AUTO-MERGE. No thanks.

[gagenater]

I like having trade fleets seperated - I usually group them in units of 10 - maybe 20 at the end game.

In the early and mid game they are 'free scouts' in areas like the med, Baltic and British Isles you can effectively see nearly all the provinces continuously with a bunch of single/small trade ships running around. You can see RR modifiers, and all sorts of other things that don't show on the ledger. By late game this isn't as useful since the # of countries has been whittled down to the point that you can probably know what they are doing anyway.

In colonial areas they form a cloud constantly patrolling to knock down pirates before everything gets settled up.

And of course as noted by others you can get a lot of them back home in case of a war. Light ships are valuable for blockading freeing up heavies to fight and/or escort transports.

The idea that 'small countries should be forced to take their chances' is BS. 6 light ships may not be much for France or Great Britian but can mean the difference between bankruptcy and building improvements if you are playing as a Dutch minor. Loosing those ships in a stack wipe might mean decades of rebuilding but if they are seperated some of them will escape.

 

[clockworkBabbag]

Where is my argument with regards to large trade fleets?

Nowhere. That's my point: you're basing this entirely around nations with a tiny FL, where it honestly isn't a terrifyingly big deal if you lose your ships. Whereas pretty much everyone else is talking about situations where getting a fleet wiped is a substantial investment lost, as well as a massive drop to income. In the latter situation, not only does fleet merging help you preserve your fleet better than splitting, but it becomes economically viable to defend your fleet.

And "screen real estate"? Please, just listen to yourself.

I see no problem with this statement. How information is displayed on the screen is incredibly important, and with a game like EU4 it's possibly one of the biggest considerations as to why the developers would choose to not allow the player to have an option to control something. Coding an option to toggle auto fleet merge would be trivial. But actually putting the button on the fleet screen so it doesn't look awful is the hard part. Try and fit too much on a screen at once and it becomes jumbled and hard to read/understand at a glance what your options are, and all the new fleet options in AoW are really starting to push that limit.

Exiled ships is a great idea. Will it happen? What do you think?

I'm not sure. On the one hand, I don't think that makes much sense, honestly. Say you have a trade fleet running around, someone declares war and immediately blockades you to 100%. Your trade fleet shouldn't be able to run that blockade in order to get back into port. But on the other hand, fleets that don't get wiped but still lose get to retreat through blockades, so I don't think it would be inconsistent in game terms.

Trade income is high-risk, high-reward. That's the entire point. You make literal boatloads of money, but you have a chance of losing it all if things go wrong in war. I don't know if special mechanics to make it easier to not completely lose your trade fleet is a good idea with that in mind.

 

[jvm504]

I'm not sure. On the one hand, I don't think that makes much sense, honestly. Say you have a trade fleet running around, someone declares war and immediately blockades you to 100%. Your trade fleet shouldn't be able to run that blockade in order to get back into port. But on the other hand, fleets that don't get wiped but still lose get to retreat through blockades, so I don't think it would be inconsistent in game terms.

Trade income is high-risk, high-reward. That's the entire point. You make literal boatloads of money, but you have a chance of losing it all if things go wrong in war. I don't know if special mechanics to make it easier to not completely lose your trade fleet is a good idea with that in mind.

I'm definitely in favor of exiling the trade fleet and letting them go home.

While granted, trade income is supposed to be risky, there's a difference between the risk that trade income can get cut off during a war by the superior navy and the much greater risk where a declaration of war by another nation means that your trade fleet gets nuked without any way to stop it. It also makes the "go home at war" button more or less useless.

Personally I don't think a human attacker in a war really needs more of a benefit. Since they're the one declaring war, already they get the ability to choose when the war happens and will choose a point where their opponent is vulnerable or outright weaker than they are anyway. Giving them a free shot at the defenders fleet really isn't necessary.

 

[hitchens]

I like having trade fleets seperated - I usually group them in units of 10 - maybe 20 at the end game.

In the early and mid game they are 'free scouts' in areas like the med, Baltic and British Isles you can effectively see nearly all the provinces continuously with a bunch of single/small trade ships running around. You can see RR modifiers, and all sorts of other things that don't show on the ledger. By late game this isn't as useful since the # of countries has been whittled down to the point that you can probably know what they are doing anyway.

