ToA Trade problem

Anybody else seeing this issue with Trade? Anyone from Stardock have any ideas? This isn't supposed to be how Trade is now, is it? I completely uninstalled GC II and all expansion packs, then reinstalled everything. Same "problem". I am running Vista SP1.

The negative number is not a bug. It shows the number of turns left for the minifeighter to arrive at one of the terminal points. For instance, when you start a trade route between two planets that are 12 moves apart the current turn shows -12. Each turn this number decreases (i.e. -11, -10 etc) until the minifreighter arrives at the destination: then the number resets, i.e. starts again from -12 and reaches zero when the minifreighter is back home.

I think that the other number (i.e. the one after the "/") shows the number of trade routes the other civ has with you but I am not certain.

The value is not fixed to 5bc turn. Probably all your routes are quite similar and that is why they provide the same income. For instance, I am currently playing on a medium map and some of my routes have value 4 bc and some 5 bc. However, the value of the route does not seem to depend on the length of the travel any more. In DA the value of a route increased each turn until the minifreighter had completed the journey there and back. So the route had the least value when the minifreighter just started to move away from your planet and had the most value when it was approaching it.

Max value/current value bug has been there from the first release. These two values are always the same.

Trade does seem gimped I had a galactic event that increased trade and set my trade to +900 percent.... I got 26 per turn. The jagged knife group got 50 odd a turn with like +2000%. It's either been made so it's never worth it to build freighters or something is wrong. I'm sorry but it takes far to long to get money back at 5 bc a turn for my investment I can build some warships and extort far more off some pathetic race.

Agreed. Trade was quite insignificant source of income before but now it it is almost worthless. However, trade still influences relations. So it is not useless.

OK, I understand about the Current Turn numbers being negative. I do wonder about the trade value now. Why does it not increase with distance? Is this something Stardock intended to do on purpose? Hopefully someone can answer this.

Has anyone noticed if trade value is still increased by trade modules on starbases? I haven't noticed yet. I'll have to look more closely at this. I remember seeing a trade ship come in close to my homeworld and through space that should have been modified by trade modules, and I did not see the trade value number increase.

I am actually quite surprised that not many people have noticed the trade bug. I used to use it as a major source of income, but now it is almost useless except for diplomatic purposes. Also, I noticed in my stats and graphs that my trade rating was an obscenely large despite my only making about 10bc per route going across a large map through various trade modules. I doubt that the trade modules make a difference, but it is hard to tell since I usualy make them so that they touch all my trade routes coming out of one planet.

I actually came here tonight hoping to find such a thread. I guess what I need is clarification from some experts on my first full game of ToA, does this sound right...

12 trade routes, covering anywhere from 60 to 90 percent of a "Huge" map... all earning 20 - 35 bc.

1 trade route, travelling about two sectors... 40 bc permanent.

Now I am playing the Korx and as well as Super Trader I have built the "be awes @ trade" improvement. Now I am sorry if this is all standard for ToA, but I am certainly sceptical. I mean it would be like having "Super Manipulator" and yet be denied the Universal Translator tech.

Also I think I poured half of my economy into starbases and I am almost certain they had SFA effect.

Total Trade average : 200 - 300 bc.
Total Trade average in Arcean Game of DA last week (also Huge map) : 1000 bc.

Seems strange to me, thanks for any replies.

This seems like a bug to me too. In DA you could make a couple of hundred each turn from trade without much effort, once the trade routes had been running for a while, and a lot more than that if you optimized your trade strategy. But in ToA trade income is so low that it's completely insignificant. The money would have been useful too, with the high maintenance costs you have to pay in ToA.

The fact that the "current turn" is a negative number, and the max value and current value is always the same, makes me pretty sure trade is not working as intended. The relations bonus is still nice though.

Bumping.

I certainly hope this is fixed in the June patch, right after the technology cost bug! In DA trade could be a major part of your strategy: Korx could definitely generate a good amount (even most) of their income with trade and well-placed starbases. That it isn't a viable strategy anymore. Please fix it, SD folks! I'm jonesing to fill the galaxy with my valuable goods once again.

I've barely managed to squeeze just over 1k bc/turn out of my trade routes as the Korx, in ToA huge map. That's including the Neutral Trade research, which btw only gives 1 extra trade route to the Korx, apparently the amount of trade routes you can have also has a hard cap.

Anyhow, this 1k was from all my trade routes combined, each going through at least 4 completely upgraded starbases (including the extra +25% module the Korx get).
This 1k was achieved relatively early in the game, however as time passed by and I actually built a few more trade starbases, I never got a higher amount, it got stuck at +- 1k and refused to go any higher. When I first hit 1k, trade made up about 1/7th of my income (most of the rest was taxes), but when my tax income eventually hit 26k+, trade had still remained the same amount. (I always spent enough money to even let trade unhandicapped by the 10K halves trade mark.)

And this is the Korx, the supposedly awesome traders...
With other races, I'm finding trade even less worth it. Trade was always rather hampered in this game, but now it's downright gimped. I'd very much like it if trade were to become a valuable part of the economy again. Now it is only economically interesting on the very small maps with rare planets, but even then, you're probably better off building warships...

In my current game (Suicidal, Immense) I've made my large, aggressive Torian neighbors less warlike by sending a couple trade ships. It's given me time to start producing Transports. A few more turns, and David will take on Goliath...

EDIT: Ignore this post.