Gawd, you're memorizing them? That number on the right is just what you need, the average price you paid. Handily updated if you add more pieces to your supply, even production costs for homegrown goods are considered. Compare that grey number that looks a little lost on the right margin to what the town wants to pay and finally profit.

The numbers are most assuredly to the left, and they're too low to be averages. They do sometimes turn red.

We're talking about different things again, the line for grain in the attached image... I mean the grey 80, thats your average.

I was talking about the numbers to the left. What are they?

Those in "boxes"? How many units the town currently has of that thing. Just like the 20 in a box on the right shows how much grain you have.

town stock> town buys for this > pic > you buy for that > your stock> average price of your stuff

Hope its clearer now, gotta run so you better don't have too many questions left right now :-)

Thanks for the lightning-fast responses. I still have one teeny question: which number is it that shouldn't be red?

My buy prices are found here: http://www.gog.com/forum/port_royale_series/any_tips_on_setting_up_trade_routes/post4

It's all about supply and demand, of course. You can use the supply graphic that comes up when you look at any town on the main map, to get an idea of where the cheap stuff is found. Note that you can saturate a market so you shouldn't constantly sell, for instance, bricks in Tortuga (no idea if Tortuga actually needs bricks - I picked at random from memory); you'll need the local builders / crafters to use up some of the supply that you provided before they are going to pay higher prices again. That ties back to what flickas mentioned, about adding a quantity of one with each click until you get a feel for how the prices change per unit for that particular town.

Armed with my average cost of purchase, I'm now making money. And I'm reading the manual, hence I've been silent for a few days. I think I had some eminently sensible reason for not consulting the manual before first posting, but I can't remember what it was.

I tried to read the relevant bit of the manual, but I'm left wondering about cannons. Ships have silly crew numbers of less than 20. Don't cannons require operators? And don't more people make for a better boarding party? Some ships are in the manual as having a crew of x+y. What's up with that?

You're so close to answering your own question. There is the minimum number needed to simply sail the ship, without those you can't even leave port. But you can load more sailors who work at the cannons, making reloading much faster. That would be the y number, you can have anywhere between those two, if you're going to fight more is obviously better. Remember the bit in the tutorial where you bought cannons and assigned them to one of the ships? You also hired more sailors then and added them to the same ship to operate them.

Correct about boarding fights as well, your chances of winning improve a lot if you have more guys left than the other ship (basic sailing crew counts for that too, there's not much sailing done during boarding after all) Cutlasses and good morale help as well, but the opponent might have them too.

Ofc there's a downside as well, those extra guys expect payment, and all men above the minimum take room on the ship that could otherwise be used for cargo, same with cannons.

I thought that only some ships had the +y number, but upon closer inspection I see they all do, which obviates the question. I think I'll have to amass more ships before I consider entering combat, so we'll let this one go for a while.

I have a couple of other queries that certainly aren't in the manual because they're about missions.

There's one mission where the governor says, “Would you like to help me trick our enemies?” I then go to some port, give gold to a guy and then take all the available settlers, but this doesn't complete the mission. What do I have to do?

In an inn, there was a pirate who said he'd give me a share of the loot if I handed over a ship, but clicking “Hand over ship” doesn't do anything.

Thats the point where I have to admit I never actually played PR beyond the tutorial plus a few minutes, the things we talked about so far work the same in Patrician3 which I know well.

I'm still going to guess. Does the mission mention where you should take the settlers? I'd try unloading them in a town of your nation to see if that completes it.

Try removing a ship from the convoy before acepting the pirate's offer, he's possibly after only one ship and can take only a "loose" one.

I'm amazed that you've answered so many questions with so little experience of the game. I think your suggestion about the first mission might work, because when I picked up settlers, I deposited them in a town belonging to another country.

I have another couple of mission questions which perhaps someone else can answer. There's one where a guy tells you to look for his sunken ship near a certain port, but I don't find anything. How does that work? And then there's the one where the watchmaker wants to see a storm, but I couldn't find a storm in the location he specified.

The storm rings a bell but I'm drawing a blank. Been a while since I played.

Some of the missions aren't fully activated until you find more info about the encounter. For instance, suppose you get a piece of treasure map and you manage to find "X" with just that one piece. Well, you're required to find a few more pieces of the map before that location gets activated. Then, lo and behold, you go back to the spot and you find whatever it is you're looking for, even though you've been bumping around that area for a long time looking for the magic pixel.

Just to expand on this.

Storm quests can be a bit tricky. Storms continuously move very slowly, but if the location is a long way from where you picked up the quest, you may have to expand the area that you are searching, in case it has moved on by the time you reach it. Sometimes you just luck out, and it moves too far or disappear before you get to it. It's still worth doing these quests whenever you get the chance, as they are great for getting navigation skill points for your captain. This will help you navigate around/through storms faster.

Finding quest locations be they storms, sunken ships or other, can give somewhat vague directions at times. If they say its NW of a town, sometimes its nnw or nww or straight nw, and it may be a considerable distance from the town, in that direction. Sometimes you just luck out on finding it.

I half agree about the map pieces. Sometimes it wants all pieces found, and sometimes you can stumble across the location before you have even found the 'X' piece and still claim the reward. If it won;t let you activate it, feel free to get another map piece and try again, but most of the time you do not need to complete the map to get the reward.

Regarding your query about pirate ship quests a few posts above. You do need to remove a ship from your convoy in order to hand it over to the pirate. be aware that pirates will fill the ship to max cannon capacity, so do not give them a military frigate, as they won;t have any room left for looting cargo from other ships, and you will never get any money from them.