Mass transit and trade

[Feone]

IMO transport should be done manually by players, but we should get vehicles that can transport huge quantities of materials. The idea is that only some people would do the transporting for everyone, ie we'd have specialized merchants. You could get yourself a ship and make a living just moving thousands of items, and another player might get himself a ship and make a living as a pirate. Of course, we'd need a better mapgen to make ships actually viable

Sounds nice in theory but I doubt anyone is willing to trust another player with thousands of items. Also, really, who wants to spend their time travelling back and forth across the same path. Not to mention the hassle of having to hire these people and trust that they won't later reveal your location to hostiles. I doubt it'll work.

[Potjeh]

You don't hire them. They buy low and sell high.

[DarkNacht]

IMO transport should be done manually by players, but we should get vehicles that can transport huge quantities of materials. The idea is that only some people would do the transporting for everyone, ie we'd have specialized merchants. You could get yourself a ship and make a living just moving thousands of items, and another player might get himself a ship and make a living as a pirate. Of course, we'd need a better mapgen to make ships actually viable

This.
I know this isn't the most noob friendly way to do trade but it would add a lot to the game.

Sounds nice in theory but I doubt anyone is willing to trust another player with thousands of items. Also, really, who wants to spend their time travelling back and forth across the same path. Not to mention the hassle of having to hire these people and trust that they won't later reveal your location to hostiles. I doubt it'll work.

Most goods that a merchant would move would likely be thing that he bought and traded for in one location to sell or trade in another so you would not have to trust him with the items any more then you do now. There are people that would love to be dedicated merchants or work caravans, this game is full of jobs that one person finds boring but another person loves to do.
This would also mean that the area you live in would actually matter, you would want to live near good recourse and near people you trade with regularly, and isolation would have a trade off. Merchants could set up trading towns for paranoid hermits that are afraid of people knowing where they live.

[Procne]

You don't hire them. They buy low and sell high.

In Salem? Anyone with such an idea would get murdered in few hours. Take a minute and imagine yourself doing such job. Then think of the tribe, darwoth and so on. Travelling merchant is like a moving hermit camp, but without claim, walls and braziers

[Feone]

You don't hire them. They buy low and sell high.

In Salem? Anyone with such an idea would get murdered in few hours. Take a minute and imagine yourself doing such job. Then think of the tribe, darwoth and so on. Travelling merchant is like a moving hermit camp, but without claim, walls and braziers

One with valuable loot and silver, too. Even the ones who wouldn't do it just for the troll value might decide to go after them for that.

[DarkNacht]

You don't hire them. They buy low and sell high.

In Salem? Anyone with such an idea would get murdered in few hours. Take a minute and imagine yourself doing such job. Then think of the tribe, darwoth and so on. Travelling merchant is like a moving hermit camp, but without claim, walls and braziers

But these people would also have to move items in this way, meaning that anyone could pick theirs off too.
A traveling merchant would likely develop a trade rout of trusted towns that he could stop and and safely spend the night. Raiders would have to find out where a merchant was and wait for hours hoping that he will come out of the town and down the path that they are waiting on so that they could steal the goods. It would definitely be a dangerous job and they would likely need guards and scouts as well, but that does not mean that it could not be done.

[Feone]

You don't hire them. They buy low and sell high.

In Salem? Anyone with such an idea would get murdered in few hours. Take a minute and imagine yourself doing such job. Then think of the tribe, darwoth and so on. Travelling merchant is like a moving hermit camp, but without claim, walls and braziers

But these people would also have to move items in this way, meaning that anyone could pick theirs off too.
A traveling merchant would likely develop a trade rout of trusted towns that he could stop and and safely spend the night. Raiders would have to find out where a merchant was and wait for hours hoping that he will come out of the town and down the path that they are waiting on so that they could steal the goods. It would definitely be a dangerous job and they would likely need guards and scouts as well, but that does not mean that it could not be done.

This would be so much work, so much time spent for trade that is much more difficult to access than anything in the current system. It sounds nice but it's a massive downgrade from current options. To some degree you have to allow for convenience, even in a game like this.

A good tradeoff on the original idea might be that the wagons would be visible for the first few minutes. So sending goods with enemies surrounding the town is a bad idea, not only can they tell the direction it would go but they could try intercepting it. At the same time, it could be protected once it's out of that range and it doesn't force people to walk all over the world for a simple goods transfer.

[DarkNacht]

This would be so much work, so much time spent for trade that is much more difficult to access than anything in the current system. It sounds nice but it's a massive downgrade from current options.

It being more work does not make it a downgrade. The current trade system is the equivalent of having fields produce unlimited crops on command with no effort other than walking over to them, yes that would make the game easier and eliminate the drudgery of farming, but it would also eliminate the fun of farming for those who like it.
The more things manually done by players and the less done through magical teleporting crap the better.

[Procne]

You don't hire them. They buy low and sell high.

In Salem? Anyone with such an idea would get murdered in few hours. Take a minute and imagine yourself doing such job. Then think of the tribe, darwoth and so on. Travelling merchant is like a moving hermit camp, but without claim, walls and braziers

But these people would also have to move items in this way, meaning that anyone could pick theirs off too.

No. They would kill the traders just for the lolz. To see the rage thread on the forum. To just take the silver and destroy everything else

A traveling merchant would likely develop a trade rout of trusted towns that he could stop and and safely spend the night. Raiders would have to find out where a merchant was and wait for hours hoping that he will come out of the town and down the path that they are waiting on so that they could steal the goods. It would definitely be a dangerous job and they would likely need guards and scouts as well, but that does not mean that it could not be done.

That's a lot of development effort required to make trade much more complicated than it is now, just to fullfil your vision. Trading is already pretty complicated with the risk of being scammed and having to personally meet with other people. And now you want to add the risk of being killed, the requirement of either huge time and infrastructure commitment to move goods yourself, or hiring a middleman (first one would have to exist) to move the goods for you. How would that increase the trade? Or make it more fun?

[DarkNacht]

No. They would kill the traders just for the lolz. To see the rage thread on the forum. To just take the silver and destroy everything else

You don't think anyone one would do this to the tribe too?

That's a lot of development effort required to make trade much more complicated than it is now, just to fullfil your vision. Trading is already pretty complicated with the risk of being scammed and having to personally meet with other people. And now you want to add the risk of being killed, the requirement of either huge time and infrastructure commitment to move goods yourself, or hiring a middleman (first one would have to exist) to move the goods for you. How would that increase the trade? Or make it more fun?

Complicated does not equal bad and there are lots of complicated systems in this game. Trading with a trusted trader is not complicated, when people get scammed its usually because they are idiots.
Asking how it would increase trade is like asking how the influence system on fields is going to produce more of the crop that you want then just letting you select which tiered crop you what to produce when planting or how making you grind purity helps you get higher purity then a system that just hands it to you. Having players manually move goods is not to increase trade, but it would make it far more interesting for many people. The current system is safe and boring, if I wanted that I would go play farmville.