One Lump, or Nine

I prefer to have a short distance trade route with a lot of trade enhancing SB modules. IMO, I think it's more profitable in the long run. It's also much easier to protect in the event of war.

~SDC~

Congrats, couslee, on your ... loss. You don't get to see too many lost submissions. Especially one with such a high score. I was actually surprised at the score on my loss, so I posted it, thinking it was pretty high (for a loss).

What was your impression of Maso?

~SDC~

I have not really looked at any other submitted losses. No idea if mine is a good loss or bad one. LOL

Losses are welcomed in the Viraxian Ascension. And no one in the empire has given me any grief yet.

My impression of Maso? Well, other than feeling like I brought a sling shot to a gun fight, I might learn to like it. Next time I will bring my own whips, chains, clothes pins, leather, handcuffs..... I think I just had a moment. Anyway, oh yeah, the game. Time will tell. LOL

Longer trade routes theoretically mean more money, but shorter routes mean the ability to easily line the route with trade starbases. Two or 3 sectors mean only 3 or 4 bases that only require a minumum of 4 constructors each to maximize the trade bonus. The shorter route is also easier to defend.

Well, you can't really maximise your trade bonuses since they are additive and there is no cap. Although I guess you can only build a maximum of 144 trade centre modules in a sector.

Personally I go for the longest routes as I want to skip the extra micromanagement that comes with building trade SBs.

~SDC~

or you could be like me and incorporate both strategies into your game, making sure to build a trade route in a straight line to the farthest planet possible, making establishing trade route SB's very easy. Usually have 5-8k trade income on average using this strategy, my top was 11k.

Question tho: Does 1.9/x pack increase the number of routes?? Cause in 1.5 the max is 10, even though i can research enough techs for 14 or so.

Max is still 10. The reason for not increasing is that the trade freighters that comes with each route slows the game down so more routes mean slower game.

~SDC~

ah ok, ty

How the hell are you getting 5-8k for trade? I'm getting like maybe 800-900 w/ 20 trade bases in the sector.

B

My more recent concerns have become minimizing the damage to my economy that loosing 10 trade routes causes. I have been building beau-ceau freighters and parking them beside alternate trading partners.

For example, I set up trade with someone nearby for as many routes as I can. Then send 10 freighters as far away as I can, and convert the routes over one every few months. It takes a while to build up the revenue and this minimizes the negative impact. All else being equal farther is better. Then I build ten (or 20) more and send them to an alternate trading partner in case of war.

BTW I generally play Crip or Maso, so middle-game wars are usually death anyway -- protecting trade ships is not particularly important to me.

Cheers!

On the subject of trade ships, I've been attempting an interesting new strategy based around stopping the mini-freighter units from moving. My first plan was to gift a slowdown base to a minor race, and then declare war on them. It didn't work - they kept moving. But my next idea worked:
What you do is build a bunch of freighters, and send them all from one of your planets to an alien world. Practically any world will do. When the mini-freighters are on their way back (so the income per turn is high), you build 8 constructors, put them in a circle around the mini-freighters, build 8 starbases, and then gift them all to an alien race, preferably one who isn't going to get his starbases attacked if they're in that location.
The mini-freighters are surrounded, and unable to move in any direction, so they just stay there. You can then build a load of trade bases in the same sector - a good way to do it might be in a big ring around the 8 gifted starbases to stop them being attacked. You get the benefits of trade bonuses every turn, multiplied by a high base amount from being late in the route, and no need to build speedup bases.
(This seems to work in theory, but to be honest, I can't really be bothered to build trade bases; usually by the time I'm ready to build lots of constructors my cultural influence is flipping worlds all across the galaxy and I keep taking over the planets I'm trying to trade with. My main trade strategy is to swap techs for alien freighters and send them to the nearest high population system. Much less fuss.)


~SDC~

No, ignore the above tactic. I tried it again and it stopped working after a while. The trade routes all went invalid.

~SDC~

i have the same problem with trade, i almost always loose my trade routes because the planet that they are going to has flipped to me.

I have this problem when trading with a minor sometimes. the trick is though to stack a bunch of constructors in the sector with minor (like 25+), build a starbase with all cult mods and any military ones you can, then gift it to the minor. No more problems.

I almost never have a problem with the Carinoids flipping. They have to be in the same sector to really have a chance of flipping and even then, I have to have 4 fully loaded Party Palaces going. I trade with them exclusively. If they eventually do flip, I have all the money I need by then.

~SDC~