Port trading gameplay is imbalanced compared to others

[visual sleet]

When I first began playing it was doing port trading, shared trade, so resources such as wood, rum, etc. I am now main-time fisherman/whaler, and I still do port trading when I travel down south to sell whale oil. I will often stick around for a day or two to do port trading. Port trading is mainly buying, selling, and travel. Though sometimes one must risk going into middle for better margin, but not always. If you are patient enough you can sell outside of middle with similar rates.

The imbalance stems from just how little loss there is involved with port trading. 99% of losses are repairs to upgrades from all the mileage. You also do not need to be flagged to trade, especially if you have help to overload. You're really only push space bar to dock really.

With fishing, and whaling, you run the risk of aggro and getting chased out of a hotzone where there is many fish or whale by imperial, or pirate nps. This is good intelligence. In trading, travel, outside of the player intelligence with middle, there is very little resistance. Forts, imperials and pirate nps will tack on a couple mins to your travel navigating around them but outside of that there really isn't much else.

For a player who really knows how to navigate the wind is hardly an adversary. There is limited resistance and intelligence involved in the risk management of trading to make it in-line with other play styles. There shoud be more intelligent nps endeavors involved to support anti-trade. This would obviously expand to offer more PvE encounters for players who are outside of trade but still navigating the same waters as well.

[uncut verge]

Have you ever done trading using goods from the market tab? (honest question)

[visual sleet]

Nope not enough you can buy/sell at one time, shared trade has much more freedom

[uncut verge]

Much more freedom, yes, and depending on the margins, could even be more effective than trading with market goods, the problem is that it fluctuates a lot, whilst market goods are always the same, with great margins

[visual sleet]

I agree with you, early on that seems fine, but I am at the point where I have a networth that is many many millions, so that doesn't work when I can goto a port and spend in 1 place a million gold on for example rum, copper, resin

[uncut verge]

It is easier to fill the hold, yes, but you get worse margins and end up spending a whole lot of time sailing , just like you would with regular market goods, unless you decided to buy on one port and sell on the other, in which case, you get even worse margins

[visual sleet]

Theres a port where trading evolves into requiring overstock. Meaning you just stock and sell when rates are high. I am at this point.. where I dont have to do much moving cause I already have 300k units of wood, or copper, or etc sitting somewhere waiting for a sellable rate. This is the point where you can buy something without the need to sell immediately.

[uncut verge]

Most i've ever seen was about 12 diff on coal (copper too, or it may have been 11)

[uncut verge]

I do this aswell, though, not with wood

[visual sleet]

I often sell coal for 35-40, which is a 25 g difference depending on where I buy it from. Rum can do about 9-9.6 difference at times

[uncut verge]

Oh, you are selling on auction, the 12 i mentioned was for selling directly to port

Well, yes, selling on auction is much more profitable, but then you depend on people placing orders

Selling to people you could get even better margins, i got 27-28 on coal. Pretty sure i've sold for more than this, but cannot recall.

[visual sleet]

This is why, I fish up north and whale, then when I come down to sell, I tend to stick around for a day or two to do selling. It is very lucrative but the risk seems misaligned with other gameplay loops.

[uncut verge]

And which would the other loops be, precisely?

[visual sleet]

Combat aligned ones

[uncut verge]

It doesn't seem as if whaling or fishing were even supposed to be a main farming method

[visual sleet]

I switched because its more active, can use larger variety of ships plus also for the production of filling rations

[uncut verge]

Yes, but combat aligned activities seem to support a different side of the economy, not purely gold focused like trading

[visual sleet]

True, but it always feels strange to make all this gold with very little frustration behind it. I guess thats just how they intend things to be.

[uncut verge]

With combat you get guns, tokens, rare items, experience

[visual sleet]

You also use more expensive consumeables in combat. Trading is really just flares and sails.

[uncut verge]

I don't really get to use many consumables against NPS

Maybe if you go after a flagship, but then the rewards heavily outweigh the costs

Even better if you go after legends with a squad

[uncut verge]

Spend almost no consumable, if any, and get multiple fragments and other resources

[visual sleet]

I like running rum rations, i tend to have a lot of rum sitting around thats something I don't mind. Usually if its something I have around cause i buy/sell it keeps me stocked. I do combat sorties in my free time though, when I am not whaling/fishing, and have left to down south to trade, I will often, on a trade route, use my Santi and just fight anything between the A to B, sometimes I do increase the value by a fragment or two. This is if I am in the mood for doing combat rather than just evading nps.

You sorta gotta make trade dangerous yourself I guess but I feel like its missing something in the risk vs reward department.

[uncut verge]

Well, if you are comparing pure trading to combat farming, yes there are less risks, and that's by design, best you could do without making it extremely annoying or even hard is to add more natural hazards, because if you get NPS to spawn along, that already happens and you can simply outrun them, while, if you instead go for making traders possible targets for people focused on PvP (pirates) you break it on a different way instead, because you will just make LH camping permanent (not with the same accuracy/effectiveness as what we saw during the event, but bad nonetheless)

[sacred solar]

OP has no evidence and no point. Thread should be closed

[uncut verge]

Or if you decide to spawn faster NPS along the route, then you are just forcing the trader to waste even more time (already sailing) defeating ships that his own ship wasn't designed to defeat (transport vessels are positively poor for combat, it isn't impossible, but it does take much longer than if you were using a proper combat vessel)

[fiery bronze]

I really don't see the point of make trading harder/ more risky. It is designed to be a risk less way to get resources and if not hyper optimized it is less effective than e.g. shooting imperials in pvp flag. Delivery inside the circle is risky. If a majority of your experience and success comes from doing this during the event you will notice an increased difficulty by now.
Also keep in mind that for a lot of players myself included trading is consider a chore. Same goes for fishing and whaling. If you enjoy it great but many don't.

Tl dr there should be a risk free way for people to grind resources.