New Ports Market policy

[Whitcomb The Feared]

i just don't understand one point in the supply system. Who is producing the port resource ?
The game + private plantations ?

Cause i see many ports with 0 resources and i don't understand if plantations are abandoned or if we just reached a peak and the supply doesn't follow the demand anymore.
I see some ports with 0 acres free and at the same time they also have 0 crates left in their stocks. So is it the limit of the game ?

Why not adding in the supply formula that when reaching 0, the production has a boom ? For the private plantations and the automatic production. In this way, that port will attract suppliers who are looking for more profits. Or who has a plantation in that port will make more money if increasing the production.

By the way, i also don't understand why so little opportunities to build a plantation. There are only 2 ports left with free acres and sooner or later even the national law Expand port acres won't be enough to enlarge plantation productions. If we keep so low possibilities to people to have a plantation, this just will push people in having more ships to make more money. but this will deplete more and faster the remaining resources.

So why not adding a system of technologies for the plantation too ? i didn't see it in the game (maybe i am totally wrong and they are in the academy). some technologies which will need tools to be repaired or iron and wood to be built .... to produce more and more.

[not a pirate]

If we keep so low possibilities to people to have a plantation, this just will push people in having more ships to make more money.

This is generally the rule of thumb for 90% of you merchants, I believe... more and more ships is equivalent to more and more money. Supposed to make it a bigger risk, higher reward. I don't really understand the plantation stuff as I've never been in a country since the feature was released, so I'm not a huge help there but I do not think plantations are supposed to be a replacement for having a lot of trade routes, maybe more of a cherry on top?

[Most Lee Harmless]

Originally, port production was pretty automatic and fixed. The only 'governor' on stocks was prices which moved trade back and forth, not stock levels. This meant some ports had millions of crates piling up every week. So, the game switched to a more volatile production means : inherent port production was nerfed and it's down to plantations to pick up the slack as the previous stockpiles diminish. The 'zero-stock' ports simply reflect which ones are most attractive to traders : more fleets run there, more stock gets removed, higher port prices result so plantations make more selling to port instead of shipping it out themselves. Over-production means lower prices, which should attract more traders.
Problem is too many traders still just run the same old routes, usually more worried about distance/sailing time than a few coins more profit. Re-routing 200 fleets is a pain. Doing it every few days even more so.
Get used to ports with zero stock, with 75% of daily production now done by plantations it's only going to get worse as plantations reach maximum holdings. Production should increase still as plants become more developed and efficient but gaps in stocks will remain. That means traders have to be a bit more proactive to make the best coin from their fleets. The days of point and forget 200 fleets are over.

Personally, I'd like it to become even more volatile. High port pops should consume more inherent production and demand more imports via higher prices. Low port pops should produce far less surplus to export. If a high pop port doesnt get enough food imported then population should die. An element of port population growth should be tied to goods surpluses. Feast and famine should rule. Then some wildly high prices might really get traders hopping off the set routes routine.

[DezNutz]

What Danik said is pretty spot on. I will add that there is game production. IIRC, it is based on what is stocked. If the stock is over a certain amount (10M I think), the game does not produce anything. Below it, the amount produced (175k) is not very large and is spreadout over the entire day. As well, with the ability to increase total acreage available in ports, more plantation acreage will be available for more production. Downside to that is that it takes both time, money, and a nation that owns more than one port can only expand acreage one port at a time.



I also agree with his last paragraph.

[Most Lee Harmless]

If stock of the port product is less than 10mil at reset then 'local production' at a rate of 35k per hour is added on the hour until next reset.

If you check out the demographics page for resources you can see how much production, split between plantations and 'local', has happened in previous 24hrs.

Last time I looked it was about 29million from plantations and 9mil from local production.

Of course, that is not evenly spread over the 21 ports nor even over each resource type but does indicate at least ten ports are below 10mil stocks.

This is excellent news for those active in supplying the player markets, which have developed very fast if not yet fully utilised by the player-base.

[Kangaroo]

If stock of the port product is less than 10mil at reset then 'local production' at a rate of 35k per hour is added on the hour until next reset.

If you check out the demographics page for resources you can see how much production, split between plantations and 'local', has happened in previous 24hrs.

Last time I looked it was about 29million from plantations and 9mil from local production.

Of course, that is not evenly spread over the 21 ports nor even over each resource type but does indicate at least ten ports are below 10mil stocks.

This is excellent news for those active in supplying the player markets, which have developed very fast if not yet fully utilised by the player-base.

Ditto

Also, to the rebirther's point re diminishing acres I have a plant operating on 9500 acres of which 8000 are via fertile lands casts, and it runs profitably, so available land is a speedbrake but not an end point

[Whitcomb The Feared]

If we keep so low possibilities to people to have a plantation, this just will push people in having more ships to make more money.

This is generally the rule of thumb for 90% of you merchants, I believe... more and more ships is equivalent to more and more money. Supposed to make it a bigger risk, higher reward. I don't really understand the plantation stuff as I've never been in a country since the feature was released, so I'm not a huge help there but I do not think plantations are supposed to be a replacement for having a lot of trade routes, maybe more of a cherry on top?

plantations are part of the supply of resources in the game. if we have a shortage in resources, as it happens many times during the week (cause people don't want to change trade routes cause it is boring and chronophage) ... well, we will have a block in plantations' productions in other ports ! cause plantations work with other resources. So if plantations stop working ... well. we risk to be dependend only on the resources produced by the game automatically. And this was my question. If there are resources produced by the game or if they are very low. Cause if we run out of resources and the merchant ships don't carry value anymore, nobody will make money by plundering or skirmishing them ! so even piracy will be blocked.

