Ship trade between docked ships

Oceana

This idea would be an expansion of the current ship trade system. Instead of trading only with the harbour, let us trade between ships as well. This will make ship trade more flexible, will make it easier to fix miscalculations and bring new RP opportunities.

I am thinking of these three options:
SHIP TRADE TRANSFER 1 WINE TO SHIPNAME FOR 0 GOLD
SHIP TRADE TRANSFER 2 WINE TO SHIPNAME FOR 5000 GOLD
SHIP TRADE TRANSFER 2 WINE TO SHIPNAME FOR 5 GRAIN

Requirements:
- Both ships must be docked in a harbour where ship trade already is possible.
- Both ships must have their captain present: one who will initiate the trade and the other who will agree to the trade.
- Trade and agreement cannot be forced.
- Transaction will fail if there is no room in the cargo hold, if the traded cargo is not available, if there is not enough gold in the strongbox, or if the other captain does not agree.
- If the trade is for gold, it will be taken from the strongbox. Gold will also be deposited into the strongbox of the trading ship.
- Prices to trade for are not fixed, but left to the traders.

What do you think?

Jonathin

Do like. Opens up the opportunity for stealing cargo by pirates.

Oceana

This would work only in man-made harbours that offer cargo for trade, not on the seas. One would need the harbour's equipment/men to transfer the cargo.

Eld

I'd love to see this, but it may open up concerns of "abuse" in terms of doing multiple trades in reduced time. For example, I have a strider and a cutter, and accept the same deal on each, 5 gems for 100k, say. I load the strider up with 92 ore (I think that's right), trade it down to 10 gems, bring it back and get a friend to help me transfer 5 gems to the cutter, and complete both deals. I've now done 2 trades in the time it would otherwise take to do one. I assume the requirement to have both captains present was intended to prevent that kind of thing, but it's really not hard to just give someone temporary captain perms. 

If it were implemented, somehow allowing pirates to raid cargo would be pretty cool, too. Not sure how much harder that would be to implement.

Silas

The trade deals, bar about 2, provide such a staggeringly small profit, if any at all, that concerns of abuse are really negligible. This would be an interesting and sensible addition to the current ship trade mechanism.

Eld

Staggeringly small is exaggeration for the ones worth doing. 5 gems/spices for 100k is about 50k profit, for about 2 hours work every 3 trades, which is low compared to potential profits from high level hunting or efficient questing, but without having to worry about competition for hunting and questing spots. 9 or 10 perfume for 25 bound credits, 10 or 11 armaments for a Mayan crown, and 15 armaments for a silver token (if that trade still exists - it hasn't come up in quite a while) are all better, assuming 5.5-6k per credit on market, 30-40 credits per crown, and silver tokens unavailable otherwise. The situation I described probably ultimately cuts the time investment to about 2/3 (my appetite for Achaea-related math is waning as the night wears on, so just estimating here). So still modest profit, but not negligible. But maybe small enough not to be a concern.

Mechanics aside, agreed that it would make the ship trading system more interesting, potentially open it up to more player interaction, and makes sense as something to be able to do. Still agree with @Mosr that if cargo transfer between ships is implemented, potential for cargo theft by pirates would also be cool, but maybe it would be better left as an RP interaction using the voluntary mechanic (tranfer your cargo to our ship or we'll sink you, or similar).

Beya

@Eld "transfer your cargo to our ship or we'll sink you, or similar"

If the mechanic can only happen in a harbour, there'll be no concerns of sinking. For effective pirating, the trade should happen in a harbour as well as between two ships which are next to each other.

Eld

Beya said:

@Eld "transfer your cargo to our ship or we'll sink you, or similar"

If the mechanic can only happen in a harbour, there'll be no concerns of sinking. For effective pirating, the trade should happen in a harbour as well as between two ships which are next to each other.

Ah, absolutely right, I forgot about that proposed restriction when I wrote that part; I was just thinking of the requirement that both captains agree. Obviously, any piracy aspect would require allowing cargo to be transferred at sea (probably by ships with a plank extended between them, I would think).

Silas

There should be more ship trade deals as well. Or perhaps make the ship trades themselves significant in some way - maybe make trading armaments between harbours mean something, with certain harbours also supplying certain other inland settlements, affecting city relations, etc. Ship trades could be a huge thing, but they're pretty underwhelming at the moment.

Oceana

I'm not sure about adding city relations to trades in harbours. At the moment, some cargo can only be exchanged in one particular harbour. If you belong to a faction that cannot trade with that harbour, you'd be hugely crippled as a trader. Unless you have the possibility to trade between ships as suggested! I'd still go with keeping trade in harbours neutral though.

