09-25-2019, 12:43 PM
As far as actual cargo ships appearing in the game go, they should spawn along trade routes when encountered, like pirates, rather than existing in the game the whole time. I reckon there should be some default designs but it should be allowed to design your own or purchase from the exchange with all the features of a normal ship. To have it otherwise would feel very weird now that literally everything else about your empire is going to be customizable and capable of being unified to a single aesthetic.
If your design has the same volume as the default-tier ships it's free, but to use more powerful custom trade designs you have to purchase the vessel for that route from the broker screen. Maybe there are also some higher-tier built-in designs you can purchase the same way. If the ship is destroyed or robbed en route, you lose your upgraded ship for that route - it reverts to using basic designs until you purchase it again.
Autogenerated trade ships should not accept any berth requests from players or any orders; they could, however, be capturable - but take severe damage when changing empire flag. This would prevent people from using the broker to instabuild ships for themselves to use at a cronodollar cost. The exploit value of en-route encounters is rather low, since they only occur along a straight line from source to target - especially if the encounter is not guaranteed but a probability, as for pirates.
Also, it will presumably still be possible for trade shipments (and thus ships) to be auto-plundered, without generating a physical encounter, by pirate presence in the sector.
If your design has the same volume as the default-tier ships it's free, but to use more powerful custom trade designs you have to purchase the vessel for that route from the broker screen. Maybe there are also some higher-tier built-in designs you can purchase the same way. If the ship is destroyed or robbed en route, you lose your upgraded ship for that route - it reverts to using basic designs until you purchase it again.
Autogenerated trade ships should not accept any berth requests from players or any orders; they could, however, be capturable - but take severe damage when changing empire flag. This would prevent people from using the broker to instabuild ships for themselves to use at a cronodollar cost. The exploit value of en-route encounters is rather low, since they only occur along a straight line from source to target - especially if the encounter is not guaranteed but a probability, as for pirates.
Also, it will presumably still be possible for trade shipments (and thus ships) to be auto-plundered, without generating a physical encounter, by pirate presence in the sector.