Port Blockades (Large)

[sXs]

Port Player Building - Plantations

This is not a hideout building. This is a port building, specific to every player. There will also be port buildings specific to nations but this is another feature.

Plantations will be available to the ports which produce the following goods:
Cotton, Rum, Tobacco


Construction details

• Every player will be able to start up to 1 plantation per port
• Nations will legislate through the Plantation law who can operate a plantation at their controlled ports.
• Any player will be able to buy a Construction Permission from the game for a total of 100 credits (one time fee).
Construction Permission will allow the initial creation of the Plantation in a port.

Operating Permission

• The Plantation law will define a fee for the Operating permission - It will have a hard fee cost of 15M -> 98% of this will end up to the nation coffers while 2% will be the corruption fee.
An Operating permission will be required for the Plantation operation. Without it, the production will halt.
Operating Permissions will have a lifetime of 3 months. Once this pass, the permission will expire and a renewal will be needed. You will be able to renew your permission during anytime within the last 7 days of the deal.

• Operating permissions are final. No one can cancel them. If a port changes hands, permissions issued by the previous port controller remain valid.
• If the law identifies someone as an eligible person to operate a plantation, then the permission will be issued/renewed instantly and automatically, based on the defined fee of the law (same for any eligible player).
• If the law does not permit someone to operate a plantation in their port, they will still be able to negotiate a permission with the port Governor.
The port governor will have no restrictions! The Governor will be able to give a permission to anyone (!) and to ANY fee he desires (0 gc to 1B max). However, any fee received will be distributed in this way:
1)60% will go into his pocket (Governors will be able to set this down to 3% and donate the rest to the nation although this very setting will be private - the rest officials will just see the amount they got from the deal in the coffers (at treasury log) with no explanations. So, the only way for anyone else to tell the actual fee held from the Governor, will be to get both the real value of the proposal and also have access to the treasury log. In different case, the governor can be as scammy as he desires to be without anyone knowing.
2)30% will go to the nation coffers (up to 87% if the governor decides this)
3)10% will go to corruption (game)

• Every permission initiation/renewal proposal will begin from the interested player. The governor will have up to 3 days to respond. If no respond comes within 3 days, the proposal will always be successful based on the fee predicted by the law. The governor will be given the option to accept/reject or negotiate the offer. In case a negotiation begins, it will need to be concluded with 48hours. Failure to conclude it within the 48h, will always result in proposal failure and a new proposal will need to be sent.

Adjustable Criteria for Operating Permission included in Plantations Law
The nations will be able to control who owns a plantation through the following criteria:

• Title
This option will define availability to your own citizens based on their title.
Different price per title will be offered. Activating this article, overrides the other two and only those with the required title are eligible.

• Diplomatic Relationship with nation
This option will define prices with every nation in the game, depending on the current diplomatic status with them. In case this feature comes before the Nation Diplomacy expansion, you will inevitably through this setting, have one stance with all other nations. There will be no special rules for Pirates. They will be treated as a nation group.

• Hostility Rating
You will be able to set a maximum allowed threshold which will be used to limit players with high hostility with your nation from getting a licence from you (Hard limit 0 to 1000)

Acres Rental

• Every port will be assigned a pool of available acres. Nations will be able to increase this amount later (Probably with national port buildings)
• The available acres will be given to the Plantation owners to enlarge their plantation for a daily fee (rent).
• The Plantation law will define a minimum and maximum charge per acre (or bulk of acres as the metrics are still waiting the final case study).
• The Governor will define the exact rental fee within the boundaries set by the law. He will be able to change it once per day in a limited way. In case the law leaves no room for adjustment, the governor will have one job less.

Plantation Operation

A plantation owner will have to deal with the following:

• Plantation size
The owners will constantly trade for more or less acres, based on acres available and the rental price given by the port governor.

• [b]Workers
Owners will be able to add more and more workers. However, hiring workers from the port will not be possible. The only way to put workers to your plantation will be through immigrants carried with ships (only with ships - voodoo will not work).

• Worker Attributes
There will be a whole system related with workers who will have two general public (visible) attributes and several hidden ones. The visible attributes will be the ones of Happiness and Health.