Jonathin

There needs to be less of a safety-zone in Achaea, not more. No on making it a harbour-only command.

Most ships have a salvaging crane and a crew. You don't need much more than that to transfer cargo from one ship to another.

Oceana

@Jonathin Do you mean you are against the whole idea if it is harbour only? Or could you live with your "I want it on the seas too" as your preference? You are throwing away a lot of possible interactions if not.

Jonathin

You're trying to eliminate a source of conflict and danger on the seas (something of which is sorely lacking anyways) that should, by all rights, be the biggest danger short of being sunk by a citadel.

Making it harbour only creates an unnecessary safe-zone which gives the shaft, yet again, to pirates. Pirating, even though I don't do it anymore, has the potential for great amounts of RP if done correctly and can be fun for all sides. 

Not only that, sailing is already heavily geared toward the defending ship by making it extraordinarily difficult to stop a moving ship whose captain has jink or half a brain. 

The whole point of making it able to be done from ship to ship while on the ocean would be to give pirates more of a reason to actually sail out, instead of just sinking every ship that doesn't cough up 10k. If there are more pirates out, more pirate hunters come out. The more pirate hunters come out, the more likely an 'epic ship battle' will be to happen. and people want an epic naval fleet battle.

tl;dr: We need things that will make the overall seafaring experience more fun, not just change one tiny aspect that would have little to no difference at all.

Sylvance

Jonathin said:

You're trying to eliminate a source of conflict and danger on the seas (something of which is sorely lacking anyways) that should, by all rights, be the biggest danger short of being sunk by a citadel.

Making it harbour only creates an unnecessary safe-zone which gives the shaft, yet again, to pirates. Pirating, even though I don't do it anymore, has the potential for great amounts of RP if done correctly and can be fun for all sides. 

Not only that, sailing is already heavily geared toward the defending ship by making it extraordinarily difficult to stop a moving ship whose captain has jink or half a brain. 

The whole point of making it able to be done from ship to ship while on the ocean would be to give pirates more of a reason to actually sail out, instead of just sinking every ship that doesn't cough up 10k. If there are more pirates out, more pirate hunters come out. The more pirate hunters come out, the more likely an 'epic ship battle' will be to happen. and people want an epic naval fleet battle.

I agree. It should definitely be easier for pirates to steal people's fortunes on the high seas.  And let's be honest, folks, more theft has always been the surest way to create an enjoyable roleplay environment.

ETA: Once again it ate my editing.

Jonathin

Sylvance said:

I agree. It should definitely be easier for pirates to steal people's fortunes on the high seas.  And let's be honest, folks, more theft has always been the surest way to create an enjoyable roleplay environment.

ETA: Once again it ate my editing.

You don't seem to understand how difficult it actually is to catch even a windcutter if the ship doesn't want to be caught. There is an exhilaration in both attacking and fleeing from ships. Seafaring on its own, without citadels or pirates is boring as hell. You just point your ship in a direction and wait. 

Your sarcasm is ill-founded considering that it is literally no different than the pirate finding you, boarding you, demanding 10k or threatening to sink you. Which is exactly what (is supposed) to happen (and is sanctioned by admin).

Right now it could go "Oh, you're doing the trade route? Give us 10k or we'll sink you. Oh, you don't have 10k? Lol we'll sink you and you'll lose your cargo anyways."

Oceana

I'm not trying to eliminate a source of conflict, as this functionality does not even exist yet. I am trying to reduce some of the frustration that ship trade brings:

- sailing the same routes again and again to get the same trade deals completed

- losing a large part of your cargo when your ship has been sunk, needing recalculations and sailing the same route again

- dumping cargo because your new trade deal needs the space 

- finding out after 2 hours of sailing that you are 1 cargo item short

- hearing an ally mutter about missing a cargo item that is simply cluttering your own cargo hold and not being able to help him out

What I do expect to see happening is more people involved in ship trade, thus more people on the seas. And more people talking about trades on market or in seafaring clans. I expect this to make seafaring more fun in general and consider this a big improvement if implemented.

Jonathin

What I should have said is that you're trying to make your idea too safe. There should be an element of risk on the seas and I think that your idea would be a great place to start.

Sylvance

Jonathin said:

Sylvance said:

I agree. It should definitely be easier for pirates to steal people's fortunes on the high seas.  And let's be honest, folks, more theft has always been the surest way to create an enjoyable roleplay environment.

ETA: Once again it ate my editing.

You don't seem to understand how difficult it actually is to catch even a windcutter if the ship doesn't want to be caught. There is an exhilaration in both attacking and fleeing from ships. Seafaring on its own, without citadels or pirates is boring as hell. You just point your ship in a direction and wait. 