Originally, port production was pretty automatic and fixed. The only 'governor' on stocks was prices which moved trade back and forth, not stock levels. This meant some ports had millions of crates piling up every week. So, the game switched to a more volatile production means : inherent port production was nerfed and it's down to plantations to pick up the slack as the previous stockpiles diminish. The 'zero-stock' ports simply reflect which ones are most attractive to traders : more fleets run there, more stock gets removed, higher port prices result so plantations make more selling to port instead of shipping it out themselves. Over-production means lower prices, which should attract more traders.
Problem is too many traders still just run the same old routes, usually more worried about distance/sailing time than a few coins more profit. Re-routing 200 fleets is a pain. Doing it every few days even more so.
Get used to ports with zero stock, with 75% of daily production now done by plantations it's only going to get worse as plantations reach maximum holdings. Production should increase still as plants become more developed and efficient but gaps in stocks will remain. That means traders have to be a bit more proactive to make the best coin from their fleets. The days of point and forget 200 fleets are over.

Personally, I'd like it to become even more volatile. High port pops should consume more inherent production and demand more imports via higher prices. Low port pops should produce far less surplus to export. If a high pop port doesnt get enough food imported then population should die. An element of port population growth should be tied to goods surpluses. Feast and famine should rule. Then some wildly high prices might really get traders hopping off the set routes routine.

I also agree on volatility. but what i still don't understand is the composition. When ports reach the limit of acres, voodoo can help till a certain point, then we will also run out of voodoo cards. And for newborns it will be impossible to bid for very expensive acres or for cards ! but even ... with the limit of acres we will be pushed to run more trade routes to make more profit but more fleets trading will mean more resources consumption ! resources that are limited in the supply. I don't say to make the supply infinite, i just ask what is next. When we reach the max acre limit and when people will run more and more fleets and start depleting daily many ports ... some people will really play with no daily profit cause they run trade routes between empty ports. So it is why i ask what is next. Some ports have really bad trade routes (even with negative return on investments or even 0 profit, but resources are consumed in the same way) + we have depleted ports in profitable trade routes ... i see a limit in the game :S

I agree in the idea of consuming more in populated ports. But we could bring some realism too. In ports with shortage ... people will diminish ! if they run out of something, they will die or flee from the port. The more they are in population, the more they consume. But of course we need to set a supply system in order to furnish enough resources to make the population survive.

What i could see in the plantation system is a concept of new technologies that will increase the acre production. Like buying more technologies (that are expensive in in maintenance) but then the plantation produces more.
Or really re-defining the production concept in game. If we reach the limit in the resource supply, we risk that people will run more trade routes and consume even more ! so we will have more ports depleted and who comes next will have problems to run trade routes in depleted ports. I mean, it is not an invention. On 21 ports i see 3 almost depleted (the 3 for rhum, and their acres are already at the limit). Psaral tobacco is low, all the three of tools are almost depleted. So it is like that 7 on 21 (so one third of the ports) are depleted or almost ! so even if we add new acres via the national law Expand port acres we will have a limit too ! so imagine to really reach the highest limit of production but ships increase in numbers ... what will happen next ? we will deplete every kind of resource and make no more money or what ? it is not a polemic, i just what to understand what there is next. because i see i still have fixed daily costs (taxes, cannons, crews, ...) but when i run trade routes in depleted ports i make no money (but still have costs !). so what will happen when the majority or all the ports are depleted ?
Or just think at what will happen when all the food will be depleted ... all the plantations will stop working too cause of a shortage of food ?

If stock of the port product is less than 10mil at reset then 'local production' at a rate of 35k per hour is added on the hour until next reset.

If you check out the demographics page for resources you can see how much production, split between plantations and 'local', has happened in previous 24hrs.

Last time I looked it was about 29million from plantations and 9mil from local production.

Of course, that is not evenly spread over the 21 ports nor even over each resource type but does indicate at least ten ports are below 10mil stocks.

This is excellent news for those active in supplying the player markets, which have developed very fast if not yet fully utilised by the player-base.

Ditto

Also, to the rebirther's point re diminishing acres I have a plant operating on 9500 acres of which 8000 are via fertile lands casts, and it runs profitably, so available land is a speedbrake but not an end point

I understand, but what will happen when all the cards of fertile land are used ? i mean, i don't think we produce so many fertile land cards than the amount used every month, no ?

[Captain Jack]

Without counting voodoo, the limit for acres is 100k. Which means that the overall limit per resource is 300k acres. Right now, the most expanded resources in acres, is tobacco with around 144k acres and then rum, with around 103k acres. Both still are a more than halfway before the limit.

It is interesting to make an assumption on why these two resources as the most developed. I would say, that besides country policy that surely plays a major part, a key reason would be that these resources are popular due to party card trading.

If we look at demographics for resources we get the following:
-Whole Avonmora currently produces around 40M per day.
-Resources traded is 70M yesterday. However, beware, we need to be aware of 2 key elements:
a)We need to look at the chart to get an average value
b)This is the total amount of crates both sold and bought.

Expanding b), I just looked for the metrics till now for today (still 6 hours before update) and I found that 38M resources were SOLD and 32M resources were bought. Which means that todays plantation production (31.45M) almost ties today's demand. If we add the local production, it overcomes this. Which means that we are currently at a balance. A balance that can easily change destination of course.

There are more points to consider:
Current acres available are 635,426 out of a maximum of 2,100,000 acres (without taking in mind Fertile Lands).

Which ultimately means, that there is plenty of room for expansion and no worries of getting short of resources. After all, the locals production do exactly that.

Finally, let us now forget the total resources in ports (which now amount to 25B crates). Every resource you sell at a port, remains at the port (since March 2018, Details here). There is a purpose for this and the reason is that we do want to activate population consumption at some point. Population consumption will have modifiers on population growth , tax income as well as other population attributes not yet implemented.