Post here your ideas on how we can improve the current trading system.

You might want to check the idea regarding the gold resource here: viewtopic.php?p=3667#p3667

All in all we want to give traders more options to generate income.

Here are my trading ideas:

1.)FREE SHIPS - New comers should be given or provided a Trade Fleet of Level 1 Howkers. They can maybe get this through a mission/tutorial they will undertake to not only get a TF to help them progress but also they can learn more about the game. Another way for this is that the Trade Fleet would only last a certain days/weeks after that it will disappear or something.
2.)FREE RESOURCES - Second option from above is that they get enough resources to build a Trade fleet themselves. Likewise they would gain this resources from doing a mission. As far as i know new comers get 400 turns 5k gold and some resources to build atleast 2ship. That 400turns is pretty much useless if they have nothing to spend it on. Most newbie would instant travel the fleet they created so that they can make more money however this causes them to appear on board and then get attacked by either new or older players.
3.)VODOOS - Have a voodoo card maybe Uncommon. That when a player use it on one of their fleet, it will provide them the best trade route to have for that Fleet. So if they upgrade the ship from lvl 1 to lvl 2 they might choose to recast another voodoo over that fleet to see whether there was any improvement on chosen Trade routes.
4.)OPTION BOX - I'm sure this has been said multiple times but having a tick box instead of that round thing. Or maybe just give an option to click more than one Trade Fleet or ship at the same time. For example when to stop all your trade fleet, you have to do it for each fleet. There should be an option to either stop all of them or allows you to click/tick on the ones you want to cancel. This also allows players to to re-set or change their trade fleet quicker.
5.)PORT CHANGE - Part 2 of above, in the editing section for trade route, only option is to either terminate or have it store resources in ports. Add an extra option which allows you to change the port where it is going. For example if Trade fleet 1 is going tortuga - tzogos and you want to change it to tortuga - seaglory or seaglory - newland. instead of terminating it you just simply change the port of that trade route. If the ship is currently travelling to a port and you cancel it normally it would stop however if you change the port, Trade fleet 1 would still carry on to its journey however it will go straight to whichever port you changed it to. Maybe it will sell the resources it got from previous port or it will do that when it actually got to the port which is part of the new trade route.
6.)MORE PORT - Having a trade route that goes into more than just two port. So instead of just a Trade fleet going to port a then to port b etc.
Have another option to add a Port C. Which enable us with more options such as Buys resources in port A then travel to port b to stock/sell them. then buy resources in Port B and sell/stock them to C. Buy resources in port C then either sell or stock them at port A.
7.)TIME TRAVEL - have either on list of trade fleet or on actual fleet page shows the time of long each travel is. i know it says that on fleet screen or when you create a trade fleet. However what if the ship is in the middle of a trip and you want to know how fast its going to compare it to the recently new found faster route.

Right now there seems to be about 3 systems for choosing trade routes:
1) Single Route: Choose one route and sit on it (like Tortuga-Tzogos)
2) Distributed: Spread all fleets across many ports to keep a good average
3) Daily Routes: Change the fleet every day to match the best prices.

I've only tried 1 & 3 but I've found changing my one daily route gives me at least 25% more profit per day if not 50% compared to what I was able to get from Tortuga-Tzogos on an average/good day. If you can calculate the best route for the day you can get much much bigger profits. The trick is calculating the best route and the boredom is canceling and starting every fleet. I'm happy to hear you are working on checkboxes etc so I will stop whining about the clicking

It seems like it should be difficult to figure out the fastest way to get profit as a trader. I like how the prices change so extremely. If you want to reduce the tedium then an improved trade route interface and longer price updates would work well. If the prices changed every 3 days or every 2 days it would still be a challenge but with less fiddling with fleets.

