Trade Route Debate

I think the party going for an economic win might need a bigger help that just one extra trade ship. What is an economic win anyway? 75% of the purchasing power in the galaxy?

What is to stop the Technologists from researching the extra trading ships along with the battleships? Will the research item not be available to them?

"What is to stop the Technologists from researching the extra trading ships along with the battleships? Will the research item not be available to them?"

Nothing, that still doesn't mean you will out trade them.. Also the trader would still be able to get battleships they could always just trade for it since they also get a bonus when it comes to the normal trade screen

I like the idea of limiting the number of trade routes to encourage more of a strategy. However, I think that your limits of 1 with a progression of 1 for subsequent play choices is a bit restrictive. I'd rather see something like 3 trade routes initially (gives everyone some incentive to build freighters) then get an additional 2 or 3 trade routes for choosing mercantile political party. Then, you get 1 additional trade route for various research items. This gives incentive for those players wishing an economic victory to choose mercantile over technologist, et al.

Realistically, even a technologist would have trouble researchign them all. And trade ability affects how much you get out of a trade route.

I don't think it would be possible to have 60 trade routes (routes for all races) on a tiny or small galaxy. I don't think there are that many star systems available. At a minimum each race would have to have 10 stars each, which is certainly not possible on a tiny galaxy and rather dense on a small one.

But as the galaxy sizes increases I think that if the number of trade routes was too limited it would affect gameplay. The amount of revenue to, for instance, conquor a huge or large galaxy is stagering without sufficient income from trade routes to augment the rest of the income, income that is essential to building the fleets to squash the opponents.

Along with all of this I would like to propose a related idea: Have the techs related to your party's strength easier to research when your party is in power (e.g., if your party is "merchantile", the techs "trade", "advanced trade", etc. cost less (20%, 50%?) to research).

Now a more specific question:

What happens if you have established more trade routes than your current limit (and lost the less lucrative ones) and you complete research that allows more routes? Do some of the discarded routes get reestablished, or do you have to establish new routes? (I would like to see the better discarded ones reestablished.)

Cheers,
Jack

It won't let you establish more trade routes than you can legally have.

That can also be changed with the united planets

if trade routes count on both sides then max will be 30 routes if each player has 10 routes

Start with 2 or 3 routes and 5 ships per route

Pure trade tech to increase the cash from a route

Trade tech with ship tech prerquiste to increase the number of ships on the route (and cash from the route)

Trade tech with diplomacy tech prerequiste to increase the number of routes

Brad,

If you were answering my "more specific question" you didn't.

Cheers,
Jack

Does anyone have any comments about allowing the Mercantile political party to have more trade routes than other political parties?

I agree with Shadowgopher's comments that restricting trade to 1 route and permitting increments in terms of route by route adders is too restrictive.

I don't see the logic behind saying, essentially, "you can be a galactic power but it's not possible to have more than N trade routes".

The inbuilt idea seems to be that you should establish trade routes with distant systems for more trade income but you can establish routes with nearby systems and still gain some trade income from them.

How about getting rid of the little ships running back and forth and incorporating more route information in the trade screen? Perhaps add a full-blown trade management sub-page to the Diplomacy section?
Cheers
Magus

The small freighters were cute to watch at first but for me the novilty is wearing off.

Cheers,
Jack

I can't agree enough with Magus on this. Changing an important part of the game-play to resolve what is essentially a UI issue sounds a bit like the tail wagging the dog. It seems to me that what's needed is a good UI solution to the problem of the trade ships cluttering up the screen, rather than restricting the number of trade routes.

What about allowing the user to toggle on or off the display of the trade-routes? If the all the little ships fluttering about are too distracting or confusing, simply replacing them with lines drawn between the planets engaged in trade might provide a cleaner solution.

Cheers,

--- Dave

I also think to restrict the number of traderoutes wasnt a good idea. Best solution I think is to make a viweing option where you can 1.) dont view any trade routs 2.) view the Traderouts as lines 3.) view the small Frighters perhaps even put a future option on where you can select the races to view.

I was thinking about this a bit last night and while I have by no means thought this all the way through here is a suggestion....

The idea of having to research the ability to improve your trade is one that I like so instead of tying those research achievements simply to the ability to have N+1 routes why not tie it to the ability to make a reasonable amount from the route.

The game already gives you a bonus for establishing a longer trade route but I think it makes logical sense to say that in order to fully exploit a trade route that crosses the known universe one would have to improve ones technology. If you didn't research the proper techs you might (in real world terms) only see the fruits of 1 trade fleet out of 8 (think of the Spanish trade fleets that went between the Americas and Spain in the 15th and 16th centuries).

