Earlier today I was talking with one of the players in my current game. We were talking about trading resources. We had agreed that I would give him so rare materials in return for fuel. I clicked on the trade option and to my surprise and dismay, I saw that I was only able to "trade" relations. I asked in the Help channel if we weren't allowed to trade resources anymore because I thought I might just be dealing with some sort of bug and daifrit confirmed that it was true that we weren't able to trade resources due to people abusing the ability. We had a couple ideas on how to reduce the amount of abuse and I'd like to list them here as well as some others that I have thought of in the past couple hours. Keep in mind that I have only recently started playing the game again and haven't been following a lot of the stuff in the forums, I did look through a couple threads about trading. If I do mention ideas that have been used already, I apologize.
Anyway, I think one good way to reduce the abuse of resource trading would be to simply limit the amount of resources that you can receive or give in a trade. I also think that having both traders paying a fee in order to transport the resources could work as well. As an addition to the transport fee, you could make it so that it actually takes time to send the resources to their destination depending on how far apart the 2 trader's countries are (this was daifrit's idea, if I remember correctly). Increasing the amount paid for the transport fee based on how far apart the trader's countries are could be an added incentive to not abuse the system.
I also have another, more complex idea that could allow resource trading but decrease the amount of abuse of the system. I have no experience developing games, so I really don't have much of a clue how difficult or easy it would be to implement these ideas but, I don't think it should be too hard to get these working. Correct me if I'm wrong. Anyway, I think that having each player pay a certain percentage of the lowest unit price for a certain type of resource on the market in order to receive that resource from a trade would be a good way to limit abuse of trading. For example, let's say that I want 1000 fuel from a player, and he/she wants 1500 electronics in return, both of us would have to pay a percentage (25% maybe) of the lowest unit price on the market multiplied by the amount of each of the resources we want. Therefore, I would have to pay 25% of a unit price of 5 multiplied by the 1000 fuel that I want. Of course the developers might think it would be better to have the percentage be 50 or 75% and I guess that would be raised or lowered depending on player feedback and/or the amount of abuse going on.
If you add all the other ideas I mentioned earlier, there really isn't much incentive to abuse the ability to trade resources. Players have to pay a small percentage of the unit price of a resource, they have to pay a transport fee, they have to wait for the resources to come in, and all of these prices and waiting times increase or decrease depending on multiple factors that can be controlled by the 2 people wishing to trade with each other but only to a small extent. On top of that, you can still decide to limit the amount of resources each player can give and receive per day. Also these ideas add a certain amount of strategy to trading with others. Players have to decide whether it is worth it to wait for a cheap price on the market for the resources they need or they can trade with someone for them at a cheaper price while having to give the other player some resources as well.
Those are all the ideas I have on making a good trading system for now. Feel free to add other ideas and feedback about the ideas as I might have overlooked some negatives to the ideas I mentioned in this post.
Anyway, I think one good way to reduce the abuse of resource trading would be to simply limit the amount of resources that you can receive or give in a trade. I also think that having both traders paying a fee in order to transport the resources could work as well. As an addition to the transport fee, you could make it so that it actually takes time to send the resources to their destination depending on how far apart the 2 trader's countries are (this was daifrit's idea, if I remember correctly). Increasing the amount paid for the transport fee based on how far apart the trader's countries are could be an added incentive to not abuse the system.
I also have another, more complex idea that could allow resource trading but decrease the amount of abuse of the system. I have no experience developing games, so I really don't have much of a clue how difficult or easy it would be to implement these ideas but, I don't think it should be too hard to get these working. Correct me if I'm wrong. Anyway, I think that having each player pay a certain percentage of the lowest unit price for a certain type of resource on the market in order to receive that resource from a trade would be a good way to limit abuse of trading. For example, let's say that I want 1000 fuel from a player, and he/she wants 1500 electronics in return, both of us would have to pay a percentage (25% maybe) of the lowest unit price on the market multiplied by the amount of each of the resources we want. Therefore, I would have to pay 25% of a unit price of 5 multiplied by the 1000 fuel that I want. Of course the developers might think it would be better to have the percentage be 50 or 75% and I guess that would be raised or lowered depending on player feedback and/or the amount of abuse going on.
If you add all the other ideas I mentioned earlier, there really isn't much incentive to abuse the ability to trade resources. Players have to pay a small percentage of the unit price of a resource, they have to pay a transport fee, they have to wait for the resources to come in, and all of these prices and waiting times increase or decrease depending on multiple factors that can be controlled by the 2 people wishing to trade with each other but only to a small extent. On top of that, you can still decide to limit the amount of resources each player can give and receive per day. Also these ideas add a certain amount of strategy to trading with others. Players have to decide whether it is worth it to wait for a cheap price on the market for the resources they need or they can trade with someone for them at a cheaper price while having to give the other player some resources as well.
Those are all the ideas I have on making a good trading system for now. Feel free to add other ideas and feedback about the ideas as I might have overlooked some negatives to the ideas I mentioned in this post.