In colonial areas they form a cloud constantly patrolling to knock down pirates before everything gets settled up.

And of course as noted by others you can get a lot of them back home in case of a war. Light ships are valuable for blockading freeing up heavies to fight and/or escort transports.

The idea that 'small countries should be forced to take their chances' is BS. 6 light ships may not be much for France or Great Britian but can mean the difference between bankruptcy and building improvements if you are playing as a Dutch minor. Loosing those ships in a stack wipe might mean decades of rebuilding but if they are seperated some of them will escape.

Spot on. Sadly it seems many dont read the thread before posting, nor will they read your post before posting.

 

[clockworkBabbag]

Spot on. Sadly it seems many dont read the thread before posting, nor will they read your post before posting.

Apparently the "patrol" button isn't a thing. Using trade fleets for patrolling seems like an unintended exploit.

 

[Immortal88]

Just create a popup window where you're asked if you want to join fleets if you send one to a node you're already protecting. On top of that put two options in the options menu: "Always combine fleets" and "Never combine fleets". I'm gonna be seriously pissed if the option gets dropped entirely because I just can't stand the micromanage-bs that comes with 100+ tradeships.

 

[gagenater]

Apparently the "patrol" button isn't a thing. Using trade fleets for patrolling seems like an unintended exploit.

I will do it with a few heavies if there are in fact actually pirates present (since light ships usually loose to pirates) also in some thinly patrolled areas. It's vital as Russia once you get to the Pacific coast. The area is so large that even with light ships on trade patrol pirates can pop up. Sometimes this is an issue in the Caribbean too especially if you are one of the eearly colonizers and you have surpressed/annexed some of the others who might colonize the area. Anyway that's one of the ways that light ships patrolling in real life promoted trade - by supressing piracy. I see it WAD.

 

[oblio-]

I will do it with a few heavies if there are in fact actually pirates present (since light ships usually loose to pirates) also in some thinly patrolled areas. It's vital as Russia once you get to the Pacific coast. The area is so large that even with light ships on trade patrol pirates can pop up. Sometimes this is an issue in the Caribbean too especially if you are one of the eearly colonizers and you have surpressed/annexed some of the others who might colonize the area. Anyway that's one of the ways that light ships patrolling in real life promoted trade - by supressing piracy. I see it WAD.

Now, honestly, this is the problem? Pirates popping up on the Russian Pacific coast? Surely those Kamchatkan pirates are a true threat to Mother Russia's trade income in the East Siberian trade nodes. All of 1.2 ducats steered west!
If this whole topic isn't splitting hairs, I don't know what is.

If Wiz or any other devs are reading this: you're inconveniencing an unknown number (I'd guess a rather small group) of people slightly and making another unknown number (I'd guess a larger group) majorly happy. I wish all EU4 changes had this effect

 

[gagenater]

Now, honestly, this is the problem? Pirates popping up on the Russian Pacific coast? Surely those Kamchatkan pirates are a true threat to Mother Russia's trade income in the East Siberian trade nodes. All of 1.2 ducats steered west!
If this whole topic isn't splitting hairs, I don't know what is.

If Wiz or any other devs are reading this: you're inconveniencing an unknown number (I'd guess a rather small group) of people slightly and making another unknown number (I'd guess a larger group) majorly happy. I wish all EU4 changes had this effect

That was about pirates - something that isn't really a problem in most games on most settings. and it's not 'just' 1.2 trade steering - it's about blockade maluses on the adjacent provinces, inability to run transports through the area, etc. I don't know about you, but that area is often my sprigboard into China or Japan if I am Russia and it needs to stay pirate clear to work as that.

 

[oblio-]

That was about pirates - something that isn't really a problem in most games on most settings. and it's not 'just' 1.2 trade steering - it's about blockade maluses on the adjacent provinces, inability to run transports through the area, etc. I don't know about you, but that area is often my sprigboard into China or Japan if I am Russia and it needs to stay pirate clear to work as that.

Russia needs no fleet. Also Russia needs no pesky islands!