Your sarcasm is ill-founded considering that it is literally no different than the pirate finding you, boarding you, demanding 10k or threatening to sink you. Which is exactly what (is supposed) to happen (and is sanctioned by admin).

Right now it could go "Oh, you're doing the trade route? Give us 10k or we'll sink you. Oh, you don't have 10k? Lol we'll sink you and you'll lose your cargo anyways."

Okay, yes, the sarcasm wasn't needed and quite possibly ill-founded (I've no clue; I don't sail because I'm one of the 99% of players that can't afford to, hence an element of bitterness towards sailing).

All I'm trying to say is that whilst the risk of theft does indeed add an element of spice to Achaean life, I don't think that on balance it improves the roleplay environment. What I usually see happening is that party A robs party B, party B blurs the lines between IC/OOC in a long diatribe against party A (rightly or wrongly), and then people get pissed off OOCly for a variety of reasons.

As Oceana said above, what does seem more conducive to richer RP is getting people more involved in ship trade with one another.

TL;DR: I want a ship I can't have  a ship I'll settle for sarcasm

Jonathin

Actually, in all of my time pirating, I never had anyone get mad or butthurt over being jipped of 10k because it never happened to the same person more than once in a very great while.

However, this thread wasn't intended to discuss the effects of theft or pirating. If I can find the motivation to stop forum lurking or browsing picaphobia, I'll post up some ideas for seafaring that would encompass this.

Rinzai

I can see how this could be abused slightly in order to move strider left overs, but it kind of exists now if you maximize your strider throw all 125 and pretty much the third deal or so is free, depending what you do, I always just stocked armaments and always sailed for extra even when the deal wasn't active.

As for trading on the open seas, it would leave it opened to pirating but I still agree with Pirates are to easy to get away from unless you have taken zero time to learn how to sail, but you would also need to have a way for the Pirates to see your cargo, I believe SHIP TRADE CARGO is captain/crew only ?

I agree with all of Oceana's issues she wanted to address, when you invest 2-3 days on sailing to do a trade, having one of those things happen is a huge downer. If I was one Armament short, I would probably pay 20k for it just in thinking time and harbour fees, and with people sailing for extras I would think if this was implemented I could find that one.

Lianca

To address a part of @Rinzai's post. Perhaps from the "pirate" side the spyglass could be used to get a base assessment of a ship's cargo.

I.E,
Shipname123 appears to be low in the water.
Shipname123 rides high upon the waves.

These would give some indication to there being cargo aboard, but ambiguous enough for the pirate to decide whether high in the water is a small amount of high level goods toward the end of a trade run (and worth going for,) or whether it could be three cotton (a waste of ammunition). Also adds another use for the spyglass, encouraging crew interaction. Being that a ship has to get close-ish to monsters for crew to use the spyglass, the trade ship has a chance of being aware and making a run for it.

Xith

Jonathin said:

You don't seem to understand how difficult it actually is to catch even a windcutter if the ship doesn't want to be caught. There is an exhilaration in both attacking and fleeing from ships. Seafaring on its own, without citadels or pirates is boring as hell. You just point your ship in a direction and wait. 

It's true. I was uh.. distracted in the cabin once and the ship had stalled against the shore. I walked out and my ship was halfway sunk. So I ungrappled, and then wavecall/cloak/wavecall/windboost. Safe and gone. But more thrilling than the cabin was, if possible.

Aerek

I like the idea, but I agree with Jonathin in that it should not be harbour only. The seas are meant to be dangerous; they were Open PK, before, and the rules of engagement are even more lax than the mainland under simplified PK, now. Ideas that deal with ships should maintain that aspect of risk vs reward, because that's the point of sailing. Deep sea fishing can make you a lot of money, diving can be good xp and you might win the lottery, and trades can net you some tidy profits or rare items, but all of these lucrative rewards are offered with the caveat that other players can hunt you, sink you, and/or otherwise keep you from racking up those rewards.

I wholeheartedly agree with trading cargo, and I think the wheeling-and-dealing maritime merchant is a concept that should be possible and lucrative in Achaea. I just don't think that idea should be implemented with safeguards that cut pirates, another completely legitimate role in Achaea, out of the picture. If it's good for the goose, it should be good for the gander.

Delphinus

Silas said:

The trade deals, bar about 2, provide such a staggeringly small profit, if any at all, that concerns of abuse are really negligible. This would be an interesting and sensible addition to the current ship trade mechanism.

That's part of the problem with the not-just-in-harbours idea. By raising the risk of losing everything, you're going to further trivialise an already tiny profit.

