As of now, all nations are port controllers. Mechanics wise, nothing makes them owners. This is our objective here. To create all the mechanisms where port owning and port controlling are 2 different things. This will open many new strategies for the game.
The subject is very large to analyze it and there are MANY little steps that need to be taken before we get there. Let's say that we already made one step not so long ago and we are now preparing for the second little step but also to a few more steps that might come up later.
Build a Port - Influence Points Modifiers
Build a port increases your influence at a Port in exchange for Gold Coins.
Currently, this is modified by Political Science Technology, which you can research at the Academy (Hideout Building).
Each level of Political Science increases Influence gained through Build Up port by 2%
I am thinking to add further modifiers to the particular mechanism. Here are the suggestions:
1)Bonus due to Port Population nationalities
Every port, right now, has nationalities. You can view the port nationalities from the court page:
If we take as example current status of Tortuga:
Then the nations of St Kitts, Egypt and US could receive the bonus which would be equal to overall percentage / 10. The bonus will have a limit of up to 2.5%. These figures are not final of course.
In order to avoid exploitation of the bonus, this bonus will be awarded to other players of the nation instead and will only trigger if you are a noble in your country. Which means that only if you have the title of Baron or higher, the bonus will apply.
Based on the above, here are the modifiers that would be given for Tortuga:
St Kitts: 2.5% bonus
Egypt: 2.5% bonus
USA: 2.1% bonus
Which means that If I was a Baron of Egypt and I invested enough to gain 100 influence points in Tortuga, then ALL my fellow Egyptian folks would earn 2.5 influence points, rounded to nearest, therefore 3 influence points.
2)Estates
Player owned estates have been announced elsewhere. We speak about player buildings in ports with the primary objective (in gameplay terms) to act as a gold bars/gold coins sinker. Estates will be extremely expensive and in exchange they will provide political power to players. The downside will be that these will be tied down to each port, locking in a way each player to a specific port's interest. This statement validity will be open to challenging by really powerful players who might be able to own multiple estates among the ports of Avonmora (limit 1 per port).
The first bonus that Estates will be given, will be a modifier to the amount of influence earned through build a port. Since this will be given only to the port that the estate is located, these modifiers will be significant.
Of course, this is a bit early for Estates, but I thought to include all possible influence-related ideas into one topic. You can find more about estates here: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=4840
Other Port Buildings
I think when we talk about influence points, we should not involve other buildings too much. I have seen some ideas (like the Port Fort) that include influence points manipulation and it could be an answer. However, I want to avoid this discussion now as I think that we will miss the objective here.
Port Nationalities modifiers
Apart from direct modifiers to influence, we can still have more modifiers to nationalities. Nationalities will ultimately play the biggest role in determining the actual owner of the port. We can see an example above. What if the modifier by nationalities instead of 2.5% was 25% ? Wouldn't this make the populations the most important factor?
And we could setup dozens of mechanisms around them. With aggressive actions or favoring actions.
Right now, only one modifier exists to affecting the nationalities of a port and this is the amount of days a nation holds the port, versus the amount of days it has been held by other nations.
Here is a new nationality modifier suggestion:
-Amount of gold coins spent by a nation to port-related infrastructure.
The only related action we have right now, is expand port acres. Soon, more will follow, such as port buildings.
Such investments should be rewarded with pop converting modifiers. I will await your suggestions for figures here.
Warfare Modifiers
Besides aggressive actions against population that we could implement, we should also add modifiers for battles that take place between players. There is already a pretty straightforward suggestion here: viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4648&hilit=influence
Something along these lines with some added value:
-Treaties can change the modifiers of these. For example:
-No relationship between nations of the players: no modifier
-Peace/Truce/Alliance: Penalty to influence gained/lost
-War: bonus
In this way, diplomatic relationships will play a role here which unlocks a great deal of actions that play a role as political power and simple war actions get a working reelationship.
Game Development
Looking forward with game development, we will need to decide in the most collaborating way which feature to expand further. I intend to move the game to Pirates Glory Version 2.0 with the Trade Routes redesign system. Ideally, I would want many more things implemented at the interface before moving forward but the game cannot wait.
Once PG 2.0 is out, we will need to know what to implement next. Trade Routes redesign is almost ready - today or tomorrow I will finish the interface. Which means that probably till Monday the first beta trade routes under the new system will start sailing in Avonmora. Which gives us about a week of testing before going live.
So, have a good read here and if you want, post your feedback.
Also, please update your WISHLISTS. Prioritize the things in your WISHLISTS. Once I am done with the updates, I will first read all wishlists and then continue with the rest. Wishlists are the most important element of development right now and I will read only updated ones. So, after you edit them, please also create a new post (you can provide insight or write a single "updated").
For those still new to the game, you can find wishlists here: viewforum.php?f=49
Each player can have his own, so please consider creating one there. Do not worry if you are still new. Remember that although new, you are also a player of this game and I am interested to know what everyone wants to see. The amount of people having a wishlist is still low, so this is doable.
Also, changes are coming to player admins for development/players dev team. I hoped this will work without my participation but it is not.
Cheers
