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Comments
Merry Logosmas, ship traders!
Easy to ask for more and more, but I think it's quite good unless people are overpaying crew/shipmates to some insane extent. I really like the random things sprinkled in, like unmarked wooden crates or hollowed skulls, though I'm admittedly not always interested in making those sails every time the trades crop up.
If anything, I think some of the trades being largely pointless or too many stops for their worth (specifically crew morale, crew experience, weapon ammunition, rum, maybe hat) is more of a discouraging point. For example, if those types of trades were limited to 1-2 short-hops (e.g. Shastaan-Tasur'ke, or Thraasi-Zanzibaar), then they'd serve as a nice introduction to the system for people newer to trades or with less time to spare.
With the current state of the credit market, the 25 bound credit trades are always financially viable, as are the 200k gold trades. Situationally, the 100k and below gold trades are worth doing, but that is dependent on the rate at which you can generate gold from other activities, namely hunting. Assuming a 65k gold reward, with 20k initial cargo and 7k docking fees, that's a gold profit of 38k, which will take around 2 hours to sail. If you can bash up an average of 19k per hour, you're better off doing that than a ship trade. (These are made up numbers to illustrate a point, no need to get your stopwatches out!)
The gold trades can be made more profitable with some forward planning - always fill the ship's hold and trade everything down, the next time there's a similar trade, the sailing is mostly done and the time / gold investment already made. This, of course, comes with the additional risk of being attacked and sunk by pirates (and I don't just mean those who call themselves Pirates, but also the other sailors who regularly attack ships) and losing even more, but that is the nature of shiptrading. To counter this, it's possible to sail with other adventurers who can man weapons, repair damage, etc, but that further dilutes the profits. With no same harbour start/finish trades, it's going to be a hard sell to get adventurers to pend their time sailing when they could make more gold (as well as experience) from just hunting, especially as, unless you're the captain, or there's some immediate danger, crewing is a largely passive activity (and no, I'm not asking for adventurer crew to be made essential on a ship, before Anyone gets any ideas!)
I agree, ships suck right now. They really do, and I have privately with the help of some others from other organizations enemied to my own, sent my ideas and the problems I see directly to the admin. Most of it can be boiled down to:
1. Trades suck.
2. The cost of being sunk is not even remotely reasonable compared to the reward of riding the high seas.
Those two points have been adequately addressed in the above and I just want you all to know a few things based on what I read. Someone mentioned piracy and being able to insure cargo against it. That legitimately is a part of the game, it is in the Pirates' mission as a way for them to have hopes of mitigation so that we don't just lolpwn random ships. That is mean spirited and would not go over well with the admin. You can pay an entire year of protection with 30 minutes of seamonster hunting and if you're attacked, toss me 20-30k and I'll go away, many of you start with "fuck You asshole" when I fire the first shot. One, it might violate HELP LANGUAGE but Two its a good way to insure that you're gonna lose that cargo. I know that many players have personal RP and "would never pay a pirate" well it's your choice. The game has conflict, you're taking a risk. As stated above the cost of that risk is currently too high, but don't blame us for your RP choices. Being a villain doesn't mean I am not personally sympathetic but I'm solely to blame.
On watching harbours, I've had everyone say everything under the sun from Jinsun doesn't actually sail he just watches harbours and onward. Of course I sail that's just ridiculous, but I'm busy OOC and I idle on a ship just like everyone else. Yeah sometimes I leave it up in a separate window while I do something else. I can't always set aside 2 hours to sole focus. I catch people out at sea too, and honestly if you guys took the advice on the first page it'd be near impossible to catch you at harbour.
I have a vested interest in making this better for all of us because the risk for me is also great. I make very very little pirating and all of the money from it goes into the org to generate unique items and content for the other players in the POM. There is a stupid amount of gold in those accounts like more than we really should have, but I'm dedicated to putting it into content. One of the bars to this has been a lack of members and a patron that has went inactive. Part of the issue has been that, due to the loss incurred when someone is sunk, Pirates are among the most hated players in the game. This goes well beyond normal "if you see them, sink them." in some measure response and goes, in my opinion to full blown harassment. I had one friend nearly retire because they couldn't deal with how pirates are treated. Not only are our ships hunted by everyone, which is to be expected, there is a very targeted campaign to take their on the seas fight to land and to punish these players for being a villain.
This involves:
Constant monitoring of each person's whereabouts and activities.
Public reporting of that monitoring.
Illegally filed bounties and Contracts.
Rude OOC and foul messages and tells.
Harassment of that player's friends
Numerous organizations and even opposing factions and navies ganging up on one ship.
Attacking a ship only to lie about it after and play the victim to get the captain in trouble.
Even targeted anti-fraternization laws. Seriously I had someone rattle on a friend for collecting furnishing samples with me.
As someone with friends in each org and friends who have been both mariner and pirate at different times, most will tell you that the current level of monitoring and public hate is creepy, overkill and damned near unhinged and the admin really have done, IMO a terrible job of balancing the risk/reward of ship combat and managing a balance between good guys and bad guys on the water. I have tried everything I can think of to make this better for people but realistically there is a mechanical problem and an ethical dilemma in the RP currently. I get why you are all angry. Being sunk sucks way too hard. I am dedicated to being a bad guy because honestly it drives a better story, but there are days when I seriously consider closing Pirates as a clan, taking a huge pay day and sinking the shit out of everyone I see without offering ransoms or protection because many of you aren't seeing the value in an enemy who wants you to have a fighting change at enjoying this game.
It would mean people can go sailing when they want instead of waiting for trades and free up some space for more interesting rewards.
Between never knowing when a good trade deal will come and being expected to spend a couple hours to complete it, it's hard to want to bother.
Never mind the risk of getting attacked by pirates, messing up how many to buy and having to start all over again, etc. It's just a huge waste of time.
I think Achaea's admins sometimes forget that Achaea is a game and that it should be fun. Why would I bother with such a boring system?
I'd like to see a lot of the same changes as @Jinsun. I love ship combat but the consequences of sinking are too high. That causes a lot of the outright abuse flung at pirates because nobody wants to lose 60k+ at once. But without a healthy group of pirates, there's no fun conflict to be had. The people on the Mariners side don't have anybody they can sink within their RP except pirates, but anyone who tries to pirate is going to be immediately watched like a hawk and chased every time they leave harbor. It's a vicious cycle.
I mean, even losing one or two pieces of cargo could set you back the whole trade, which is really not at all fun. Then there's the possibility of getting your crew wiped. Thats also definitely not fun at all.
I think a lot needs to change to make piracy/Sea Conflict something that is not hated/avoided on an ooc level as it presently seems to be. Some of my suggestions would be:
1) to remove crews getting wiped out for lack of tokens, and instead make it a temporal two-three days thing before they recover.
2)Make it so that you can at the very least buy back what you have lost from any harbourmaster, maybe at a very slight increase in price so that at least expenses can be recouped. This would maintain the possibility of paying protection to the pirates, which would likely be cheaper.
3)Don't allow ships that have been violent/sunk another ship to redock so fast/easily. This would make it possible to actually get some revenge/actual combat going beyond hide-and-seek and ensure that people have to actually commit to it instead of just being opportunistic.
And you won't understand the cause of your grief...
...But you'll always follow the voices beneath.