 

[gagenater]

Russia needs no fleet. Also Russia needs no pesky islands!

I nearly always get a maxed out fleet as Russia by somewhere in the mid game. It often means the difference between long slow grinding victories and lightning quick carpet seige campaigns.

 

[clockworkBabbag]

I will do it with a few heavies if there are in fact actually pirates present (since light ships usually loose to pirates) also in some thinly patrolled areas. It's vital as Russia once you get to the Pacific coast. The area is so large that even with light ships on trade patrol pirates can pop up. Sometimes this is an issue in the Caribbean too especially if you are one of the eearly colonizers and you have surpressed/annexed some of the others who might colonize the area. Anyway that's one of the ways that light ships patrolling in real life promoted trade - by supressing piracy. I see it WAD.

A few things here: Light ships are not actually the ships that conduct trade. They are (and here I'm quoting from the tooltip for protect trade) "protecting your trade interests." Protect trade is already an abstraction of protecting merchant ships from pirates.

Random spawning pirates is not quite the same thing. Rather, that's an abstraction of there being literally no naval military presence in a region for a long period of time, and therefore there's nothing to stop opportunists taking advantage of that. Those aren't just scattered pirates conducting occasional raids on merchant ships, that's actual pirate-controlled waters.

Pirate spawns and protecting trade are related, but they're significantly different enough to justify protect trade not being able to prevent pirate spawns in far-flung areas.

Second: You claim patrolling for pirates is a reason why we still need the option to have un-merged fleets. But the point is there's already a way to maintain a military presence in your waters without protecting trade. Just actually send your fleets out to patrol. The button is right there.

You seem like you're wanting to have your cake and eat it too. I doubt protecting trade is supposed to be the primary way of preventing pirate spawns when there's a button specifically for patrolling stretches of coast, but you're trying to use separate, staggered fleets doing protect trade to duplicate that effect on top of generating income.

 

[MaXimillion]

The fact that automatic trade protection in a node doesn't get rid of pirates in many cases is one of the many reasons why pirates are a terrible mechanic. I really don't see why Paradox left them in for people who don't own WoN, when disabling with that DLC means that they're unlikely to ever get changed in any way, since the game seems to be mostly tested with all DLC's enabled.

 

[hitchens]

Apparently the "patrol" button isn't a thing. Using trade fleets for patrolling seems like an unintended exploit.

How is it an exploit? Its really not.

 

[hitchens]

Now, honestly, this is the problem?

No its not. Read the thread plz.

 

[oblio-]

No its not. Read the thread plz.

I've read the thread, you actually replied to my rhetorical question on the first page.
And right there I told you how you can do the same thing you did in the past without giving the rest of us tons of boring micromanagement.

The "Patrol" button. Use it. Learn to love it

 

[spinoza013]

I've read the thread, you actually replied to my rhetorical question on the first page.
And right there I told you how you can do the same thing you did in the past without giving the rest of us tons of boring micromanagement.

The "Patrol" button. Use it. Learn to love it

Do you get trade power patrolling?

 

[spinoza013]

Do you get trade power patrolling?

that's also a rhetorical question ;p

 

[hitchens]

I've read the thread, you actually replied to my rhetorical question on the first page.

hmy: How dare you?
Agreed to disagree :closedeyes:

 

[oblio-]

Do you get trade power patrolling?

If you read the topic the complaint was that during a war splitting the fleet can save some of your ships, especially if you have a smaller fleet.

This point was dismantled by another poster (countries with small naval force limits don't really get a lot of cash from naval trade...).

Against a human having 2 small fleets won't really do much, don't kid yourselves. Against the AI you can just use 1-2 ships on patrol to trigger a fight which will give you enough time to retreat. The loss of 3-6 trade power will surely be catastrophic for your economy :laugh:

This discussion is akin to the terrain changes in 1.8. Complicated discussion and vehement protest about a entirely minor issue.

that's also a rhetorical question ;p

Don't get me started or I might advance to metaphors or even haikus!

hmy: How dare you?
Agreed to disagree :closedeyes:

In the end you'll agree or disagree with Wiz, not with me. Good luck with that
You're focusing on the wrong problem IMO.