Suggestion Trade Caravan Industry

[Tygah]

So the recent thread, A Fresh Start, got me thinking about raiding, stealing, town interactions, and other such things. One interesting mechanic that might give people a little more to fight over and defend could be a trade caravan mechanic.

Let's imagine that there are NPC caravans that can carry goods from one place to another. Person in town A wants to send diamonds to person in town B. Why would they use such a slow caravan system when they can just both go to spawn? What if the goods in the caravan multiplied by a certain factor over a certain amount of distance? If Town A sends 10 diamonds to Town B a thousand blocks away, Town B would receive something like 15 diamonds. But let's say Town A sends 10 diamonds to Town B that's 20,000 blocks away perhaps they'd receive 30 diamonds.* These caravans could be attacked and looted, which would make players cautious about sending them without guards. It would also provide a mechanic to help players grow their goods in trading groups, and also foster the existence of more legitimate stealing and looting. After all, you're choosing to take the risk of putting your stuff into a caravan, if it gets looted, then you didn't defend it well enough. If you don't want to take the risk, fine, but neither do you get the benefits of more stuff!

How would these caravans stay on track? Players would create Route Markers that would tell a caravan where to go. Route Markers could follow roads, go off through the wilderness or nether, and be as straight/zig-zaggy as you want. But the terrain in between the route markers must be maneuverable (no more than one block up or down in elevation, 3x3 width and height. Caravans would go straight from one marker to the other, and the benefits would be achieved upon successful completion of the trip. As you level up, you could obtain better/more NPC guards and increase your trading profit margin.

Thoughts?

*These numbers are not exact. Please do not get too hung up on the math.

 

[Jedoi]

At first I thought, "uh, that's what embassies are for". As I read on, that's a pretty cool idea though. It would devalue embassies, however. I do like the idea.

 

[Leasaur]

Embassies are buggy as all hell anyway, and this sounds pretty cool. More discussion and development is needed, so post away.

 

[mopb3]

Something like this could, possibly, work but I think a pre-requisite for such a thing would be the construction of roads, the markers for the NPCs would just lag the hell out of the server if they're too complex.

All that said I am completely in love with this idea, and I'll investigate ways of making it happen.

 

[Tygah]

Yay! I really hope it's possible, I think it would be a ton of fun.

How bad would the lag be, especially if there was a cooldown for sending caravans? If it is too laggy to create your own routes, perhaps the rules could say that they must be along approved roads? I could imagine that staff wouldn't want to have to go out and check and approve every road that could possibly spring into existence because of this. The easier it is for players to set it up on their own, the more likely it'll be used.

Perhaps players would only be able to utilize a certain number of route markers, which would force them to go along straighter lines to their destination. This could diminish the chances of complex and laggy routes while still allowing players to set up their own, possible clandestine, routes. The only thing about clandestine routes (AKA underground tunnels) is that they would be a lot more secure than a surface road, and a lot harder to raid. Perhaps they would be less profitable? Or perhaps it'd be better to just make them illegal?

The cool thing is I could imagine players building their own roads just to utilize this feature, which would not only connect the server and give the world a more alive feel, but also begin giving more emphasis on making towns worth visiting by non-raiders.

 

[agorednocit]

The new 1.9 road textures would look pretty badass with this, if it becomes a thing