steveroof

Join Date 07/2008

Diplomacy: what if we overhauled the trade system?

I am suggesting an overhaul of the trade system currently used in Sins in favor of a really well implemented one I've seen in another space rts.

In Star Trek Armada II, trade worked like this: You payed to build your trade ships, and your trade ships would actually carry goods, and if your ships were destroyed, those resources were lost along with the costly ship. For example, say each trade ship in sins would dock with the trade port, then load up on X credits. If that ship were destroyed enroute to the next trade port, you wouldn't get those credits. Ally tribute worked in the same manner. If you wanted to send dilithium crystals or crewmen to your ally, you would select some trade ships, dock them at the port, and then load them up with the crew or resources. Then you'd send the convoy to your ally, but it had to be protected because it could be destroyed. Right now you can only "wire" resources to someone. As it stands, disrupting trade is not a useful activity. But it could be! Imagine the fun of having to protect trade convoys, not only because they contain resources or credits, but because you had to buy each ship. Refinery ships could function the same way...you have to buy them and their loss becomes actually costly to you. And to prevent spamming trade ships, what if each trade port raised your trade ship population limit, or each refinery raised your refinery ship population limit? What if the TEC, with their "better economy" got +3 economy ship limit per trade post and everyone else got +2?

Now combine this idea with the way trade is implemented in AOE2. You have economic buildings (the market and dock) and economic units (the wagon and trade ship). You assign an economic unit to one of your ally's economic buildings. It will travel to this building and then back to one of your own, and each time it returns it will offload gold, the amount being based on the distance it traveled. What if in Sins, you could select your trade ship, and then assign it along the trade route it will travel (using waypoints). The money it will pick up at each station along the route is based on that station's distance (in number of jumps from your home planet (or maybe from the trade port it stared at. Using this system, trade alliances between you and the AI actually become useful! And you can have multiple, player-defined routes, not just one "longest route" that the game hands you. Now you could actually select your trade ships and shift-right click all through your empire and into your ally's, setting up your route of choice.

Just off topic, as it stands, planets may have bonuses such as "penal colony" or "massive pure glaciers". This is similar to the planetary bonus system that exists in Star Wars Empire at War. What if these bonuses instead functioned as "commodities" that could be traded to players in exchange for credits/metal/crystal, diplomatic leverage, or other commodities? What if these commodities had to be sent in trade ships to an ally, making them vulnerable to interception by the enemy?

What if I keep asking rhetorical questions?

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Ryat

Join Date 06/2006

+429

Aside from paying for the trade ships Sins does automaticly for you. If your trade ships are destroyed you do lose a certain amount for each loss and the enemy gains a certain amount. Mind you this is slight (like 10 credits or so) so you barely notice it but it is there.

The whole send resources via ship sounds like fun and can put a damper on ones who do econ-feeding if you jump that supply line. Flipside is that this will raise the micromanagement a bit.

Commodities sounds like a good idea. Conisdering that GalCiv2 does use this system and they have stated they plan on borrowing a lot from this awesome turn based 4x game they just might do that.

Quoting ,

quoting post

What if I keep asking rhetorical questions?

Careful what you ask for

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I like the ideas presented in the OP. I feel that they probably won't end up in the beta or the XPack, but still, there are some awesome things to see.

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i do believe that they are overhauling the trade system. at least, there's a research (or many) related to trade treaties, mentioned in the press release

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hmmm. nice idea.

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The most beautiful thing in sins is the lack of necessary macro-scale-micro.

Most RTS games require a big number of clicks to develop infrastructure etc. Sins is very simplified - you can, for example, select your 80 planets with a box and instantly order the construction of fighters on each planet, because the squadron management icon will appear (collectively, for all planets). You can also quickly TAB through them all to see which one could use an upgrade to civilian infrastructure. Or you can click on Logistic Structures icon and tab through all your planets to see which one can have more extractors built.

This is one of the most awesome things about Sins, that it allows you to easily keep control of things that other games would make unmanageable. Just imagine managing 80 expansions on a Starcraft map! Or zooming on a particular exp to hunt down an SCV to order a construction done (and then shift+click on resource nods so it doesn't fool around later). Undoable without a steady 1000APM and some brain enhancement implants.
I must reluctantly admit that sophisticating trade and other parts of the game could likely screw this great feature.
And I don't think it will be worth it.

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yeah, I have to agree with that N3rull. The lack of micromanagement that Sins requires (I can even let my fleets handle enemy AI ships, and not fear, to a point) makes it an excellent game.

However, having custom Cargo Ships that perform this role, instead of just trade ships, would add a new twist. You could pretty much have a small cadre of Cargo Ships to trade advanced materials with allies.

