I would do something different. I have never felt that trade should be directly manipulated by the "empire" in empire builders. After all trade is a reflection of the private sector within an empire, and the benefit to the empire is through taxes, a happy citizenry from an increase in available goods, and the increase to manufacturing centers with more available resources. Traders should be "free agents" and I already like how they are not directly controllable ships by the player. Trading can be a game unto itself and its up to the game designer to decide how deep to go to determine how far to implement it into their game. The main problem I see right now with how trade is handled is the immense number of trade ships moving around on the screen, I would argue that if your going to see that much activity then trade should be much deeper than it is currently implemented, if not then tone down the amount of icon visible traffic.
So you have a few options.
1) Highly simplistic trade, trade is simply a number generated in the background and is a number derived from your current research level, number of planets and population, number of trade stations. NOTE: if your going to do this then I would also decrease the scale on the trade ships so there presented as background and completely non-selectable units, you shouldn’t even see the icon zoomed out that are in phase jumps they would only appear at a greater level of zoom (for a good example of this look at how trade caravans and ships look and act in the totalwar series, you also already kinda have this implemented with the way planetary traffic works).
2) Simplistic trade. Essentially the same as above but add in a few sliders so a person can set how much emphasis an empire is putting into trade. Right now you have mining /culture/trade ships perhaps a simple slider to allocate the the perentage allocation to each. Call it something like “Empire subsidies” and have a 100 points that can be allocated between the three. Basically just a minor level of involvement from the user. Something like this might not be bad in a real time game like this one for a minor user action as compared with option 1.
NOTE: With options 1 and 2 you would either get rid of trade stations altogether (not a bad idea) and simply have the ships originate from the planets, or make it so only 1 trade station per sector is needed (like you can’t even build a second one), or have multiple trade stations in a sector increase the number of ships originating from that sector (some from planets some from the trade station).
Wouldn't be a bad idea to handle miners this way either. Just have a nifty algorithm for both, the small scale units not clogging up the screen and the user manipulation in the form of research and 1-2 simple sliders. Miners adding to crystal and metal and traders adding to credits. In addition you can add "culture ships" passenger cruise type ships, ambassador ships, ships like the enterprise (exploration/ambassadorial).
Essentially a background, non direct interactive, small scale animated ships that you see when your zoomed adding alot of flavor into the environment and not taking away alot of apm time from this RTS style game.
3) Medium level user involvement trade. Here you would use “trade connectors” between certain planet types. Below is just a small example with how the beta 1 currently works.
terran to ice/asteroid colony - food trade
ice to volcanic/desert - water trade
asteroid colony to terran/ice - metal trade
Or some other way to “trade connect” planets by type. Then show the available number of connectors in the planet overview(or a sub window of the planetary overview window) and have trade stations support a certain number of routes, say 2. Then building more trade stations if routes are available becomes a user choice and certain trade routes shutting down between empires hurting you more when trade stations > number of available routes.
4) Highly evolved trade. Put in a full supply/demand model. Create a way to build manufacturing modules on planets and create natural resources on planets by type. I would probably stay pretty far away from this choice as it would require a lot of work and time management and this is a real time game.
Out of those choices I would choose option 2, and use trade stations, culture and mining to merely effect the number of ship originating from that system and make the ships background animations like the planetary vehicles already are except they move though space but don’t clutter up the screen with a ridiculous amount of non interactable icons. Also add some level of user interaction through a slider for empire subsidies. Personally I would love to sit down and write out an insanely complex model like I mentioned in option 4 but since this is a real time game I realise option 2 would work the best. The whole trick would be in writing out the “nifty algorithm” I mentioned to make the background game entertaining on the screen. So here is high level prototype for the trade ships.
Ships are determined by an interval in the main game timer either from the start of the game or from the start of researching “Trade”. Also a check whenever a new colony is created.
Total number of ships originating from a particular planet could simply be at a ratio of 1 ship per planetary development point. If you wanted to leave the trade stations in simply have them increase the total number of ships by 1.
An alternative would be to have a ship per possible destination (the number could get pretty big in large games though the engine seems capable of handling it). A trade station could simply increase the amount of revenue on cargo in this scenario.
Cargo is determined when a ship leaves a planet and a credit amount is generated based on
Planetary type, Planetary Population, Research Bonus, Culture modifier
A destination is chosen upon departure as well and depends on how you’ve handled the number of ships as I listed above, traders could also have a random id to determine “agressiveness” if a trader is of low agression then they try and trade close by and on a safe secure route if there highly aggressive they’ll go for a long distance high risk but highly profitable route.
On arrival the payment for goods should be modified by a cultural bonus if there is a culture center in the area (this would reflect “marketing”), giving some reason to build culture centers “behind the lines” and maybe add some nity graphics to culture centers like a bulletin board and some creative advertisements.
Trade and Diplomacy
The main thing to add then would be more options of intra-empire trading through diplomacy. This would also take some reworking of the entire “at war” mechanic in the game, which imho would be a good thing. First and foremost when encountering a new empire you should start out as neutral and not openly at war requiring a cease fire. Actively firing on a player or “declaring war” should put you at war. While not at war a trade agreement should be consider to always be in effect , after all it’s the private sector and not governments conducting trade. However while at war a player should have the option to embargo another player, even then however traders should still try and make runs to the other empire but only ones of Super High agressiveness (see above). An additional option would then be to turn on “unrestricted warfare” with that opponent severly hurting the background relation number with that empire immensly and for a long time. This would make your ships, fighter defenses, static cannons etc destroy traders,miners, and culture ships when they encounter them. Traders/Miners operating in a war zone though would get immense payoffs if they actually can deliver to a planet during wartime even more so if unrestricted warfare is on. This could open the door for some interesting research options for these “black market wartime dealers”, like “super fast blockade runner trade ships”, “trade ships with stealth” etc. And make for some intersting options when going to war.
Piracy
All the time these little animations running in the background should encounter other little background animations in the forms of pirates. They just appear based on an algorithm and shoot down a trader and sweep in scoop up a little crate and zoom off. Piracy should be a factor of the sector and how many empire ships are in it as well as defense platforms and cultural centers. Fighter hangar fighters and your ships should try and intervene to shoot these buggers down as well. Have that asteroid development 1 colony with nothing but mines you didn’t want to increase your empire maintenance by building defenses jump inhibitors etc in? The place would be swarming with pirates.
Also handling miner ships in the same way as traders through thes smaller scale background animations is a good idea as well like i mentioned before, having "mining areas" in asteroid zones would be a good idea as the destination for these mining ships, pirates could also target them as well.
Players could also "sponsor piracy" against another empire by diverting a certain amount of credits per minute to target another players trade/mining/culture ships).
Culture
Culture could also come in the form of the small background animation ships, passenger ships, ambasador ships, etc. A ship originating from a cultural center and sending passengers on a tourism trip to another empires planet would increase the culture effect (also makes building them behind the lines and not making it relative to proximity (although that could be a factor since it would be a shorter trip) would make the decision on where to build them simpler and have game lasting effects). Again pirates could effect these ships, passenger ships shot down in enemy space could cause culture changes and other related issues (like cassus belli which europa uiniversalis uses and something I would talk about more in changing diplomacy in another post). Also opens up options.
Anyways sorry to ramble on:0 You got a great game going here got a few more suggestions ill try to make on other topics later. Good luck with the development. And sorry i edited this post some and know there are some redundancies from the edits.
