Vasari Phase stabilizers(gates) reduce trade income

Hmm. I'm going to need to test this, as I haven't noticed phase stabilisers making any difference to my trade income.

Yes and phase stabilizers also increase your empire income by gabjillion because you get free ships

I am absolutely sure that phase gates affect your trade route. Logically, providing direct connections are most likely to reduce the number of jumps between any given planets. Therefore, they will always reduce your trade income.

I should clarify: You may not notice a big difference at first because the new longest trade route will not be a lot shorter at first but reasonably they should always be shorter the more gates you build. Please do some tests by yourself, as I cannot possibly run so many tests in the mean time.

As to how dark armada benefits your economy, I am not sure that this end game tech is relevant. Anyway, i think it is really weird for a phase gate to DECREASE trade income (and have no effect on refineries too).

If anything, phase stabilizers should INCREASE trade income because it makes the trade ships able to reach their destinations faster. Devs, if this is true, PLEASE fix it, as it is highly unfair!

I just tested it and the phase gates do not affect your trade income at all, the white line is still the same path and you still make the same amount of money.

Returning Armada is only an end-game tech if you wait until the end of the game to research it.

It's perfectly possible to tech straight to it within an hour or less.


As do I, which is why I'm going to test it.

Since my results showed no difference, I'm wondering if the OP lost a trade station without realizing it, or just had a bunch of trade ships die in the time before he looked at the income again.

They don't have to rush to them. That is just an option. Not much strategy in it, it's a gimmick that kind of exists to tell people how uber the Dark Fleet really was, and to allow those who go for it to get an unlimited supply of free ships - no pain, tremendous gain.

Although, why the hell does Longer Trade Route = More Money??? It seems weird. Logically, you'd think the cost of doing business is higher because the transportation cost is longer and there is risk of pirate attacks, but instead it's the opposite and the profit is more for some unknown reason. It should be based on population of the planets and what kind of planets your selling to. Inhabitants of Asteroids and Volcanic places would buy more while inhabitants of Terran and Desert worlds would be comparatively self-sufficient and would be exporting.

In fact, Phase Stabilizers should logically make you get more because the companies operating the trade ships should have to pay a fee to use such advanced military infrastructure for their operations.

But no one ever said that the Vasari are master economists, so...

I would imagine for the same reasons that it tends to work like that in the real world - the further you have to go to get something, the more you're willing to pay for someone to bring it to you.

A farmer who grows corn isn't likely to make much money by selling corn to his neighbour, who also grows corn. If he ships his corn halfway around the world to a place where you can't grow corn, though, he'll get a much higher price.

quick related question:

whats the shortest amount of time one has taken to tech up to dark fleet?
and does anyone who goes with this strat, spend any on research before dark fleet is reached?

It's a great mechanic! How could you not like it?

Further testing have yielded interesting results

One important thing to note for anyone who wishes to test the effect of phase stabilizers on trade, as I have probably found out the reason for them to make no differences.
The order of building a stabilizer or a trade centre first matters. Trade routes (white lines) sometimes do not change unless one of the trade centres on the route is destroyed. Building stabilizers after the trade route is established may not change the trade route. Try this: build a pair of phase stabilizers at the beginning and the end of your trade route. Scuttle the trade station(s) at one end(or both ends) and build one at that same planet(s) afterward. Probably, you wont get the same trade route again.

I discovered this when I loaded the game that I based my previous observation on. I scuttled the phase stabilizers to see if my trade routes, that have already been using the convenient (yet less profiting...) phase stabilizers, would change and give me a higher trade income. I was utterly surprised by what I found. The trade route persisted even after the stabilizers are scuttled! I waited patiently for all the little trade ships to finish their trip, and no ships ever flew directly through those empty spaces anymore. However, the trade route and income did not change at all, so i decided to scuttle the trade station and rebuild it. The trade route reverted to some normal status afterwards.

