Trade Ship ?'s

**The_Russian** · 05-19-2009, 00:59

Can trade ships be "stacked" on each other to increase trade output to your trade partners?

**antisocialmunky** · 05-19-2009, 01:34

Kinda...

You could just totally screw up your flet if you do it on one of the circles though.

**Monsieur Alphonse** · 05-19-2009, 02:05

You can have a full stack on each node. The first one gives 20 units of trade goods. Every next ship will add 13 extra units of trade goods to the trade lane. The more ships you place on a node the higher your supply of that good becomes. Higher supply means lower prices. Just don't place to many ships at once and slowly increase the amount until prices start to drop. Then you have to stop until prices are rising again or start stabilizing.

There is a bug of course. If you want to remove at least one ship of a stack, remove the stack of the node and split the stack. Next place the remaining ships back on the stack again. If you split a stack while on a node, the remaining ships will become stuck and become useless.

**Didz** · 05-19-2009, 09:35

There was some analysis done in an earlier thread which suggested that the benefits gained diminish with each Trade Ship added to the stack. As a result of reading this I try to limit the number of trade ships I place on each Trade Port to five.

Also as Mr.Alphonse has already stated when adding (or removing) ships from a stack, make sure you move the stack off of the Trade Port (the circle) first, adjust its composition and then move it back. Trying to add or remove ships to a stack whilst its on the Trade Port can lead to weird results. At best you will suddenly stop receiving any trade from that fleet, and at worse the fleet will become useless and locked in place so you can't do anything except scuttle it to free up the Trade Port.

**anweRU** · 05-19-2009, 13:25

The additional output you get by adding a ship depends on several factors:
- Difficulty level
- Monopoly, i.e. controlling all five nodes in a given trade theater.

I was getting 17 bales/ship pre-patch, up to 10 ships on a node, on VH difficulty, in a theater I monopolized.

**Servius** · 05-19-2009, 14:57

I have a 14-ship stack in Madagaskar. The first ship added 20 units. The other 13 ships added 15 units each. There was no diminishing return (after the first drop from 20 to 15). This was as The Knights of St. John on Medium difficulty, only controling a single trade port.

**Slaists** · 05-19-2009, 16:05

Originally Posted by Monsieur Alphonse

You can have a full stack on each node. The first one gives 20 units of trade goods. Every next ship will add 13 extra units of trade goods to the trade lane. The more ships you place on a node the higher your supply of that good becomes. Higher supply means lower prices. Just don't place to many ships at once and slowly increase the amount until prices start to drop. Then you have to stop until prices are rising again or start stabilizing.

There is a bug of course. If you want to remove at least one ship of a stack, remove the stack of the node and split the stack. Next place the remaining ships back on the stack again. If you split a stack while on a node, the remaining ships will become stuck and become useless.

The output for ivory is different between the Madagascar Straights and West African Coast. Madagascar straights produce more.

The output also seems to be a function of how many ships you have in the theater altogether (across all nodes). Realize also, that the more ships you have cranking out the commodity the lower will the commodity price drop.

Originally Posted by Didz

There was some analysis done in an earlier thread which suggested that the benefits gained diminish with each Trade Ship added to the stack. As a result of reading this I try to limit the number of trade ships I place on each Trade Port to five.

Also as Mr.Alphonse has already stated when adding (or removing) ships from a stack, make sure you move the stack off of the Trade Port (the circle) first, adjust its composition and then move it back. Trying to add or remove ships to a stack whilst its on the Trade Port can lead to weird results. At best you will suddenly stop receiving any trade from that fleet, and at worse the fleet will become useless and locked in place so you can't do anything except scuttle it to free up the Trade Port.

Yes, but the diminished benefits come in the form of reduced commodity price (reducing revenue from selling the goods from ALL ships) not so much in reduced product output per ship added to the stack. I just stop adding Indiamen when I see the incremental change in revenue to go down to 100 or so. Usually I have no more than 4 indiamen per trade node, in many cases I have less.

There is another small thing about adding ships that comes along with the necessity to take ships off the node and then back on. The trade distribution (to your trade partners) resets at that point so you can end up with less trade than before adding the extra ship because some of the trade gets re-routed to trade partners whose harbors are being blocked at the time...

**Monsieur Alphonse** · 05-19-2009, 16:42

According to Alpaca at TWcenter the first ship gives you 20 units and each extra ship adds 13 units of trade goods. Link: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=262209 see posts 4 and 10.

**Slaists** · 05-19-2009, 16:47

Originally Posted by Monsieur Alphonse

According to Alpaca at TWcenter the first ship gives you 20 units and each extra ship adds 13 units of trade goods. Link: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=262209 see posts 4 and 10.

I definitely have seen +15 unit increments post the first ship in Madagascar straights.