New Fleet Actions (Medium)

[Captain Jack]

Greetings all,

The heart of the game pounds with ships. So, what is better than more features that are directly using ships?

Action 1: Transport Immigrants Fleet action

Will work similarly with trade routes. However, instead of trading goods, it will transport population.

At version 1.0, everyone will want to move wherever the fleet owner wants. So, NPC citizens will simply follow your plan without objections. If need be, in future releases, we can add some criteria for this.

The transport will be easy go; Every ship transport capacity will be equal to their cargo capacity/2. So a howker, will be able to transport 30 people. Gear up....

Action 2: Expedition Journey fleet action

This is a more sophisticated system. It will work like Fishing in essence but instead of ships trying to catch fishes, they will try to catch treasures and ships. It will be fail-safe and the exact functionality will be secret.

Here is what can be unveiled:
-Total Fleet Cargo employed will play a role
-Total Crew Members employed will play a role
-Total (additive) fleet speed as well as fleet speed and maximum individual ship speed will play a role.
-The player will send out the fleet and it will always return with something gained. However, time required will greatly vary depending on criteria and rewards earned.

Rewards will be:
-Fame * after making a historical discovery.
-Technological * gain a random technology level as long as you have an academy (rare)
-Gold Coins* Gain a gold coins amount after unveiling a ship treasure
-Gold Bars* Gain gold bars after discovering a major ship treasure
-Ships* Gain a ship dragged from sea bottom (can by any ship currently in sea bottom) (common - at least 30% chance to get a ship initially)

[Haron]

Interesting. This sounds fun. More actions for ships and fleets are a good thing. I have a few comments and questions, though.

First, about transporting immigrants:

A) Why is the capacity only 1/2 the "ordinary" capacity? Let's look at a port with 200M citizens, and compare this to the TI voodoo card. Such a card would give the port 2M citizens. This is now measured against moving an equivalent of 4M crates of goods (which will be 2M citizens with the 1/2 capacity rule). Comparing the value of moving 4M crates of goods to the value of moving 2M citizens, this does not seem like a very lucrative idea. I'm guessing the only use might be on completely destroyed ports, like Akrotiri.

B) What happens when fleets with immigrants are skirmished?

C) If a fleet with immigrants are plundered, how do they translate into "cargo value" if the target doesn't have enough gold in treasury to pay his ransom?

Secondly, the Expeditions:

I have to start with a comment: I am, as always, opposed to keeping the exact rules / functionality secret. I prefer the rules of a game to be open and equally available to all players (with "hidden rules", those with experience and doing experiments have a better understanding of the rules than others). Anyway, on to the questions:

A) What will the chance to gain a technology level be? That seems to be by far the most valuable outcome, unless the gold coins gained can be enormous. Thus, this probability will likely be very important in determining if sending a fleet on an expedition is worth it.

B) Will the gold bars gained be equal to the fleets cargo capacity?

C) When gaining ships, does this work identical to the "tidal wave" voodoo card, or will there be a higher chance of getting a decent ship, and not just "yet another howker"?

[Maha]

a ship dedicated to party trading makes 12gc profit per cargo space per one way trip or 24 gc on a round about. when this gc is invested in a port it will add roughly 1 citizen per cargo instead of 0.5 citizen per cargo that Transport Immigrants Fleet action offers. the only difference is that the source port is not losing citizens.
so the only use would be draining citizens from ports, how would this compete with 'black death'?

however, if the migrating people are considered 'refugees' who escape heavy taxation, diseases like Black death etc, than it could create something interesting. these citizens turned refugees become stowaways who replace cargo (without permission). thus a 'doomed' port becomes less attractive to merchants and loses her citizens.

[Admiral Nelson]

+1.

[Most Lee Harmless]

I like the suggestions : I would add, or re-introduce an element previously proposed, to the Transport Immigrants feature : a nation can pass a law to offer a bounty for each immigrant landed at a specific port : thus, for example, IoM could offer 10 gc per head for immigrants landed in Akrotiri : the benefits being two-fold : added population and the trade taxes as the fleets sail out again loaded with rum.

I feel this would both encourage the trading of immigrants and add a national interest in encouraging it. Perhaps an additional bounty for population taken from a target port could/would become part of port wars and nation struggles?

[PhoenixKnight]

Firstly,

A) Why is the capacity only 1/2 the "ordinary" capacity? Let's look at a port with 200M citizens, and compare this to the TI voodoo card. Such a card would give the port 2M citizens. This is now measured against moving an equivalent of 4M crates of goods (which will be 2M citizens with the 1/2 capacity rule). Comparing the value of moving 4M crates of goods to the value of moving 2M citizens, this does not seem like a very lucrative idea. I'm guessing the only use might be on completely destroyed ports, like Akrotiri.

