thus representing the realistic nature of the problem, Solitair If perhaps the patrolling could be done in a way that the two ships moved on the same squares, at the slower ship's (freighter's most likely) speed, you could send literal convoys of freighters

And the micromanagement shouldn't be too bad, you just select a planet, and send a trader, or five or whatever, to it, accompanied by an appropriate number of warships and let them go. You would just need to actually look at the trade route screen once in a while to see what profit margin you're getting and decide if you want to change a particular route or not.

How about the following system:

-In order to trade an empire has to have one or more planets which have a "trade symbol" as feature.
-For each colonized planet with a trade symbol an empire can open one trade route. (with all the little freighters zipping around or so)
-the revenue from the trade route can be modified by technology (freighter size), piracy, planet modifiers or whatever.
-Depending on the galaxy setup (few trade planets, medium or many trade planets) you can choose by yourself if you want to trade much or not.

klaus

PS: I would also opt for a fighter/carrier system

Klaus,
how would you envisage a planet getting a trade symbol?

and what's to make this a viabable economic strategy for a merchant player which is not dominated by a military (lots of planets) or technology (high research) player?

I would assume that a merchant player would have fewer planets and lower technology, and therefore needs some advantage which can be exploited exponentially which military players and economic players cannot exploit? It's got to be something which a military player with his larger empire cannot just switch to. The current freighter system fails here as a military player can just conquer as many planets as possible and then just send as many freighters as any other player.

Paul.

What if we made the trade route so that it wasn't just planet to planet, but involved multiple stops, like up to 3 with room for more with advanced techs. Then even though the other players only had one, they could really make it pay.

To make the mercantiles effective, the mercantile party would start out with 3 routes, and the rest with 1. Mercantiles also would get 50% more from the route than others. That would definitely give them a decided edge in the beginning. They would have enough money to buy social an military projects and techs from other civs.

Paul,

-the trade symbol could be pregenerated during galaxy generation

-for merchant players the program could generate "extra" trading planets which cannot used by non merchant players. Or a merchant player could have a certain amount of "automatic" trade routes from begin on.

-a merchant player could also have a revenue bonus per route, because he is an expert in getting a good price for his goods.

-the best option for merchants to be as interesting as military types should be one or more special technology groups which give him advantages in trading revenues and building up more and more trade routes.
these tech could be
-piracy and counter piracy techs
-specialized freighter types
-building up 2 or more routes per trade planet
-having more revenue per route than standard
-the trading partner of a merchant gets more money than normal
-trading stations which are useful for getting even more money out of one trade route

this and more should be so interesting that some guys like to play merchants and not military types.

I think just having a bonus at the beginning of the game is NOT so interesting than to have to research trade techs the whole game. Firstly the permanent urge to research trade techs reminds a merchant player his origins as merchant and secondly if there are severals different merchant-tech branches a player has interesting game options and a real reason to play his role as mainly non-military type.

klaus

PS: I would also opt for a fighter/carrier system

Klaus,
I like the idea of researching the merchant options. With the current tech tree idea, where researching one branch can remove others, it would be easy to allow various playing styles.
Maybe certain social improvements and ships could only be available to certain styles.

Military :- Omega System Defence, Advanced Quality Control, Omega Quality Control, Omega Shipyard, Hyperion Shipyard, dreadnought

Technology :- Neural Net, Galatic Research Centre, Omega Research Centre, advanced survey ship, ranger

Diplomancy :- Agenta, Galatic Exhibition, Council of Eldar, increase diplomancy options, advanced defender

Trade :- Stock Exchange, Galatic Stock Exchange, Omega Power Plant, advanced freighters, cloaked freighters

Some technologies should also be limited to individual categories. +10 soldiering is for military only. Additional trade routes are banned for military, etc...

Paul.

There should be a game-wide strategy for the mercantiles. Researching techs would allow them to

-have more routes
-better espionage
-more influence points per each trade route
-better shipwide defenses than regular freighters and ships
-better sensors
-social projects aimed toward economy would generate a greater percentage(like 20% would become 30%).
-destablization having a double or triple effect because of routes
-
But with the current system, the starting position is going to be key because once a planet is grabbed it is more than likely to stay where its at unless you want to go to war, and that is not the core of the mercantile strategy. Mercantiles need a good core of planets early on and then be able to generate the rest of the revenue from trade.

There should not be a need for more planets. A merchant empire should not need lots of planets, it just needs the ability to CONTROL trade on other races planets. As mentioned earlier this could be done by only letting a single owner control the trade to or from a system. Give a merchantile player a higher chance of winning control battles and the rest will do itself.

The hard part is giving the bonus for style of play and not forcing a player at the start of the game to choose a certain stlye. Maybe a branched tech tree with one choice blocking other choices is the solution.

Paul.

How about this:

A player would have exclusive control of markets in the beginning(under dictatorship), but as the game progressed he would only be able to duty the trade routes on specific items being traded. It would sort of be like a simcity type of thing where you set the parameters and the value and activity of the trade route grew based on how you maintained it.

This would solve the problem of a government sending freighters. The government would send the first freigher to set the trail, and then modify the environment variables to increase the value and activity. The freight companies would gravitate to the best and most protected routes. If you put your warships on a particular route, it would drive the value of the route up because it would be safer(and vice versa with pirates). If you lowered your overall duties, you may get more traffic and be able to take some of the business away from other empires. You could throw some UP votes to affect this.

