Anathema
Posts: 8
2/13/2015
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I backed this on Kickstarter. Played an early version, back when it still had the card-based combat. My reaction to it was that there's the potential for a good game here, once there are places to go, and markets that aren't placeholders, so I can bumble about the Sunless Sea trading my way to better ships and occasionally dying.
Now that it's finished, I've picked it up again. And I'm finding that trading is absolutely impossible, especially when you're a new player who is being cautious. Every port within a safe range of London has absolutely punitive prices that won't even cover the fuel and supplies.
The whole mood of the game feels like it is encouraging me to play it safe at first, but there's really no way to do that and keep myself afloat. So eventually every single one of my captains has made a futile journey out into the sea, hoping to find something that will actually make a profit and let me live long enough to do the various stories involving taking people and places to various things. None of them has discovered a market with the remotest hope of making any kind of profit on basic trading; only about half the islands even have shops that will sell me food or fuel at absolutely punitive prices.
I find myself wondering why this game even has trading. I mean, the Kickstarter pitch of "sea-bound Elite with Fallen London-quality stories" hooked me. But five captains have succumbed to the many deaths of the Sea, and I'm really starting to get tired of sailing around aimlessly in the shitty starter boat, hoping to luck into a storyline that will actually give me enough fucking money to have a decent chance of making it back to London and re-supplying for another venture.
I feel like every single captain is a total idiot for making these obviously-doomed journeys, and I'm beginning to feel like an idiot for playing them. I don't mind the permadeath, I don't mind the sea being merciless, but I would like to have some kind of fighting chance at actually applying the basic logic of "oh hey I journey between ports trading stuff, buy low sell high and get a better ship" to this thing.
If the intent of the game is that trading is Not What You Actually Do, then why is there even a 'shops' tab in the interface? And what the hell does the game actually want me to do to get started? More idiotic, blind journeys out into the dark sea in hopes of that one lucky find?
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They say she's a weapon from behind the stars. They say she's a cunning clockwork simulacrum. They say her virtue's for sale. They say she's kind to spiders. All lies, of course. Except about the spiders.
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NiteBrite
Posts: 1019
2/14/2015
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Trading isn't there for profit, its for quest completion and survival in a pinch. Like, paying 30 echos for 1 fuel is ridiculous, but if you've run out of fuel right as you pull into a port that sells fuel at that price you aren't going to say "no". Similarly you might need a very specific item sold only at that specific port to complete a quest (ex. a mirror box from the khan's shadow, mutersalt from wither, etc.). Some goods are unique and require travel to acquire. Other items are a matter of convenience. Maybe you want to take coffee to the khanate but don't want to zail all the way back to london just to pick some up. Thankfully, Adam's way sells some so you are set. And so trade goes. Its more a matter of convenience and emergency life support than profit.
That said, there is quite a lot of legit profitable trades out there (souls to the brass embassy, wine to godfall, the merchant venturer quests, etc). They are just difficult to find when you are new, but that's where the community, the wiki, and just plain experience playing over and over step in to help fill the gaps in your knowledge. We can be very accomodating min-maxers and profiteers if you have very specific questions 
edited by NiteBrite on 2/14/2015
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I AM currently accepting calling cards.
Stats loss counter: reset, irrigo equivalent: none
[00:34] <@ortab> NiteBrite's laugh is that of a condemned soul gazing into the abyss.
Merciless Modiste avatar by Paul Arendt (based on an original image by Joe England)
http://fallenlondon.storynexus.com/Profile/TheBriteModiste
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SporksAreGoodForYou
Posts: 291
2/14/2015
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I noticed the text at the beginning saying trading wasn't profitable. And it's not, really. In my mind, the trading was less about finding routes which make money, and more about having places to buy things you need for quests, and places to sell booty you acquire in your adventures.
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penknife
Posts: 85
2/14/2015
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Trading exists because there are a few ways to make money from trading in the late game when you have a big ship and can make long voyages safely, and because various goods are needed to play through storylines -- you'll often need some wine, or honey, or souls, or candles -- and you have to be able to buy them somewhere, and so that you can sell the things you acquire from sinking ships, killing beasts, and doing storylets. But, yes, you mainly make money by exploring, fighting enemies, and playing through stories. I'm not sure why trading is so powerfully attractive to some players despite the message you get the moment you first visit the shops in London telling you it's difficult to make a profit that way.
edited by penknife on 2/14/2015
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http://fallenlondon.storynexus.com/Profile/Penknife
Most social actions welcome, no SMEN or Boxed Cats please.
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FogChicken1
Posts: 29
2/16/2015
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Sunless Sea is not a trading game, it's a story/exploration game with trading.