Tvistor

To be fair, the few times I went sailing with pirates, I wasn't really impressed. We mainly boarded some poor guys who were trying to fish or whatever, make some demands and they'd either give in and we'd leave them be, or we'd sink the ship because why not.

Wasn't any different to old theft in my opinion. We'd just put them in a situation where we had very little to lose, then people would get offended when the Oppressed party wasn't in the mood for RP.

I've nothing to say as far as what constitutes 'fun' on the scales of power, but I didn't get a modicum of enjoyment from that, even on the winning side. It felt like a pretty big jerk move on an OOC level, and I stopped heading out with them. I'd love to see an honest fight on the seas, but hardly anyone is capable of defending themselves. Didn't understand a damned thing of the mechanics surrounding the chase, but we caught enough people that it was clearly one-sided.

As for the original idea, it is just going to make that problem a lot worse to allow it outside of harbours, as per what Delphinus said. It would be the equivalent of allowing selfishness stripping with old theft -- there isn't much more increased RP potential so much as giving one side the opportunity to a lot more power than is really fair.

Oceana

Bump. I still want this...

Jonathin

Tvistor said:

To be fair, the few times I went sailing with pirates, I wasn't really impressed. We mainly boarded some poor guys who were trying to fish or whatever, make some demands and they'd either give in and we'd leave them be, or we'd sink the ship because why not.

Wasn't any different to old theft in my opinion. We'd just put them in a situation where we had very little to lose, then people would get offended when the Oppressed party wasn't in the mood for RP.

I've nothing to say as far as what constitutes 'fun' on the scales of power, but I didn't get a modicum of enjoyment from that, even on the winning side. It felt like a pretty big jerk move on an OOC level, and I stopped heading out with them. I'd love to see an honest fight on the seas, but hardly anyone is capable of defending themselves. Didn't understand a damned thing of the mechanics surrounding the chase, but we caught enough people that it was clearly one-sided.

As for the original idea, it is just going to make that problem a lot worse to allow it outside of harbours, as per what Delphinus said. It would be the equivalent of allowing selfishness stripping with old theft -- there isn't much more increased RP potential so much as giving one side the opportunity to a lot more power than is really fair.

It's one sided on the side of the defending ship. The ships you caught were obviously inept captains because all it takes is a few turns and you can spoil and entire chase.

Katzchen

Where did this '10k' idea come from? When I've come across pirates they asked for everything in my strongbox & pack...

Jonathin

If they're the Pirates of Meropis, you can issue that shit. That's bs and it goes against the admin sanctioned "pirate code" they have to abide by.

Kinilan

I can't speak for how others went about it but when the Inexerable under my command  caught a ship I'd let/make the boarding party leader negotiate. This at any time could have been @Dontarion,  @Dunn,  @Kaevan,  @Jarrod, @Sabiru or @Lianca plus whoever the were leading which ranged from nobody to 5 others, usually 1 or 2.  We'd demand all their gold, check their inventory for anything of value, demand their flag if they had one and we didn't already have a copy and rummage around the ship taking whatever wasn't nailed down. I was supposed to be harsh. The cost of getting caught was meant to be much worse than just paying for safe passage. Even then it's up to captain and crew if they paid. They can just as easily, and a few did, refuse and they got to watch their ship sink.

I ordered harsher action against those that went OOC or got really disrespectful. Don't spit at the man with his boot on your neck if you want to keep breathing. But people that accepted their situation, stayed in role and didn't waste our time got off lighter.

Jonathin

There's a pirate code for a reason, @Kinilan. I was talking about the PoM. If you chose not to follow that code while you were the leader of the organization, the PoM should've lost their high clan status at the very least. 

When Darknight didn't follow the code, he was forced to give every single piece of gold back to the person from whom it was taken. "Pirates" like you don't add anything to the game whatsoever and hilariously detract from it by making the whole experience enjoyable for only 1 side. 

ETA: It didn't matter what ship we were on. We had to follow the code as long as we were a part of the PoM. You're nothing more than ship-board griefers these days.

Zulah was a respected pirate because he didn't strip a person of everything he or she owned. He RP'd every single time he boarded a ship. People enjoyed interacting with me because I demanded 10k only and usually gave other ways to get off scott-free. If you look at people like @Katzchen, her experience obviously was not fun in the least because you or your "pirates" have no self-control. If you think for one second that "GIVE ME EVERYTHING OR WE SINK YOU" is a form of RP, you're hilariously wrong.

ETA2: I'm sorry for continuing the off-topic-ness. Kinilan's post just irks me to no end.