There has been about 5 months since we released Treasure Hunt feature. We feel that it is time for a little update.

First of all, the manual mentions:
Your exploration rate drops 1% per region once a week.

This was never implemented. Therefore it has been removed from the manual. It can be revised as an option in the future.

Secondly, we want to add a slow deterioration rate for buried treasure. This means that once a week, during the weekly update at Saturday night all treasures turn investment will drop a bit.

While this primarily makes sense it will also make the feature better as:
1)It will slowly make the treasure of long inactive players easier to obtain.
2)It will make Treasure burial a more strategical option than just adding turns and picking a port.
3)Eventually it will encourage treasure hunters.

The rates proposed should be relative to total buried treasure/total turns invested. Here is the proposed mechanism:

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Rules
1.It affects only treasures with 1000 turns or higher.
2.Any fractional turns are rounded upwards (ie 0.2 becomes 1 or 3.6 becomes 4)
3.Update takes place once a week.

Rates
For turns 1000 to 2000,  1 turn per 100Millions
For turns 2001 to 5000,  1 turn per 50Millions
For turns 5001 to 10000, 1 turn per 25Millions
For turns greater than 10000, 1 turn per 10Millions

Examples:

a)Treasure with 1345 turns and 14Millions. Treasure will lose 1 turn per week.
b)Treasure with 2456 turns and 45Millions. Treasure will lose 1 turn per week.
c)Treasure with 6879 turns and 120Millions. Treasure will lose 5 turns a week.
d)Treasure with 10349 turns and 324Millions. Treasure will lose 33 turns a week.

Remember that total normal turns a week, are 1008.



Let me know what your thoughts are. If you have more ideas, please throw them at the table.

I like this idea. Even though I have a lot of gold buried I believe it's a bit too easy right now to hide gold away forever.

I think the turns lost every week is too little though. Even after an entire year you would only lose 208 turns if you have 6000 turns protecting 100M gold. I could easily just throw another 200 turns on there next week and just ignore this change for another year. It seems like the decrease should be a % of the total turns invested. Maybe:

1000 to 2000 turns:...0.1% of your invested turns go away each week per 100M gold (1500turns w/ 180M gold = 3 turns/week)
2001 to 5000 turns:...0.1% of your invested turns go away each week per 50M gold (3000turns w/ 180M gold = 12 turns/week)
5001 to 10,000 turns: 0.1% of your invested turns go away each week per 25M gold (6000turns w/ 180M gold = 48 turns/week)
10,000 + turns:........0.1% of your invested turns go away each week per 10M gold (12,000turns w/ 180M gold = 216 turns/week)

Before you think 216 turns is a lot: realize 10,000 turns is 2.5 months worth of turns and 216 turns per week is really only a decrease of 2%. And 48 turns is only 0.8% of 6000 turns.

-Captain D

How about a treasure with 15000 turns that amounts to 350M. Take in mind that this specific treasure is SURE to attact a lot of hunters who will now know the whereabouts for their PvP efforts.

Let's see:
Intitial formula: 35 Turns per week, 1825 per year.
Your formula: 525 turns/week, 27,375 per year.

As you can easily guess now, large treasures will become obsolete. We do not want that though. The objectives (as said before) are:
1)Make the treasure of long inactive players easier to obtain.
2)Make Treasure burial a more strategical option than just adding turns and picking a port.
3)Encourage treasure hunters.

If we wanted to go right ahead for the optimum value, we need to take in mind the turns per week value; 1008 turns.
Then we have to decide how important it is for someone to be able to hide his gold. Let's agree which should be the price for it. Let's say that an insurance of this sort, should cost like 1% of total money a month. I think this is a good price considering that a single Booty Master can steal up to 7% of your total money.

So for a 350M treasure, the cost is 875K a week or 3,5M a month or 42M a year.
Let's transform this to turn cost. If the avg player needs 144 turns to make 2Millions then this cost should be 63 turns.

So I think we have a better solution now as shown below:

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Rates
For turns 1000 to 2000,  2 turns per 100Millions
For turns 2001 to 5000,  2 turns per 50Millions
For turns 5001 to 10000, 2 turns per 25Millions
For turns greater than 10000, 2 turns per 10Millions


Examples:

a)Treasure with 1345 turns and 14Millions. Treasure will lose 2 turns per week.
b)Treasure with 2456 turns and 45Millions. Treasure will lose 2 turns per week.
c)Treasure with 6879 turns and 120Millions. Treasure will lose 10 turns a week.
d)Treasure with 10349 turns and 324Millions. Treasure will lose 66 turns a week.


Any agreements/disagreements?

I can understand the need for this deterioration rate. I thought Captain Jack's initial rate was a little high. But Captain Dungeness' rate was way too high! To quote Captain Jack, ".... we want to add a slow deterioration rate for buried treasure." How would it be if a player who buries his gold and goes on a holiday for a couple of months and comes back to find all his gold stolen - not because of an inadequate turn investment on his part but due to his turns being depleted by a high deterioration rate. Not good. To me, right now, Captain Jack's initial rate is looking good!

Any more feedback on this?

Personally I never bury gold because the turn costs are crippling for a true pirate. I use every turn I get and frequently have to buy more.

Luckily I have found other ways to hide gold that do not require turns.

Not really germaine to the specific changes you are discussing (I'm for anything that promotes carrying a little gold around), but I thought you might want a pirate's perspective.

I would be interested to hear all the ways you have found to preserve gold. If you want, pls send me a pm. Do not worry, we will not wimp anything, we always avoid to wimp anything. I just want to ensure we know all ways already.

Captain Jack wrote:

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Rates
For turns 1000 to 2000,  2 turns per 100Millions
For turns 2001 to 5000,  2 turns per 50Millions
For turns 5001 to 10000, 2 turns per 25Millions
For turns greater than 10000, 2 turns per 10Millions


I think that sounds reasonable. It's still not too hard to keep the turns very high but it requires you to slightly maintain your buried treasure if you put more than 1000 turns in.

I like how it's set up. As number 2 treasure hunter, i say it gives merchants and players that can't spend their turns the opputunity to invest in something that can pay out big. there has to be a balance between treasure hunter and treasure burier.

Although if a player is inactive his treasure turn thing should go down slowly.