With 3.0 and so many script changes on the horizon, i've decided to shelve writing stuff that I'd only have to edit later and am looking at other stuff. It turns out it's incredibly easy to kitbash meshes together with no real downsides (not 100% sure on how this will go with draw-calls, but for what I have in mind, it wont matter). There are even cargo assets, that if you know what you're doing, you can clip on to a ship in like 10 seconds flat to make shiptype-specific cargo vessels.
(textures would need work to fit the various ship types - eg via a custom "trader" shipset that includes everything and is called by script - lithoids probably being the hardest to fit them to, probably just use the default transport gfx)
And this is more rambling than my usual posts but this has got me thinking. What could a scalable galactic trade system look like?
But.. what about a mod that:
It boils down to
Seriously considering making this for 3.0 as I like thought of actual economic goals (rather than just a military expansion focus). Any thoughts?
(textures would need work to fit the various ship types - eg via a custom "trader" shipset that includes everything and is called by script - lithoids probably being the hardest to fit them to, probably just use the default transport gfx)
And this is more rambling than my usual posts but this has got me thinking. What could a scalable galactic trade system look like?
Yes, we have internal trade, and we have bilateral/multilateral(federal) trade deals, but there isn't really a galactic trade network per se.
I've seen a lot of threads about "extra national trade lanes" (which tend to ignore that other empires would be making trade lanes through your stuff too),
And the old Living systems mod & a few others that built on it by spawning freighters that reward you with resources.
These all suffer from either mechanical issues, scalability issues (a cargo ship delivering 500 minerals or alloys early game is OP - doing it late game is just a waste of CPU cycles).
But.. what about a mod that:
This sounds like a good way to expand trade and potentially even megacorps by
- Spawns cargo ships equal the number of non-gestalt/non-FP trade hubs
in the galaxy (and corresponding to the ship type of that station - so a plantoid cargo ship spawns from a trade hub on a plantoid starbase - easy to do in script)
- This keeps a solid cap on the max number of these ships in the game as there aren't that many hubs in GC space at once.
- These cargo ships are run by an "AI nation" formed out of a GC resolution - the Galactic Trade Alliance
- Open/closed borders are known to be an issue with path-recalculation. A "GTA" Nation can ignore open/closed borders, letting freighters move freely between any GC signatories Non GC-signatories could have a policy to allow/block/eat(lol) to modify scripts for orders.
- These cargo ships provide planet buffs rather than offer resources, letting them scale better over time, rather than offering flat values.
- The general flow would be
- Ship find colonised world.
- Pick any resource the planet generates in surplus, or fall back and pick something linked to its specialisation type (e.g. Alloys if its a forge world).
- Pick a destination world, get its specialisation, cross-reference from a database what buffs could be used
- (e.g. alloys > Colony = "Bought aftermarket colonial equipment" planet buff +50% build speed for 60 days.
- alloys > mining world = "Bought new mining machinery" + miner worker output +25% 90 days.
- etc. Can generate a large table of these of Y resource to X planet specialisation types.
- Travel to world, "sell cargo" wait two weeks,
- find another world, "buy cargo" (increases TV for that world for a short time), repeat script.
- All freighter movement handled via script, I've spent the day reading over the enigmatic cache events (the enigmatic cache literally just flies from random world to world, waiting a bit and moving on, which is precisely what a freighter would do too), and it's surprisingly easy to write up some clever logic to pick planets that are close, or far, with minimal performance hit, or even avoid ones at war, or go for more populated worlds for "passenger runs", increasing pop immigration pull.
- Have other mechanics in my notes for this
- Different ship types
- Tankers/freighters (only gives resource/construction/terraforming related buffs) - cargo displayed en-route via a scripted-loc tooltip on-hover over ship.
- Diplomatic ships/passenger liners (only gives pop growth/xenophilia/unity/influence buffs) -
- tourist worlds could have a high weight for passenger liners in the ship logic script, making them massive pulls for immigration, or each ship that arrives could buff POP trade value produced (so you could run a profitable resort world),
- Slave ships that will auto-buy slave pops off the slave market, take them to slaver empires and just dump them there, if a slave has been up for sale for too long.
- Gestalts can also trigger a policy to receive these, if biological, to eat the pop.
- Bio-trophy pleasureliners (yes, really) for RSes to spawn in their space, to increase bio-trophy growth.
- (depending on how pop-migration works in 3.0 this could even enable it for RSes if it isnt already on, for biotrophies, letting them move between sanctuaries if overcrowded).
- Syndicate ships (hunt the other freighter types for profit, loiter in systems with CS branch offices to passively increase crime on worlds in that system)
- If freighters deliver the same buff to the same world, its buff is doubled, and its time is refreshed, most buff times would last 90-180 days.
- MCs lobbying the GC to pass a resolution that awards them 50 EC (or, because we have more script power in 3.0, EC = 1% Month income) any time a trade ship performs a trade in GC space, but non-MCs pay a TV/MC upkeep cost if this is passed, making megacorps incredibly fat off trade fees.
- If the Galactic Imperium is founded, the GTA is automatically re-branded as the ITA (Imperial Trade Authority) and is re-sprayed red, rather than GC-blue.
- Barbaric despoilers and crime syndicates can shoot down trade ships for goodies. either
- directly, letting you basically run piracy operations of your own [though the GTA wont become hostile it will avoid your space for 10 years] (and triggering galactic sanctions for 10 years + cheesing off the local space's owner if they're a GC member and you're killing freighters in their space {it isn't possible to only make 1 ship out of a whole empire hostile, as in CK3 with raiding parties, sadly. Or at least I've not found a way, yet - you need the indirect route below using a vassal nation for this})
- or indirectly by forming a "syndicate" vassal that will spawn "syndicate" ships (corvettes/DDs only) that prowl the galaxy hunting down freighters, crediting you the rewards. They'll be treated as pirates by everyone for 60 days after killing a freighter. If anyone discovers you finance them, big opinion hit.
letting them run their own freighter operations, on top of the GTA,
or lobby to become a GTA shareholder/controller and reap benefits - imagine corps going to war over a CB for a "10% stake in the GTA" that another corp had won from the GC (randomly assigned initially - or given out by the emperor [essentially Emp triggers a battle royale for the assenting MCs, whomever wins becomes the new ITA majority shareholder]) with every 10% giving you larger share of EC from each GTA trade in the galaxy - a seriously large amount of money).
It boils down to
- Core stuff is quick to do (mostly ripping off how the enigmatic cache works + extra stuff on top)
- A GC resolution to trigger the GTA nation
- 4 small events needed to grab an idle ship + find a destination, assign a cargo, apply planet buff and clear cargo, repeat.
- A grid of planet buffs based on source cargo + destination world specialisation.
- Housekeeping events (respawning ships if they blow up, re-routing freighters if a world is destroyed, an empire is under extra-dimensional invasion, or if a star-system explodes - y'know usual stuff).
- Bonus stuff (point 5 above)
Seriously considering making this for 3.0 as I like thought of actual economic goals (rather than just a military expansion focus). Any thoughts?
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