Vicky's lack of transport costs

[TheFlemishDuck]

It is something that has bothered me quite some time ,and it leads me to make a suggestion on it for the Dev's.

In Vicky ,say you have a glass factory in Beieren ,now wether the coal as input for this factory comes from for ex the Ruhr area ,or maybe imported from Korea ,makes no difference for that individual factory.

Neither does importing any good cost anything in transport costs.One can empty every grain RGO of Germany ,thus having to import all food ,but the costs of importing this ,no'r the volume of transport means nessecary for transporting such an enourmous amount of goods is represented ,well except convoy's for colonies.

To think that in this time period a merchant marine was a sign of economical strength ,many country's made nice profit's by transporting goods for other country's that didn't have the ships for it ,and upto the end of the 18th century many low value goods just wouldn't have been transported by the fact that there wasn't enough transport capacity to move it all.

Hence my suggestion:

Change the transportation screen to make it a "Merchant marine" screen ,or maybe just "Merchants" ,with the following alterations:

-Ships would not only be needed to transport goods from colony to homeland ,but also when importing something from the world market.

-Ships in the merchant screen would costs an x amount of daily upkeep

-Having a lack of ships by the volume of what you trade would mean that goods can still arive however with a increased cost in ship upkeep.For ex. you have 50 ships running ,but need is 75 ,then there are a theoretical 25 ships in the merchant marine screen that cost for ex double of owned ships in upkeep ,or otherwise said the upkeep for ships rises a lot more for the period that you import with a lack of owned ships

-Having a surplus in ships would mean that this surplus bring's you income by as long as other country's lack ships while importing goods ,If other country's do not lack ships then the surplus ships don't bring income still have their cost in upkeep ,the income surplus ships bring in in comparison to upkeep is afcourse larger and is theoreticly paid by the the country that makes use of the ships.

-Merchant ships have an upkeep cost and transport volume depending on technoligy ,in 1840 for ex. one may need 2 ships to trade 1 unit of any tradable good while in 1900 1 Ship might carry 2 unit's of any good.Higher technoligy merchants also maybe cost a bit less in upkeep and ship surplus would make much more income because of larger carrying space.

-Possibly ,ships should also just cost more to aqquire.

-If you lack ships for transport and excess ships of other country's don't exist ,then the good might not be transported (maybe depending on value of good ,higher priced is first transported)

-If there is an excess of ships compared to total total transport need for WM then nations with ship excess and lowest naval tech sees there profit cut first.

Afcourse bear with me this is just a suggestion.Personally i find the colony transport screen for the moment fairly useless apart from importing goods from colonies ,you just add some ships and you don't have to touch it for decades neither does it cost anything in upkeep.strange also that this sort of transport is represented in game but transport for trade in general isn't.Like i said IMo in the 19thc century having a merchant marine for a major country was quite important ,and it often provided a sizeable part of the nations income.

And i would think that changing it to this wouldn't be even al that hard.It's mainly adding a upkeep cost for the ships ,adding code to calculate the trading volume in the WM and to calculate the amount of trade ships available (and possibly let profit of excess ships be depending on this ratio) ,then add code to increase the cost of ship upkeep when lacking ships also to the ratio of trade on WM/ships available.

One would not have to link the increase cost one nation pays for lack of transport and what an other earns on excess ships ,who transports goods for an other does not matter ,upkeep for lack of ships rises depending one the ratio "trade volume on WM/total ships available" and income for excess ships would be determined by this same variable.Total ships availabe is calculated accoring to amount of actual trade volume by tech and numbers of ships for each country. (first calculate the actual excess transport capacity of a nation and then add that transport capacity for each country) So making use of abstractions would probably make it a lot easier to implement.even graphical not a lot would have to change ,maybe a budget representation for what ships cost or earn individual in the ship screen and a total cost in the budget screen.

Personally i think it would be a very worthwhile addition ,but can be debated ,input on this suggestion is favoured.

 

[november]

I like it. Plus it would add strategic complexity to the naval game. After all, counties were obsessed with their navies during this period, and with good reason.

 

[TheFlemishDuck]

I like it. Plus it would add strategic complexity to the naval game. After all, counties were obsessed with their navies during this period, and with good reason.

