Mass transit and trade

[Nektaris]

And you should tell me why i am wrong

[Feone]

And you should tell me why i am wrong

If you had read the original post you would know that the aim is not to remove teleports to boston, or player interaction.
It merely aims to remove goods transfers via boston. Something the devs have stated is a problem, in their view.

[Dallane]

And you should tell me why i am wrong

Why would you not read teh OP?

[ImpalerWrG]

OP has a really nice idea but I think I can add to it.

First while the Carriage house is good the way he links buying and selling THROUGH the structure is bad, it necessitates a high degree of development (structures, horses etc) for trading and bloats the functionality of the structure unnecessarily. I think we want a transport system that is JUST a transport system and trading structures that are just trading structures. The OP's reasons for tieing the two together seems clear, he assumes that the wagon/carriage is going to be completely unaccompanied by the player.

But it need not be, the player can go with the wagon, but they don't need to be IN it during the journey. Just give the player (only the player who sent the wagon) the option of teleporting from the sending carriage house to the destination carriage house once the wagons travel timer has completed. The player can only be 'entangled' aka 'Drive' one wagon at a time and we already specified that wagons move at real-time (or at something near it) so by definition the player can not move themselves by these teleports much faster then they could have walked. But the player gets to just hang out in their own home turf occupying their time with normal play while the wagon travels, no boring down time, but the forethought and logistics of the travel are still their.

Once the player is done with shopping and sends the wagon back, the act of sending the wagons immediately teleports the player back to their homestead, and an empty inventory is required to send the wagon, so all purchases need to be put in the wagon and the player will need to wait for the wagons arrival to get their purchase. In fact the player can command the wagon to go to any location when they send it, every time it is sent the player returns to homestead and every time the wagon arrives the player gets a pop-up informing them of the arrival. So trips other then simple to and from are possible, you could do loops or wander endlessly (assuming you know the destination names).

Now lets take it up another notch, limit the range on wagons so the player needs to go through several player made locations to get to Boston, players will want to make Carriage houses available for this because the wagons horses will need to be refreshed with comestibles or accommodation (such as a stable or inn), and people will have a big incentive to buy these fresheners along the way rather then use valuable cargo space for them. A few silver for each traveler is all were talking here but the income will make running these wagon stops very lucrative.

Lastly we need some down-market options for the newbs, the OP addresses this with his 'Shopping bag' idea but I don't think we need a new container for this, we just need to allow the homestead itself to fill the role of the sending carriage house. But the homestead can only send sleds, and sleds are very slow in this travel mode. Carts need the full size Carriage house and move a bit faster, a real wagon carries twice as much as a cart but needs horses, and the fastest and costliest option is the Carriage which has less cargo space then a wagon.

Roads might also help to speed up travel, H&H had an interesting 'mile post' system but it was fatally flawed because the players time was occupied the whole time, it was just an automated system of movement clicks, saving your fingers from the carpel tunnel but not saving any time. You construct (using a large number of stones) just the markers in a cookie crumb fashion putting them at most about a screens width apart. The ground between is then AUTOMATICALLY decorated with a paved road graphic (which is not the same as paving) so the road looks nice. They should also logically link with each other and with destinations like homesteads and carriage houses. The cumulative distance between the crumbs determines the length and can boost travel speed between two linked locations, but slower travel is always possible over 'rough ground' it's just slower. Roads do not reduce the amount of refresh that horses need when traveling so their is no disincentive for rest areas from building them.

[Feone]

But it need not be, the player can go with the wagon, but they don't need to be IN it during the journey. Just give the player (only the player who sent the wagon) the option of teleporting from the sending carriage house to the destination carriage house once the wagons travel timer has completed.

Bringing characters along is a terrible idea. I for one trade with several people that I would definitely not give the chance to enter my town.

Now lets take it up another notch, limit the range on wagons so the player needs to go through several player made locations to get to Boston, players will want to make Carriage houses available for this because the wagons horses will need to be refreshed with comestibles or accommodation (such as a stable or inn), and people will have a big incentive to buy these fresheners along the way rather then use valuable cargo space for them. A few silver for each traveler is all were talking here but the income will make running these wagon stops very lucrative.

The wagon stops are not currently doable for the same reason. Why settle for a few silvers when you can just take out any traveler and get all of the carried stuff.

Lastly we need some down-market options for the newbs, the OP addresses this with his 'Shopping bag' idea but I don't think we need a new container for this, we just need to allow the homestead itself to fill the role of the sending carriage house. But the homestead can only send sleds, and sleds are very slow in this travel mode.

A (very) slow option would take so long that they'd probably no longer need the item by the time it got back. A boston shoppingbag would be far more practical.

[nonsonogiucas]

I would love to reply on this but unfortunately I can only write from my phone atm.

