Master Haggler [Legendary]

[Juicypotato]

Yes, it only affects one port, but a trader can easily send all his ships to that port. And he can have a warehouse with insane levels. So the profit can be enormous. Also, legendary cards are not something you get, but something you make - in the witch hut. Which is why I said getting the price right is important. Both the price AND the time to produce this card needs to increase.

I haven't kept up with how legendary cards are made, but legendaries are a higher tierthan rares and It's unlikely you can make any legendary card with just a recipe. There will be some catch.

This is also a great card for pirates because the trader will be making so much gold, 1 round of fugitives and a pirate can steal any easy 40M gold.

Maybe we can nerf this card a bit and while this card is active you can't remove gold but can only add gold. Also ships can't be leveled up and gold bars cant be purchased. Add some vulnerability which benefits the pirates lots more. A rich player like phoenix can run this and have 20 ccs and a mindbar and make 200M in one day but he'll be on the demographics page with the most gold and there will be some very thirsty pirates such as yourself after him...

[Malachi Constant]

+1 But I agree it could use some tuning

[Haron]

Doing some calculations for this one. Assuming 500 ships, all LMMs (60 cargo), and 1 hour between ports (two hours between arriving in "target port"), a trader can ship 360k crates to this port in 24 hours. Let's say it's tools at 20 gc/cargo, then a 50% increase in sale price gives 3,6M increased profit. In addition, there's the profit from buying goods cheaper in the port, and I haven't calculated in things like Duke bonus and other voodoo cards (indian cards). If the card includes sales from warehouses as well, and we assume a warehouse with a capacity equal to 24 hours trade (level 360), that's another 3,6M extra profit there. So a huge trader could get away with a 10M profit from this card, I think.

Sounds like a lot - but is it, really? Let's say the player instead uses this warehouse to store tobacco, and uses a tobacco gathering card to sell for 20 gc instead of, say, 12 - that's 360k x 8 = 2,9M. Less than the 10M for the suggested card, but then again, Tobacco Gathering is a common card, and sells for around 3 credits.

Note: These calculations are very rudamentary, and I think the real difference in profit from tobacco gathering and this card would be over a factor 5,but they give a rough estimation of what one can gain with such a card. I'd like to see an actual huge trader comment on this, though - how much would one get in profit from such a card? And what is the real profit from a card like tobacco gathering? Based on that, an appropriate price (and creation time) can be set.

[Captain dungeness]

I'll take a whack at the math here. Someone needs to double-check it for me.
Vaasburg-Caspian is a good route right now: 9 gold profit per crate for each round-trip. A 4xLM+cutter fleet can make about 48k profit daily (about 10.6 round-trips per day).
East+West gives: +21k daily profit
English India gives: +7k daily profit
Warehouse Tycoon tech gives: +22k daily profit
=98k total daily profit

Instead that fleet could run a party route Hannes-Pania: which provides 97k profit without bonuses (about 8.7 round-trips per day)
West gives: +9k daily profit
Warehouse Tycoon tech gives: +16k daily profit
=122k total daily profit

Casting Master Haggler on Vaasburg only:
Master Haggler would be applied either before or after Tycoon/East/West/English. It gets complicated with % on top of % but I think if it applied first you would be buying cotton in Caspian for 2.4 and selling in Vaasburg for 11 then buying tools for 5.6 and selling in Caspian for 23.1. That's means you're making 8.6 gold on each crate of cotton and 17.5 gold on each crate of tools. 26.1 gold profit per crate compared to 9 profit per crate with no bonuses.
=141k total daily profit with Master Haggler

Casting Master Haggler on both Vaasburg and Caspian:
Buy cotton in Caspian for 0.8 and selling in Vaasburg for 11 then buying tools for 5.6 and sell in Caspian for 34.1. 10.2 gold profit on each crate of cotton and 28.5 gold profit on each crate of tools. 38.7 gold profit per crate compared to 9 profit per crate with no bonuses.
=207k total daily profit with 2xMaster Hagglers

Looks like a almost worthwhile card since the currently proposed crafting cost is 10FavWinds+2East+2West= about 18 credits.
With 100 fleets a player could use 1 Master Haggler to make about 14M daily profit compared to about 12M daily profit on a Party Route. Using 2 Master Hagglers would provide over 20M daily profit compared to 12M with a party route.


CONCLUSION: This card is slightly better than a party route if used on 1 port. If used on 2 ports it's much better than a party route.

This card needs to take at least 24 hours to craft so that players can't easily keep it active at all times. I don't want it to become a always-on kind of thing for every big trader like Party Cards have become now. The crafting cost should include some gold bars to be used in the haggling process instead of extra East&West.

How about Crafting:
10x Favorable winds
1x East India Trading Company
1x West India Trading Company
300 gold bars
Crafting Time: 36 hours
Crafting Tier: Level 1 Witch Hut required

Casting Cost: 24 Turns
Duration: 24 hours
Resistant 85: 85% chance to resist Serenity and Purify

The crafting materials for 2 cards are worth almost 28 credits+1.2M gold for only 24 hours of effect. That price is STEEP for the short duration. I don't think the crafting cost needs to be any more expensive. A player with less than maybe 60 trade fleets would probably not find this card worth its cost since they would only be making only about 1M more gold than party routes after considering the credit cost and crafting time. If the effects lasted longer then maybe it would be worth it.

The best part about this voodoo card is the level of understanding required to use it well! It might convince large traders to actually pay attention to port's buy/sell prices instead of just running party routes! Hooray for encouraging less laziness in trade routes! Players without large trade fleets could craft this with their low-level witch huts and sell for credits on the voodoo market.

-Captain D