• Caring Workers
Workers will have certain needs. Such needs are first and foremost food. Therefore you will need to have food crates stocked in your warehouse and a constant supply in order to feed them. You will be able to adjust the food amount to them though.
You will also have to decide how much space to allocate for them. They need space to live and the only thing you got is the acres which you will also use for your crops. Additionally, you may construct further buildings for them (buildings will need acres) to accommodate them further, such as housing, baths, utility shacks,etc. All these cost gold to build and come with maintenance fees but they will improve their living conditions.
Workers will have a natural mortality rate which will be increased based on the decisions you take for them.

• Production
You will get to decide how many hours every worker will spend for the production in your plantation. You will be able to select it based in hours from 1 minimum and up to 22 maximum. Hours of work will affect a lot of their hidden attributes but also their visible attributes. Hours of work will greatly affect production.
You will also be able to invest gold coins and time to improve the methods you use in your production. There will be a maximum limit per plantation. Once reached, you will be not be able to improve it further and the game will prevent further investment to prevent loss. You will be able to spend turns to hasten the time needed.
Production yield will be the same for all resources (same overall output - however, obviously, the more expensive a resource, the less crates will be produced which tends to be better if you intend to transport them).

• Logistics
All produced goods will be either sold automatically to the port at the port price - 3 (-2 for cotton) or they will be stored to the player's warehouse.
Once stored in warehouse, you will no longer be able to sell it to the port so this decision must be made in the plantation management. You will be able to change this anytime.
If a user warehouse is filled, production will be sold to the port instead.
If both fill up, production will stop.

Full metrics will be released soon. There are a lot of metrics included here but we have a case study under way and the results will be mostly balanced. Most of the metrics will remain private though as this is considered PvE feature.

Future Expansions:
-Contract Shipping might be lined up as a Plantation Expansion
-Graphics (initial version will be text only but future version could become fully graphical - a little better than the hideout graphics)

Prerequisites:
-Nation Diplomacy (Optional)
-Governor port preference (Implemented)
-Plantations Law
-Removal of Fertile lands



ANY VALUES PROPOSED will stand for Version 1.0 and are all up for discussion.
A REVISION will follow sooner than later. The revision will change metrics in the way we feel it is best for the game balance, always taking your feedback in mind

Your feedback is mostly welcome

I see several tie-ins here. Diplomacy, Hostility, "caring workers", production and logistics, contract shipping.

Blockade of a plantation port directed at a specific plantation owner could be huge. Blockade of a plantation port directed at a particular governor could be huge. Hostility tie-ins for both plantation and blockades could have more value, especially if hostility ratings were changed slightly to have more of a penalty than just national relations.

Changing the national revenue structure to get focus away from population, or tying population rates into an index based on happiness of citizens. Blockades could, and should affect all of these. CJs OP on blockades is brilliant in its simplicity because it leaves open these possibilities and actually implements some things that would probably be prerequisites for other upgrades.

Follow these upgrades up with port related building such as forts. All of these things can apply to SHM question of "why do we want this?" These all bring a sailing and ship focus back into the game while adding huge amounts of strategy on both sides.

[Captain Jack]

After reading through almost every post down to the last comma:

1.Different Post Battle Affects
There have been some suggestions. This part is crucial and should be discussed further.

Here is another approach although I am not officially supportive of this yet, just an idea:
If the winner is the Attacker, fully damaged fleets of the attacker get +18 danger
If the winner is the Defender, standing (non-fully damaged) fleets get +8 danger.

2.Different Bonuses
We could use less innovation and functionality for Version 1.0. If this also means that Blockades can be introduced with reduced severity till we get our first feedback from the first battles, so be it. We can always revise and improve a little later.

These will replace the proposed Toll Fee list, Cargo plunder and Free pass.

a)More influence bonus
i)2-4 Conspiracies worth cast against controlling nation that suffers a blockade
ii)Infuence gain for all attackers based on damage (we will work a fair number out of this, this most probably will be added right after a few blockades happen) on Blockade Success

b)Toll Fee
Toll Fee is equal to the 10% value of the tail ship.
Toll Fee will be charged at the following cases:
i)At all manual fleet moves, during port arrival.
ii)At all automatic trade routes that load from Warehouse, on Departure.
iii)At all Fishing routes, on arrival.
iv)At all Transport Immigrant routes on Departure

The fleet owner will be able to choose whether to pay or not through a global and/or blockade specific option. If he chooses not to pay, the fleet will get +1 danger instead (extra). The same will happen if the fleet owner cannot afford to pay.

c)All tax income will be paid to the Blockade instead
-Instead of the nation that is controlling the port.
We will assume that the locals make this sort of deal with the Blockade Owner in order for traffic to continue. This cannot stay forever though and will be changed later when more concepts are added. This is when we will move closer to the initial suggestion.