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One possibility is that they try this out during the beta and see what the players think

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I'm totally with N3rull here. The streamlined nature of Sin's economy keeps much of the choice of other systems without the babysitting that takes away from other aspects of the game. In Supreme Commander you may spend up to half your time juggling engineer assignments to balance resource usage rates against income while maximizing the production speed of high priority items. Interesting stuff, but it takes away from the military strategy aspect of the game.

In Sins everything is a one-time purchase. Put up a trade port or population infrastructure is just a matter of point and click. Establishing a colony is just about getting a colony frigate or cap there and hitting colonize. There is still the heavy decision making of expenditure versus income and prioritizing your needs, but it's far more streamlined since everything is a one-time purchase.

While I would like to see some changes to the trade system, they shouldn't take away from the streamlined nature of the Sins economy. It'd be nice to see more alternatives to late game trade port spamming. I'd like to see refineries be changed to be loyalty independent (they're priced as a late-game income producer, but their loyalty-based income inherently makes them a poor choice late game). I'd like to see some more economic impact from culture (raising loyalty is good, but you still only see one every fourth or fifth planet, with a few extra on the front lines for propaganda purposes).

One thing that might be interesting is a replacement to the "longest trade chain" we have now, which is both confusing to newbies and often favours specific map layouts while penalizing others (ever had a magnetic as a choke when you're in the pocket? Or how about those "webby" empires with lots of lanes. That's both hard to defend and hard to set up a good trade chain!). Obviously we'd have to replace it with another mechanic of similar strategic consideration; it would have to remain something that required a lot of planning and thinking, but little management to build it and no management to maintain it.

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One thing i would like to see in the Expansion about trade is the ability to pick your own trade route. The ai usually makes the longest route availiable but many times i been able to creat a 15 planet trade chain but then the comp changes the route to make it only 11 planets long. That really annoys me when i am on econ and i have nothing else to worry about.

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What about this:

Trade Port ability - Deal of the Year

A buyer has been found in an allied Empire for some very precious cargo. Escort the Trade Vessel to earn serious profits.

Ability costs 1000 credits to activate
Cooldown is 15 minutes from the moment the previous Deal of the Year is completed (either succeeded or failed)

Effects:

a very sturdy Trade Vessel (the size and durability of a cap ship, but much slower) is spawned next to a random tradeport.
It has to be escorted to a randomly picked trade port in an allied empire's territory.
When it reaches the target, the owner is being paid a serious sum of money (say, 1000 plus 500 for each phase jump in the shortest route from the spawn to the target) and the receiver is being paid a half of it.
If the ship is destroyed, the money is lost to the owner and the attacker receives a third of the Trade Vessel's worth.
The payout is reduced by 1 credit for each 20 damage taken by the Trade Vessel (cargo being damaged).
All players that have a planet in the system where the Trade Vessel spawned will be notified that "Empire X is escorting a high value transport towards Empire Y", without specific information.
When a player's force spots a Trade Vessel, the player receives a message "Trade Vessel with precious cargo identified!" that will zoom on that gravwell if clicked.

How's that?

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hmm, actually, I like that very much. Just change the durability up a little bit, and make some 'interdictor' ships that are designed to move rapidly, and employ fighter movement, and have weapons that chew up Trade Vessels.

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DsRaider

Join Date 11/2008

+70

I agree with both the OP and N3rull. The trade system really needs to be xpanded but it needs to remain streamlined and hands free. Trade ships are a necessity in this game as they can easily double your income. When I play I find it a bit stupid that my Varsari have to spend money and time researching trade in order to compete with TEC. To counter the fact that trade is so vitally powerful and gives you so much money it should have larger downsides. This would also be more realistic, you can assume that the TEC economy works similiar to our moderen one. In real life trade vessels that were destroyed would not be replaced for free, also the operating costs of trade ships would go up if the route became dangerous due to higher insurance and danger pay for crew etc. The amount of money gained for raiding enemy trade ships is pitiful. It should be greatly increased, and additional penalties imposed on the trading player who loses trade ships.

The good news is that the devs said that they would be making pirates act more like pirates in the new expansion, and I think that this means they will retreat more and raid trade ships more. Hopefully this means that protecting your trade ships will become much more important and trade routes will be less like money factories and more like strategic assets you have to defend and actually think about. And if pirates can raid trade ships efectively than I don't see why players couldn't start a profitable bucannering business of their own.

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In real life trade vessels that were destroyed would not be replaced for free, also the operating costs of trade ships would go up if the route became dangerous due to higher insurance and danger pay for crew etc. The amount of money gained for raiding enemy trade ships is pitiful. It should be greatly increased, and additional penalties imposed on the trading player who loses trade ships.

That idea may be a little too much, because the trade ships are stupid enough to fly through enemy gravwells. I wouldn't wanna lose the game because my trade ships are downright stupid. If you are to be losing money big time for each trade ship, you should have some control over it. And that would mess the whole simplicity up.

