Nobody eats fish anymore (PvE)

[Genma Saotome]

Close to 50% of the ports no longer buy fish.  Has everybody gone vegan?  Or is the fish market broken?  The later of course.  As more and more ports stop buying fish the few that are left get more and more fish sold there... until they too shut down.  I just dropped  738 tons of fish meat in a port.  Surely a few more visits of ordinary size will shut down that market too.

A few suggestions to get fish out of the fish markets and back on the dinner plates:

First, please don't cut the amount of fish caught.  Noobs are highly dependent on free fishing to get some cash early in their sailing careers.

If you have some rate whereby the stock of fish meat is reduced by local consumption, you need to increase the rate.  If you don't have a local consumption rate you should consider adding one. Seeing as the supply of fresh fish is unlimited the demand needs to be increased to make the markets work again.

Provisions are stocked when a ship is built.  Consider a consumption rate on each ship.  You know how many are in the crew on any given "day".  If you assume the ship loaded provisions for 3 months (these ships are not sailing to the far side of the world) there will be, in due time, a need to restock, which should often mean purchasing fish meat.

Food is an inelastic commodity -- lower prices don't change consumption all that much. Set a consumption rate for each port; Create a price function so when supply is high both buy and sell prices fall.  When supply is low both buy and sell prices are high. It doesn't have to be rocket science, just something simple that will, in essence, encourage loaded ships to head to those ports where the buy price is high and empty ships to those ports where the sell price is low.  The combination should keep fish markets working in all ports and give you, the DEV's, a test case for a slightly more complex feature in the trading aspect of NA that perhaps could be a template for applying to other goods.
 

[Macjimm]

Great idea.  

[Captain Jean-Luc Picard]

5 hours ago, Genma Saotome said:

Close to 50% of the ports no longer buy fish.  Has everybody gone vegan? 

Yes. Just sell them vegan fish instead.

Edited July 15, 2017 by Captain Jean-Luc Picard

[Anne Wildcat]

My suggestion, make fish cheaper to buy at ports that are overstocked.  That way maybe you can make a profit off of converting it to food supplies?

[CaptVonGunn]

You know you need them to build ships right?

 

 

[Genma Saotome]

On 7/15/2017 at 5:26 PM, CaptVonGunn said:

You know you need them to build ships right?

 

 

Yes but the demand for fish meat is woefully short of correcting the market problem

GB on July 16:

• Bahamas: 6 of 18 markets buy fish.
• Jamaica: 2 of 15 markets buy fish (and one pays only 5 gold)
• Antilles: 4 of 13 markets buys fish.
• Central America: 10 of 18 markets buy fish.

USA:

• 0 of 6 markets buy fish

Freetowns

• 4 of 29 markets buy fish

France

• 15 of 31 markets buy fish

I didn't count Neutrals but it looks like about half of the markets are closed and Prirates don't eat, they drink blood anyway so I skipped them.  Only Spain looked "not so bad" which is faint praise... but then who sails for Spain anyway?

 

In the grand scheme of things this needs to be fixed.  Doesn't need to be tomorrow, nor this week, but it has to be done before release.