Hello Disco people, long time no threads of mine with (stupid ) ideas.
CAUTION: Long post ahead. If you lack the attention span to read it please don't bother commenting on it.
Suggestions on how to format this for better readability are welcomed.
Introduction
I recently noticed the rise of popularity of a certain militaristic corporation from the Omicrons among our indie population. And that got me thinking:
What is it that makes people flock to just a small set of corps (usually unofficial factions and a couple of OFs with their own IDs) and not even trying to play several vanilla corporations of Freelancer at all (hello to Synth Foods & Cryer, our newest vanilla revival attempts) ?
Why are people mostly playing Freelancers and Zoners for casual trade despite their supposed disadvantages?
Why is every corporation in Disco played just like a regular Mom & Pops bussiness instead of a ruthless hypercapitalistic giant hellbent on crushing their opposition by any (economic) means necessary?
Is it just that people don't want to be tagged while (silent) trading ? Is it the trade routes ? The rep of those factions ? The "why should I have a boss in the virtual world, if I already have one IRL" mentality ? The mining bonuses ?
Let's try and gain some insights through a short analysis.
Azurite Gas 3.0
Iridium Ore 3.0
Alien Organisms 4.0
Order, Criminals
(barring Outcasts)
Universal
Liberty hostile corps
N
Criminals
US|
Liberty hostile corps
N
Criminals
Zoner
Y
Up to 3600 in Houses
Iridium Ore 3.0
Alien Organisms 4.0
Only Nomads
(\^/)
Y
Up to 3600 in Houses
Iridium Ore 4.0
Alien Organisms 4.0
Only Nomads
Freelancer
N
Helium 3.0
All Ores 1.5
Scrap Metal 3.0
Toxic Waste 3.0
Alien Organisms 3.0
Criminals
At first glance most IDs appear to be viable to be played regularly. Many of them share a similar set of limitations, and a few of them stand out by their advantages or disadvantages. Let us compare category by category.
Piracy opportunities
First, the ability to pirate other corporate entities. Now, nobody in Disco seems to think of corporations as ruthless pirates, but the dystopian world of Freelancer should offer plenty of opportunity for intimidation, price dumping and straight out shady bussiness among the corps.
Among the IDs there seems to be three broad categories regarding piracy:
The corps that have no pirate lines
The House Corps that tend to get along between themselves and only pirate in times of tensions between Houses
The Corps that tend to pirate their inter House and intra-House rivals
Liberty Corps tend to be peaceful and avoid piracy, Gallia Corps pirate their external enemies while there are plenty of opportunities for both internal and external strife in the case of Bretonia, Rheinland and Kusari corporations.
Tau oriented Corps seem to be the best bets for those who want a taste of corporate piracy.
Law enforcement lines
Most Corporations don't have these, but the quasi-militaristic ones organised as various Guilds seem to have them at the expense of some other ability.
Cargo demands
Many Corps have none of these. The ones that tend to operate in the Edge and Border Worlds seem to have them, but they often target unlawful entities who don't even trade (or smuggle) often.
Cargo size limitations
The standard is to have no cargo size restriction for Corps. Quasi - militaristic corps and Guilds tend to have their transport ships restricted in exchange for bigger combat ships (or in other cases, more neutrality against Unlawfuls)
Mining bonuses
There are also 3 broad categories here.
Some Corps purely do shipping and no mining
Some focus only on local or specialised mining
Others are primarily mining oriented with bonuses on many Ores.
Hostile reps
This is one of the most blandest categories, I assume because of gameplay reasons. Most corps only tend to only have the common Criminals as enemies. Also KOI being so hostile to anyone seems like a Guard rep leftover ?
Special
The pattern here is that purely shipping Corps get bonuses to their freight and some Corps get access to special ships.
