New game features in development

I realize it's not normal to ADD features in game development but that was why we kept the base design relatively simple so that good suggestions and ideas could be added.

We are implementing trade and here's how we're looking at doing part of it:

You build a freighter, you then take freighter and send to a particular destination and a trade route is formed.

The amount for the traderoute is determined by the distance traveled by the route and the combined population of the the source star system and destination star system.

Once the route is formed, a miniature version of the freighter is created that automatically travels the route back and forth. The player collects revenue each turn as the freighter moves.

The amount you receive from the route per turn changes somewhat as it gets further and further.

Example:
If your freighter travels from Sol to Drengi and the distance is say 50 spaces away and the value of the trade route is 100 total, you would receive amounts like 1 to 4 per turn depending on the distance away from Sol the freighter is.

Why do that? Because your enemies can attack and destroy the freighter. However, when the freighter is destroyed, you don't have to rebuild it (it would become very tedious to do that). A new freighter is automatically created and starts over again.

So what this means is that in times of war, you will lose revenue from trade where the amount you lose depends on how far away from your local star systems you control space and gives players an incentive to gurad their trade routes with ships.

This also paves the way for a GalCiv 1.x or 2 feature of having piracy be a path to power - create marauders and hijacker class star ships who actually get $$$ when they attack a freighter based on the player's piracy ability.

Jsut to reiterate, players don't have to do any micro managing at all of trade routes. The freighters go automatically and are recreated automatically when destroyed AFTER the initial trade route has been created.

Trade routes shouldn't be confused with trade goods which is a totally different thing (you trade those in the diplomacy dialog).
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Reply #1 Top
Why not have specialist stealth type ships that hide behind enemy lines like the u-boats in the atlantic in WW2 that just target freighter's.
Reply #2 Top
What do you mean when you say that freighters are automatically recreated? Does it mean that the planet of origin stops building other ships to replace a lost freighter? If that's the case, I'd rather have a dialog showing the current status of my shipyard and giving me the option of building a replacement.

Replacing a lost ship necesserily cost money. Again, will I be able to determine for myself wether or not to part with parts of my funds? If a trade route only yields say 1 credit of revenue, why would I want to continue that route if I lose the ship?

Just a few questions on the subject....
Reply #3 Top
I would assume that the government (you) need to create the route, but once it is open there a private trading concerns that actually manage the daily trading, thus the trade ships would be private concerns and not built in the naval ship yards. In keeping with this idea I would rename the initial ship that open up the trade route to something like "trade explorer". This will help diferentiate it from the regular freighters.

Couldn't there be more than one freighter on a freight lane at a time. Say one for every $50-100. Once you have your $50 of trade goods, a freighter leaves. That would help represent the fact that lucrative routs would have more people trading than with some backwater. Also give the pirates more chances to get rich, and better incentive for you to guard the better lanes. If the rout isn't very profitable, there will be fewer ships traveling along it.

It would be great if there was a special ship, ie corvette or something, that you could assign a command to "guard shipping lane" or something similar. Fast speed, medium to heavy guns, low armor - to find, catch and shoot those pecky pirates. Would be interesting to see a "trojan horse" ship that could sneek into a system as a freighter....

I don't like the idea of getting a couple of credits each turn. Seams unrealistic. If I were to ship a load of fuzzy plastic toys to japan, I wouldn't get the money until the ship docks and the cargo is unloaded. In interstellar distances, unless there is an interstellar banking system, I would have to wait until the ship actually made it back home to get paid. Also, the ship should be carrying cargo both ways to make the route very profitable.

Population and distance are the only factors being considered at this point for value of a route? I would think that other factors can play a part also: species, technology, politics, good/evil, resources (ie you have iron, I have copper...), and climates of the two trading partners (hard to sell heavy wool cloths to someone in the bahamas, or thongs to eskimos!!!), and just what your trading skills are.

Pirates should get more for their work than the revenue a government makes. As the ships are private concerns, the only revenue you see is what you tax them. Thus there are probably 5? times (value) as much cargo on the freighter ship as you get. When a pirate take a ship, it could get anywhere from 0-100% of all trade goods (damaged widgets are less valuable). Also, if the pirate take the ship, sinks it (blows it up) or just leaves the crew on board to continue (the good/evil thing) will influence the amount gained as well (and the amount of risk of being cought).

In times of war I would expect all trade with the enemy to imeadiately stop adn all trade ships to try to go home asap. Once war is ended you should have a choice to restart the route or keep it closed. Keeping germany closed after ww1 was a major cause of ww2.

