Game Idea

Well as far as computer games go, there's a lot out there that use the basic concept of trading goods and what not. There was a sort of half text based game that involved selling drugs in a variety of different cities and different things that would happen in the game (like cop busts, etc etc etc.) would affect prices in certain or all cities.
Also Terminal Velocity, a formerly Mac only game used similar ideas for trade goods where the majority of your money supply came from either transferring goods for someone else to one of a dozen different systems, or you could pirate from people, steal their money and goods and then sell them.
I don't know of any computer games that use your exact idea though. I think it would be a neat idea to try, I don't know how well it would work mostly because not all people would play a game where the primary focus is trading and harbor building, but I guess it really depends how you play it out. I say give it a try.

I was only giving examples of ones I knew using the trading of commodities and bartering as examples of what I have seen used. I believe that a boardgame would be good to if they can work for many computer games they could be transferred to a boardgame was my point and not to speak on computer games as I dont know that many only trying to give some help for what little I know in this field to another is all.

I was trying to find a comparible game such as a commodity trading one.

The commodity trading such as you are describing could be " Stock Ticker" that one I know of.

As for adding the boats and things I would say it has good potential to add all kinds of features to it. Bigger boats, supply and demand changing at each island, owning of the wharfs and warehousing, fuel costs fluctuating, people to travel on ships as well or not, freak storms or pirates stealing. Buying bad commodities. Fluctuating currencies. This would actually be kind of fun to design let me know how it works out for you.

I want to add some more variety too this idea, only I don't want it to be complex or atleast the rules may not be complex, and I want the element of luck as small s possible. In a few post I mentioned the idea of ships and that sounded allright to me only I thought about that before only It seemed really difficult to have wooden blocks that you have to put in wooden ships and then take it out again, i don't really have a solution for that, and I'm not sure what exactly It would add to the game.

I am thinking of on a original way to give resources one idea is that you secretly point out two colors(products) and if everybody has decided the player hows turn it is picks two colors, this two colors then are compared with the secretly choosen colors and those how are the same gets products. My question is again or this concept has been used before and or somenbody else got a funny idea. Thanks a lot for all the support.

What if you had each island accept only a limited amount of each commodity and when they reach the max of what is set then the trader must take it to the next island on another turn or trade a third commodity that they have on board.

This makes the race for each island and a point value can be given to having given the island the amount which max's them out. This would also allow them to take as many commodities as need be but having the distancce to each island be the factor of where they go by allowing each ship to move only so many tile spaces on a single turn.

By making the race to each island and the distance the variable then your player must strategize which island is easiest and best for him in comparison to transfer goods to without being to readily available for his oppononent to fill the topping off of the islands limits to gain the points for doing it.

Example say you have Island "A" and they want sheep. The max they can have is 100. A ship can only carry 20. You carry to this island 4 times and now the island only needs one more to top off to gain the point value. If you have the opponent land the last 20 he or she would get the points and nothing for you doing all the work. This would work like a chess play where the person who has the most commodities topping an island off would gain control of the harbor having the avaiability to charge fees to the other traders bringing in goods to top off other commodities. Thus making a profit to buy bigger ships and warehouses. Most harbors wins.

just a thought here as I really like your idea and gave it quite a bit of thought how to make it work.

What I really meant is that if the active players secretly (or not) chose two commodities all the lands with that commodities produces that commodities. But your idea could also workout, I think.

what about triangles? Don't know if that has been used before, but it could make for an interesting board, maybe even interesting rules and such. *shrugs* just a thought.

-- Matthew

I am pretty new to the hobby side of board games lol, so for all I know there could be lots of games with triangular grids out there lol. It just sounds neat and original to me :P. I just think it would make the game look good and might add some really interesting play to it.

Or you might also consider maybe using just a picture of your sort of "area" with all the water and islands and have maybe line grids that act sort of like tracks with different dots on them to indicate stopping points for a turn. Hope that makes sense.

what he said lol. I didn't word it very well lol. But yeah, it seems like that is the best idea for it. I'm reminded of a board game I saw played a looong time ago called I think "Iron" something or other. I think it had to do with trains, but I'm not sure, it had a map and players would actually draw new tracks and do small quests and such to get more money to build more tracks, etc etc. You won't be drawing your own tracks most likely, but point being the tracks had stop points in each sort of grid line, and for you you could just draw the stop points in. I think depending on the scale of your game, it might get gridlike with so many tracks, because you'll probably have each island connected to the other. Paths would be intertwined and such.
Anywho.

hmm
That idea could work, I think that micro-managing with multiple ships would make for some interesting play though, since the idea is basically to have more than anyone else. I guess it really depends how difficul a game the creator is trying to make...

Thanks for all the wonderfull ideas I will certainly work on it. Currently I am thinking of a wayto change the board every time you play it without making it look like settlers of catan.