You can trade profitably (sometimes very profitably) if you have a lot of capital and a lot of game knowledge, and once you know the routes and opportunities you can often make trades to add some margin on your longer trips even if it's not enough to pay for the trip on its own. However you can't bootstrap as a pure trader. I really wonder if they ought to put this in the tutorial, given how many people we hear about who have tried to do exactly this and ended up frustrated - although I think the splash screen is intended to make the point.
People forget that Elite wasn't a pure trading game either. The heart of the game (and most of what made it a great game for its time) was space combat. The trading aspect, while required to make money, was actually extremely simplistic and would have become boring very quickly if it had been a standalone game. What made it interesting was the interaction - the best trading destinations were often the most dangerous and pirate-infested ones, so you needed to get good at space combat to be a good trader and vice versa. Sunless Sea is not a space combat game, it's a story and exploration game - particularly the long-running stories like the officer stories, or the port stories that play out over multiple visits. But the interaction is similar. If you try to be a trader while skipping the story and exploration element entirely, you won't succeed, any more than you would have succeeded as a trader in Elite by avoiding all the worlds with pirates/space combat.
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NiteBrite
Posts: 1019
2/16/2015
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Garthand wrote:
That's an interesting point. What if echoes and trading were to be eliminated entirely, forcing players to acquire fuel, supplies and possibly ships through stories? That would definitely place more focus on the stories, and would prevent players from playing on a map past the point where no stories remain.
I would find that most upsetting. I've put in over 146 hours in this game and have nearly one hundred percented every storyline out there. This game has great story but its gameplay is great too to the point where the game can be incredibly fun even if there were no story at all or are 'past the point where no stories remain'. Seriously I entertained a group of 90 people for 4 solid hours on my launch day stream just sailing around in a steam launch and fighting monsters and such. I we read maybe 2 things that entire time, but that didn't make it terrible. Forcing Sunless Sea to be pure story by removing its wonderful gameplay mechanics would be a right shame in my opinion, and it'd really lose a lot of what makes it fun. There's nothing wrong with having fun on an aged/advanced map, especially since the amount of story out there isn't unlimited.
I think, what's nice about all these mechanics is you can take advantage of them or ignore them completely and the game is fully playable either way. It's your game and your captain. You get to decide how the game is played and what you want and how you will get it. There's no 'one and only path' through the content, and that's fantastic.
edited by NiteBrite on 2/16/2015
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I AM currently accepting calling cards.
Stats loss counter: reset, irrigo equivalent: none
[00:34] <@ortab> NiteBrite's laugh is that of a condemned soul gazing into the abyss.
Merciless Modiste avatar by Paul Arendt (based on an original image by Joe England)
http://fallenlondon.storynexus.com/Profile/TheBriteModiste
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Shadow
Posts: 49
2/16/2015
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People want to accumulate echoes because they exist, they're hard to earn, and meaningful upgrades cost outlandish amounts. Also, some stories are often a significant expense until the final payout. That is, if you can reach it and aren't forced to put the quest on hold until you can procure some rare item otherwise barring the next stage.
The stories are great, I don't dispute that, but the actual gameplay needs more fleshing out, and balance honed. There's a lot of potential in there, but I wouldn't class it as "incredibly fun" once you've discovered almost all locations, done the more accessible quests, and need to make long, slogging journeys to make a profit (to get that Frigate you still can't afford after 20 hours) and/or do a single quest on the other side of the Unterzee.
I'm also strongly adverse to the idea of having to necessarily die and start over to be mechanically more productive on the next captain. Retracing hours of old content in slightly different circumstances is not my idea of replayability. It's an area where the underdeveloped dynamic gameplay becomes a real problem.
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In Her Enduring Majesty's Service
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Kirzen
Posts: 1
2/20/2015
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- SPOILER WARNING - SPOILER WARNING - SPOILER WARNING -
If suddenly having more money than you can ever imagine spending is going to run the game for you, stop here. I love the game, I love the setting, and I honestly believe that there should be a much more complete trading system in place (Uncharted Waters was one of my favorite games when I was younger). But the idea that money is somehow a difficult to obtain commodity is misplaced. So I'm going to tell you how to make a couple hundred grand in a couple hours.
How you make your first few hundred is unimportant. You'll need a small amount of mobility for this and a general idea of where Salt Lions, Iron Republic, Mount Palmerston and Khan's Shadow are. It'll also be helpful if you collect a few Admiralty's Favors at this point, you'll need plenty of them later.
(NOTE - List format on this sucks, so I'm going to paragraph it instead, it'll be fairly longish (its a worthy read I hope) The first section is how to make your first 10k or so. The second section will cover how to make all the money you should ever need through the sunlight trade. This is starting with a fresh game, no handouts, nothing special, just a guy/gal and the starting dinghy).