Using the same set of planets and trade centres ,i performed a short experiment to change it from a 'no phase gates' to a 'with phase gates' and back to a 'no phase gates' configuration. The ‘no phase gates’ configuration gave more number of jumps to the longest trade route and increased the profit made by all the trade centres. As I said, the key is to break the existing trade routes by scuttling and rebuilding trade centres. I hope to outline my experiment and upload some evidences later.

BTW, I placed a stupendous amount of bounty on my opponent to ensure zero interference from pirates.

Yeah, but thats because of supply & demand, not distance. If the place on the other side of the world begins growing corn, the farmer loses monopoly and looks like a fool with his overpriced corn.

In a star system or a galaxy, therefore, two planets of a similar kind shouldn't really get the advantage in trade income for longer routes - two Terran corners at the opposite edges of a giant system can both produce 'corn', so selling it won't work like that. Instead, they should be selling to asteroids, where you can't get 'corn' so easily. But still, the asteroid could buy from a nearby Terran corn-producing planet and get it at cheaper rates than from buying from a Terran corn-producer at the other edge of the star system with pirates patrolling the region.

The only way I see this working is if the system is not like in GalCiv 2 where private companies took over freighter duties. Instead, here, your government takes over freighter operations and private companies rent out cargo bays hoping that your freighters will have military protection from pirates assured. There's always going to be something in demand at place 'X', so their would be something to fill the cargo bays, if not the metaphorical 'corn'.

In GC2, longer trade routes = more money because the freighters were selling to just about any friendly economic starbase they could find, and not at pre-set trade ports like in Sins, and were selling to an alien race that obviously isn't producing and probably can't produce the same stuff(thus monopoly).

It makes perfect sense for trade routes to make more money when they are longer. Although two terran worlds may look the same, it would be sheer folly to believe their products are the same - especially biological products. Assuming a separate ecosystem, these products will ALWAYS be different and exotic, even on another terran planet.

It also makes sense for phase stabilizers to reduce trade income, sense they make their transport easier, less risky, and less expensive. Sorry if it seems you are working at cross purposes with yourself - in a way you are. After all, you build your phase stabilizers for a military purpose - not an economic one.

What he said.

I've just been testing, and I can't replicate your results.

As far as I can tell, building phase stabilisers makes no difference to trade income, regardless of the order I built the stabilisers and trade posts in.

Destroying all my trade centres after having built stabilisers on every world (I had 10 planets in the test) then rebuilding them did result in a different trade route - but it was exactly the same number of jumps as before.

Incidentally, the basic trade income for a trade port (for Vasari, at least) appears to be 1.3 cr/s + 0.1 cr/s for every jump in your longest trade route.

Destroying trade ships temporarily lowers the income from a port, until the port automatically builds a replacement. Each port appears to have 5 ships, so destroying one reduces its income by 20% while the replacement is built.

This means that you can, in theory at least, disrupt enemy trade by continually destroying their trade ships.


Just a tip - you can start a solo game by switching off all the AI opponents. You'll win as soon as the game starts, but have the option to continue playing.

Do this on one of the random maps without pirates, and you can test away to your heart's content.

The longer the route the more dangerous it and the more chance you have to lose the ship. That seems like a good reason to reward you with more money.

I've tried building trade stations before stabilizers. I've tried stabilizers before trade stations. I've also tried building trade stations, then building stabilizers, then scuttling and rebuilding the trade stations, like you said, but I couldn't reproduce any of your results.

Phase stabilizers don't seem to effect the longest-route calculation at all.

Thanks for the tests. As no one had the same result of mine. I'm going to post some screenshots. At the same time, I hope some dev can comment on this.
My experiment was very very simple. I had a linear empire with an equally linear trade route of 8 planets without any stabilizers. As it was an 2v2 AI I was winning a lot, nothing could have interfered and harmed my trade. In fact, nothing flew in or out of my systems with trade except my ally's ships and ,of course, trade ships during my test. I have also only taken the following screenshots only after my rebuit trade station have relaunched all the trade ships and reached maximum income. (The effect of changing length in the longest trade route, however, seems to be instantaneous to other trade stations)

I apologize for the inconenience of having to copy and paste the url into your browser bar. I never posted images on forums before....

