Protect trade tooltip - is this a bug?

[ImAdrian]

Ok, so I've already heard that the profit shown by the tooltip for protecting trade is misleading or incorrect, but have a look at this one:

It says that by adding 29.94 trade power to the node, you will "increase" your trade value by -0.59 ducats. And this is not even talking about profit after ship maintenance, it's just the pure trade value. Am I missing something, or is this just a bug? How can adding trade power decrease your trade value??

 

[Ajistair]

This tooltip is worse then not having one at all, never trust it, it isn't accurate. Your home node is probably the best place to have your ships (if you dont have a majority control over it)

 

[Kryndude]

Easiest way is to test each node every month and see which ones gives you the most trade income increase. It's usually your home node. It's been years since I've learned the mechanics so I don't exactly remember if there's any real penalty to trade protecting a node with majority control or it's just because it's less trade power increase percentage-wise, but if you have over 50% control you might want to test the adjacent nodes too.

 

[Cancerofthehead]

There is no penalty to adding more ships, just diminishing returns (ie 10/100 is more than 10/110).

Generally you want to get to 75-80% control before moving downstream, but there can be some exceptions.

Also, since your flag ship should have +1 trade power per ship in fleet on it, your ships are better in one giant stack so it can be more questionable when to split them.

 

[EllisDee]

The tooltip perfectly sums up the way the trade system itself works: it's something incredibly simple made overly complicated by the way the game communicates it to the player.

 

[PhoenixG]

What I think what happens is in that month an AI increased his trade power in that node so that your trade income decreased. The 9.39 ducat is calculate from previous month while the 8.80 ducat is calculated in real time.

 

[Kryndude]

The tooltip perfectly sums up the way the trade system itself works: it's something incredibly simple made overly complicated by the way the game communicates it to the player.

Could you explain how this is even remotely accurate? It makes no sense to me at all.

 

[Tempscire]

Could you explain how this is even remotely accurate? It makes no sense to me at all.

View attachment 550778

I can explain both cases to you:
(i) The tooltip says that the trade value decreases if you control a large share of a node and some nations which have trade power there do not collect there.
In your case in the Channel you have a share of 81% but check if some of the nations having TP there do not collect, if so the actual share of the trade value you get is higher than 81%, if no other nation collected it would be 100% for example. The tooltip now compares two values, your current trade income 156.08 which is:
trade node value * trade value share * trade efficiency,
and the trade income with the added light ships:
trade node value * trade power share with ships * trade efficiency.
Now if enough of the trade is not collected your actual trade value share can be higher than the trade power share you have even with the light ships added. This is probably the case in your example but to be sure one needs more information, in particular the trade node interface of the Channel.

(ii) The calculation for nodes in which you steer is actually very strange. It does not tell you the increase in trade income you get globally but it tries to calculate the trade value you steer in the node which is just
trade node value * trade power share, (does not include trade steering!)
but it does so wrongly. I don't know why but it does not take into account province trade power and transfers from traders downstream but only merchant TP and ship TP.(Might be smth. wrong in the code). So it calculates the share of merchant and ship TP you have before and after the added ships and calculates the quotient and multiplies it with your current steered value to get the new value. This leads to the increased value shown being extremely inflated if you have a decent amount of province TP in the node or a downstream node.
Therefore I would never trust the tooltip on nodes where you do not collect!

In nodes where you do collect the tooltip is, besides the point explained in (i) which I am also unsure how to improve on, as far as I know correct.

 

[PogoMarimo]

The short answer is never, ever trust the tooltip. Just ignore it. Read how the trade system works in the wiki, then use your intuitition to test the most likely useful nodes each month to see the ACTUAL income change.

It's usually going to be your home node, or a node with a Transfer Trade Power Merchant upstream to your home node that's very wealthy. The more "steps" away the Protect Trade mission is, the more grimy hands will touch the wealth that you transfered upstream. Unless you control the entire trade route from a distant node to your home port, you do not want to Protect Trade too far from home.

Privateering tends to be more accurate, since they "confusing" factors don't impact it as much, but I would use the same strategy for privateering--except don't pirate your home node unless you are just getting dunked on in terms of trade power.

 

[Kryndude]

I can explain both cases to you:
(i) The tooltip says that the trade value decreases if you control a large share of a node and some nations which have trade power there do not collect there.
In your case in the Channel you have a share of 81% but check if some of the nations having TP there do not collect, if so the actual share of the trade value you get is higher than 81%, if no other nation collected it would be 100% for example. The tooltip now compares two values, your current trade income 156.08 which is:
trade node value * trade value share * trade efficiency,
and the trade income with the added light ships:
trade node value * trade power share with ships * trade efficiency.
Now if enough of the trade is not collected your actual trade value share can be higher than the trade power share you have even with the light ships added. This is probably the case in your example but to be sure one needs more information, in particular the trade node interface of the Channel.

(ii) The calculation for nodes in which you steer is actually very strange. It does not tell you the increase in trade income you get globally but it tries to calculate the trade value you steer in the node which is just
trade node value * trade power share, (does not include trade steering!)
but it does so wrongly. I don't know why but it does not take into account province trade power and transfers from traders downstream but only merchant TP and ship TP.(Might be smth. wrong in the code). So it calculates the share of merchant and ship TP you have before and after the added ships and calculates the quotient and multiplies it with your current steered value to get the new value. This leads to the increased value shown being extremely inflated if you have a decent amount of province TP in the node or a downstream node.
Therefore I would never trust the tooltip on nodes where you do not collect!

In nodes where you do collect the tooltip is, besides the point explained in (i) which I am also unsure how to improve on, as far as I know correct.

Wow, that perfectly explains it. Thank you so much, and yes at the time I believe Friesland was not collecting from the Channel. How did you get to know this? This is the first time I've seen a proper explanation of the protect trade interface.