Firstly, burn your fuel down to get the handout from the bruiser if you haven't done so already, you're going to complete his first quest to transport the contraband souls, but you'll not be coming back to collect the reward right now. Doing this will freeze his quest at the reward step so that you don't have to worry about disappointing him or botching a mission later and having him leave. As far as I know if you disappoint his patron and he leaves you can never get him back and it will seriously hurt your sunlight trade forever.
Complete the bruiser's first quest to transport souls, and raise about 1K echoes in whatever manner you desire. The easiest ways that I've found so far are to complete either the deviless quest on Mt Palmerston (by returning her to the Brass Embassy), completing the quest line at Visage or running sphynxstone to London from the Salt Lions. By the time you finish any of these (and sell the rewards) you should have 1-2k echoes and they can be reliably completed in an hour or so of real time.
(YOUR FIRST 10K)
Start in London. Fill your ship with at least 24 fuel, 2 supplies, and as much coffee as you can hold. You're going to travel directly south down the coastline to Cumaean Canal and make a trip to the surface. You can top up your fuel and supplies in Cumaean, but purchasing fuel there is fairly expensive compared to London and you MUST have enough room on your ship for the fuel and supplies required to make a surface trip.
(Collect news here too every time you return, its good for Moves in the Great Game)
Take the trip to Naples for 1 fuel (sometimes you'll lose 1 crew doing this but it's a fairly uncommon) and then take the train from there to Vienna. You can establish a relationship with a cafe here to provide them coffee, they'll pay you about 80 echoes each. Even in the starting ship this is approximately 6-700 profit per trip.
(Choose which way to handle the revolution here as well. I choose to increase Iron supremacy, this unlocked a contact here that will have dinner with you in exchange for news from London, there's a very good chance doing so will grant a Moves In the Great Game each time).
Return to Naples on the train from Vienna. Take the time here to make sure you have enough fuel and supplies to reach either the Iron Republic or London, you should have about 14-15 fuel (including the 10 that is required to make the journey back underground). You can buy fuel here in Naples for 15 echoes (which is less expensive than Cumaean's shop, but more expensive than London or IR), you should however buy 35 or so supplies here (you can buy them for 5 echoes each here, the cheapest source in the game).
Take the supplies down to Iron Republic and sell them to the House of Milks market (25 echoes each - Keep 3'ish - 20profit x 30'ish = 600). The House of Milks is not always open however, and you may have to idle outside Iron Republic for a couple of days and push the market forward. Don't worry about your Horror levels, your Horror will be reset to zero every time you visit the surface. House of Milks ALSO sells coffee even less expensively than London does... so stock up once again with 24'ish fuel, 2'ish supplies and fill the rest of your hold with coffee.
You can repeat these steps for 1200+ profit per run (even in the starter ship), each run takes only a couple days. Follow the coast, run with your lights off (your Horror is set back to zero every time you return to the surface. You should be able to make 10-12k doing this before the coffee shop in Vienna burns down. You can make even more profit in a merchant vessel, just keep in mind that as you get closer to the coffee house in Vienna burning down (I believe it's a set amount of coffee you're allowed to trade) your final trade will trigger the cafe's destruction... regardless of the size of said final trade... so make it a good one.
(SUNLIGHT FOR PROFIT)
Now set out across the Zea and head for Khan's Shadow (Approach from the SW if you can, less Khan Cruisers) and buy 20 mirror lined boxes. Return to London and make sure that you have at least FIVE Admiralty's Favors (you've been turning in your Moves In The Great Game, right?) Head to the surface and fill all the mirror lined boxes with sunlight (unlike in Aestival, there is no chance of wounding yourself doing this up here).
Take your 20 boxes back to London (If you run into customs, blow 5 Favors to have them look the other way).
Visit the bruiser and sell your sunlight to him at four hundred echos a pop. But the best part is that he RETURNS THE BOXES to you. You just made 8000 echos. You can now immediately return to the surface and repeat this as many times as necessary. If you start running low on Admiralty's Favors make sure you're trading your Moves in the Great Game to him (always nets one favor) and if you betray the revolution in Vienna you can have dinner with your contact there every time you return to the surface for a pretty good shot at another moves. Doing this will keep your favors high enough that you can do this forever. Once you have enough echos, buy the merchant ship, buy the supression item that allows you to overload engines for free. You now can travel nearly double speed with no chance of failure.
You can now go to Khan's Shadow, load up on 40-50 MORE mirror boxes and continue trading for tens of thousands of echos with every trip over a journey that takes less than 2-3 minutes. (London <> Cumaean).
(EDITED for readability ~K)
edited by Kirzen on 2/20/2015
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