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+--- Thread: Mining and shipping (/showthread.php?tid=114326)
RE: Mining and shipping - Sath - 04-09-2014
(04-09-2014, 04:32 PM)Highland Laddie Wrote: @Moriarity - Aegira isn't a shipping company, so it's not an apples to apples comparison. (Better comparison to them would be manufacturing/tech firms like Cryer, Synth, Solar Engineer, none.of which are active in any meaningful way) Also....I think other IDs can still buy/ship Gate and Lane parts, unless that has been restricted. So, aside from some little bit of RP pride, that essentially means nothing.
My point is that gameplay as a shipping company seems ultimately pointless aside from just putting yourself out there as a target for pirates (which isn't as much fun as you may think), whereas gameplay as miners, pirates,.military, etc. has much more specific perks.
I would like it if shippers had a bit more tangible perk.
IMG has mining access to many ores, but they are restricted to only ships below 4200 cargo. If people still want to play as a IMG char, which is obviously less profitable(given the restriction), though they can get more profits from playing as a shipping company, which has access to 5k(more profit for the same route/ore), then the problem lies somewhere other than what this is claimed to be.
Also, IMG were restricted due to the abuse of the neutrality and vast options of ore available for them to mine. So, if still people want to join IMG| instead of other trading factions( IMG has the largest member group as far as I have seen in Disco) , it is solely because they trade in groups, mine in groups, fill bases in groups and fight in groups. This attracts more people into their faction, rather than the things that you can say, like they can mine as well as haul ores themself.
And the top active factions( IMG/JM/Congress) tend to push their members towards group work, and in turn tend to fluorish more in terms of activity. This capability to make organised trading/pirating is one of the things I like from Lyth and Jack. As the saying goes they both " lead by example" and push for group working. Instead of complaining about mining factions usability of transports, you can organise something in skype groups, log in regularly, make people playing in game feel your presence, and then when possible, give quality RP/interactions when you come across any player, whoever it is. When players can feel your presence in game, regularly and they find it great, you can get more people into said factions, be it shipping/mining/pirate/quasi-lawful/whatever faction.
Regularly log in tagged ships, dwell more into forum RP and see the faction grow. Instead of whining that people dont want to join shipping factions because they can get better profits from mining factions, is never an excuse for the inactivity and lack of interest from players to join the shipping factions. Enough said about the OORP aspects.
RE: Mining and shipping - Singularity - 04-09-2014
Woo.. This thread just went from a dark cold room to.... fire pinching hot
... Just soon as I wrote that simple feedback *wasn't me* Anyways calm out everyone.. Cross talking with each other isn't helping, but just increasing tensions among yourself.
(I am such an angel
)And as per the issue, yes, the Shipping is a bit weighing down compared to Mining Corporations but, the mining corporations shouldn't pay for this.
All I can say is may be we can find something that will help the Shipping corporations a bit (may be a commodity which respective shipping corporations of house spaces can only trade), without nerfing or even touching the mining corporations as they exist now.
-- See, everyone.. such simple is the work... simple issue with simple answer
RE: Mining and shipping - Highland Laddie - 04-09-2014
For one, the Shipper doesn't make more profit than the miner because the Shipper has to BUY it. That alone can eat heavily into the profit margin. The miner doesn't have to, in this case.
Sure, an easy work around to this problem that has been used is for the shippers to just use indie miners to fill themselves up, but that also means less visible presence of tagged ships in-game, and no interaction with the mining factions, which takes away from their RP opportunities.
Also, your simple suggestion of "just get in game more" ignores things like RL, different time zones, etc. Not always that easy if you don't already have a large player base to begin with.
@ Sing - I'm totally calm, dude. No worries here. As I'd suggested earlier, I think ID related bonuses/restrictions might be a nice perk, but otherwise I'd like to see more niche oriented RP for factions, because I think the blending and integrating of faction functionality just makes everything too bland, too redundant, or just altogether worthless.
RE: Mining and shipping - Sath - 04-09-2014
Hegemon, is the ship with the highest cargo and can mine at the same time(ores, which are profitable). A IMG Hegemon can make a profit of 27/28 million with a full load of gold ore.
Whereas, a 5k of any shipping corporation...takes 15-17 million for the ship to be filled full with gold ore. And at the sell point, you can make a profit of 30-35 million. And also, hegemons are screwed up in TL, whereas I can insta dock in TL when in most of the 5k ships, except the Colossus and maybe the Shetland. So, the shipping companies have a higher profit in terms of ore hauling.
If a IMG char wants to haul ore, he also has to pay the miner( he cant get that free). His cargo hold is a max of 4200. So obviously the profit is again less than that of what a Shipping company can get from hauling ores.
Well, the factions that has the highest activity also has people who have RL problems. JM is a quasi lawful faction, where there is not much profit to be made. But still they are above many trading factions in the activity list. The reason is, they make sure that, it is fun, when actually a group of people log in and do that thing, whatever it might be. They log in groups, since they know that sinlge man piracy is very boring.