Hope these ideas help.
Reply #4 Top
Exactly. Once the player creates the route, "private industry" takes care of it. That's why it'll be represented with a very tiny ship that goes back and forth. Players have no direct control over routes after that.

And with all trading in the game, if you're at war, there's an embargo. Hence, the AI will think twice before attacking someone they rely on trade with.
Reply #5 Top
hehe.. it's never too late to add new features ;)

I have to admit that I would like to see some indication that a particular trade route is bigger than others.. and God King's suggestion of multiple trading vessels is a really good way of doing this. It would then force you to "beef-up" the security of that lane when the danger of pirate attacks.. and looking from the other perspective give you multiple raiding targets. Although if the routes gets large enough, there might be an over abundance of ships, so a limit might have to bet set (if only to keep the display from getting cluttered)

Now to our favourite topic.. money. As private industry is controlling the trading, the income you earn would be classed as docking fees and taxes. As such.. if you wanted to go this far.. you could set up a mini "trade tax" rate which would indicate what percentage of the income from the route would be received.. higher the tax less trading done (who want to trade when there is no profit?) but more income. hmm.. again if you wanted to go this far, as part of foreign policy you can have trade protection policies. This could provide some interesting trade deals as part of diplomatic negotiations.

Well.. that's all I have off the top of my head.
Reply #7 Top
The traderoutes are scheduled to be a key part of the game by Beta. Trade Goods will be in soon after...though they may also make it into the beta if things go smoothly (Which, of course, I hope they do!) :)
Reply #8 Top
Question, if you have a trade with another empires planet, does the other empire also benifit from the trade? Logic would say yes, as they would have their own taxes and docking fees (abet probably less than that of the player that opened up the route).

Should you have the option of rejecting a trade route from another empire if you plan to kill them off soon?

If you have a trade route with another empire, and take over the planet, does the trade route start back up as now the two systems are both controled by me and no longer at war?

I can see all sorts of diplomatic trades in terms of "I will give you X if you reduce your tarrifs by Y%". Lots of potentials here (both for good ideas and lots of work....)

In order to keep players from getting into trouble, we may need a screen showing just what trade benifits we are getting (and giving) to whom. The computer players are great at keeping track of such minutia, but for us humans if it isn't glairingly obvious, chances are good that we will try to attack someone who unknown to us is actually supporting our whole economy!!!! Could be disasterious.
Reply #10 Top
hmm.. rejecting trade. Sounds good.. there can be all sorts of diplomatic waves from rejecting a trade route. If you reject too many of them, wouldn't it stand to reason that there would be some negative influence? hehe.. not that it would matter too much if you are planning to kill them off any way ;)

Following on from that.. would there be a way to "close" an existing trade route? not exactly sure how this would affect the game play, but it might be another form of economic attack (only useful if u have a large income from other sources). Any thoughts on this?

There would definately need to be a screen showing the current trading situation. Hmm.. it would need to show both the trade routes created by you, and also those other races have initated with you... probably be a system listing with the "trade partner" system, and the amount earned by the route. hehe.. but then again.. never know what some twisted minds will cme up with ;p
Reply #11 Top
Will it be posible to establish trade routes between your own planets and colonies? I hope so, because if you have a couple of rich planets the could contrbute quite a lot of income, even for a relatively tiny empire.
Reply #12 Top
i think you should be able to establish routes between your own systems after all they would be trading luxuries and other items which the systems might want.
Reply #13 Top
Yeah.. trading between your own systems would naturally take place, however, is there any benefit to actually having to set this up? couldn't it be simply assumed?

On the flip side, what could be done is to have the routes automatically created, run, and displayed to the player using the same method as a normal trade route (ie little ship flying back and forth). This could then open the "raiding behind enemy lines" tactic
Reply #14 Top
I would also like to build a Privateer ship. This ship could be used for harrasing trade-lines behind between enemy worlds, and give me a smal income. Of course, they would have to fly the pirate flag ewen if I controll them.

This could be a cost effective way of waging a economical "war", even when pretending to have a friendly relationship.
Reply #15 Top
Yep, we're going to have pirate ships eventually. I'm not sure if it will be in the 1.0 release though, maybe a later one. We've also been talking about having a hijacker ship that you can use to attempt to steal ships from the AI. :)
Reply #16 Top
ooo.. you will be assimilated! hehe.. great idea - a cheap way of grabing some nice hardware :)

You guys are doing a great job.. keep it up :D