Yeah ,and blockade's could be more powerfull as a country would loose it's acces to the WM ,and maybe even loose ship's captured by blockaders.

I was thinking ,the volume of tarrifs one can make effectivly represents also the amount of pop demanded goods imported from the WM.Then it means the game already makes the calculation and knows by variable's wich goods get imported and in what volume. (the game needs such calculations to calculate tarrifs one would think) Thus the volume of goods imported for pop needs could also be added to the total transport needs ,and more importantly should there be less trasnport capacity compared to transport need then the lowest value of pop demanded goods wouldn't be imported neither ,meaning:

- a country could lack a lot of pop needed goods by the fact of to few transport capacity overall in the world to import goods ,thus increased millitancy for the pops ,increasing the importance of RGO's
- a country blocakded would not only be roobed of the possibilety to buy and sell on the WM but also would lack all the pop needs that otherwise get imported ,wich could mean a high increase in millitancy
- A country would defacto pay transport costs for all pop needs imported ,meaning a high increase in costs for country's with high poppulation and few production of specific goods to alleviate pop needs.

I would say that this then would also increase the importance of any RGO in a country ,and would make it harder for most country's to pull many pops from whatever RGO to work in factory's ,as for ex. any grain less produced locally than needed by pops would mean an increase in transport need and thus a increase in transport costs ,especially when lacking ships.

And then i would say that's logical ,and it would make a hell of a lot more difference for German for ex in the 1914 scenario to be blocaded under these circumstances than it does now.

Besides the evolution of such a merchant marine could be steered by strategicly placing clipper factory's at start. (in a way it's already pretty good) ,because the majors would need a lot more ships they would wait a lot longer for exporting selling theirs ,thus the country's that get clipepr factory's at start are favoured in the trade compretition from start ,country's that are landlocked wil always pay high costs as they can not have ships.Country's with good naval tech would also be favoured ,like France or UK.

 

[OHgamer]

But how do you deal with countries like Switzerland that are landlocked but still developed a solid industrial economy in the 19th C? Merchant Marines are nice, but not all countries that industrialized had them, and it wasn't vital to have them to successfully industrialize, as the Swiss proved.

 

[TheFlemishDuck]

But how do you deal with countries like Switzerland that are landlocked but still developed a solid industrial economy in the 19th C? Merchant Marines are nice, but not all countries that industrialized had them, and it wasn't vital to have them to successfully industrialize, as the Swiss proved.

Simple ,landlocked means no merchant marine ,thus increased cost for all import transportation.Everything that is imported needs to be transported too anyway ,possibly by land or by sea.

But it shouldn't be vital for industrialization neither ,just an increased cost ,Switzerland could still industrialize but there would be limits and extra costs for those goods they import.

Some country's would be able to profit from an large merchant marine and others would simply have to pay more because of the lack of merchant marine ,in the end however even with increased costs for goods it doesn't mean that a factory using these goods for production wouldn't be able to make more money out of it than the costs it pays for raw materials + transport cost.

 

[King]

mmm there is one flaw with this as far as I can tell, the effect of railways. Railways made the transportation of goods a lot cheaper. So if Prussia was importing goods from Austria via Rail how would Blockading Prussia coast effect that?

 

[TheFlemishDuck]

mmm there is one flaw with this as far as I can tell, the effect of railways. Railways made the transportation of goods a lot cheaper. So if Prussia was importing goods from Austria via Rail how would Blockading Prussia coast effect that?

Maybe you could just make an extra factor "land transportation" calculated on factor's like average infrastructure in country ,wich could make and costs of transportation lower and effects of blocades to ,maybe you could give country's a constant neighbour value depending on where it's placed to give an extra simplifided value to add to land transport cost or possibilety ,like UK as island would have no neighbour value and Switzerland for ex. a total one ,thus given a land transport cost that is probably cheaper and not-blockadable.

But then you make the work only bigger ,and then afcourse what happens if Switzerland goes to war with all it's neighbours?

While this might not be perfect i must note that the situation as it is is much worse ,tottaly discarding goods transportation ,making blockade's useless as it is anyway.
As an simplification i think my idea holds a lot of merrit ,though i won't state that it's perfect or that there is no room for improvement on the idea ,hence the discussion.

