Private Ports, Trade, and Navy Rework
This is my mod intended as a spiritual successor to my somewhat popular PPCI mod. I rebuilt it file by file in order to maximize mod compatibility, and it now focuses almost exclusively on trade, ports, and how navies interact with these things.
Without further ado: In vanilla Victoria 3, the state is entirely responsible for the convoys that trade centers use in order to make profitable trades. This means that a trade routes profitability value is somewhat fraudulent, as the trade route owners do not account for the costs imposed on the state by their trading activities. Worst, the cost they fail to account for are the very boats and shipping lanes that they use to conduct all their business- I don’t know which member of government they bribed for this setup, but it ends now.
This mod reimagines Convoys as a representation of a nation’s ability to project naval power and protection across the trade lanes maintained by the pops of the nation. As such, the main source of convoys becomes Naval Bases, instead of ports. In fact, ports are no longer government owned buildings that eat into a governments budget to subsidize wealthy captains of industry; instead, they are private infrastructure that produces a new good known as "Shipping Lanes". Shipping Lanes are created by ports, consuming clippers and other civilian naval goods. Of course, as private infrastructure, the government can still subsidize the port and keep costs down for their capitalists if they would like…
Trade centers now choose the extent to which they purchase these shipping lanes in order to conduct their business through their production methods. Be warned that using overland trade instead of sea trade is significantly costlier for them, especially before railroads make overland trading more economically viable.
Ports still provide a smaller amount of unscaled convoys simply by existing, and the government can use a new production method to hijack some of the civilian port activity and get some additional convoys out of them. However, this is probably not optimal in the long run and doesn’t scale very well. Nations must now rely on expensive navies to really maintain large overseas markets and trade routes.
There are a series of changes to employment and output of ports and trade centers in order to make sure that these buildings and production chains are viable economic activity. This mod also increases the price range of goods from -95% to +95%, as opposed to the default -75% to +75%, in order to create more opportunities for profitable trade (should you have the navy to support this).
Other changes, all of which support the goal of making trade more powerful but demanding:
-Railroads and ports have a small increase on MAPI. Base MAPI reduced from 75% to 70% to compensate, and urban centers now stimulate transport demand from these railroads (while being more profirtable due to nearly halved labour requirements).
-Reduced the rate of GDP falloff for the Investment Pool
-Increases prestige effect on company bonuses
-Unincorporated states no longer have a MAPI malus
-Excess convoys have a doubled effect on trade competitiveness, as do trade agreements
-Ports now play a larger role in determining where a trade center for a route will by physically located, as this is the lever players have most control over. A nation which wishes a particular province to do a lot of trade should invest in ports there.
-Added very small beneficial effects on mortality, throughput and state construction efficiency from excess innovation. What’s the point of creating a wealthy trade empire if there is no late game sink for it through universities?
I hope you guys enjoy the mod, especially fans of the original PPCI. I also hope to hear feedback/bug reports. Cheers,
Paul
