Trade Routes and Jumpgates

[Space_Doogie]

I've been trying to figure out what my strategy for my first game is going to be, and I've had a couple of questions pop up considering using jumpgates to create faster trade routes. My questions are:

1. Can trade routes be set to utilize jumpgates, either automatically or manually?
2. Is their a way to use an allie's jumpgate (I doubt it, but the wiki is worded a bit oddly)?
3. If trade routes can be set to use jumpgates, is it even realistic to reach that far into the science tech tree as a trader?

Thanks in advance!

[Leedot]

Hi Space -

1. Currently ships have to manually be navigated through a jump gate so it's difficult to use them in conjunction with harvesting / trade. Hopefully we'll be able to address that at some point since it would be cool / useful. At the moment the ship AI doesn't take jump gates into consideration when plotting a course.

2. Players can only use their own jumpgates / beacons.

[zarkwizard]

Some of that has been discussed quite a bit internally...

Here are a few of the problems...

Trade earnings are based on the distance of travel. If you could instantly jump from a place 25 sectors away to your destination planet should the goods be valued the same. The ultimate answer would be no. Since the demand would be low on your home planet for goods that could be acquired quickly.

Calculations for the trade routes were put in place with the time it takes to travel from one sector to the next. The larger the distance the higher the value of the cargo. I can't recall of the top of my head, but with the proper trade skills in place, and ship upgrades I think it would out to be about 27 sectors (give or take a couple, due to my bad recall - since I don't handle the trade calculations).

With that in mind if we were to add jump gates in to the mix we would have to try to figure out distance traveled, using a jump gate. Now I'm not saying that won't change in the future, but for the time being we decided trade ships with cargo can't jump. Let's say they don't have the special antigrav shipping containers needed to make the jump... perhaps they will be manufactured in the future.

As for question #2, can you use an allies jump gate... no... that was another topic that came up quite a bit. While currently their is no formal "alliance" structure in the game. Basically the diplomacy is.. I won't kill you, you don't kill me.. deal? So with that in mind we don't really know who your ally is. Which brings us to a bigger thing...

We have been working on diplomacy trees, and trying to come up with what we call a diplomacy victory. It's in it's early stages, and as we get further along with the idea we'll run it past everyone and get some feed back as to what people would like in the diplomacy part of the game.

Another option we have discussed is maybe having it so players can "charge" players to use one of their jump gates. If I had a jump gate built, and you wanted to use it, you would have to pay me <x> rare, or common ore to use it. Of course I would be able to set different rates for players, so if it's someone I like I can charge a lower fee, or make it free for people.

Those are just a few of the next step thoughts in where the game is going, or things you may be able to do in the future. We'll have to see what people like dislike, and then look at what it will take to get the game to where the players would like it to be.

[fieryspoon]

If you're going to enable trading through jump gates, there should be some benefit to researching up to that point. If you're simply reducing the distance by the jumped amount, is there any point to do it? Protecting from piracy seems like a pretty marginal benefit to me.

[Stille]

Trade earnings are based on the distance of travel. If you could instantly jump from a place 25 sectors away to your destination planet should the goods be valued the same. The ultimate answer would be no. Since the demand would be low on your home planet for goods that could be acquired quickly.

I think logically will be, that if only one trader can use the gates - then prices should remain the same, if anyone - prices should be recalculated based on the new shortest distances.
Maybe advanced model cloud be possible, that price is hugely dependable from the time and amount of last stock been delivered: for example - you sold 20 of item to the planet. Timer begin to reduce this amount - 2 in hour for example. After 10 hours, when amount became zero, price shoul began to grow with the same timer.

[Leedot]

The current thinking is that the trade value would be calculated by the new shortest distance. Historically speaking this would be similar to how salt used to be very expensive but is now very cheap as methods for production and transportation have improved.

Spoon - It would still be useful for a research because it makes them less reliant on the large storage capacities / travel speeds of the high end trading vessels. It also means a player can more readily keep planets connected that would otherwise be too far apart to be useful so a player could cherry pick the most resource rich sectors to settle from across the entire galaxy. (this is less of an issue if you have matter transmitters but they only move resources and not ships as well.)

Additionally it's worth mentioning that this would also increase your options for establishing optimal trade partners since there's nothing that says you have to place a jump gate right next to your trading partner's planet.

[Space_Doogie]

Thanks for the info! I'm definitely trying to find a way to encounter as little warfare as possible, keeping enemies and allies at ease through diplomatic practices. Since I haven't had a chance to play yet, I'm not sure how I'll feel about the current trade system, however, I've looked at the wiki a bit more and can say that teleporting my goods might be good enough.

As for renting out jumpgates, sounds awesome. I especially want to set my own rates, just so I have even more control over the leverage I have on the players I deal with.

[Leedot]

Space - Have you watched the Trade tutorial video? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OcPWQ4FCFc

Also, just as a side note the wiki is pretty out of date at the moment so take the information on it with a grain of salt.

[Space_Doogie]

Yeah, I've watched the vids. I'm sure I'll just hafta wait till I get my hands on the game to see how everything really works, and how I'll feel about it all. Speaking of which... Release the game now, pretty please? XD