The mercantile strategy of researching technology for more trade routes, better freighters and so forth would be to drive to price of their trade routes up and draw the business of other empires to its own companies. That way the emphasis will be on quality not quantity because the money will gravitate to the best routes.

At the very least we should but some options into the game creation screen that allows for variants on the basic game. There are a lot of cool ideas here, and the game creation screen needs to be fleshed out a little more.

Here are my thoughts on the trading mechanics within this game. This is by no means a wholly developed idea.. just something to get some dialog started. I would eliminate the physical routes from the screen and break everything down into a sub window (Yes I know, more work). When you come within sensor contact of a settled planet or a Empire gives you a map of there system it appears in your “Tradable Planets” window.
These are the planets that you can initiate trade with if you are in decent standing with their empire. Freighters can be built but they wont be actually ships but just a number as to how many routes can be set up. Trade routes are then set up between the two planets you select and you get revenue depending on how many months it would take to make a round trip between the two planets based on your current technology level. (I would also encourage inter-empire trading for the trading class since they should be able to get the maximum profit from efficient trading practices). So from planet A to B it takes 12 months to generate 3 credits in revenue for your empire and 1 credit of revenue for the other empire. Depending on whatever factors are set your empire can make more of a profit from the route then other empires or vice versa. So it might makes sense for you to cancel a route to a would be enemy because it would hurt their bottom line more than yours if they are getting more of a profit from the trade then you. Okay now that will cover your basic trading principles which can be built up from that to make it more complex. For you guys who want to disrupt trade routes here is my idea on that. First you need to have espionage up on your opponent so you can learn some of their trade routes. Then move your star ship into the sector that contains at least one of the planet doing the trading. (being caught breaking up a trade route will anger both empires or if you are good you can make it appear to be another empire. Or you can break one of your unprofitable trade routes blame it on another race as a diplomatic move so as not to anger your friend empire) Select disrupt trade routes and select the route you want based off your espionage and the sector you are in. Depending on “whatever” stats it will take you a certain amount of turn to disrupt trade routes and you will not be able to move your ship.(basically "scanning the sector and looking for the offending craft" ). During this time your destroyer will be unable to move and may come under attack from me trying to
defend my trade routes in the sector. If you are successful after the end of the months… it says freighter found… trade route destroyed or it could say freighter has eluded capture. Now you may say how can I do this with out being caught. well build your ship with a cloaking device.. slip in the sector and start disrupting. The other empire will get a message like (Traders complain to the empire about the increased hazards in doing business in this sector.. suspect it is the Terrains or something like that). Then the other empire can send a message to the Terrains saying stop doing that and they can comply whereas all disrupting will be stopped or they can go to war for being falsely accused. You get the picture.. sorry for the disjointed sentences.. tying in idea mode.

I wish there was a way to do like colonization and pretend you are a pirate....that way you wouldn't really know who was doing it.

I have a small suggestion about setting up trade that might also help solve the economic victory issue, and a few of the other problems.

First, make it to where a planet has to have a certain productivity level before it can trade. Holding true to life, a nation cannot trade unless they have a surplus of something, and they cannot have that surplus unless their productivity is past a certain point. (the demand of the area)

The first point also sets up the ability for an Empire to generate an economic victory by growing planets that are able to trade, building a trade ship and sending the ship out to trade, increasing your overall income, and giving you more power over the empire you are trading with.

Second, make trade with a race a diplomatic issue, and armed escorts for the ship another diplomatic issue. There have been time where, if a nation didn't want to trade with another it would take war for that policy to change. However, both issues are both ways, meaning if one wants to send in escorts then they both get the ability. I also don't like the thought of warships just breezing through my space without my permission.

Third, make trade ships that do not belong to your race invisible as default, and escorts marked as such, but leave in the ability to bring up a certain races' trade ships as need. Also, by default, make your trade ships visible, but allow the ability to remove the ships, to reduce overall clutter.

Fourth, remove the UP issue of more trade routes and replace with a Trade Ship Immunity Issue. Very often during the early parts of many wars it was thought an improper act to attack merchant ships why not add it here.

However, I think to off balance this immunity make the owner of a trade ship lose 35% of the total income (taxes, customs, and tariffs) to the the planet owner. This will make the owner a bit more picky in choosing those routes, as it is better to give an ally the money than an enemy. I also propose an UP Free Trade issue of lowering that to 15% of the total income (customs only.) An issue only the trade dependent races would want, but it would slow those trade race down just enough to keep things balanced.

Although, my ideas are not completely explained here, I am rather tired, but I would be glad explain more fully to anyone interested at [email protected]

turbosr,
with the current situation where you can build everything on every planet, every planet will eventually become a trading planet. Therefore a merchant victory would not be possible against a larger military empire.
Other ideas are very interesting, but need to rethink the method of economic victory. This requires some method for a smaller empire to focus on economy and win which a larger nation forcussing on military cannot do, or cannot just switch to once they are the largest empire.

Paul.

It's a good point to have some unique abilities that other nations don't have. I think that the different methods of victory have to be given unique things that separate them(ala stars!). But it has to be done without stretching the credibility of the system too far. They have to be things that a larger empire could not reasonably build with its more resources.
I would almost say they need a number of things from unique techs, diplomacy options, social projects, even ships in addition to extra trade routes, and even the ability to do things other players cannot because of their philosophical focus. These would be given the longer they pursued a particular way of thinking as a culture.
This way those that played from the beginning one way would have an advantage from those who played a different way through the game and switched at the end. A larger empire cannot change too quickly how a whole culture thinks regardless of its power.