Since the trade routes are established between star systems and not nations I think this is the way to go.
Cheers
Magus

I think what Magus is saying is that researching trade technology is analogous to learning how to build bigger and more efficient freighters. If so, I agree. Limiting the number of trade routes does not seem to do this, but allowing more profit from a trade route based on researched techs does.

Cheers,
Jack

I have no problem with losing the little freighters however, I think that there still needs to be some way to interdict a race's trade. I like what Magus is saying about improving trade. What about limiting the distance a trade route can be established until a certain level of trade technology is reached. (ie. you can set up a trade route across 3-4 sectors with basic trade technology but to go across the galaxy, you have to research higher).

The little freighters do have a purpose, they can be destroyed and hence you can essentially provide an economic blockade of enemy planets.

The same end result, interdiction of a trade route, can be both accomplished and maintained by other means.

For example: if we want to interdict trade route X you could either right click on a warship and select "Interdict trade route" (or something like it) which would then take you to the route management screen to select the route to whomp.

You could then watch the ship travel to the destination area and show a nice graphic of the freighter blowing up. In order to _really_ interdict trade you would have to dedicate a ship or ships to that duty as the other nation can build replacement freighters and / or send warships in to break your blockade.

This is potentially a very complex issue, as it is in the real world and I am by no means saying that I think my way is the best possible way to handle things but I do feel that the limitations on trade imposed by the present system are far too restrictive (totally leavind aside the issue that started this thread, which was "how do we deal with all the little freighters running around on the screen").
Cheers
Magus

I think at the moment the trade works well on tiny and small galaxies but poorly on larger galaxies. While I like the little freighters, I would rather be able to move a ship into orbit and blockade a planet (hence removing all trade and blocking purchasing of advances).

The level of complexity which the freighters will add for large galaxies with lots of freighters is a pain. Limiting the number of freighters does keep this manageable, but at a cost of realism and variety.

How about the following idea.

Replace freighters with freight companies. Now when you build a freighter, you send it to a star system and it sets up a freight company on that star system. That freight company is then responsible for all trade from that star to the rest of the galaxy and gives a monetary bonus every turn to the owner of the star and the owner of the freight company.

Only one freight company is allowed per star system, and if another freight arrives when one already is present then a battle based on trade level occurs and the winner takes control of the trade.

Players can build as many freighters as they want and send them to any planet (within range?). Building freighters costs money though and takes away from building war ships. This then would give the merchantile player a way of winning by focussing on freighters and not war ships. He would also have a trade bonus giving him an advantage in the freighter battles.

What do peopel think?

I agree that the current trade implementation works fine on smaller galaxies and poor on larger galaxies. I will have to think more about Paul's idea.

Cheers,
Jack

Good idea. Would allow different starategies to be employed in the longer games.

To add yet another idea to the mix... what if you built all of your own freighters, and upon establishing a route, you add more freighters that you built to the route, and ships on the route automatically ply back and forth between the two systems, but the more often a ship stops in at port, the less money made, so you could got for tons of ships at 2 bc a stop, or fewer at 8 bc a stop.
Eventually though, the foreign world would get inundated with your goods, and the price would drop below reasonable levels (or to nothing) and you would decide to establish a new trade route somewhere else, or switch ships out of the current one to milk the profits to the end.
Allow players to have as many freighters as they want... just make them expensive enough that each one actually counts. If one dies, you have to take the time and build a new one to replace it, thus making trade-convoy raiding a more viable tactic. Off course, if warships could be told to "patrol" a trade route, automatically moving back and forth along the route until an enemy was sighted, then handing the controls back to you, you would have a chance to stop the privateers... it would add a whole new dimension to the game,
plus it would give the trade victory, not to the player who sent freighters to the most planets, but the one who was able to protect his routes, or make deals with other civ's for their ships to patrol a route...

what do you guys think?

Jaggy,
this idea again works fine on small or tiny galaxies but imagine the micromanagement nightmare on large galaxies. Especially if you're at war and someone else is attacking your freighters. As for patroling the trade route, on large galaxies this can be huge and a privateer can easily find some spot to destroy your freighters before you get there.

Paul.

Another aspect of the current implementation that bothers me is that once I extablish my maximum number of trade routes I can not improve on them without "killing" a route. The OS2 version allowed you to attempt to build more routes than the maximum 10 routes it allowed but only allowed you to keep the 10 best routes. If trade is supposed to be a significant method of winning, shouldn't the same method of improving ones trade income be the same as the OS/2 version?

Cheers,
Jack