Commodity Runs for the Palace and Gaea

Pac, Spout, Snap, and I got to talking shop on the fundraising pilly yesterday, and we all think it's time to start working more seriously about getting commods to Gaea in a more coordinated fashion. They have of course all been working to keep their stalls stocked, whereas my embryonic official effort has been basically sitting on wood, iron, and now tellurium bids purchased with my own money, soloing my MB short distances with them, selling them dockside to merchants, and donating profits to palace coffers. Now all my bids are blocked, and I'm not even started on anything with decent payoff for given effort. We can certainly do better.

As I see it, we have two long "trunk" runs for bulky items, from Chaparral to Gaea and from Meke or Park to Gaea. Chap and Park both have really cheap wood, and are too far away for running it to be feasible without coordination. The Owls have a distillery and IM on Park that Sunsetpork ran, and I have taken up the mantle of running basically like one would run a palace. Making money through arbitrage. Commods from islands not served by those routes would be the less bulky ones and could feed Gaea directly or be cached on ships or stalls at islands that are on the route. Essentially I see running the trunk routes as a communal effort and running the feeder routes as simply an alteration of the selfish, solo work one does anyway in getting commods for a shop. One would just buy more than they need and be able to trust that others were doing the same for goods they no longer have to worry about because they are specializing.

The palace is a big component in the system because if we get people to see Gaea as a "one stop shop" for annoying to get commodities we can charge more and we can also hopefully get people to end pillies at the island by offering good buy prices on strategic commodities. We've already started that with blood, and while so far the sales to the palace have mostly been from merchants on the island, the experiment at least has turned out to be profitable thus far.

Spout and I have talked about consolidating commod runs. If pirate A and pirate B both need to move commods on the same route, and their commods will all fit on one boat, it makes sense to consolidate. It saves time and makes for a safer run if there are more pirates on to defend if the ship is engaged.

Who would be interested in testing this out?

As an apothecary operator on Spring I run sloops from almost everywhere to Spring. I would be happy to haul goods to Spring (coming from the East or South) or drop them off at Gaea coming from the North or West.

My typical runs are:
1. Meke to Spring via Xi, with side runs from Namath
2. Winter Solstice to Spring
3. Nu to Spring
4. Cleopatra's Pearls to Spring with side runs from Frond
5. Terra to Spring via Virdis (I will add this run to four above)
6. Garden Cradle to Spring (I will add this run to three above)

I don't do these runs very often but at least once a month, and since these ships are mostly carrying herbs, some fruit, and pillage spoils there is plenty of room for minerals or some bulky commodities. I will announce in FO chat anytime I will be planning a run for folks to get goods to my sloops. Also I don't need any help moving the goods if you don't want to. I am very good a solo-evading and have lost only 1 herb once in a fight ever (unfortunately it was Yarrow from Beta, bah).

I also am offering to drive sloops or even cutters between Spring and Gaea to help commodities generated on Spring be moved and used at Gaea, and vice versa. No one has taken me up on this yet, and I do it more frequently, at least 3 times a month just to move hemp oil mostly.

All the stuff my distillery needs is basic stuff, in fact I'm trying to use it as a testbed for the idea of consolidating effort through the palace by having the palace sell flaggies their wood and iron dockside for tiny markup. So as far as stuff for me specifically I'm starting to get iron from DN/TLM/Fintan/Cormorant because the prices in that area are that compelling compared to anywhere in Midnight. Stockpiling it somewhere where the Garden Cradle->Spring run would meet up would be totally doable. Coordinating purchasing would be great for stuff for the palace. You, Spout, know more about apo goods than I would ever care to learn, so you'd very much know what to get if you wanted to get more than you yourself needed and have the additional go to the palace. But the iron is the easiest, most obvious thing to try. As it is I haven't been bringing in as much as Sinners would buy if she could, to say nothing of all Gaea's iron using flaggies.