3.Tax Income Increase
We will increase tax income from 1% to 10% (No changes to Gold Bars)
This should rise port income from about 600k currently to about 6M
I am saying about, as this estimation is rough and slurpy. I can welcome any survey per port.

The only problem about this is that income of every port, will grow 10fold. Feniks suggested we should also decrease tax income from npc citizens but I am not sure which is the way to go. Population is different than influence and if we further decrease income from NPC citizens, we will have a shift of balance there, so close to a recent shift of balance at exactly the same point. This deserves to be discussed thoroughly.

Let's not forget, that the extra income paid will be otherwise leave the game. That's not exactly something that we like as we are always seeking ways to remove gold coins from the game.

Extra Ideas that could be added:

Participation Fee
During Fleet Add phase, the fleet owner also gets to pay an entering fee.
This will simulate real case scenarios where winners of a blockade also had plunder earnings.

This could be a fixed fee (ie 25k per fleet - debatable).
All gold collected, from both sides, form a Blockade Gold Coin Bounty
At the end of the blockade, the winning side wins the bounty.
It is divided among participants based on damaged conducted (so a winner could end up getting less than he paid, if his fleets did not do enough damage).

Clearing up points since they were asked:
-Classic bounty (fame/gold) is not valid for battles that take place during Blockades.
-There will be no level losses in blockades.

Population Affects
Depending on the Blockade result, we can affect population in many ways. I am only mentioning this for future reference.

-----------------------------

Constant Blockading

Due to the various special rules that come with Blockades, I feel that the only realistic way to implement them without having any upeavals to the rest of the gameplay, is the proposed period ways.

Remember, we also need to make the game less and less sleep-risky. You should all be able to sleep well without worrying what happens in the game when you sleep and the blockade proposal took this in mind.

Still, I am interested to see any full scenario idea with dynamic Blockades at a separate topic. As it was way too scattered for me to consider it.

[DezNutz]

This suggestion is turning into an offensive blockade only (against port owners) and not traffic control. That's favoring a particular side for blockades.

Unless blockades can be used by either side, I'm against this idea.

[Captain Jack]

This suggestion is turning into an offensive blockade only (against port owners) and not traffic control. That's favoring a particular side for blockades.

Unless blockades can be used by either side, I'm against this idea.

What do you mean either side?

[sXs]

Blockades are offensive actions....... I don't see the point.

[sXs]

Are you suggesting port owners should be able to blockade certain people or groups from trading in their port?

Trying to understand your stance....

[DezNutz]

This suggestion is turning into an offensive blockade only (against port owners) and not traffic control. That's favoring a particular side for blockades.

Unless blockades can be used by either side, I'm against this idea.

What do you mean either side?

A port nation should be able to initiate a blockade on their own port to control traffic, preventing players from reaching important resources or even controlling the GB trade at their port.

[DezNutz]

Blockades are offensive actions....... I don't see the point.

No blockades are not just offensive actions. Take the time to read Haron's suggestion on blockades as well as mine on Forts. Blockades have been discussed for use as not solely an offensive action.

[Banger]

I actually agree with Dez here. The port controlling nation should be able to blockade its own port for reasons to include: preventing access to certain people, controlling trade of gold bars, making extra income via fee to pass.

[sXs]

Blockades are offensive actions....... I don't see the point.

No blockades are not just offensive actions. Take the time to read Haron's suggestion on blockades as well as mine on Forts. Blockades have been discussed for use as not solely an offensive action.

I am not allowed to introduce things not included. You yourself said we can not look to things that may or may not happen even if they are approved. If you think your posts on forts is valid then my posts on plantations is also valid. Both were mentioned in CJs OP.

I agree there should be a mechanic similar to what your are suggesting, but blockading your own port against certain activities should also come at a price to the nation just as you have suggested on the other side.