Adding combat to a trade sim?

[Milkymalk]

I'm not a professional game designer, but I have been around long enough to have a basic understanding of what makes a game fun and keeps the player invested. That said, what I know makes me wonder if what I have in mind is enough.

I'm working on a game that mixes classic trade simulations with VN: You have a ship, later a small fleet, and travel around a fantasy world buying and selling stuff. Every town has a rudimentarily simulated economy consisting of needs, wares input and wares output. You start in the north sea a small region with medieval European culture and after raising your standing with the cities there high enough you get some quests which will unlock more ports and regions for you, from America the colonies to Japan a far eastern country.
Along the way, you will pick up several girls love interests very interesting characters who give you their personal quest lines.

So what I am concerned about is that unlocking or reaching a new region will not really be perceived as rewarding, as it's just more of the same. There is not really a "power up". At best, you will have access to a few more ware types (there are a total of 45 different commodities in the game that you can trade; 15 food types, 15 raw materials and 15 trade goods/finished goods) and maybe better sale opportunities for already found wares, but it probably doesn't feel like a new challenge. Filling every region with so many characters that it's worthwhile cruising around the new ports for the quests alone would make the character count escalate quickly.

I have toyed with the idea of introducing RPG combat with the "collected" characters as potential party members, which would make exploring the world important in order to find new challenges. It would also make finding items rewarding. But somehow it doesn't feel right because the player is not a mercenary or soldier but a trader. OTOH, there are pirates and those encounters would be best resolved with some kind of battle, so that would fit right in there.

I could go full Kamidori, where the player is supposed to be an artisan (wrongly translated as "alchemist") and still goes out to kill monsters for crafting materials. So the player could, besides ports, find farming spots where he fights a battle and then gets loot (from the defeated monsters and the place), which consists of stuff to trade (hides, meat, plant stuff, minerals) and RPG items. I wonder, however, whether this would change the focus of the game too much. A cooldown for those places would help to not make it a pure grinding game, but that would also water down their usefulness. OTOH, it would keep the player moving around and since he is going from A to B anyway, he might as well trade on his way there.

What are your thoughts on that matter? Do you think a trade sim should stay "pure", or is combat needed for it to keep the player interested beyond the first few locations? How can I make it fit better with the original game idea? To be honest, writing all this down already gave me a few ideas, but I would still like input from outside my own head.

[gas]

Are you too trying to come with a TaiPan clone trading game?

Your concept lack a goal and challenges to reach it.
And so you turned the whole thing into an RPG with a more familiar goal: grow. And familiar challenges: combat.
That's not bad at all, but it does stop to be a simulation and turn into an RPG.

The original TaiPan trading game was all about collecting money to pay a debt.
The goal was to collect that large sum before being sunken.
The challenge was: find a balance between how much do you boost your ship and how much money you'll collect.
You can't roam the sea freely as pirates and storms, so you should move in small steps and try not bringin along too much money. But the more you play the larger the chance that a deadly storm sunken you the same.
In such a game finding a route instead of another could have totally changed the game experience.

So, let's pretend to stay put to the original concept. No battles, just tradings.
You have a number of docks, and political powers that manage such docks.
Your starting and possible main goal is to buy back your father empire. To do so you need to collect a very large treasure. That's simply done by plain trading between docks.

Anyway, there's another way to reach such result: collect political power. You can pay or act to collect political power in regions and the more you'll grow the more Trading Companies will be on an alert. As Companies compete, you can try do to allegiances and receive 'power points', but also turn others hostile. At given 'power points' you'll win the game being elected as President.
Trading companies can unlock their best docks to you, so in fact your politics will change the map and maybe the characters you'll meet.

Now, when you'll begin the game, you own a special jewel. The first time you reach a given dock, an old man tell you about 6 other jewels that , once collected, lead to a big treasure. They also work as skill bonuses.
Collecting the big treasure can be another way to win the game.

To add for more, let's say you begin the game with a girl crew member with some fancy aptitude. If by any means you'll follow a given quest you'll end with her help to the "edge of the seas". Another way to end the game.

How about a rival? Rivals give a lot of motivation. That evil one continually put you in anger and his plot grow more and more. Surely you can ignore it (once you'll be the President you can just deplete him). But you can win the game by assaulting the evildoer fortress with your fleet (and allies)and get back his treasure.

Now, what if you can turn into a pirate by some condition? And maybe you'll find your father was one in his early days! This could unlock a couple more way to win (find Skull Island, or defeat the Companies, or reaching the edge of the seas as a pirate instead).

So, as you'll see, you can surely work on a concept that doesn't include RPG mechanics.

[Milkymalk]

First off, those are some excellent ideas and pointers!

I've never heard of Taipan before, I was actually thinking of The Patrician, especially the first game, mixed with actual story gameplay. You evaluation is right on point: Turning it into an RPG will make the trading part a secondary effort when it should be the main focus. However, I still believe that "smooth sailing" would make it too much of a simple grind, and random pirate/storm events which you cannot influence would be too frustrating in a modern game. You could do that 30 years ago, but today, players want to be in control of their fate.
So maybe something that does feel like a compromise would be good. COmbat gameplay that is simple and fun, yet doesn't take away from the game's main mechanic. A minigame just to loosen up the flow, that takes 2-3 minutes and is there just to give a sense that if you royally screw up, you still lose something.

The possible goals you listed remind me that there are tons of information about trading companies out there that I should read and watch. History is full of trading conflicts and their politics that I will get lots of plot hooks just by researching what was actually going on.

[gas]

A port of the original Taipan (don't be scared, but everything started from there):
http://www.taipangame.com/