Ahoy everyone,

As we are nearing plantations, a series of updates are needed. We will start with food to make things easier for everyone to adapt and understand.

Before I come down to food, there are some details you need to be aware of:
-Every port has its own market. It is the market where you buy and sell resources.
-Every market has its own warehouse. This is a gigantic warehouse that can fit up to 2.1B crates of every resource.
-Every resource traded at the markets, stay at the markets till the resources update.
-The resources update takes place every 3 days. During the update, market prices are updated.
-Once update it is over, all resources in warehouses, except the producing resource of each port, is removed from the game. This means that all start from 0.
-There is currently and for a long time now, no production of any resource, artificially by the game. The only resources that are produced, are Food from Fishing and Gold Bars from Goldsmiths.

Here comes the issue now. Fish cannot be sold back to Food ports. Even if this could happen, no one would really had any reason to do so as these markets sell below to what any other market would pay. This makes them a bad choice.

Right now, it happens that Goroum, which is a food market, to be running low on resources.

Let me travel you back in time before I continue:
In the early days, this was a usual scenario. Some ports, namely Tortuga and Tzogos which were the center of trading, were running out of resources daily. There was an artificial daily production back then so once the day started, there were resources to trade. But before the day was out and sometimes way before this (and before the new production would come) the markets run out of resources and had nothing to sell. If you dig the forums, you will possibly find the complaints of that era.

We ended up with Fertile Lands, till we reach the day where production will pass to the players hands. This already happened though, with Fishing (Food) and is about to come fully with Plantations, Mines (Iron), Sawmills (Wood) and Workshops (tools).

Let's return to today. How exactly we get the Food ports filled?

There are many more issues to iron out as food will get more and more value than just using it to a party. Population will need it sometime in the future.

Perhaps we should also provide some sort of Plantations for Food too. That's the leading idea. So Grain Farms anyone?

This actually opens things up quite a bit.

Looking forward to it.

I agree there needs to be available to produce all resources. Grain farms seems logical!

Grain farms leads to distillery.

Lumber for rum barrels+Grain for mash=Rum(Vanes Black Label Rum)

Sounds like a new hideout building.

While I like the idea, I want to suggest simply open up the markets where if you sell the market product, you sell it at no profit or less than market value.

i dont think developers should let any port to run out of resources completely, before giving us tools to produce resources. this would make ports very much useless for trading.

fertile lands were removed from voodoo packs and gifts long ago, and for some time the production tied to amount of crew hired has been turned off. fishing itself can produce food out of nowhere, but wont make port any more useful for trading

I belive grain farms are going to be needed; fiishing may affect markets as it too.

That said, one could explore the idea of national fishing rights - model it similarly to plantations, with food ports offerring not only grain farms but fishing, etc.

That said, I think simplicity is better than additional features, here. Leave fishing as is and add the grain farm. Fishing and grain farms will change the market dynamics of food vs the markets of tobacco, rum, cotton, etc. Fishing with grain farms makes the food market a bit more stable.

I may be over thinking this, or just not thinking enough... I'll let you all decide as I share some initial thoughts...

I think it's a fantastic idea. In fact, an entirely player based economy where all products available for purchase in the game are produced by the players would be a great thing to see come to pass.

Governors would have to negotiate/discuss what plantations/products would be allowed at what ports. After all, if each port was allowed to produce everything, value of goods would be low, and there would be no need for merchants and we'd all have to resort to plantation ownership or piracy to make money. Ports would be sometimes fought over in order to control what trade was allowed there when controlling nations would not play ball with the rest of the port owners and merchants in negotiating supply/demand issues.

Players that wanted to run plantations rather than run ships in a large merchant enterprise could do so, (contract shipping would be extremely useful in such a scenario), players that wanted to operate as merchants would have an expanded role, and pirates would be hated for more than just raiding fleets every now and then and taking some coin.

Hope to see this in game soon, with more to follow!!

Sir Thalius Hayle wrote:I may be over thinking this, or just not thinking enough... I'll let you all decide as I share some initial thoughts...

I think it's a fantastic idea. In fact, an entirely player based economy where all products available for purchase in the game are produced by the players would be a great thing to see come to pass.

Governors would have to negotiate/discuss what plantations/products would be allowed at what ports. After all, if each port was allowed to produce everything, value of goods would be low, and there would be no need for merchants and we'd all have to resort to plantation ownership or piracy to make money. Ports would be sometimes fought over in order to control what trade was allowed there when controlling nations would not play ball with the rest of the port owners and merchants in negotiating supply/demand issues.

Players that wanted to run plantations rather than run ships in a large merchant enterprise could do so, (contract shipping would be extremely useful in such a scenario), players that wanted to operate as merchants would have an expanded role, and pirates would be hated for more than just raiding fleets every now and then and taking some coin.

Hope to see this in game soon, with more to follow!!

I imagine that the amount a port can produce would have some sort of limit. For example, if Tzogos decides to put extra effort in mining, that leaves less room for other areas, Land would be limited to a degree, it wouldn't and shouldn't be possible for a single port to have a industry in all fields.

Captain Jack wrote:
Perhaps we should also provide some sort of Plantations for Food too. That's the leading idea. So Grain Farms anyone?

I'm a little confused by this statement, as plantations are nothing but estate farms. Farms can grow anything you plant. So just by definition, shouldn't a plantation be able to produce 3 different game resources. Food, Cotton, and Tobacco. I don't see why we would need discuss Grain Farms.

If any additional port building is needed, maybe a Distillery so Rum can be produced as that would be the last resource that needs a building for production.

If we are going to keep the existing resource market system (port resource limitations), port resource production buildings have to be limited to the respective ports. The buildings are operated by players and the production is sold to the port which is sold to everyone else at market. This makes sense assuming that not everyone will have access to the port production buildings as they are leased via the governors.

I would leave fishing alone.