The problem with plantations

[sXs]

Simply pointing out the fact that the major issue is lack of ship involvement. I like idea of a port plunder/ownership battle also affecting plantations as a part of the risk component. To achieve this as a risk metric though, you must incentivize nations to care and be invested in who they allow owning plantations in their ports.

Right now port battles are rare. Maybe 1 or 2 major conflicts per year. your tie in would incentivize plantation owners to help defend ports. That would actually deter port battles even more because now you draw in players that are not affiliated with the port owning nation. Makes port takeover even more difficult. All "fixes must maintain balance.

As far as my other suggestions as a fix, up until now, there has been very little interest in even addressing the issue. I will need to go back through posts and notes and try and find the discussions. Almost all involved in those discussions, including CJ, agreed that Haron's point of a lack of a ship component is the major issue that needs to be addressed.

[Haron]

No, Danik, it does not contravene any "absolute condition". I just think such an option will be challenging due to the fact that players of all nation can have a plantation in any port. It does not mean that such an option is impossible. Perhaps there is a way to adjust or tweak it to make it work.

My point is that it should be possible to attack plantations somehow. I realize that making the exact mechanic for that can be difficult and time consuming. However, if the dev team and the admin thinks agrees that it should, indeed, be possible to attack plantations somehow, then we should start discussing such mechanics. If, however, they think it should remain safe and out of reach for pirates, then further discussions about how it could be done are not really relevant.

[Most Lee Harmless]

As I understood the main thrust of the 'port battles' suggestions was that ships were a key ingredient. I rather like the idea that ANY port takeover should include a ship-based element.

I called it a dialemma because given owners have plantations under many flags then who they dupport and how much they support them becomes a movable feast. The port owners themselves might have to consider incentivising their tenants to assist a defence.

Should third parties even get involved? Well, that is kinda implicit in things like Diplomacy with Allies and in a few of the better worked out proposals for port battle mechanics.

Thus why I said that it might be better to work plantation risk/losses into that mechanic. Which wont appear any time soon so I offered a 'quick fix' option which added risk of loss in a rather simplistic down-and-dirty way.

As for PVP plantation raids... kinda falls over for me on the basis no nation is going to sit there and allow a third party to raid its shores. So back to 'port battles' we go to involve nations again.

Where there might be grounds for a PVP element ,if I wanted to specifically target Haron in Pania, for example,is perhaps a modification of List of Demands. As Fertile Lands was re-worked to be used in Plantations then LoD might have a role as a dusrupter of plantations. Not sure how or to what extent but its an option to discuss.

As an aside : yep, once you 'crack the code', skin the advisor and invest millions you get a profitable plantation. The road to it, however, is a bit heffing lumpy. Add more lumps and folk aint gonna walk it no matter how big the prize.

[sXs]

As I understood the main thrust of the 'port battles' suggestions was that ships were a key ingredient. I rather like the idea that ANY port takeover should include a ship-based element.

I called it a dialemma because given owners have plantations under many flags then who they dupport and how much they support them becomes a movable feast. The port owners themselves might have to consider incentivising their tenants to assist a defence.

Should third parties even get involved? Well, that is kinda implicit in things like Diplomacy with Allies and in a few of the better worked out proposals for port battle mechanics.

Thus why I said that it might be better to work plantation risk/losses into that mechanic. Which wont appear any time soon so I offered a 'quick fix' option which added risk of loss in a rather simplistic down-and-dirty way.

As for PVP plantation raids... kinda falls over for me on the basis no nation is going to sit there and allow a third party to raid its shores. So back to 'port battles' we go to involve nations again.

Where there might be grounds for a PVP element ,if I wanted to specifically target Haron in Pania, for example,is perhaps a modification of List of Demands. As Fertile Lands was re-worked to be used in Plantations then LoD might have a role as a dusrupter of plantations. Not sure how or to what extent but its an option to discuss.

As an aside : yep, once you 'crack the code', skin the advisor and invest millions you get a profitable plantation. The road to it, however, is a bit heffing lumpy. Add more lumps and folk aint gonna walk it no matter how big the prize.

I understand the idea, and strategically as a "big picture" idea I love it. I would be behind it 100%. Anything that brings more ships and strategy into the game would be of great benefit in my opinion...... for what that is worth.

[Shadowood]

Has anyone ran the “profit” numbers for plantations yet? I would love to see some examples. A lot of people assume plantations bring large daily profits. But do those same people consider the investment that went into that plantation?

