Efficient use of trade fleets

[JQLibet]

My apologies if I'm missing this, but I'm trying to figure out the most efficient way to allocate my light ships to protect trade. Should I just throw everything I have at one trade node? Is there some sort of maximum where additional trade ships don't return any additional value? Or should I split them equally among each?

More importantly, is there any way to tell besides trial and error?

 

[Cossack8559]

Would like to know the details to this as well, at the moment i just split my light ships i start with in half and send them on their way, no idea if i only need a certain number or if more = more etc.

 

[Zarine]

Trade ship add to you trade power.
The part of the trade you are affecting in a node is (your trade power / total trade power in the node).

Now, let say you have 0 trade power in a node and there is 100 trade power there.

You start, you have 0%
You add for 50 trade power of ship, you now get 33% of the trade (50 / 150). This is an increase of 33%
You add another 50 trade power of ship, you now get 50% of the trade (100 / 200). This is an increase of 17%
You add another 50, you now get 60% of the trade (150 / 250). This is an increase of 10%
You add another 50, you now get 66% of the trade (200 / 300). This is an increase of 6%

As you can see, the more power you have, the harder it is to improve it by adding power.

Now it's hard to say when to stop putting in a node and start in another one.
Trial and error is the easiest way... another way is just to split as you think fit. Do you really need that extra 0.1 ducats per month?

 

[smellymummy]

spreading them out seems to work out well for forwarding trade to the node you are collecting in, all the while keeping a big fleet in your capital node if you need the boost in power, for example portugal in sevilla node

so far trial and error seems to be the best way to figure things out tbh