So this is what i have , 8 planets with a single trade station on each (7-jumps route)
Note : The ice planet, Calliope, has 30% trade bonus to its own station (nothing to do with the trade route)




Step 1 : scuttled the trade station at the lower left end of the trade route. (terran planet, Lyubov)The result was obvious. One less trade station and a one jump shorter trade route (-0.1cr/s on all remaining trade stations)




Step 2: built a pair of Phase stabilizers at both ends of the original trade route.
on Lyubov (Terran)



on Saskie (Volcanic)




Step 3: This is where it gets interesting. Rebuilt the trade station on Lyubov.




Now I have a 'longest' trade route of only 4 jumps. 3 jumps less than without the gates, hence, 0.3cr/s less for all trade stations. Why is it so? placing a pair of stabilizers on both end of the linear route is simply like sticking both end of a strip of paper to form a circle. The longest disctance between 2 furthest points on the paper is halved.

This is a very logical result in terms of game mechanics. What the game has done is to pick the longest direct route and treat normal and artificail trade lanes equally.
In a branched empire, the effect may be compensated by taking the trade to another branch. Theoratically, when more phase stabilizers are built, the other branches are also shortened. My experiment was to illustrate that making use of phase gates will result in a trade route that is shorter than the longtest possible route that the natural phase lanes would give.

You see , phase gates are used for connecting the furthest points of your empire to improve mobility. As these furthest points are also where trade routes are based on, shortening them now reduce trade income, which to me, is kind of ridiculous.




The point is, those stabilizers do alter the longest trade route. This means they can reduce the number of jumps of the longest route. Resulting in the exact same number of jumps(hence, income) may simply be coincidental. The logic is that if the phase stabilzers alter trade routes, they will shorten the longest route. If your previously second longest trade route or the new routes created is not as long as the old one, you will recieve less income.




My results appear to show that the trade income per port is
1.1cr/s + (0.1 * no. of jumps in longest trade route) cr/s

Again, not what I found - destroying and rebuilding trade centres caused the route to be recalculated. Phase stabilisers made no difference, and the length of the longest route remained the same (just the actual route changed).

The game automatically works out the longest route - my only suggestion is that what may have happened is you ran into some form of bug in the code that does this.


Hmm. I placed a single trade port on a single world, and it earned 1.3 cr/s. :NOTSURE:

Mind you, I was playing on FAST speed, so maybe that affects the base trade income?

If you have viewed the images i posted, the trade worked exactly as i said. In my case, the stablizers had greatly shorten the distance between my previously furthest plants so my chain of trade station are in fact in a loop rather than a single line.
The game recalculated the trade routes and find that the furthest planets can only be 4 jumps away. In fact, they do not have to be the 5 planets highlighted in the screenshots. Any other 5 connected planets (taking into account of the gate-created phase line) will be 4 jumps away.

Okay, did another test with a linear layout of planets, and got the same results.

Stage 1: All planets have a trade port. 7 planets, longest route = 6.



Stage 2: Add phase stabiliser at every planet. 7 planets, longest route = 6.



Stage 3: Destroy all trade ports. 7 planets, longest route = 0 (no trade at all).



Stage 4: Build new trade ports at every world (all of which now have phase stabilisers). 7 planets, longest route = 6.



Again, phase stabilisers make no difference to trade routes, regardless of whether they're built before or after the trade ports.

I have no idea how you're getting the results you're seeing. :NOTSURE:

Did you h ave multiple trade ports in a system? That may effect the results when things were recalculated.

Nope, just one per system for the test.

EDIT: Assuming you meant me.

Either or, was trying to figure out why you guys were getting different results. Only idea I had.