Are Trade Routes Working?

from Sins Forums

Ever since the Betas, trade routes have not been showing up correctly and this continues in Entrenchment.  The question is, are they really working or is the display of the trade route just not working?

I can only speak as tech, but when you hover the cursor over the credit cell on the screen the trade route is displayed as a white line following the phase lanes.  It is supposed to show the longest unbroken trade route.  However it just stops.  There is in every game I can remember a contiuation of trade ports from the planet or asteroid the illustrated trade route does not pick up.  Is it possible that if the planet had formally had anoter empire's trade port it neutralizes the display?  There is a slight increase trade in trade income and trade ships can be seen entering and exiting the grav well so my guess is it is working, but who knows?  The total amount of trade income is to increase the longer the longest unbroken trade route is, but i am unsure what that factor is supposed to be.  It may simply be the slight increase per trade port I observe.

 If the trade route doesn't work, maybe it should be fixed.  If the trade rout map does not work and can not be fixed after numerous betas and now an expansion, perhaps it would be better to remove from the game instead of displaying incorrect data.  Or perhaps it is unique to my computer and is a video glitch.

8,839 views 12 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong but I think in order to have a chain of trade routes they need to be linked in an unbroken chain with no gravity wells inbetween. The trade ports will need to connect. I'm currently in a game where I needed to fill some holes in the trade line I thought I had established but they were through one worm hole and one asteroid field. In order to link them I placed a starbase with trade facilities in them which linked the chain.

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

Yes this is true. Because all starbases have trade port abilities the devs now force the use of starbases in these empty, star, or dead areas to continue the trade route white line. This is not the case on vanilia even with 1.15.

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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

Ah! Thanks for clarifying the difference in trade between Sin 1.15 and Entrenchment 1.01

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

In my current game of Entrenchment, Gaian Crescent, the trade route ends when it goes through an asteroid grav well, eventhough the grav well is colonizable and has a trade port in it. 

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

I can only speak as tech, but when you hover the cursor over the credit cell on the screen the trade route is displayed as a white line following the phase lanes. It is supposed to show the longest unbroken trade route. However it just stops. There is in every game I can remember a contiuation of trade ports from the planet or asteroid the illustrated trade route does not pick up.
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I noticed this as well. Does the order in which you build the trade ports (or in which you colonized the planets) have any influence? The white trade line shown usually isn't the longest possible in my games, not sure if it is just the graphics or trade income as well.

Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top

Screenshots would really help here :)

Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top

Trade chains have been changed in Entrenchment, they no longer automatically go thru uncolonizeable gravity wells. 

But they still only seek the "shortest longest" chain!  So if you have 8 tradeports connecting in a circle, but central connecting phase lanes, the trade chain will only be 2 long.

Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top

Screenshots would really help here
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Annatar11, any suggestions as to how I could post a screen shot to the forum.

Trade chains have been changed in Entrenchment, they no longer automatically go thru uncolonizeable gravity wells.
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Asteriod fully colonized in this situation, with trade port and everything.

Has anyone ever scuttled a trade port?  It appears to have no effect on the per trade port credit.  My guess is the trade ships that were created are still there so the per trade port bump continues after the trade port is gone.  Scuttle a couple, the per trade port credit which was increased when you added the trade port remains.

Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top

it has always annoyed me when an extra planet gets a trade port in the middle - but out of the way - of a trade rout and is not included, but in a recent game my trade routs litterally stop for no reason. I took this screen shot, hopefully it helps. every planet i own has a trade port on it, and every non-planet in my (red) culture also has a starbase with the trade port upgrade, but the trade port just stops

 

here is the independent link just in case: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3609/3367116800_dd683d1970.jpg?v=0

 

and the picture

trade path buug

Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top

There's nothing wrong with that picture. The longest possible chain starting from any planet is 5 (4 jumps), which is what you've got. Remember that it grabs the "shortest" possible path between the start and end points, otherwise it would go through every planet.

If the starbase you got at the star gets a trade port, the route would probably go Terran > Volcanic > Asteroid Belt > Asteroid > Pirate Base > Star.

Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top

to get a longer chain you need to specifically not built ports on certain worlds that would make your optimal trade route shorter.

 

in the picture you presented you would have to build this trade port chain to get a longer route:

 

starting point: desert world on far west(left)

2nd: volcanic world to the east of the desert

3rd: terran world south-east of volcanic

4th: asteroid south-east of terran

5th: terran north of asteroid

6th: asteroid north-east of terran

 

that would give you a route with 5 lanes in it, which is 1 longer than your current route of 5 planets/4 lanes. you could go longer if you used star bases with trade docks, such as the route annatar suggests that uses the star and pirate base and an asteroid belt. my route uses only planets with natural logistics slots.

 

the value of the route is of course related to the number of lanes in the route. you ahve to be careful about which adjacent planets get ports or else you might break the lane. its worth noting that you can build as many ports as you want at worlds that are not adjacent to planets on the route and it won't break the chain at all. so in the example i described for your map, the ice world is totally non-adjacent to the route and you could fill it up with trade ports without affecting the length of your route at all.

 

if you find any of this stuff interesting in general, as opposed to just in terms of playing better in Sins, you might want to check out this:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graph_theory

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euler_trail

 

an ideal sins map would be an Eulerian Graph and you could make a trade route with (n-1) lanes in it, where n is the number of grav wells.

Reply #12 from Sins Forums Top

Thanks, i didnt realize there was a limit on the length.