Trading Ships

Trading Ships

There are six types of Transportation unit. These are separated primarily into Carts, Boats, Ships and Trains. Boats and Ships both separate into Trading Boats and War Boats, and Trading Ships and Warships. This post will cover the general details of Trading Ships. Trading Ships have massive Cargo space and are second only to Trains. Ships have the greatest Health of all Transport Units, but Warships are somewhat more resilient than Trading Ships. Trading Ships can carry more Cavalry units but Warships can carry more Infantry on board.


Construction and Recruiting

The building of Ships requires Boards and Oil, more so with every increasing rank of Ship. Ships overall employ the largest number of Crew. Trading Ships in specific appear to recruit more Peasants per rank than Warships, but fewer Yeomen and Peer crew per rank. Starting construction on a ship will consume the Material costs and remove the Crew from your population for training. When the Trading Ship unit is available, the physical ship will be built and it will be staffed a full crew of Peasants, Yeomen and Peers.

Research

Building Trading Ships requires your settlement to have knowledge of Navigation. This is the science of finding your way around and without it, Ships would be no more powerful than boats, unable let the shore leave their sight. In order to research Navigation, you must first research Physics, which has it's base in Science which is where you'll need to start.


Auto-Trading

Trading Ships can be sent to targeted Regions to auto-trade. This entails assigning your ship to a Region and letting it leave your sight for long-ish periods of time.  Each ship you send has a percent chance to bring back Coins, Goods or Resources depending on the Rank and size of your ship. Ships can definitely be lost at sea, but each larger, better built Trading Ship reduces the chances that this will happen. Sovereigns building things like Lighthouses throughout your settlement will also improve your chances of Ships returning from Auto-Trade routes.


Auto-Raiding

Auto-Raiding is when you assign your transport units to go find some other schmuck and and take their stuff. This occurs as Interceptions in which players can interfere with each other's shipping plans. Trading Ships are not the most effective way to auto-raid but they can hold a lot of loot. The Auto-Raid cycle takes several hours, more if you send your Ship to a foreign region. These transport units suffer the highest chance of loss while auto-raiding because they are often heavy with cargo and have a limited ability to defend themselves. They also have the lowest chance of Intercepting anything except for carts that almost never intercept while auto-raiding.

Regions and Distances
The Region you choose to Auto-Raid or Auto-Trade with determines the coins, resources, goods and other rewards you can get back from your transport units. On the other hand, going far from your homeland can increase the amount of time each Raiding and/or Trading cycle requires.

Shipping Buildings

While a number of buildings have effects on Shipping, there are very few that can actually build or store a ship. Buildings that can create Ships are limited to the Port Authority Office, the Naval HQ and the Dry Dock. This means that if you're not a Sovereign or Minister of the Port or Shipyard districts, your only chance to build your own boat is to convince the Secretary of the Navy to sell you a Dry Dock or a Shipyard lot to build one one. Buildings that store boats are not quite as exclusive. They include the Boathouse, Cargo Dock, Cargo Terminal, Floating Docks and the Harbor. Of these, the Boathouse is the only building that isn't locked into a specific district. While the mechanic is potentially silly, players can buy a lot anywhere in the settlement and build a Boathouse to hold their personal Ships. It will eventually be possible to rent out Ship (and Boat and Cart and Train) storage slots from Ministers and independent owners.