Construction permit
Operating permit
Workers
Golf bars for stars
Resources to make your plantation run

Small plantation = small investment = small return (in time)
Mega plantation = mega investment = mega return (in a long time)

I like to compare plantations sometimes to Gold Smith investment. Level 20 Smith is just over (or was) 2 billion in gold coin. At the time I completed mine I calculated it would take 1.5 - 2 years to pay off and start to make a profit. I see plantations the same. I only have 1 mega plantation, but have sunk untold amounts of gold into it. It makes $10 million per day. If I put 2 billion into this plantation it would take 200 days before it “broke even”. This does not take into account the on going daily costs. So maybe it’s 1 year??

Should plantations be able to come under attack when the owner is burdened with such debt? If the resources in Avonmora are to be solely produced by players, so all can benefit, should those goods come under attack? I honestly don’t know at this point in my plantation experiments.

What I do know is we should focus on ship battles. And ships shouldn’t just be able to fire cannons on other ships but ports as well.

[William one eye]

I have been suggesting for a while now.

Plants should be able to build danger.
If the balance is off somewhere the plant starts gaining danger points and shows up on a plunder board.

If a raider has fleets in port where the plant is they can raid the plant.
The raider will gain danger points and be held in port until these danger points expire.

The take from the plant could include gold bar or goods from players in port warehouse.
Plant production and workers.
Quantities will be based upon ships in the raid fleet.
Different ships used would yeild different raid success
And favor stealing of items.
Say perhaphs more trade galleons = better chance to steal workers
Frigates = better chance to steal gold bar
Lmm = better chance to steal goods.
Like shipwreck hunts the best make up would not be clearly stated.

Plants should then be able to raid fleets that are in their port.
For cargo, gc and the ships if ransom cant he paid.

I also think plant should be able to raid other plants for workers.
I think this should be voodoo based.
The card would work like this.
Choose player
Choose port.
Choose danger you are willing to build.
The more danger you add, the more worker you are able to steal.

Plants can raid another plant that has danger for workers.
The build danger for each attack.

I also think plants should be subject to
Fugitives and hostile natives.
The raider yeild / plant loss should not be out of balance with the profits from ship to ship attacks. Likewise if a plant raids a ship the same should be true.

In nation laws, a law should be adoptable that allows for
Building of hostillity points on a raider if they raid a plant on your soil.

[DezNutz]

I think that looking back at the original topics might be worth while:

Plantations Expansion

Manual: Plantations

Plantations v1.0 Discussion


Might give some thought on how to move forward with plantations.

[Jim Bergerac]

Stupid question, but what are the risks/ downside to pirates / attacking nations? I hear lot's of talk of maintaining balance, but so far it seems all upside for pirates.
By the way, some of us do bring in our own supplies, and even make the excess available on the market!
If we're talking about plundering warehouses, why stop at that? Why not banks too, and Goldsmiths, maybe even nation treasuries?
How would ports defend? In other games you'd be looking at defence installations (forts, guns, etc.). There's an awful lot to go through.
As this idea stands at present, sorry but I'm definitely not convinced
-1

[Most Lee Harmless]

I was never much in favour of plantations as implemented. They are a scrappy opaque creation, overly complex with stumbling blocks set every step. You invest credits in a permission. Now you have one. Nope. Now you need to invest coin in another permission. Great, now you got one! Nope. Now you need to rent acres. Done! Now you got one! Nope. Now you need to import workers! Done! Now you got one! Nope, now the workers die. You got to pour bars and coin into infrastructure! What infrastructure? Which bit? How much? Mmmm... guess! Oops, your acres just ran out! Rent some more! Bring in more workers! Pour in more bars and coins! Oops, your permission ran out. Pay more coin!

Plantations dont really need risk of loss added by PvP. Their very complexity and structure is a freaking enormous risk of loss. And you can't recover a bean of your investment in starting one unless you keep pouring in bars and coin. The only other option is to walk away and write it all off.

So, given the complexity and opacity of how the damn things are even supposed to work, quite where do we apply further risks of loss? We can think up voodoo, raids, plundering, destroying infrastructure, stealing coin, etc... but if we cant even see how the bugger works in the first place how can we judge the fairity of any inflicted losses? Would they even have an impact or would then effectively wipe out the whole investment by causing a death spiral? Adding danger to expose a plantation to attack could do that, once exposed, how can it recover before being exposed again?

I just poured six million coin and 4-5k bars into raising one bit of infrastructure as my workers mood falls. Nada. Not even half a star of improvement. Does it need a million more? Or ten million? Or twenty? Nobody knows, Reggie, nobody knows. So, an attack drops that metric. How do I recover it? Was the attack over-powered? Nobody knows cos the cost of recovery is unknown.

Those are questions that need answering before we can judge what is a 'fair' system of attacking a plantation.

[Jim Bergerac]

One things for certain - the plantations produce a lot of extra goods (I'd guess at least 100% of the basic port production), so that in itself provides a lot more goods to be moved around ... so that's more merchant traffic being generated right there. Or are you guys happy to see port goods prices go up (less supply, same demand)?