Ore Changes, the problems with it.

[Sabru]

I generally agree. I always found it odd that the economy was effectively "ore, ore, ore, ore and ore" for a long long time and completely disregarded the potentials for general commodities trading, from finding new trade chains that take you round sirius (one of the obvious being the house capitals alcohol route) to the simple RP potential of traveling far with different commodities and the chance of running into various factions, from lawful to unlawful and everything in between, and either having general interaction or trying to talk your way out of being pirated.

I cant speak from the angle of pirates nor do i know exactly what should be done but, in my opinion, something needs to be balanced somehow so that while ore remains profitable, it is not the be-all and end-all to trading for money. The only thing i can think of is "lengthening the chain" like, for example, you take mineral ore (like gold or something) to a "refinery" buy midpoint which pays decently (though not to the current ore levels) but also sells the "refined" product (gold bars, to follow the example) which can then be on-traded to a final sellpoint somewhere else with perhaps 1 or 2 different commodities that can be traded back.

The whole journey, ideally, would pay a similar amount in total to current ore trading but encompasses more action than just point-to-point movement from field to buypoint. Unlawfuls could even be given decently paying sellpoints of their own to encourage reasonable cargo piracy as an alternative to cash piracy.

I'm not sure if any of this would even work but just thought i'd float my 'layman's' idea on the disco economy

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