Buying and selling ships
The user can buy and sell ships via the ship's agent dialog in the OfficeScreen or the Shipyard.
Buying ships
The ship's agent offers any type of ship, but not any type of ship might be available at any time. By default it offers a certain ship for a month. If the end of the month is reached new ships to be offered have to be randomly generated. A maximum of four to five ships should be available each month, but not more. The type and state as well as the tonnage and other data are automatically generated, but should not exceed a certain maximum or minimum (e.g. the state should not be worse than 30 percent).
Delivery of the ship is not done instantly. Instead an internal flag containing the harbour where the ship currently lies will be used and the ship will be transfered to the user's home harbour on buying it. Thus it can take some time until the ship is available, when it has to drive from e.g. Sydney to London first.
The price is calculated on the state and other information of the ship. There are two values:
- The estimated value for the ship
- the real price to pay for it.
The user will only see the estimated value and will be offered to pay the real price, which can differ from the estimated value. It can be higher or lower than the estimated value, but should not exceed a difference of 20 to 30 percent.
Selling ships
The user can sell ships using the ship's agent dialog, too. He will be offered a certain price, which will be usually beneath (20 percent) the estimated value for the ship. If the state of the ship dropped beneath 30 percent, the ship will not be bought so that the user has to repair it first. The ship will not be available from that point of time anymore.
If the ship is currently on sea, it cannot be sold. If it still has some cargo, this will be sold with it, but does not influence the bid value.
Shipyard
The shipyard allows the user to build individual ships and allows him to adjust the following values for the ship to build:
- tonnage
- maximum speed
- maximum range
- ship type
Dependant on the ship type the other values cannot exceed a minimum or maximum value. The requested values however can differ from the later build offer.
After the user has set the value a construction plans will be generated which can take (dependant on the ship type) between one and three months. As said before the real values of the construction plans can differ from the requested values (the algorithms have to be designed).
As soon as the user receveid the construction plans, he can let the shipyard build the ship. Dependant on the ship type this will take between 4 and 24 months (this has to be specified exactly). The construction plans remain by the user and can be used to build more ships of the same type at any time.