 

[Gwalcmai]

Let's see. Changes to the interface, changes to the code in several places, values to be thoroughly tested and balanced... I don't think this proposal has that good a chance of making it into the game.

Not to say that a solution to include transportation costs would not be welcomed. But maybe something simpler, like "pay 5% extra on everything bought from the WM, 10% if you're landlocked, [5+(5*proportion of blockaded coast)]" if at war. Values picked out of thin air, criticise at will.

As for the owning a proper merchant marine or not, and while figuring out a way to have that represented in the game would be cool, maybe the actual effect of having a merchant marine was not as big as all that. Theory has it that merchants will undercut each other for market share, so the operation is usually not that profitable anyway.

Edit: Although it could be argued that, if you don't factor in distances, trying to include transportation costs is a bit silly.

 

[Varyar]

I think it's a good idea to include transportation costs, but is it necessary to include it as a 'player interaction' feature? I'd be content if there was simply an increase in cost based on distance by sea, or land.

 

[Gwalcmai]

I think it's a good idea to include transportation costs, but is it necessary to include it as a 'player interaction' feature? I'd be content if there was simply an increase in cost based on distance by sea, or land.

That's the problem, isn't it? How do you calculate distances when you have no way of knowing where the products came from? (i.e., when you buy coal from the market, you can know that Germany and Korea are selling, but there's not way to know who you bought from.)

 

[TheFlemishDuck]

That's the problem, isn't it? How do you calculate distances when you have no way of knowing where the products came from? (i.e., when you buy coal from the market, you can know that Germany and Korea are selling, but there's not way to know who you bought from.)

Yes ,i thought about this problem to ,but then i thought this proposition presented a relativly good abstraction.One could say that for the total costs of transport ,part of it would be goods that came from long distance and part of it would have come from short distance ,and the actual cost is just a general average of this.Knowing that most RGO goods have a general area of production this wouldn't be that hard to justify ,a cotton or tea would usually come from Asia and tobacco usually from America.

But i agree thought that ,with extended considerations this would be a lot of work ,however i thought that as it was innitially as i proposed it was a relativly good abstraction with not to many work.
Take into account that many of the variable nessecary to calculate this transport costs are already in game by because they are used for the current world market as it is ,so most variable's needed could possibly be inherited from those already existing ,meaning there wouldn't be a need for much extra periodical calculations. (wich takes most of performance)

I mean ,i know something about programming ,i work in the IT sector,im not experienced in it but i know the basics of programming and it' structuring ,so i think i have a fairluy good thought of what an addition of code means in the general performance of the program and the amount of labour.

If i make the consideration ,i would say that most actual work would lay in ballancing ,not in actually writing the code for the functionality ,and then i would say that the community could do the balancing.

 

[Gwalcmai]

But you're not considering other costs and barriers to change. There is, for example, the rather large barrier of the interface. You seemed to propose it be changed, which would probably be rather nasty (compared to changing the interface for some Windows application, for example). Then, that change would probably require text changes. But if Paradox changes the text in a patch (assuming it's not a trivial change like correcting the spelling) then the localised versions of the game would need to be changed as well.

And as for the coding required... Off the top of my head, you have to change the way the amount of ships required is calculated. This probably means also tampering with the code for interacting with the world market, as you would be needing to know how much is being bought. This could also factor in technology to determine the amount each ship is supposed to carry (this could finally make some sense of the difference in having clippers or steamers on the transport pool. ). Now you know how many ships are needed. The check for how many ships there are should be trivial, as the game already does something of the sort for the colonial transport. But the action to be taken when you are short requires a change, as you should still be able to transport things, for an added price. Now you have to make all those changes matter, so you have to include code to calculate the upkeep of the merchant marine. Which requires getting the part that handles the colonial shipping and the part that calculates the budget to interact. And you have to include the upkeep in the budget, adding the extra money for leasing ships from abroad and deducting the income from lending ships to other countries (you could probably get away with not changing the budget screen by including the upkeep of the merchant marine in the "Imports" heading).

