A lot of us don't use cargo ships or zeppelins because there's 50 people online all day that will come out and sink us

I understand your point mcsamj, but I believe that adds to the geo-politics of the server, giving more of a reason to make treaties and documents to avoid being sunk.

Hi vectra, nations didn't initially have the AH feature but it was added later down the line because of the lack of player interaction/trading.

The ah enabled players to sell single items across the map with ease, which simply didn't happen before due to the risk/reward of such a trip

I really empathise with this suggestion. The server was actually released without /ah precisely to promote use of Movecraft and player shops. I was inspired by the economy of EVE Online in doing this.

Here's the problem. For the first 8 months we ran without /ah, Movecraft trade on a large scale did not materialise. Some people made shipping companies, but all failed. The server economy was small and sluggish, and our objectives had not been met.

Why? I think there are two reasons:

1. Players prefer to grind their own items over travelling to buy them from player shops and contracts, even if they dislike grinding. Or they simply get frustrated and quit.

2. There are not many items that are regularly purchased in quantities that would require Movecraft to transport them. Slimefun machines, runes, etc, can all be carried in an ender chest.

It's true that the server has changed a lot since 2021, especially in the Movecraft department. It's difficult to predict what the outcome of removing AH now would be, although I strongly suspect it would be the same as before. Interested to hear what you think.

Vectravxr the problem with treaties to stop getting sunk is they don't work. Can't stop a random guy from coalition pulling a ship out and sinking a cargo ship full of materials that took days to make.

My opinion is that the problem arises from the lack of existing towns with actual active playerbase and not the other way around. Only instance i ever managed to successfully use movecraft for trading was the very beginning of nations 2 when there was 100x less towns and i had 15 online residents at Norston at times. Then it made sense to go travel to the other end of the world for sugar cane since it does not grow in the desert. Also, Bulk-shipping items does not really make sense if there are no centers of "bulk production" and they will never exist in a world where a town is just 1 player. Also player shops are nearly completely useless for anything else than trade inside the town among the residents. So entire concept of a functioning economy quickly falls apart when you take "society" or "community" out of the equation, and i would not call towns with 2 people an established "community". Conversely, the reason why /ah works is because as 1 player you might want to buy a SF machine or a rune from someone else and it is super convenient if you can just have it "teleported". Ideally, i would like to see towns where you walk into a shop and buy the said machine or rune from a player shop.

maybe increase the server tax on ah items to further incentivize buying bulk via movecraft? this would solidify /ah as a 1-5 item sort of ordeal rather than en masse buying i guess.

kinda stumped on this one. i like the idea though.

The outcome of removing /ah would be total self-sufficiency of the entire playerbase because nobody has the time to actually do trade when it takes at least 10 minutes of negotiation, sometimes even longer then planning out a "safe" route where you don't get blown up by no life movecrafters that check /craftlist every 20 minutes and then round-trip time taken to actually transport the items ((for very little reward)) one of the primary reason people rank up (other than novelty) is for the perks and one of them is more /ah slots (i love capitalism) I've tried to set up a player shop based systems in the past and it's way too much effort without warping the sunk cost spent on building infrastructure for chest shops is insane especially if your trying to sell ALOT of stuff

Full self-sufficiency isn't inevitable if some resources are fully region-locked. That can easily be done with crops, less so with other resources.

I think that "Full Self-sufficiency" is not that much of a big deal as devs give it "credit for", because it seems like an obvious explanation that people are simply self-sufficient and therefore do not need to trade at all. This is in a way true because of course, it is best to be self-sufficient when you live alone in a "town", because the said "town" is more equivalent of an "off-grid homestead" than a real town. I am getting the impression that most mechanics would work in an environment that nations is SUPPOSED to be meanwhile they do not work in practice because Nations is really not a place with "established communities". For example, Zaify mentioned how full self-sufficiency isn't inevitable if some resources are fully region-locked. That would imply that you would need to have a town that is producing and selling regional goods to the wider market. But the said "town" does not exist as a town but just as 1 player and the "wider market" is a bunch of individuals and not communities that are going to "import" stuff. At the end it boils down to the fact that region-locked resources WOULD make trade necessary IF the environment where the said resources are being spent would allow for a larger scale "economy" In practice even if it was possible to region-lock every single existing thing I doubt there would be much change without first fixing the core issue.

Also, I would like to add that even with the possibility of full self-sufficiency trade is still possible because plugins like slimefun, as well as some core Minecraft mechanics, allow for much more efficient production based on scale. For example, you are not going to build an entire wool farm if you need to make a bed, so it would be easier to just buy cheap wool from the farm instead. This is especially true for SF machines, ammunition, and things like concrete or terracotta. As well as enchants (spawner farms). I will not go and buy 20 spawners to make myself a set of armor, but I would much rather buy a set of armor from someone who has 20 spawners and is able to sell it cheaply instead of being "self-sufficient" and grinding zombies at night to eventually complete my set somehow. I do not think "self-sufficiency" kills the economy by default.