Avonmora may have become boring

[Haron]

My issue is this : traders are not combative : period. It runs counter to the need to keep your fleets rolling 24/7 each bringing in their small profit to add to the overall take. Privateers are combative, but the price they pay is to self-limit their trade and also, to a large extent, their combativeness : pirates are very combative, their price is that regular trade of any kind is difficult.
Thus I find it a bit off to see this emphasis on making traders more aggressive : they would stop being traders and end up as privateers : the logic of purses and plunders would force that. Too many hittable trade fleets endanger your attack fleets : that's undeniable and enough high-value hit fleets have been stolen because of it.
Whats broken here is not that merchants dont fight enough, its that Pirates and Privateers dont fight enough to please the public demand for blood-sports so, somehow, we are looking for ways to force merchants to fulfil that need. Thats about as useful as sending out the hot-dog vendors to pitch during a dull ball-game.

Traders are not, and perhaps should not be, combative. However, in my opinion, they should be COMPETITIVE. The actions of one trader should affect the income of others, simply put. And the best way to achieve that, in my opinion, is to change the way supply and demand works. Todays system means traders are basically playing "solitaire", with the occasional plunder against them a couple times a year or so.

[Most Lee Harmless]

My issue is this : traders are not combative : period.... Pirates and Privateers dont fight enough to please the public demand for blood-sports so, somehow, we are looking for ways to force merchants to fulfil that need.

I fundamentally disagree with these statements. I don't understand why you say merchants should be free from competition and certain players need to fight more.
Here I'm proposing to remove the mindlessness and give the majority of the players (aka the traders) some resistance to fight against. It gives the experience more value to have some interesting obstacles to overcome. I'm NOT ok with non-combative traders who figured out how to cast Party Cards on their warehouses daily and repeat ad nauseam.

-Captain D

Traders are not combative because they are traders : simple : if you are running 40 fleets you are cruising for a bruising if you start picking fights : the thread is that Avonmora has become boring, not enough fights going on : the solutions being offered seem to center on somehow getting merchants to be more aggressive to each other, as if that will fulfil this need : it wont because the two play styles are too contradictory : you could ask why there are not more privateers fighting each other, because thats a strand of game play which has diminished in my time here : that is caused, in my view, by the way the game has developed : you cant be fairly good at all parts of the game anymore, it has developed into a more complex beast and those who specialize seem to enjoy a greater advantage now, able to offset disadvantages with greater benefits, whilst the privateer has seen the balance of the game turn against their play-style.
if you want a thing to worry about, its that specialization, the moving into niche areas to maximise benefits to overcome disadvantages.