Activating Shipyards

[Chenier]

Name: Activating Shipyards

Summary:
Shipyards are infrastructure that we can build since sea travel, but that has no function. This feature request is to toggle two functions for them. One as a ferry toggler, second as a protection provider.

Details:

*Ferry toggle: Ferry routes are a relic from the days before sea zones came in. Sea zones were meant to replace them altogether, but that then remained in limbo as a TODO. The ability to bust into cities directly has always been a little broken, and has had numerous negative impacts. For one, it's a little unfair that some enemies can attack each others' cities without efforts, while others must pass by the much more costly sea zones. Secondly, it meant that in many places, having distinct (or at least hostile) realms was basically unthinkable. Can Fissoa and Madina ever really be expected to go to war, when both of their capitals are one region away from each other for all intents and purposes? D'Hara could never tolerate the idea of sharing the central islands for this reason also. And in the odd cases wars do break out over such places, the result is unlikely to be much fun. Too easy to sneak past each other's armies thanks to a single travel option, leaves everyone kind of forced to just sit in the capital, unless one realm is really much stronger than the other.

Thus, why not turn ferry routes into an extension of the new features, instead of a relic of a prior system? They represent the well-charted routes that sailors frequently use, and that see heavy traffic. But... maybe not all of them are always operational. And the idea of landing in a city via ferry routes is safe, while landing via sea zones is suicide, makes no sense...

Therefore, block ferry routes as a default, turn them off. But have it so that if two cities connected by a sea route both have a shipyard and belong to realms that are at peace or better with each other, THEN, it toggles back on. But you have to pay a fee. As long as your realm or an ally has a shipyard at either your location or destination, you can pay for ships.

Think of it as a naval guild, where the NPCs run the fleets, and the nobles just pay for their services, more than the noble/realm actually owning the ships. The boats are always there, somewhere, fishing, hauling cargo, transporting people, whatever, and sometimes nobles hire their services.

You pay for the fleet's service, and how many boats you want/need, and then they wait for you a day, toggling the ferry route option. If you don't embark, they sail back without you, wasting your gold. Perhaps a cost of about 1 gold per 5 men if the city lacks a harbor, 1 gold per 10 men if the city has a harbor.

*Second option relates to the choice of hiring different kinds of ships, namely, ferry ships, cargo ships, and warships. Ferry ships do as described above, they let your men travel from one ferry port that has a shipyard to another. Cargo ships extend the range for trading, to as if you were in the city on the other end of the ferry lane. They take 20% of your sales if the city lacks a harbor, 10% if it has one. This ferry-toggled trade would show as a distinct trading box below the regular one, to make things clear, and avoid paying fees without knowing. And finally, warships protect from enemies and harass enemies.

This is to counter a new threat to sea travel. If you are using a ferry route or a sea zone, and there are monsters or hostile warships on it, then they will harass you. You can lose hours, provisions, or men fighting them. "While at sea, monsters climbed on the boats, and stole supplies during the night". "While at sea, monsters climbed aboard your boat, and fought your men. 3 men were killed in the process". Hiring warships offers protection. "While at sea, monsters approached, but your warship escort chased them away". This would all be modulated by the number of monsters swimming in the sea zones. If there are too many monsters, they could outright destroy the warships. Warships have a similar effect on enemy traveling troops. "While at sea, hostile warships harassed your ferry. 4 hours were lost evading them." "While at sea, hostile warships attacked your ferry, killing 10 men." For the sake of simplicity, warships and monsters using sea zones would only threaten those on the same sea zones, and those on ferry routes would only threaten those on the same ferry route. Monsters could always use all ferry routes, regardless of shipyards.

Benefits:

Completes the transition intended for sea zones. Gives a purpose to shipyards. Addresses the diplomatic issues of ferry-linked capitals. Balances ferry vs sea zone travel and attacks. Adds appropriate risks for sea traveling and ferrying across monster-ridden sea zones. Encourages realms to seek nearby expansion and conflict instead of far-away alternatives.


Downsides:
Presumably long and complex to code. Higher upkeep costs for realms that rely on ferries, like D'Hara and Astrum. A simpler alternative might simply be to disable ferry routes altogether, and just focus on the penalties to sea traveling in sea regions with a lot of monsters. Could also be an intermediate step.

[JeVondair]

I am here for this

[Anaris]

Phasing out ferry routes would be nice. However, it's not on the TODO list for the foreseeable future. There are just too many things that still rely on regions being connected by old-fashioned routes to function properly.

Shipyards already have an intended purpose; it just needs to be implemented. (That is on the TODO list in the foreseeable future.)

[JeVondair]

What was that intended purpose again? I remember when they were first implemented, but that seems like it was about 5 years ago.

[Anaris]

What was that intended purpose again? I remember when they were first implemented, but that seems like it was about 5 years ago.

Providing something resembling scout reports of sea zonesâ€"basically, giving you some idea of who's on their way toward you from the adjacent sea zones.