Full Trading Company Rework; Profits, Levelling, Etc.

Trading companies are currently rather overpowered to a broken degree.

They are in a feedback loop of profits levelling them up and levelling up increasing profits.

That the Near linear formula controlling their working do little if nothing to combat.

All of the formula could do with big changes one of them is the income multiplier, 

This formula in particular feeds the feedback loop;

<!-- TCIncomeMultiplier x TRIncome = TCIncome.                  Vars: Empire, TradingCompany -->

<TradingCompanyIncomeMultiplierFormula>0.75 + Pow(Property(TradingCompany, Level) / 5, 0.75)</TradingCompanyIncomeMultiplierFormula>

Formula Graphed ( IncomeMultiplier= 0.75 + ((Level / 5)^0.75 ))

I'll give amplitude credit the formula has a slight logarithmic-like curve to it when graphed which helps.

But it being mostly linear in effect and its (relatively) high gradient is what's causing the issue, the fact of just having a trade company active for a while will make it double (at Level 7) or Triple (at Level 15) its profits makes it rather over powered. 

The solutions to this could be either:

To remove the income multiplier entirely, which would mean the company level mechanic would be unused 

(but you could make it something like instead when a trade company reaches level 5 it unlocks the next trade company and every 5 levels after it unlocks a new trade subsidiary)

Or (A method I would prefer) instead of using the trading company’s level directly, you use the company’s level ranking

I.E. the highest level trade company gets a x2 income bonus and the lowest gets X1 (aka none) and all in-between get a bonus relative to there position

(E.G. If There are 5 companies in the galaxy at levels 15, 13, 7, 4, 2 Their bonuses would be 2, 1.85, 1.38, 1.15, 1 For this example the equation would be y=(1/13x)+(11/13))

The Equation to do this would be: 

(( 1 / ( HighestTradingCompanyLevel - LowestTradingCompanyLevel )) * TradingCompanyLevel ) + ( 1 - (LowestTradingCompanyLevel / (HighestTradingCompanyLevel - LowestTradingCompanyLevel)))

<!--                    This bit makes the gradient                         -->     <!--This bit sets the lowest to have a bonus of 1 (the y-intercept)-->

The Benefit of using what I will call the relative system is that where parameters would be outside your control now have a range that you can set them to allways be in and can easily balance

E.g. The IncomeMultiplierFormula can currently result in a large range of numbers and has massive impact but with the relative system it would always be between 1 and 2 (or whatever numbers you set it at) And it does it in a way that does not remove the benefits of levelling up trade companies as adding a hard cap would (e.g. trade companies stop having any extra bonus after level 15 or something)

The relative system also means that many different variables of the game do not exacerbate any balance issues.

(or at least not close to the same extent)

For example Galaxy size varies massively and the Trading Route Length Modifier does not acount for that so the balance issues for trade Companies are exacerbated on larger maps

<TradingRouteLengthModifierFormula>1 + $(PathLength) / 5</TradingRouteLengthModifierFormula>

If this was converted to the relative system it would not matter what map size you played on.

An example of how you could convert it:

<TradingRouteLengthModifierFormula>($(LongestPathLength)/$(PathLength))*X</TradingRouteLengthModifierFormula>

(X being how much of a bonus you want the longest trade route to have) With this when you are playing a huge or tiny map the trade route length bonuses will be scaled automatically in Realtime all you need to do is decide what you want the longest trade bonus to be.

The Relative system can be applied to most aspects of trade companies (just ask if you want me to go into possible ideas of certain aspects)

The Downsides of the relative system, All ways of making trade companies will have some issue or disadvantage. The issue with the relative system is that is that when the Max/Longest/Biggest Thing etc. changes or other things are effected (for better or for worse) so if a longer trade route is established all others lose some income. If a big company levels up all other lose income. 

But in a way this adds some realism of a market mechanic that if you aren’t staying competitive you lose.