Player generated trade routes

[LinkesAuge 22]

Before I present my suggestion let me give you an overview of what the game currently lacks:

1) Incentives to be out on the sea

2) A deeper economy / trade system

3) Resource gathering/generation without having to grind for it

 

My suggestion to address these issues (it's not a magic fix that will resolve them completely) is to give people (islands/companies) the ability to establish trade posts.

How would they function? Every island can support X amount of trade posts with a limit of trade posts per company (to give further incentives to smaller/outside companies to life on your island and having them around). The trade posts would be structures you need to built (on the coast) and have the ability to be upgraded (which could have all kinds of effects: bigger/better/more trade ships, further range of trade ships, bigger rewards/resource generation and so on).

Any trade post on an island could be "linked" on a 1:1 basis with another island's trade post (ID based system which allows "invites" for such links or just be openly listed, both "owners" of the trade outposts need to accept it). Once the link has been established a timer will start which if not disrupted then "produces" NPC generated and manned (trade) ships.

What will those ships do? In short: generate resources for both islands (or companies) involved (island owner could also get a trade tax). You'd be able to pick one (maybe more depending on trade post upgrades or other factors) of the available resources (from the destination island) for trade. There would be no additional farming (grind) required and you wouldn't need to put in any resources, the trade route would simply continue to generate a certain number of the resource you picked and store it in your trade post as long as your trade route/ships are "uninterrupted".

The generated NPC trade ships would follow the trade route and be raidable by other players/companies. To incentive boarding and not just the destruction (pure griefing) of trade ships you could implement a system in which NPC ships that get boarded provide "loot" as reward to the pirates while the trade ship stays alive . The trade ship owner simply wouldn't get resources as "punishment" for not being able to protect his trade ship. Additionally one could think about having to pay a certain amount of gold to get that trade ship back into your own service. That gold could be part of any potential loot as reward for pirates. One important note: Any "loot" collected by pirates would go directly to some base structure. I think one of the biggest problems preventing loot based piracy is the fact that storing loot is counter productive for any attempt at PvP. You could also think about having a daily gold payment to your NPC trade ships as requirement for those trade routes. Gold that would be "lost" to you in any case but gets stored in the NPC trade ships which could be part of any loot pirates could get.

To board a ship as pirate you would first need to bring down the trade ship to a certain fraction of its HP (maybe with sail HP as main factor) which would automatically slow down/stop the trade ship and initiate a "raiding window". To make trade ships vs (player) pirates not totally one sided and create some opportunities for PvP I think it should be possible for the owner (company) to spawn in on trade ships in case someone wants to board them (you would get a notification any time a trade ship of yours is attacked). This needs of course some kind of mechanic not to be abused. One approach could be that the trade ship only allows a certain number of "spawns" per time/raid windows and also a max amount of "deaths" for both defenders and attackers based on ship/crew size of those involved. If a defender gets enough "kills" and/or protects the ship for a certain amount of time the boarding attempt will have failed and give the trade ship a certain time in which it's protected from further attacks (again to prevent abuse).

If as pirate you decide to just sink a trade ship that's also an option (maybe it could even be part of the war dec system) but there would be no "loot" as reward, it would be purely to target the economy of a (hostile) company.

This is my general idea and I'm sure there are some holes left or different approaches you could take (there are a million other things you could do on top of it when it comes to trade) but I'm convinced that this game needs more content based around naval action and that players will never fill the void as "targets" for all the potential pirates out there. People certainly do make trade runs or haul stuff but it's too few people doing it and only leads to one sided situations which aren't rewarding for anyone.

That's why we need an economic incentive to be out at sea, either to defend our own economic interests or simply to gain yourself by pirating actual trade routes.

I feel like this game needs to get away from mindless grinding for all parts of the game. I totally think you need to motivate people to put in some "work" so things "matter" if you lose them but why isn't the "work" the more fun stuff or at least closely related to it? Give people the opportunity to generate an income through other means as long as they are willing to put in some effort and protect it.

Edited March 6, 2019 by LinkesAuge