Selling ships to other players

Neptune's Pride Feature Requests
1

I know that in a formal alliance game, players can give ships and carriers to other players be sending a carrier to a formal ally, and the game takes care of the rest.

What about making this possible for players who aren’t allies, or even in games that don’t have formal alliances enabled? Say, through a new carrier command?

Players could make deals where they exchange a certain number of ships for a tech level or money, and ships become one more resource to be traded.

One issue I see already is that a player could look at an “enemy” carrier coming to his borders and wonder: "Hmm, is that the promised arms shipment, or is that my “trading” partner come to betray my trust?

Perhaps if a carrier is scheduled to change ownership on its next stop changes colors as soon as it departs the previous destination? I don’t know how hard this will be to implement, but it could be useful for the new owner, too, since he/she can add waypoints to his new carrier’s itinerary before it arrives, or immediately send the empty carrier back, or whatever.

2

The way this game currenly works is that
the destination star could be captured by an enemy before the carrier from your ( formal or non-formal ) ally arrives.
In this case the ally’s carrier will engage combat at the destination star, unless your ally is already formally allied with the new owner of this destination star which you just lost.

Each star is only controlled by one owner. Each carrier is only controlled by one owner. There is never any mingling of different flagged carriers at different flagged stars. Combat occurs when there is a difference of ownership.

In a formal alliance, carriers change ownership when allied carriers arrive at a different flagged allied star.

is your feature request somehow allowing carriers to have a different owner at your own stars ? This could potentially add a layer of possible confusion ? At this point in time, allied carriers are not allowed to visit formally allied stars, because the carriers will change ownership at the different flagged star.

As it is now, when games have more than 8 players, some players are already having a little confusion over colors.

I doubt that Jay would implement this, although I think it can be done with more code. It would be more realistic, since foreign navies often make friendly port visits in real life, even sailing in formations together.

But in this game, it could be confusing when you allow your allies running rampant across your empire. Who controls the new star when allies make a joint attack on an enemy star ? This is already a challenging code situation that Jay resolved in a simple way. Read The Triton Codex / HELP / Combat / more than 2 players .

The computer does not read your mind, and there can be a lot of variations and nuance in real life political relationships. Jay would need to write code for all the variations that come with this feature request.

3

Hmm. you raise some good points. I didn’t intend to imply that there could be a carrier belonging to one player over a star belonging to another, I meant to say that the owner flag for the carrier would change as soon as it departs, when it’s no longer at the former owner’s star, but perhaps from the code’s point of view it doesn’t “leave the star” until it arrives at it’s destination? No, that doesn’t make sense with already observed behavior… If only I knew the code better!

Anyway, moving onto the scenario you proposed, that makes for an interesting quandary. Perhaps two “flag checks” should be implemented, if this feature does make it into the game. One when the carrier departs for the ally, (I don’t know how that should be done, I’m under the impression carriers execute commands upon arrival.) and another when it arrives.

If the new owner is a “friend” (Something that only happens in formal alliance games anyway, and even then, a formal ally wouldn’t be frightened by a friendly ship approaching his star) then the carrier changes flag again to match the current owner, using current mechanics.

If the new owner isn’t a friend, then combat occurs as normal. Since the ship now belongs to the old owner, the carrier would act like any other carrier he could send, albiet coming from an unexpected angle, and if the purchased ships win, then the star reverts to the old owner, and the carrier parks there like normal.

Another problem I thought about depends on more than I know about the carrier code in the game. If we do add this “send to” command, what happens to the rest of the commands on the carrier’s list? What happens if the list is looped? Do we add checks and functions that will “clean up” the list so a fresh list is delivered to the recipient?

Perhaps this shouldn’t be a “command” at all. Maybe this would be better implemented as a “give to” button in the view tab. When selected, it pulls up a destination overlay like the one used for normal travel, but with different stuff under the hood. It only allows one jump, and it checks that the stars are mutually in range for the recipient’s and giver’s respective hyperspace levels. When whatever dialog boxes are finally clicked through, the carrier disappears, and on the next tick a new carrier belonging to the recipient is created, loaded with the proper number of ships, and makes for its destination. This makes it possible to “give” a carrier to oneself, but perhaps checks to prevent that could be added.

The existing mechanics for giving a ship to an ally could be left as-is, both to correct for the scenario you pointed out and to allow allies to gift ships to each other normally (And perhaps with a little benefit to ally relationships, since if the givers tech level allows for longer jumps he can send a carrier to an ally that his ally can’t send beck with his tech level.)

4

Everything you described is already available when Formal Alliances are enabled in the game settings and activated by mutual agreement between two players. Currently, ownership and control of carriers is turned over to the new ally when the carrier arrives at the ally’s star.

I have not played a Formal Alliance game in a while, so someone can correct me if I am wrong. I believe all previous carrier commands are cleared when the new owner takes over control.

What you seem to be requesting is a feature that allows donating a carrier to a new owner while it is in flight? even when Formal Alliances are not enabled in the game settings.

One possible problem that I can think of is the new owner may have a shorter Hyperspace Range than the previous owner, so the carrier might be making an invalid flight to the new destination star.