I've got the impression that too many separated mechanics have been mixed togheter in the same thread. It is difficult to discuss any of them in this fashion.

I would suggest to separate concerns again.

Transport is a thing.
Automated transport is another thing.
Trade is another thing.
Automated trade (stalls) is still a different thing.

I think I understand how the devs might find that the carriage house is a nice thematic rendition of the Boston stalls competition they had in mind... I do not like the part where the wagon goes into hyperspace and comes back at destination however as it look like even more item porting to me. You should at least be required to build a trail or road between A and B and then defend it in order to send goods this way.
Bostonport can stay with a 60 min cooldown and n00bs like me are still happy.

[Feone]

I would love to reply on this but unfortunately I can only write from my phone atm.

I've got the impression that too many separated mechanics have been mixed togheter in the same thread. It is difficult to discuss any of them in this fashion.

I would suggest to separate concerns again.

Transport is a thing.
Automated transport is another thing.
Trade is another thing.
Automated trade (stalls) is still a different thing.

I think I understand how the devs might find that the carriage house is a nice thematic rendition of the Boston stalls competition they had in mind... I do not like the part where the wagon goes into hyperspace and comes back at destination however as it look like even more item porting to me. You should at least be required to build a trail or road between A and B and then defend it in order to send goods this way.
Bostonport can stay with a 60 min cooldown and n00bs like me are still happy.

That is just not practical, distances are too large to do this.
There are some traders I trade with regularly, yet none of them would be worth spending the probably dozens of hours required to build a road between my base and theirs. Let alone the fact that I wouldn't want every player to have an easy indication as to where my base is.

Would it be nice to not have any sort of invisible transport, teleport & instead have thematic roads, epic journeys and tales of robbers etc? Yea sure.
Would it be doable? Not even close. Way too much work, way too much risk. Almost nobody would do it and the ones that would are going to get raided/murdered in no time due to the giant "Look there's a base here, one with enough loot to build a trade route! Follow the road!" arrow pointing at them.

[Procne]

I think I understand how the devs might find that the carriage house is a nice thematic rendition of the Boston stalls competition they had in mind... I do not like the part where the wagon goes into hyperspace and comes back at destination however as it look like even more item porting to me. You should at least be required to build a trail or road between A and B and then defend it in order to send goods this way.

Because it is item porting. But it's a type of porting which is not free, like Boston, and takes time. Maybe you don't have to build a road, but you have to build the carriage house and wagons, probably get a skill for it, raise horses and pay upkeep for them in the form of food, and then wait some time before goods are delivered. It's a consensus between convenient trading as we have it now, and transporting goods manually yourself, which in my opinion would be a complete trade killer, not fun , and punishing.

If you believe transporting goods by driving a wagon yourself through half the map is feasible and fun then obviously the whole idea doesn't make sense to you.

[nonsonogiucas]

the whole idea doesn't make sense to you.

Yep, you got me. I don't get it.

Please explain how a complicated system for item porting is more fun than the straightforward item porting we have now.

From my point of view the whole concept is reduced to:

Ok, now we have item porting.
But item porting is bad and not fun!
So lets say that you have to build this and this and that...
... and THEN you port items around even more than before!

So in the end the game doesn't change very much, it gets more complicated but not more complex, you don't get more choices but more chores.
You see, I dislike item porting in Salem because it too much of a convenient shortcut. The single mechanic, single-handedly manages to nullify any chance for interesting gameplay to emerge in relation to transportation because... meh, why emergent gameplay when you can grind a little bit to port items?

Now don't get me wrong.
If we have to continue to port items around I do prefer your very thematic rendition of item porting... sure it has a lot of flavor... it's just that I don't like item porting as a mechanic in this game.

Way too much work, way too much risk.

This should actually be in capitals on the home page.

distances are too large to do this

I agree, another problem entirely.

[Procne]

Now don't get me wrong.
If we have to continue to port items around I do prefer your very thematic rendition of item porting... sure it has a lot of flavor... it's just that I don't like item porting as a mechanic in this game.

I don't like the idea of our current insta-port, because it allows you to transport stuff between any 2 points on the map at no cost. But I'm horrified with the idea of having to transport anything myself by walking / riding through half of the map. It's just totally unpractical and would kill any trade, save for some few, high value items like pure pots. Thus the idea - it is item porting, but not instant and not free. Sure, having wagons in the world might be nice, but it would be too complicated and costly development-wise.

Take one more thing into account - professions are part of the developer roadmap, with the idea of people being able to specialise. I may only assume now, but I think it also involves hermits or small towns being able to specialise in a range of products. But that makes sense only if they can sell their products and buy stuff they are not specialized in. Having to do multi-hours trips to trade, with no mean of carrying large amounts (wagons / carts are out of the question here, since they can't cross water or ledges) of goods is practically a killer for this idea - those people would prefer to do everything on their own than to specialise.