Emphasize trader hunting!

[Taedrin]

Being a somewhat regular trader, I think I can say that traders are overpowered. Why are they overpowered? Because people don't hunt them down enough. Also, once your team has taken all CPs, trader is free to make loads and loads of money; this makes it nearly impossible for the losing team to make a comeback when the winning team has a trader. Even if they DO kill the trader a few times, the only thin they do is slow the inevitable. Killing a trader doesn't give you any sort of significant advantage - all it does is somewhat counteract a disadvantage.

To combat this, I propose that a trader's bounty significantly increase as he acquires more trading items in his trading run.

I make this suggestion because currently, unlike normal tanks, the only real incentive to get a trader kill is to prevent him from giving the enemy team trader gold. It is, at best, an indirect incentive. The bounty on a trader is unbelievably low compared to his actual worth on the battlefield. Increasing the traders bounty to more properly reflect it's value to it's team makes sense IMO.

Currently a trader's bounty is the same whether his inventory is empty, or whether is inventory has 30k of trade items. I suggest that the traders bounty increase by a certain percentage of the value of the trade items in his inventory. I would say at least 10%, but no higher than 50%. For example, if the trader has an inventory with 30k of trade items, his bounty would be increased by 15k if the percent increase was set at 50%, 3k if the percent increase was set at 10%. Once the trader's trade items disappear (either because he was killed, or because he cashed in his trade items), his bounty returns to normal.

If this change were implemented, I believe it would make games more interesting. Traders would have to seriously consider the dangers of attempting to trade near the front lines. A team which is losing due to trader gold could try to recover by "assasinating" the trader at the right moment for a huge infusion of gold.

Anyways, I leave this suggestion to the community for discussion.

[Visjeplus]

Maybe it would even be interresting when the trader is killed, his inventory will drop to the ground (in a single special trading item). Then anyone should be able to pick it up and bring it his own trade master, giving the gold as if trading to your own team. Just like being a pirat and looting someones goods. Maybe even giving the player with the trading items a slow effect (so make players able to catch him and when killed the same item will drop again. (sort of capture the flag).

Visjeplus

[Gammagulp]

I like the idea - droping a dropable treasure box - who has a selling amount of a percentage of the goods from the killed trader.
Even the other team should be able to kill the enemy tank with the treasure box to get the money back. Like hunting the trader Box

[Taedrin]

Well, the treasure box idea is nice, but how are they going to implement that? The only (easy) way that I can to do this is to create an item with a variable sell value, and I don't know if WC3 supports that. The alternative would be to drop all of the trade items on the ground individually which another trader could steal, but I don't know if that would somehow conflict with the way items on the ground can't be picked up by another player.

However, as I said, I'm no map editor, so that very well might be possible. Would certainly make for an interesting game, but on the other hand, we don't want to make things too complicated (newbies already have a hard time figuring out how to buy weapons).

Right now your bounty already changes as you buy and sell items, so I don't think it should be that hard to extend that functionality to trade items.

[TKF]

There is a trigger which detects how much the trader should get for his lost wood when he dies. I'm sure any system can be implemented in that trigger.

It could be a 15 gold kill bonus for every good the trader did possess.

In this way, trader get worth much when he is killed with a lot of goods. But on the other hand, this sort of is a disadvantage for the trader. I'm not sure this is such a good idea....

[horselance]

I thought Traders give more bounty when they carry goods. It must be implemented. Not a treasure box but only bounty increase.

[Exodus]

Well, I didnt post yet because I wasnt sure about this topic and because I had no time ( )

Actually, the trader bounty does increase when he's carrying trade goods and they increase the tank cost of the trader just by the amount he would get when selling them. For example, when getting one metal, his bounty increases by 2, that applies to most of the trade goods. So you get 2 extra gold for each good he's carrying.
But it seems like thats not enough for you guys, then how big should the enhencement of the bounty be? 2 or 3 times as high?

[horselance]

18-20 good must give extra 140-150 gold. So each good can be 7-8 gold.

[Gammagulp]

After a lot of time trading a trader can hold 10 items (for example wood and water and the other stuff on the profitable side), cause it get very dangerous catching too many you seldom carry more than 10 goods at the same time- which are only 20-30 killing gold, but ca. 3500 selling gold (1/2 for trader, rest for the team). I think this relation is not good enough as exo said.

I belive 1/10 till 1/20 of the selling gold would be ok.
(1/20) So Metal for 115 selling gold gives ca. +6Bounty and 275 sellinggold give an extra +14Bounty.
Suggestions?

[Vomitus]

I think Gammagulp is right. For 10 goods(wood+water) bounty would increase by 20*5 + 19*5 = 195 gold. Assuming this happens even very early in the game it becomes really worth hunting trader.

Btw, how about increasing trader's speed by 10-20?