5

This was the important part of that rambling wall of text I put up there:

While I may be new to this game, I’m not operating in total ignorance, and I did pay attention to you when you explained how Formal Alliances work before.

As I tried to say before, this acknowledges the existing mechanics allowed by Formal Alliances, and exploits them if Formal Alliances are enabled. This won’t replace them, merely supplement them, and if Formal Alliances are enabled, using the old way may in fact be better because I did consider what might happen if the giver’s home is farther then the recipient’s current tech, and suggested a check be added prevent the gift from occurring if the move might otherwise be an invalid move. I apologize for not making this clearer.

What I’m not suggesting is changing ownership mid-flight anymore, so much as deleting the old carrier and creating a new one already en-route, or some other similar fudge that looks like the carrier was actually given rather than foul code-wizardry.

Then again, that’s just a suggestion. I’ve never seen the game’s source code, so these suggestions rely on my existing coding instincts and what I would do if I were the one building this game, not Jay. Really though, in the end it doesn’t matter how it gets implemented, all I want to do is theorycraft this idea and shake out the potential problems with it in the hopes that if it does get noticed, its more than just an idea and something that can add real value to the game.

Currently, the idea is this:

Add a button to the carrier view that allows a player (giver) to select another player’s (recipient’s) star (destination) and send the carrier to it, barring a series of checks that might otherwise render the trade impossible, such as too great a distance, gifting-to-self, or other problems as-of-yet unconsidered. Somewhere along the way, wether through in-transit flag switching, wholesale delete-and-recreate black magic, or some other shenanigans, the carrier is changed from belonging to the giver to the recipient.

If, during transit, the star is claimed by another player (invader), then the game will look at existing mechanics for the proper course of behavior. i.e. id the invader is a Formal Ally of the recipient, then the carrier changes ownership once more to become the property of the invader, or if the invader is not a Formal Ally then the carrier begins combat as usual. This paragraph does not actually require work to implement. Rather, it highlights where the new feature ends and displays how implementing it in this way would synergize with extant mechanics to prevent potential problems before they have a chance to happen.

Did I miss anything?

6

So it seems like you are requesting a feature that allows you to donate one of your carriers to that recipient with a destination at that recipient’s star, and ( as though wearing the hat being in the role of the recipient while you control ) this carrier would comply with the recipient’s Hyperspace Range limit and Scanning Range limit ( because stars beyond scan range sometimes cannot be navigated to by mouse click). Once this carrier departs your star, it would change flags and be under the control of the new owner.
All other issues are handled normally by existing game mechanics, including Formal Alliances if enabled and activated.

Did I rephrase and comprehend correctly ?

This sounds sort of similar to Formal Alliance, but without the shared scanning data, and carrier ownership is changed at departure instead of arrival. And we have not even talked about the $ 150 fee.

South Korea recently donated some ships to the Philippines.

7

Now that is something I did not know. It the cost per-carrier, or is the $150 fee for joining in an alliance?

Hmm… perhaps sending ships should cost money like sending tech. say, $10-$20 dollars or so, but I’m assuming that the $150 refers to joining an alliance. If the fee is to send carriers then the cost should rise to at least $170, if not more.

The reason is that I want Formal Alliances to have an advantage when it comes to sharing ships over an independent player acting as an arms dealer, should this feature be implemented.

Otherwise, yes, you’ve hit the nail on the head. That is exactly the feature I am requesting

8

So I have interpreted your feature request correctly. Now it is up to Jay to say yeah or nay.

I just now thought of another problem. If your friend has farther Scan Range than you, you are not allowed to see stars that he is able to navigate to. So how do you send ships to his stars ? I suppose his scan range would be limited by your scan range, so that you are not able to see more than you are allowed to see ? In this case, your gifting carrier is limited by the scan range of both players ?

EDIT : I just thought more clearly.
When you initiate donating this carrier, it is under your command at your star, so it should comply with your scan range limit and hyperspace range limit. Once it departs your star, it changes flag and must comply with the recipient’s scan range limit and hyperspace range limit for its destination star. So this carrier must comply with the scan range limit and hyperspace range limit of both empires for the destination star.

Last time that I checked, one player must pay $ 150 to activate the Formal Alliance. What usually happens is both players negotiate to split the fee. After that all the benefits of FA, including gifting carriers and ships, are free, unless otherwise negotiated by the participating allies. It costs $ 0 to Declare War.

9

@Thistle,

I was developing a system for this game, not quite in your thread of selling ships, but interested in pricing / valuation as a component of the overall system.
Current documentation and FAQ’s that I have reviewed do not absolutely price the NP2 ships.

For sales purposes, how much do you price a ship?

10

I’m still new to this game, but from what I have experienced I don’t think I could put a fixed price on a ship. It depends on how late in the game it is (supply and demand, you know) and the political landscape. If the buyer is on the ropes, a dealer could demand much more per ship than if the buyer is simply trying to accelerate a campaign going in his favor.

In any case, each ship would be worth only a fraction of a dollar. Unless I am gravely underestimating the value of a single ship, but so far, I’ve been expending them as glorified bullets, Like I said, I’m new here!