DarkMagic
Rare member
When you do commerce, packs are set to 130% but as other people turn in packs this price boost drops and drops and drops. Needless to say this needs to be changed because every pack is basically at 110-100% or lower. It is sadly a race to get the packs in first with people having to buy fuel and axel grease to race others there but this just wastes money and usually you are beaten there by the merch ships with 20 packs so buying the fuel is just a waste. The fact everyone has so much labor this means everyone is doing trade runs now and thus making commerce extremely bad money wise now. If you look at other professions such as fishing it only got buffed thanks to the labor increase meanwhile commerce gets nerfed, because of this it has made trading a very stressful thing to do and really not worth it compared to fishing. I tossed alot of time and effort into commerce and getting to the farm hauler and slowly working my way up to the freighter but now IDK if I even wanna go for that and has basically made me regret going for it and made me wish I had gone for fishing boat instead.
My suggestion to fix this issue with commerce and to get it back to being a decent way to make cash again are 1 of 2 ways if not both.
1. There was a version of AA commerce were, IIRC, only had the wagon and before the hauler was added or freighter. But I recall people stopping at the wagon because you could trade in 4 packs personally at 100% of what the going rate depending on who else had traded which was usually 125-130%. But once you turned in a fifth pack you'd get like 90% of the value and a 6th pack was like 70% and a 7th was 50% or something. Idk exactly how it worked but I do remember never going above the wagon because you would lose so much money turning in too many trade packs to the same place and this would reset when you get your 22h payment. Now it seems you can turn in as many packs as you want so long as you have the labor for 100% of the value listed so now people can trade full merchant ships and drop the price for everyone else but still make a fat stack of cash solely for themselves. So bring this mechanic back but put it at say 7 or 8 packs before the price starts dropping for personal turn ins, this should help keep the price at say 115%+ for everyone and also limit those who are making too much from it, it will balance the scales to ensure everyone can make a decent profit from it. Also the addition of making the overall % reset back to 130% faster would be nice, considering before commerce wasn't so highly contested because of the labor costs ment not everyone wanted to get into it but with the 4x regen it means everyone can basically get away with doing commerce and whatever else they wanna do now so commerce is just extremely contested atm.
2. My other suggestion is to just not have the overall price drop for commerce and have it always be at 130%. When you look at other professions like fishing were the price never decreases despite 30 boats turning in all at the same time it gets pretty evident that when commerce prices fall it's bad and needs to be changed. Consider the following, when you trade to places that are closer rather the farther to a destination and they are more profitable then the farthest packs it's just sad. For example the farthest pack you can transport may cost like 15g at 130% and another pack that is say half the distance is like 13g per pack at 130% the 13g pack becomes way more profitable then the 15g because it's price dropped to like 80% from how many people are turning those packs in. The problem with this however is that the 13g packs have also dropped making the farthest pack the most profitable again but still almost half the value anyway. Making it were all packs stay at 130% value no matter what will make commerce a lot better and make it on par with fishing profits. Although even with this change fishing is still the most profitable, some people are saying they are earing 300-350g per hour fishing in the ocean and 2k gold a day.
However, I think the idea of adding both of these suggestions would be the best option, making packs always 130% no matter what can easily be abused so making the limit of personal packs that can be turned in before the price drops at around 7 or 8 every 22 hours would be fine, this would make the freighter still viable but also make the packs not so easily abusable for thousands of gold. Please consider these changes or other ways to buff commerce and make it fair for all because the only way for commerce to be an above decent option for making cash again would be to wait for player numbers to drop and you never want your solution to a problem be less people playing.
My suggestion to fix this issue with commerce and to get it back to being a decent way to make cash again are 1 of 2 ways if not both.
1. There was a version of AA commerce were, IIRC, only had the wagon and before the hauler was added or freighter. But I recall people stopping at the wagon because you could trade in 4 packs personally at 100% of what the going rate depending on who else had traded which was usually 125-130%. But once you turned in a fifth pack you'd get like 90% of the value and a 6th pack was like 70% and a 7th was 50% or something. Idk exactly how it worked but I do remember never going above the wagon because you would lose so much money turning in too many trade packs to the same place and this would reset when you get your 22h payment. Now it seems you can turn in as many packs as you want so long as you have the labor for 100% of the value listed so now people can trade full merchant ships and drop the price for everyone else but still make a fat stack of cash solely for themselves. So bring this mechanic back but put it at say 7 or 8 packs before the price starts dropping for personal turn ins, this should help keep the price at say 115%+ for everyone and also limit those who are making too much from it, it will balance the scales to ensure everyone can make a decent profit from it. Also the addition of making the overall % reset back to 130% faster would be nice, considering before commerce wasn't so highly contested because of the labor costs ment not everyone wanted to get into it but with the 4x regen it means everyone can basically get away with doing commerce and whatever else they wanna do now so commerce is just extremely contested atm.
2. My other suggestion is to just not have the overall price drop for commerce and have it always be at 130%. When you look at other professions like fishing were the price never decreases despite 30 boats turning in all at the same time it gets pretty evident that when commerce prices fall it's bad and needs to be changed. Consider the following, when you trade to places that are closer rather the farther to a destination and they are more profitable then the farthest packs it's just sad. For example the farthest pack you can transport may cost like 15g at 130% and another pack that is say half the distance is like 13g per pack at 130% the 13g pack becomes way more profitable then the 15g because it's price dropped to like 80% from how many people are turning those packs in. The problem with this however is that the 13g packs have also dropped making the farthest pack the most profitable again but still almost half the value anyway. Making it were all packs stay at 130% value no matter what will make commerce a lot better and make it on par with fishing profits. Although even with this change fishing is still the most profitable, some people are saying they are earing 300-350g per hour fishing in the ocean and 2k gold a day.
However, I think the idea of adding both of these suggestions would be the best option, making packs always 130% no matter what can easily be abused so making the limit of personal packs that can be turned in before the price drops at around 7 or 8 every 22 hours would be fine, this would make the freighter still viable but also make the packs not so easily abusable for thousands of gold. Please consider these changes or other ways to buff commerce and make it fair for all because the only way for commerce to be an above decent option for making cash again would be to wait for player numbers to drop and you never want your solution to a problem be less people playing.