-Captain D

we should have another option while sitting up a trade route it says (store in both warehouses )


example Tortuga and tzogos trade route (buy iron from tzogos and store it in Tortuga
buy tools from Tortuga and store it in tzogos )

The use of warehouses isn't as versatile as it could be. I would like to see the ability to truly empty a warehouse when setting up an autotrade. Right now, it seems when set upon take from warehouse until empty, the only goods removed are the ones furnished by the port - anything else stored there is left behind.

For example, it would be great to have ability to buy Rum and store it in Newland, then later auto trade to empty the Newland warehouse of rum to sell or store in Aiora. This would allow a trader to diversity the warehouse inventory in each port.

i thought i made a brilliant long distance trading plan, but morgan thought of it too ._.

SHM and I have discussed this. To give some a since of prospective, there are approximately 209 2-city trade routes. This excludes same resource ports. If we add a warehouse capacity in that equation, a 3-city trade route becomes 7,980 possible choices.

This has several benefits:
1. Stacking of trade routes is reduced. Not everyone is then trading a single route which reinforces pricing in those markets.
2. Warehouse could be used to capture "best prices" to be traded later, when the market improves.
3. Faster ships with lower cargo are now more relevant to reduce those longer travel times.

Finally, if we add single fleet specific voodoo to reduce travel time, any number of routes become more profitable. And it would make slower ships with larger cargo, ie Trade Galleon, beneficial. As an example, I might have a fleet of TG in reserve looking for the best price. Once located, I would launch voodoo on that fleet and set it on its way.

I would find it enormously helpful to have the market values listed in the popup for each port on the map screen.

If that's dumbing it down too much, at least make the 'active ports' page available in alphabetical order. Whoa. The things you find when you go looking for them

Greythorn wrote: If we add a warehouse capacity in that equation, a 3-city trade route becomes 7,980 possible choices.

Wow! Greythorn and SHM, you two are brilliant. I didn't realize at all how close we are to 3-port trade routes! The only thing missing is the ability to auto-load goods from a warehouse that are not sold at that warehouse. 7,980 choices you say? That makes some really interesting options and makes it much harder to calculate the optimal route.

I hope Captain Jack likes the idea.

-Captain D

Prices changes every few days instead of daily could go either way, if the route is a bad route say 85g per unit/day then it's not really worth re-doing your fleets to run it because the increase in 24 hours doesn't outweigh travel time to new port however over a few days it might be worth it. On the other side if we get another 156g per unit/day route come in like the other day, then traders that follow the market can spend a few days making more than double the tor-tzo run. I don't tend to find it to bad re-setting 20 of my TF to follow the days market change, takes a couple mins is all(although cancelling a multiple amount of specific routes at once would be lovely).

Also an option to empty warehouse then buy from market? Doesn't appear to have that option, or i'm reading it wrong(possible)?

Greythorn, i got 189 different 2 port routes, and 5670 or 6246 different 3 port routes? mind swapping figures so i can see where i miss calculated?

Kinda agree with your first point, there are 2/3 routes that are the standard 72g per unit/day route, And the price change is minimal in these ports although it gives a standard to compare other routes against and a good way to set new players off with a guaranteed known income for the day.

Second, can't you already store in warehouse and wait for best price to roll round, i know of at least 1 tools route its worth running on store 24/7 and waiting till the day the price rolls back upto 25g per unit to sell.

Third, aye shipping between 3 ports would bring more use for either the faster lower cargo vessels or the bigger cargo slower ones as it would add a lot more diversity.

Using a 2 port system it will never be difficult for people to work out the best trade prices for the day if they want to, i'm sure their are traders out their who have made calculators/spreadsheets/programs to find out the best price within 5 minutes of price changes happening.

Using a 3 port system would make it a lot more complicated and also increase the diversity in profitable routes, meaning you could have multiple high profit routes available a day instead of just 1-2, and changing routes may be much less beneficial. However if people have made calculators/spreadsheets/programs for calculating the 2 port routes then all they would need to do is find a way of re-working there systems for 3 port routes, and their back up to speed.