But thats not the case with many trading factions, as I dont see many trading factions, where there are more than 1 or 2 ships logging in at the same time. Thats not the devs/admins/players problem, that means that the said factions dont have a big presence in the forums and in game, which makes them relatively less known to people, and basically, who wants to join a faction who hardly come in game and dont even have a commendable forum presence whereas they can play as indies and benefit from the same with even more OORP benefits.
Try to advertise shipping factions indirectly via forum RP, bonus for newcomers, in game presence and much more. So, you can actually get more recruits. A single person is enough to set up a RP via the forums and take it in game.
RE: Mining and shipping - Highland Laddie - 04-09-2014
http://discoverygc.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=101342
That's been going on...just in case you think I hadn't thought of that already.
RE: Mining and shipping - Lonely_Ghost - 04-09-2014
Oh yeah, I remember thouse Gateway guys. They also have set a PoB in Cortez system, around a year ago.
Both Gateway and Bowex were moving tons of platinum ore from Alberta system.
P.S. I remember, when in good old 85, NPCs has no tractor beam, you could mine fill up your heggy (he had 2700 cargo space) and drop ore near local base, then swith to your hauler, launch and pick it up. Was pretty usefull in Omega 7 or Dublin systems.
Now, with NPCs stealing ability, it's pretty risky activity.
Ofcrs, you can set up a base away from NPC's zone, and use it as a drop-off point. Prety coll, also RP
RE: Mining and shipping - Zed26 - 04-09-2014
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's possible to not only create new IDs, but restrict those ID purchases to a specific tag(s), so it may also be possible to extend it to a commodity. While that opens up a whole other debate about encouraging official faction membership versus exclusivity/elitism, some factions could definitely use a stimulus due to having few in-game perks (guns, ship-line, commodities, rephacks, bases, trade routes) such as LH~, Gateway, Cryer, IDF, EFL, Bowex, etc. To their credit, some of these factions work hard to develop complex, quality RP, but I can see how attracting new blood is difficult. Best of all, this will be an additive perk, rather than hobbling others to level the playing field.
So thoughts:
Officials only, but it encourages membership and visibility with said trading/smuggling commodity, as it is unique with an infocard written up by the faction and can be a big part of their roleplay. It can have pros and cons, but this also creates a hard in-game enforcement of commodity shipping restrictions to "officials only" already imposed by some RP house laws. I'd suggest just one exclusive "flavor" commodity, not a whole line (due to both implementation and community concerns).
Balancing commodity prices can be a headache of setting a base price, good/bad buy/sell prices, sold/not sold, and a price modifier at every base, all the while accounting for distance/time traveled and profitability. However, if it's limited to officials, it only needs modified prices at certain bases - say a couple friendly/unfriendly or lawful/unlawful to make those ships juicy targets for cargo confiscation/piracy by enemies (possibly limited to bases of the biggest enemies inRP at a flat bonus modifier, as it's only obtained by looting) and encourage some interaction.
RE: Mining and shipping - Sath - 04-09-2014
(04-09-2014, 09:22 PM)Highland Laddie Wrote: http://discoverygc.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=101342
That's been going on...just in case you think I hadn't thought of that already.
Well, that is one part of it, but that is not the only part. People should actually get to know about your faction before applying, and thats where the bonus part comes into play. When people are having a choice of selecting a faction from a group of factions.
But the said faction should be in that "group of factions" that are in the players minds when they are going in for a new faction. This can be done only if there is a more lot of effort from said faction, something out of the ordinary, may it be the regular forum RP stuff, or in game stuff or even something that no one has done yet, a completely new idea.
Consider this as a corporate world iRL. Employees of higher quality come for jobs only when you are known in the papers, magazines and internet. Thats obviously for the good reasons of course, be it some new innovation, excellent customer care or something along that sense. Then comes the "offer" part, wherein the said employee thinks about the various job offers he might think of applying. A bonus at that time gives an edge.But without the publicity, your bonus and good offers take a backseat without any recognition.
The same applies for Disco. Get some publicity one way or other. Start a corporate war, or take in new deals, form partnerships with other corps,( these are somethings that I can point out from the top of my head) and much more. Just that you have to put in lot of time and effort to get known in the community as a good faction that one might consider joining. This can be done for all the factions, irrespective of their nature(shipping/mining/pirating/smuggling).
RE: Mining and shipping - Highland Laddie - 04-10-2014
@Mory - I've just.noticed you joined in Dec. 2013, so I guess maybe you're just not as familiar with Gateway as I may have first assumed. I'm not really looking for a.lesson or advice in attracting members (I'm already familiar with how that works), but I'm more concerned with the viability of shipping in general,.and helping keep it viable and active.
And you're not wrong: the best way to do that is to increase in-game presence and advertise (but apparently not in welcome threads....as that apparently pisses some people off...)
RE: Mining and shipping - Pavel - 04-10-2014
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