trade route "feature" or "bug"?

from Stardock Forums
you can have multiple copies of the same route. i.e. you can have 2 "sol to weber" routes simultaneously.

this implies that the best trade strategy is to make x copies of the most profitable route you can find.

feature or bug?

cheers

h
160 views 3 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
I don't see why it would be a bug. If you think one route has the best revenue you should be able to focus on it.

But on the other hand you lose the fact that you can trade with different civs (which is better to maintain peace with the whole galaxy). Also remember that routes increase revenues with the time so it is not always good to decide to focus on a new route because it will take time to reach the same level of revenue as the previous ones. And it is not always good to focus on an old route, especially if it's a short one, since you can start new routes with farer and bigger systems which will improve greatly your revenues.

~SDC~
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
I don't think trade routes increase in time in quite the way you mean. When you start a trade route, it says something along the lines of "this route averages 7bc a mo". What that ends up meaning is that the first month of the route it nets you 1bc, and the last month of the route it nets you 14bc. Barring trade upgrades via starbases or something, I don't think those numbers will ever change. The "getting bigger over time" factor is for the individual trade ship along the route--iow, if you're going to start killing someone's trade ships, do it near the source, not near the destination, or they'll have gotten most of the money. It's not a terribly realistic system (irl, you'd get packets of money all at once, but spread months apart) but there you go.

The big problem with forming the most profitable trade route over and over is that if that planet's ever taken, all your trade routes go away. The big advantage is that the more trade, the closer that race will be with you. If you want an alliance, forming lots of trade to one civilization's almost necessarily from what I can tell.

~SDC~
Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
it just makes trade less interesting, as it's fairly obvious by midgame which of your systems is gonna be the most profitable for the forseeable future, so you end up with X trade routes between that planet and some rich AI planet ( as i usually focus on making 1 powerful civ totally dependent on me financially ) and then line the route with trading posts. it would be more fun to force the player to have a variety of trade routes. makes for more interesting strategy IMHO.

not a major issue in any case.

cheers

h