And then you have everyone complaining that you just included a problem in the game, because you didn't calculate how much shipping the other coutries require and are instead rewarding massive merchant marines that sit idly in port because no one needs that much shipping capacity, but the owner is still being paid for having more than he/she needs.

 

[TheFlemishDuck]

And as for the coding required... Off the top of my head, you have to change the way the amount of ships required is calculated. This probably means also tampering with the code for interacting with the world market, as you would be needing to know how much is being bought.

I would say that the game knows already how much goods are traded on the world market and even how much are imported by pops ,In Vicky prices are calculated on demand and availabilety and that in itself represents amount of goods trated ,wanted and available.So these value's are stored in variable's on a periodic bases and thus can also be used for other periodical calculations.Same goes for Pop imports from WM as tarrifs are a representation of goods imported from WM ,so under the hood of the game there are already variable's used to calculate worth of tarrifs.

. This could also factor in technology to determine the amount each ship is supposed to carry

As a simple abstraction i would say ship space would be depending on type and naval tech or possibly also financial tech.Again variable's are already present ,the game knows what tech each specific country has ,but one could also create a variable "merchant effeciancy" and add bonusses to this value when reseaching specific techs ,like +10% effeciancy bonus when researched every 5th naval tech.Also the game knows what ships are in the transportation screen and their numbers.

But the action to be taken when you are short requires a change, as you should still be able to transport things, for an added price.

Not if the total world transport capacity is insufficiant and the good isn't valuable enough i would propose ,but probably this would be better in an abstraction.But the added price would just be added to total transport cost ,not to it's own value ,because the computer knows in that screen how much ships you are lacking (it uses it to calculate effeciancy) it's not that hard to add for every ship lacking a extra cost to the total transport cost wich should be only represented in one value.

Now you have to make all those changes matter, so you have to include code to calculate the upkeep of the merchant marine. Which requires getting the part that handles the colonial shipping and the part that calculates the budget to interact. And you have to include the upkeep in the budget, adding the extra money for leasing ships from abroad and deducting the income from lending ships to other countries (you could probably get away with not changing the budget screen by including the upkeep of the merchant marine in the "Imports" heading).

And then i thought about that "getting away with ... " option to.

Or otherwise just add a value near the import/export value's ,a value that could be positive or negative.It's not that big graphicly ,it's more in code because of the calculations needed ,but most of the variable's needed to calculate the transport cost or income are already represented in game as i mentioned.And on the other hand the transportation screen is fairly irrelevant as it is.

 

[unmerged(30240)]

An intersting idea.

For the USA, Maine will become very important since 1/4 US ships were based there during the 19th century.


I have a few other questions:

1) What about private industry? How will they effect the merchant marines?

2) How about stowage? Part of crime fighting?

3) How about whaling fleets early in the game? New resource?

 

[unmerged(16488)]

Zounds of coding - unless tou take the extreme simplification.

Problem is : the game does not track specific stuff. Some coal is pruduced in coutry X, some is used there, some other is sold to the WM. And Country Y buys some coal from the WM. For cost transports, you should indeed code a brand new trade system like HoI2 does. It would require major interface changes(graphics, texts to be translated, & so on). Plus it works with Hoi2 that has limited number of countries & only 6 exchangeable resources. Plus you'd have to program an AI that manages all that.....

And then you count the transports, then apply a price policy depending on shipping distance, ship rarity, infrastructure, presence of mountains, age of the coder.....

Me says : Vicky 2 proposal.

 

[TheFlemishDuck]

1) What about private industry? How will they effect the merchant marines?

Well if private industry's effectivly create production then that produce will be able to be transported to ,raising trade volume.

2) How about stowage? Part of crime fighting?

Irrelevant id say ,to specific for something that is an abstraction.Vicky has railroads but therefore no special considerations for train robbery's neither hasn't it?

3) How about whaling fleets early in the game? New resource?

Nah ,im not going to say that it didn't exist back then but probably to insignificant and otherwise to hard IMO to specificly translate ingame.
And one can note that the abstraction "fish" as resource in Vicky represents all marine life catched and used for consumption ,so whale's is simply a part of fish ,but one could write events for certain fish RGO's historicly near to important whale area's that significantly increase the effeciancy of that Fish RGO ,to represent the better valued whale.Yes ships are needed to catch whale but the same aplies for fish ,so one dedecuts that fishing boats are already theoreticly a part of the fish RGO.