B) What happens when fleets with immigrants are skirmished?

C) If a fleet with immigrants are plundered, how do they translate into "cargo value" if the target doesn't have enough gold in treasury to pay his ransom?

I love the idea. It is close to something that was suggested a while back.

Regarding 1-A of your question Haron, I assume it is similar to the idea that the immigrants, need supplies to survive at sea. so each person will have space for 2 that is on top of ship weight limitation!.
1-B, they are kidnapped and essentially defected to the captured nation port? If it's a pirate then they will be converted to gold at a port that is controlled by a nation and they get added to those nation ranks.

Not sure about your secondly but these are my current thoughts. I may have to consider things further.

[Captain Jack]

1)Transport Immigrants
-I think the rate for moving people around is fair. We took in mind the tax income they generate and the tax income they remove. It's a step towards Nation Diplomacy feature too.

-On Skirmish we could give a price per head (ie 40gc). Population is then lost.

2)Expedition Journey

A feature like this would not rely on a single condition or formula. More will be involved. We like to reveal all PvP related rules but on PvE we tend to hide a small part. Exploring a PvE feature is after all an experience on its own. In our design, PvE features will always be less rewarding than PvP ones, therefore no unfair advantages can be really born. Although here we speak about fleets that are equally exposed to other players like all PvP ones. So we might expose more info eventually.

a)0.5% to 1% should be the default chance. Maybe we can add modifiers and limitations or else it will be prone to exploitation.

b)Random can be used but surely never more than available cargo. Total number earned though, will have an affect on the trip duration though so do not expect a fleet that gained a ton of gold bars to return anytime soon.

c)Again, same mechanism should be preferred here. Random ship gain based on conditions though. For example, you won't be able to pull a SoL with 5 Cutters and bringing a SoL back to port would require more time than a Howker.

Dwelling on time required more, we could use the following format:
-Time to initiate Expedition (during this time, the fleet travels to the vicinity of the target port): A few minutes
-Expedition time: Up to 1 hour
-Return Time: At least 1 hour

So, with this design in mind, an expedition should last at least 1.15 hours and will add +1 danger on every return. One thing worth mentioning though is that probably there will be no automated expeditions and we can always allow users to select how many hours to send their fleets on expedition. Most probably, this is the safest way to go.

[Haron]

Thanks for your replies, Captain Jack. I will get back to the transport immigrants once I have time to work through the math on some examples. Moving on to the expeditions.

Personally, I like things that have a tradeoff between risk and payoff. And so I think this should apply to such expeditions. For example: Let's say each expedition takes exactly 24 hours (I think expeditions should be more long-term than one hour - at least to me, that "feels" more right, and also helps this example ). The player can then decide how risky the expedition should be: Should he get +1 danger pr hour (default, because danger also drops by 1 pr hour, this means no danger gained)? Or should he go for a more dangerous expedition? +2, +3 or +4 danger pr hour, meaning he will be lit up (every 3rd hour, every 2nd hour or every hour), but with a larger chance of a successful expedition?

Not sure this exact mechanic would be ideal, but I think being able to choose a trade off between risk and payoff in SOME way, would be a good thing. Another issue could be to have the return rate from the expedition depend on the value of the CHEAPEST ship in the fleet: So, how strong a tail do you dare to use? Just a thought.

[DezNutz]

Why is the capacity only 1/2 the "ordinary" capacity? Let's look at a port with 200M citizens, and compare this to the TI voodoo card. Such a card would give the port 2M citizens. This is now measured against moving an equivalent of 4M crates of goods (which will be 2M citizens with the 1/2 capacity rule). Comparing the value of moving 4M crates of goods to the value of moving 2M citizens, this does not seem like a very lucrative idea. I'm guessing the only use might be on completely destroyed ports, like Akrotiri.

Half capacity actually makes reasonable sense. Think of it as turning your cargo ship into a cruise ship. People voluntarily moving between ports and using your ships to make that move. People require space. You aren't slave shipping were you want to pack them in like sardines to make the most amount of money.

[Sebena]

Why is the capacity only 1/2 the "ordinary" capacity? Let's look at a port with 200M citizens, and compare this to the TI voodoo card. Such a card would give the port 2M citizens. This is now measured against moving an equivalent of 4M crates of goods (which will be 2M citizens with the 1/2 capacity rule). Comparing the value of moving 4M crates of goods to the value of moving 2M citizens, this does not seem like a very lucrative idea. I'm guessing the only use might be on completely destroyed ports, like Akrotiri.

Half capacity actually makes reasonable sense. Think of it as turning your cargo ship into a cruise ship. People voluntarily moving between ports and using your ships to make that move. People require space. You aren't slave shipping were you want to pack them in like sardines to make the most amount of money.

Says who? I want to pack as much as I could they will be happy if they get premission to use bathroom