction in the costs of getting a plantation to such a desirable state and ready for its daily plundering?

For daily it will be once the defences, those slow to repair things, are down. Unless, hey, the plant owner spends to speed up the repairs.

So, quite why are plant owners pouring coin and gokd bars, rents, permissions and all the rest, into their enterprise when it simply gets turned into a farm for others to feast on?

Thats the flaw in the above suggested plundering method.

[PhoenixKnight]

If people are allowed to attack plantations, with the current plantation requirements, it won’t be remotely worth keeping one. The return on investment is not good to start with. Allowing people to attack it as will will probably end up killing the feature.

Keep in mind that the guards cost as is is so high that adding guards against attacks (which I don’t know if it works or not) will cost too much. If 1 acre is 4000 guards, how many warships do you need to attack a plantation successfully? Probably an army or the margin of loss must be very low.

[PFH]

Depends on whether the attacks will be naval against land, naval to land, or land to land. Or a process from 1 to the others.

Cannon fire from the naval side will make collateral damage and destroy the architecture pretty significantly, which will cause high numbers of guard deaths.

Naval to land will focus primarily on piercing the initial defenses of the plantations

Land to land will be a fight within the plantation and will be the “plunder phase” of attacking plantations

[xPROx]

If it turns into we can attack plantions. Why stop there what about players banks or marine.

But on a real note. I still believe attackers need to pay the 100 credit each port to attack. And if it's a land attack. The attack needs a Barrick to train soldiers and need to pay to keep it at each port alone with resources to keep soldiers alive.

Now if a sea attack why can plantions owner have a fleet that. Is set to guard port. That fleet can't do nothing else but set at bay and watch over plantions.

And will plantions be able to be raid over and over. Or a set number a day