Pack Stations - Bartering with your other towns

[Zarubine]

Some observations / suggestions:

- the bare bone system works in the sense that you can move goods from one town/region to another

- it doesn't seem possible to set a trade limit, which means town A will supply, say shoes, to town B until town A is empty and town B has a big surplus - solution: allow to set limits, i.e. barter goods until xx amount left at supplier or yy amount received at destination

- there are no notifications about the route working or not - solution: a message with something like "barter between town A and B has stopped because town A run out of shoes"

- the idea to link bartering to world market price is interesting in theory but causes the entire system to be rather inefficient and in need of a lot of micro managing.

E.g. I sent flax from my farming town B to main town A, produce linen, then send the linen back so town B can make clothes. Otherwise, because the ratio between flax and clothes is rather big, you end up with only 2 clothes for every 10 flax you send. Whilst bartering for linen will get you 5-6 linen for 10 flax and therefore 5-6 clothes.

And unless you have pack stations for every good you want to barter, you have to periodically check stock levels for bartered items in both towns to adjust which items get bartered when against which product from the other town. Which is cumbersome with only 2 towns but will probably quickly become annoying when you have 3 or more.

- another issue with the ratios is this. Say, flax and linen ratio is 0.5 so for every 2 flax you get 1 linen. The mule can take 10 items. So if I send 10 flax from town B I get 5 linen back from town A on the return trip. On the other hand, if I send 10 linen from town A to barter for flax, what happens then? The ratio for that would be 2.0 so I should get 20 flax back but the mule can only carry 10.

Do I get only 10 flax back because the mule can't carry more? Is the trade carried out over 2 journeys, which would mean on the 2nd journey the A to B leg would be empty? Are only 5 linen send because the system knows only 10 flax can be carried on the return trip Is the trade not carried out at all because it's not valid considering the ratio between the 2 items? Depending on the answer to those questions, it might mean only trades with ratios of less than 1 are valid/workable.

In conclusion, in principle, I like the idea of a barter system between your own towns but the system needs work. If the aim is to set up several towns specialising in farming, mining, etc. (as the development wheel and limited number of development points suggests), then bartering needs to become more efficient. At the moment I still need most production/crafting buildings in both towns to ensure they don't run out of goods.

[Zarubine]

Update:

I bartered cloaks for flax at a ratio of 4.0. The trade was initiated from town A. Town A sent cloaks, town B sent flax.

After 2 months or so town B had 41 cloaks whilst town A had 3 flax. If anything, that should surely be the other way around, no?

[Armalot]

Personally i find it somewhat odd your own regions have to barter goods between each other at market rate rather than a simple supply line being opened. Manned and travelled sure, but why the "cost" if on the same team, might as well just buy and sell from the traders.

Market dynamic (oversupplied vs in demand etc) resolves just selling constantly but i feel there should be at least a discount for you to send goods between owned regions.

[Zarubine]

From a historic standpoint it does make sense. Even if it is part of the lord's overall holdings, why would the cobbler send his shoes to the hamlet down the road to obtain eggs say, if he could sell them to the market for cash (and then buy the eggs). It seems the system was created like this to keep everything in house and not disturb the global market.

Though another way to do that would be for the villagers to sell their surplus to the player at market price to be paid for with funds from your treasury (there would need to be an exchange rate between treasury and regional wealth). The items sold would be stored in the manor and then could be traded (without attention to market price) to the other manors in your other towns and from there sold back into the wider village.

That's how it worked in England in the 16/17th century for the landed gentry. Farmers and tenants would often sell their surplus produce to the the manor house for the baron/earl/duke to do with as they saw fit.

[Newman_CZ]

Za mě je tedy výměna mezi mými regiony holý nesmysl.zbytečný chaos v surovinách.Proč to neudělat jednoduše a neposlat např.200 jednotek chleba do jiného regionu kde prostě není půda na farmaření.A nic za to nemusín chtít.Jsou to moje regiony tak nechápu důvod proč bych měl používat směnný obchod.Toto je za mě největší hloupost a věc která mi vadí.

[chikkichakka]

I dont care if historic or not, this cumbersome system of exchanging things is really annoying. It really hinders the idea of having specialized regions working together if exchange is such a hassle, it seems not worth for me using this feature at all then.

[It's Shas]

I get the point the system tries to convey but I don't like the current implementation one bit. The development points encourage you to specialize your regions and the way the barter system is implemented doesn't synergize really well with that. Most of the time you don't trade goods of equal value wich means you either need / already have a huge overproduction of the less value good in one region, or you live with the fact that movement of the higher value goods trickles like an hourglass. Especially the excess part could be a huge pain in the long run since established trade routes can only sell so much of an excess that you need to micro production at one point (aka stopping it) to not flood your storages.

[HellDuke]

Armalot lähetti viestin:

Personally i find it somewhat odd your own regions have to barter goods between each other at market rate rather than a simple supply line being opened. Manned and travelled sure, but why the "cost" if on the same team, might as well just buy and sell from the traders.

Market dynamic (oversupplied vs in demand etc) resolves just selling constantly but i feel there should be at least a discount for you to send goods between owned regions.

It makes sense and I like the idea that the towns are their own separate ecosystems. However the fact that you are a lord for both would make sense to allow me to somehow influence the movement of goods, specifically spend my own money (treasury) to buy goods and send them to the other town. I think that would be a better use of the pack station and otherwise the towns could just use the trader functionality to trade goods between each other, but maybe that is planned

[Magniankh]

Pack stations are a total bandaid feature and it shows. They need improvement. I like your suggestions, OP.

[Lucifen]

I tried to trade with my mining outpost town for some iron ore and then ingots
My mining outpost got to 166 shoes while my main town got like 3 iron ore.
When i tried to trade with my farming town for some ale or malt, i got a pittance too, sent like 120 meat but only got 7 ale and 1 malt

Somethings definitely going wrong with the system. And i feel like whatever goods they carry just get deleted if you switch the trade settings inbetween.