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Well good ideas all around. In the game though, when you destroy trade ships its says the player who destroyed it gets some resources, while the player whom it belonged to gets a decrease in income rate. Ive never observed this however, either because the resource swap is negligible or it doesnt actually work.

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you get 50 creds for killing a trade ship (which is 5 seconds of basic credit income, or 1 second for an eco strong player)

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What if pirates ONLY attacked trade ships and civiian targets?

Pirates would know it would be suicidal to go against an empire.

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Quoting N3rull,

reply 5

The most beautiful thing in sins is the lack of necessary macro-scale-micro.

Most RTS games require a big number of clicks to develop infrastructure etc. Sins is very simplified - you can, for example, select your 80 planets with a box and instantly order the construction of fighters on each planet, because the squadron management icon will appear (collectively, for all planets). You can also quickly TAB through them all to see which one could use an upgrade to civilian infrastructure. Or you can click on Logistic Structures icon and tab through all your planets to see which one can have more extractors built.

This is one of the most awesome things about Sins, that it allows you to easily keep control of things that other games would make unmanageable. Just imagine managing 80 expansions on a Starcraft map! Or zooming on a particular exp to hunt down an SCV to order a construction done (and then shift+click on resource nods so it doesn't fool around later). Undoable without a steady 1000APM and some brain enhancement implants.
I must reluctantly admit that sophisticating trade and other parts of the game could likely screw this great feature.
And I don't think it will be worth it.

Actully their is a addon you can dl that allows you to select all units or structers of one type or multiple types for starcraft works on multiplayer bnet too but I dont play that game anymore it just got to repetitive and the stratgic value per unit is so little it more of mass building and sending which is not strat to me. Sins is amazing because even if you build large fleets that doesn't always mean your going to steam roll, you have to posistion yourself, get close enough to enemy planents and be able to defend your planents all at the same time and of course unlike star craft it takes alot more then 1min to recall all troops to defend an area.

To the OP I completly agree with your idea, I for one dont like the 'feeding strat" much rather prefer a ship you have to build, load with resources and send with the advanced options of having that ship fly back on it owns using the same rought or to avoid planets where a hostile fleet happen to to take over...there really is alot of cool things you could do with it.

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I agree with N3rull.

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Though like the OP I would prefer a more complex trade system, it might not be difficult to have streamlined trade that is still an improvement on the existing system, which is abstract in the extreme.

First remove the 'longest trade route system'- as it isn't very rational and leads to odd strategies.

Each possible trade route from a port is then assigned a value, both by distance and by the type of planets traded between: asteroid-asteroid trade isn't lucrative, terran-ice or terran-volcanic are. Each ship already plying the interplanetary (planet-planet rather than port-port) route reduces this value, to prevent congestion. However, a second and third trade ship might still get most value from the same route as the first, if the alternatives are not very advantageous.

The cost of a trade port would be reduced but no longer includes the trade ships, which are ordered and built separately at the port, up to the maximum which each port can support. As soon as a ship is constructed it will work on the most lucrative route out of its home port- it might be preferable to delay building the second and later ships until better routes are available. If a port is destroyed its ships would be reassigned automatically to other ports- this can allow existing ports to exceed their notional maximum capacity. Newly constructed ports would still have spare slots for new ships though. If there were no ports left the ships could be refitted as new pirates!

Credits would only be gained for each successful trade voyage, not at a steady abstract rate. The value of a cargo might not have to be equal on each stage of the route- the outward food and luxuries to an asteroid might not be equivalent to the inward ore and precious metals. The bounty on a trade ship would then be the value of the current cargo. It would be preferable to also allow trade ships to be boarded and captured, but this might entail more complexity.

This system is still mostly automatic- the only extra player workload involved is having to order the ships. However, it might prevent trade port spam, as well as the non-trade planet phenomenon (where having a trade port at a planet would reduce the trade chain). Trade is very dull as it is, it seems as if it is simply a variant of mining. A less abstract method would allow commerce raiders to become a factor, whether privateers or blockaders. More specials and a variation in planet size might also help to make each game different.

I'm not sure about the extra computer workload involved but the calculations would be fairly simple- each route and completed voyage would be easier to calculate than a single firing calculation(?) The Ai should be fairly straightforward as well.

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What if they took some sort of 'middle road' complexity here? Like say an option on your trade ports called 'risk factor' or something. High risk would load ships with more expensive goods, that would of course cost you more if you lost them to enemy raids. You could require a tech before you could choose this higher cargo value option. With the current system, attacking trade ships is basically a waste of time. In fact, they actually help you as pirates will run around attacking them instead of more important targets. They need to be a more significant part of the game.

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