 

[TheFlemishDuck]

Problem is : the game does not track specific stuff

Actually to some point it does.In the convoy screen you can see that the game tracks wich goods are transported back home from wich port.It does this however on state colony bases and not provincial ,wich is probably even better.Who knows to wich level the underlying code used for this tracker can be used.

Even then ,the game knows what amount a specific country exports (code in WM) ,so as abstraction you could give each country a region code and then calculate eachother's distance by region ,and only by those goods first if it's exported by a country with the closes region code ,also giivng a price multiplyer for region distance.you could make the world only 6 regions (it's continents) and it would still make a good enough base for relative goods distance tracking.Effectivly the code would see first if there was enough of a good in it's continent and buy that first at the lowest distance multiplyer ,and when in the region that good would be lacking it would get it of an other continent ,wich would mean a multiplyer depening on continent distance.Though if you are a country with high merchant effeciancy (by tech) you could get first option on the goods in youre region.

Some coal is pruduced in coutry X, some is used there, some other is sold to the WM. And Country Y buys some coal from the WM. For cost transports, you should indeed code a brand new trade system like HoI2 does.

What is bought or sold on the WM mainly makes the volume of merchant trade ,here the game already has hoards of code to calculate various stuff ,the WM code knows what each country sell's or buys ,it does not take into account from who it buys or at what distance in the WM screen but that at all is not nessecary ,the WM screen should perfectly stay the same as it is ,all calculations for transport are made outside the WM screen.And yet with the abstraction i proposed youll know that when you import x amuont of goods ,there will be a transport cost attached that will calculate itself on the transport screen according to settings of the WM.

More simple but and still effective trade systems exist before HOI2 ,like the trade system in EUII wich is somewhat similar to mine.You don't need all that diplomatic stuff like in HOI2 at all.

It would require major interface changes(graphics, texts to be translated, & so on).

Not so Major IMO ,it's just changing one ledger ,most of the work is under the hood and in betatesting.That said when we get patches most of the time it's because we found those specific bugs and the effect is that often the devs have to make code or even graphical changes ,id say a whole patch is more work than implementing this.

And then you count the transports, then apply a price policy depending on shipping distance, ship rarity, infrastructure, presence of mountains, age of the coder.....

Counting transports code is already there.Price policy on distance can be a fairly simple abstraction ,price policy on ship amount is quite easy to ,infrastructure can be an easy abstraction to (ega land transport effeciancy or naval effeciancy) Presence of mountains is way to specific for an abstraction anyway ,who cares ,and coders improve with age ,it's like fine wine.

 

[unmerged(45852)]

The idea seems like it would create micromanagement nightmares.

What could be a lot better is to make navies important by limiting access to the world market if you are in a war and partially blockaded. For example, you drop lower on the buy list, or you have to pay inflated prices.

 

[unmerged(45456)]

I while ago I was thinking about ways to better model the economic system of the time period and came up with the following idea (that I think avoids a lot of micromanagement).

Basically instead of having just a WM one would also have a domestic market (i.e. one that consisted the production of the ones states), a colonial market (ones colonies), a "continental" market (i.e. europe, n.america, e. asia) and finally a WM. Goods would be sold into the various markets at a certain price and bought off at a higher price, which would model the cost of transportation as well as the profits of the merchants (and as tech/infra increased this would go down). The "sellers" (i.e. Factories and RGOs) would sell to whichever market offered the best price (which would flucuate based on demand). In the early game transport costs would be so high that the domestic market would be the primary source for goods, but later as transport costs decreased so would imports...possible causing economic troubles at home). Tariffs and trade agreements would also be easily fit into this system.

Not like Vic 2 is likely, but one can dream...

 

[unmerged(30240)]

The idea seems like it would create micromanagement nightmares.

What could be a lot better is to make navies important by limiting access to the world market if you are in a war and partially blockaded. For example, you drop lower on the buy list, or you have to pay inflated prices.

I second; hence my previous post.