Trading

[Pickles]

I have any number of suggestions for making trading more interesting but this is the easiest to implement.

Trading the same route gives less XP the more you trade, please note that it doesn't affect profit only XP.

To provide an example (with easy numbers):
There's a 10x sell that I'm using. Every 10 times I use it the XP drops 1x. So after I've done 50 trades it's only 5x XP per trade no matter the distance. This would be done on a port & good basis.

This has a few interesting effects:
a) Racial galaxies become useless for XP in a very short time (flush traders from fed routes).
b) Alliance planet routes are only effective for cash (flush traders from safe gals).
c) Traders continuously have to trade new routes to gain XP (unfamiliar ground, easier kill).

We'd want some sort of cooldown time so that after a couple of weeks you could go back to an old port and get the max XP.

The in-game justification is that the player isn't learning anything new trading the same spot over and over, therefore less XP.

This would require 1 extra table and some alterations to the trade code. Not a massive rewrite.

[SpaceDoG]

I wouldn't say a couple of weeks but a break down of days or hours based upon the amount of holds and changing ships won't affect that cooldown. It would stay the same until it resets and if you trade it again it would just append the new time to the old not decreasing it or changing the current value.

[the570z]

The only issue would be that finding folks trading unfamiliar routes is very difficult. While getting a trader on a fed route is tough, they are at least easy to find... lol.

[Fatman]

why all this interest in nerfing trading? it is an important aspect of the game....dont need to screw with it...it is fine as it is

[the570z]

I am currently trying to learn hunting, but no matter what I'm doing I stop trading as soon as I can every round because its boring. There is no skill at all anymore required other then runnng away on rare occasions hunters come for you. With ships like the PSF most folks just park if they even see a hunter on the cpl and save turns, then use them three days later when everybody is off line without wasting one. Trading as it is is both confusing as hell(until your familiar with the game it just doesn't make any sense) and utterly pointless except as a grinding manuver all players must go through in order to do other things. I know some people like simple games but if we want to retain players the first thing they encounter can't be so uninteresting. I think you might find a lot more people trading if there was more sense of interaction to it. Pickles idea of forcing folks to switch routes is a start to making trading more interesting but would make an already tough game(hunting) even harder as hunter ships just are not fast enough to scour the galaxy all the time checking every oddball route. It also may just serve to annoy traders with arbitrary rules forcing them to waste turns wandering about.

We really need to find a way to make trading more interactive and less about clicking fast. Ideas are coming forward but we need more and more refinement on already suggested ones.

[Fatman]

nly ideas i have seen about trading is to make it take alot longer to do to give a bigger advantage to hunters

[the570z]

Well a lot of people feel that hunting should be the challenge of trading. Several changes over the years have been against hunters, now with a declining playerbase a lot of folks feel that hunting should be made a little easier as with a PSF and a decent internet connection it is pretty much impossible to die to a hunter(i killed one the other night but I got lucky).

As the game is and has been, hunting is the only challenge traders face, if hunters can be easily avoided then trading is just clicking for a couple min a day, which is utterly pointless and boring.

The other beef folks have is there is no sense to the trading ships. The most efficient is also the most well protected. We have a lot of super ships in the game right now, ones that are so powerful there just isnt any point in using any others. Thus there is this large ship list and perhaps 20% is used at all and 10% used regularly. Hell by the second week there is pretty much only 3 trade ships in use in the game, ATM, PSF, and IST. Why shouldnt we redo the stats on the rest of the trade ships to make risk equal reward? Instead of now where the least risky ship is also the most efficient.

[N.ator]

change trading into that ports have deals of goods and that routes are concstantly changing daily.

[Freon22]

Well a lot of people feel that hunting should be the challenge of trading.

I think you are wrong, I am sure that a lot of the hunters want the challenge to be them.

Several changes over the years have been against hunters,

Wrong again over the last few years every change has been to help the hunters.
1. Unkown scouts
2. Name changes
3. Faster game speed
4. Smaller galaxy

now with a declining playerbase a lot of folks feel that hunting should be made a little easier

There is nothing wrong with making hunting easer as long as at the sametime you make it so it does not hurt so much when the trader gets poded. You talk about risk/reward? What risk does the hunter have now? No trader wants to lose weeks worth of work in 2 seconds.

as with a PSF and a decent internet connection it is pretty much impossible to die to a hunter

The PSF has always been hard to kill that has not changed. What did change that has made it the ship to use is game speed and galaxy size. You asked for faster games and smaller galaxies.

As the game is and has been, hunting is the only challenge traders face,

I think you are wrong here also. I can not speak for other traders but I trade to see what level I can get to, how much money I can make for the alliance I am in or for myself. There are a few other reasons I trade also. I play around with the hunters, well no since in getting into this part.



I do have an idea that I am sure will get flamed by guess who. But maybe not! lol

Right now game speed mainly effects ship turn rate. What you guys should be asking for is to have the game speed tied to the ship defenses and cargo holds for all ships. This way if you are playing a game speed of 1 everything is the same but if you are playing a game speed of 1.25 now the shields, armor, CDs, and cargo holds of every ship is reduced by .25 You would also have to tie planet and port defenses to the turn rate.

Now the PSF is not 600 cargo holds it is 450 cargo holds, the armor are not 1000 they are 750. You may ask why CDs, well CDs are part of the defenses of all ships that carries them. But with this one change the IST now becomes a much better trading ship. It will only lose 100 of it cargo holds and not as much of it shields and armor compared to the PSF.


I am going to go off topic now with a few more ideas.
Everyone ask why is SMR losing players? Its the way the game has changed, if you join one of the two alliances you are told how, when, and where to play. Your alliance leader tells you what planet to park on, what route to trade, what to build on planet, what sector to move to and sit, when to fire and when to take the pod. Its not you playing anymore it is someone else telling you what buttons to click.

So kill the auto launch on planets, now it will become good to park on more then one planet. Planet owners will want to build their planet, its their home. One or two will have to still build their planet for bonding planets but the rest can build to level 70. Also do more for planets like make a random bonus so that during building you may get a message that says " We found 10 million credits during the building of this shield generator" or maybe a bonus weapon, something to make it more interesting. Even with these types of changes it will still take time for some players to come back.

You do need to change something but making it just easier to kill traders is not going to get you more players.

Ok so I have said my peace, I hope whatever changes you guys make it for the game as a whole and not just for a selected few.

[JettJackson]

So kill the auto launch on planets, now it will become good to park on more then one planet. Planet owners will want to build their planet, its their home. One or two will have to still build their planet for bonding planets but the rest can build to level 70. Also do more for planets like make a random bonus so that during building you may get a message that says " We found 10 million credits during the building of this shield generator" or maybe a bonus weapon, something to make it more interesting. Even with these types of changes it will still take time for some players to come back.

This is a whole different thread issue here, but I would be entirely against this, especially with defending being hard enough as it is already. Splitting up people does no one good, as it hurts defense, and considerably ruins the reward of busting the lander. Is it worth busting a 70 for 3-5 landers? I say hell no.