Rebuilding after plunder.

[DezNutz]

When a trader is lit up and plundered, everything is as it should be, of course. However, after the raid, the trader returns to look at the carnage, and wants to rebuild and restart his trading fleets. While restarting trade routes are easy enough, rebuilding the fleets is a cumbersome job which can take hours for huge traders. I therefore think we need a way to make it easier for huge traders to rebuild after they have been plundered.

I'm thinking along the lines of a new menu, "Rebuild after plunder". In this menu, you get two options: Add tails, and level up tails.

For "Add tails", you first get to select the fleets you want to add a tail to. Only fleets with 4 or fewer ships are shown here. Then you select all the fleets you want to add a tail to, and select a ship type for that tail (usually a howker or a cutter). Then it takes such ships that the trader has our of fleet, and adds as tails to the selected fleets. If he does not have enough of the selected tail ship type, only as many fleets as there were available ships gets filled, and a warning is given.

For "Level up tails" you select the fleets where a tail needs to be levelled up. This can be very many fleets, so there should be an easy way to select many fleets at once. Perhaps select all fleets starting with a certain letter, for instance. Or select "from this fleet to this fleet". When this is done, you set a level which you want the tail ships to be levelled to. The game then calculates a price for this, and you can select "OK" if you want to proceed. The tails are then levelled up. Also, the atts should be added according to a macro selected by the trader (for instance first sails, then hammocks, and so on).

I think this is necessary to keep the biggest traders trading. I do not mind that they lose a lot of gold and some ships when they are plundered, but I think it is bad for the game that they have to spend hours getting back in business after having been hit. No-one benefits from that.

(Edited Title name to fix misspelling. -Clockwork)

[DezNutz]

Level up tails - There already exists a mass upgrade tool.

[Haron]

It does. And perhaps improving this is sufficient for levelling up tails. The current tool requires you to click on every fleet you want to upgrade. I am thinking about those traders with several hundred fleets. Just clicking to select every fleet takes a lot of time. Maybe making a template may be a good idea. Then there has to be a simple way to select hundreds of fleets (maybe all fleets starting at a specific letter, for instance), then upgrading these fleets to this template.

The point is that it takes too much time to get back to trading when you have hundreds of fleets. This should not take hours.

[Most Lee Harmless]

I disagree.

The mega-fleet traders know the choice they make. If they choose to run low-level tails then they are balancing cost against the possibility of tediously replacing them after a hit. Same way they balance cost of fitting cannons versus rare chance of fighting off a lower level hit fleet.

Making it easier to recover from the consequences of such decisions just makes them easier to take.

Running hundreds of fleets should be tedious. If we make it as easy as running ten then where is the challenge?

[Haron]

By all means, I agree that a huge income should come with a huge risk. But I think that risk should be in terms of losing hold, ships and other resources, not in having to spend hours rebuilding after a raid.

I want there to be huge traders around. And I definitely don't want them to quit because the game becomes boring for them. Spending hours rebuilding is boring. No one benefits from that. Let's get them back on the water fast.

I think disadvantages should come in terms of losing resources, not in having to spend hours on something boring.

[Soliel]

By all means, I agree that a huge income should come with a huge risk. But I think that risk should be in terms of losing hold, ships, and other resources, not in having to spend hours rebuilding after a raid.

As cheesy as it sounds, time is definitely the most valuable resource people spend here. You can't buy it or trade for it, and I can think of several hundred things I'd rather spend hours on than reestablishing fleets, especially with a big system. Keeping big traders up and running more often benefits traders and raiders alike.

That said, I agree with Dez that the mass upgrade tool is already a thing. While expanding it would be nice (upgrade all of [type], upgrade all to X, etc.), it's also sufficient as-is in regards to this issue imo. However, I think being able to mass-build/edit/add to fleets would be a good thing.

+1 overall

[Most Lee Harmless]

The time a mega-fleeter spends actually running their trade is minimal. The time a pirate spends running their 'trade' is far more.

Spending time repairing/rebuilding is the traders 'cost of doing business'.

Personally, if you run 200+ plus ships you have already accepted that your sink chance is 100%. rebuilding is a given as it's inevitable you will get hit, lit and lose.

Making it easy to recover is lazy play. That it is proposed just to provide more cows to be milked is equally lazy.

[Getsum]

rebuilding after a raid is not that time consuming I have had to do it a few times
Don't see any reason to change anything other then maybe a max button for all fleets.