Mining was a mistake. It brought us a couple of negative things that are hard to control. First of all - OORP hate, of cause demands of pirates began to rise up if one see a juicy 5k transport with ore worth 50 millions. It's a risky business since you're hauling a huge amount of cargo at a time that cost a lot. Maybe mining with freighters can be less frustrating in case of pirates since you're shipping in little portions at a time and also harder to catch. But since all the money making gameplay is aimed to make as much money as possible at the as brief as possible period, then this won't happen at all. If people could, and they were doing so, fill the Barge with ore 500M worth, move it with little to zero escort and then pirates catch it and ask for 100-200m, for example, they'd still complain that pirates are too OP and no RP.
Well... This can be fixed by the only actual mean. Smuggling, Trading and Mining must be rebalanced totally.
Trading needs to loose that many routes we have - someone decided it is wise to make a ton of routes with same money\time profit rate. One house must have just 2-3 most profitable routes to make hot spots. Maybe to regulate this dynamically. Like rising the profit of certain routes (1 per each house) for a week or two, then rise another route's profit, etc.)
Smuggling needs proper jump hole network and logical routes. Currently it's just broken and don't worth an effort. Some time before I heard that jump hole network is remade on purpose because flying though the holes must be longer route then flying though the lanes - which is contrary to the original FL idea, lol.
Mining - maybe it'll be wise to significantly lower the ore prices while rising the speed of mining itself. So people fly more frequently with less valuable cargo. And make just 1-2 routes per house, since spreading fields isn't cool idea from how it turns out. Or to dynamically regulate the bonuses on the field as with trading to make one field to be better then others for a period.
This way all the cargo moving would be more or less of a same cost so pirates won't be able to ask for huge taxes. Also the dynamic regulation will allow to control the appearance of hot spots at desired locations by routing traffic.
Anyway, it's a matter of perspective. From trader's pov the pirates are nope and morons. From pirates pov - the traders are silent bitches and faggots. (yes I like to test how the anti-swear filter works on forum, ye).
Maybe it could be best to actually start from yourself.
(12-19-2013, 08:54 PM)Knjaz Wrote: Hell, back in Dublin times, we had certain people who perfectly understood that simple logic and were demanding very little amounts from miners, per day, but on constant basis. Were also nice enough to protect their "hunting grounds" from other parties, to an extent. You know how it ended? These folks (or certain guy, don't remember too well by now) sometimes received their /givecash playername 2.000.000 the moment they appeared on our radars, like a daily tax.
Wish I had those, all I got was people who instantly started flying to Essex the moment I poped on scanners and refused to pay 500K-1M credits for their gold cargo, because they knew with CAU8 or near they can fly to Essex and then just camp it in a huge battle of attrition (or atleast their friends log 2-3 gunboats and a repair ship, to fight off my fighter and 2 friends also flying snubs). Which eventually brought to the bloody awesome rule that you can run away 14K+ without being considered as "losing the fight".
But you know what I did to that lovely bunch that was too greedy to pay 500K in Dublin? They payed 3000 gold ore in Magellan, whether they liked it or not. Moral of the story? Everyone can be a dick and still be within the rules.