Comments based on player / faction activity
Let's take the last tracker data as a base of our observations
Gallic Metal Service (Unofficial) 28d 03:05:42
Independent Miners Guild 14d 10:55:59
Borderworlds Exports 13d 18:15:16
Gateway Shipping Inc. 12d 11:49:36
Phoenix 11d 10:23:06
Daumann Heavy Construction 10d 13:09:32
Universal Shipping Incorporated 9d 19:41:15
Orbital Spa and Cruise 8d 10:16:31
Omicron Supply Industries 6d 19:26:20
Samura Heavy Industries 6d 13:32:05
Kruger Minerals 5d 04:10:43
Front de Liberation de Gallia 4d 21:39:03
EFL S.P.A 4d 20:29:43
Bretonia Mining and Fabrication 3d 14:09:05
Gas Miners Guild 3d 08:59:46
Bristol Constructions 3d 03:09:52
Deep Space Engineering 2d 23:17:32
Ageira Innovations 1d 11:56:30
Planetform, Inc. 2d 11:17:13 Yes Second Failure
Interspace Commerce 1d 04:46:08 Yes Second Failure
IDF Shipping 10:58:00 Yes Second Failure
One can observe that purely shipping companies tend to do worse than the mining ones. Seeing as the best profit source for shipping companies is POB and manufacturing supplies, which the players tend to prefer to ship themselves anyway, it is easy to deduce why purely shipping corps are not that popular among players.
Nonetheless, the companies operating in high POB density areas (e.g. Bretonia, Liberty and its border) tend to still easily sail past the minimum tracker requirements.
Piracy opportunities
Since most players don't seem to pay much attention to this category or even seem to prefer Corp IDs without any pirate lines we can conclude it is not currently considered very important for Corporate gameplay. Which is sad. Because pure Pirates are also rare today.
Law enforcement lines
The Core seems to be the most popular for this among the indies, no doubt owing to large traffic of traders and malicious wrongdoers in the Omicrons.
Cargo demands
I have no idea how much has this line been used (if any?) in reality. I have personally witnessed it only being used once. Must be because the demands are often focused on smuggled commodities and smugglers are really rare. And it does not make much sense to try to intercept a smuggler in a fat transport without a CD anyway.
Cargo size limitations
This is also pretty bland. Why would I, as a player, choose a shipping corp over a mining corp if I can do both with a mining ID with very little (or even no) disadvantage ?
Mining bonuses
The smartest move here is obviously to choose a Corp that has the highest numbers in the Ores I am interested in mining. Not that miners are that expensive to set up, so one could obviously have them for all corps pretty easily.
Hostile reps
Players seem to value neutrality above everything else. In the real world (mining) corporations pay all sorts of rackets, taxes and insurance to avoid losses and keep their competitive advantage. The closest thing that comes to that in Disco is the POB fees, if the player run corporate faction happens to own one.
Yet most POBs in Disco are actually Zoner or Freelancer owned. The reason for this becomes obvious if we look at the Zoner reps. Zoners are neutral to the strongest criminal factions and the House factions (both lore, gameplay and playerbase wise) and thus the easiest way to avoid taxes and piracy of any sorts. Corp IDs / corporate 5K transports can still be used to supply Freelancer / Zoner POBs, so there is really no (gameplay) reason to choose any other POB rep aside from Zoners.
Special
Not much can be said about this. Players still tend to avoid Corps that only have shipping bonuses going for them. Yet Ageira is still fairly popular with the access to their special ship and commodities.
Improvement ideas
Now I'm just going to throw out some ideas in a quite disorganised fashion as something that seems like it would be interesting to experiment with:
Lowering cost of civilian ships and equipment
Any decently profitable Corp in Sirious should be able to afford at least some escort ships stationed in various Edge and Border World bases.
This would make piracy harder, but maybe also more rewarding (maybe pirates could make bigger demands) and more thrilling for the wannabe Pirate.
Reorganising POB supplies / routes to favor Shipping companies instead of unafilliated entitites
For Example, in Lore the Zoners only deal in mundane necessities like Water, Oxygen and Food Rations, and tend to buy everything else from House Corps still (such as biodomes from Synth Foods).
Reworking sellpoints so the equipment and module manufacturing supplies would be available mostly in House Space would lessen the self-sustainability of the Zoners and make them more reliant on Unlawfuls, Freelancers and various House Corps, thus promoting more interactions between them.
Increasing the price of some POB supplies
And by some I mean mostly the stuff that is available almost everywhere, such as various types of fuel. GMG would especially benefit from this, as some players / POB owners would, for example, opt to contract GMG for their fuel deliveries instead of wasting both money and time to ship it to their POB. Fuel is only used when a base is under siege anyway, so not much of a change here.
Adding lines to (cargo) pirate Freelancers and Zoners to Corps
Corps are supposed to be big bullies in Freelancer, seeking the highest possible margins, and almost falling short of using guns to achieve this, but as an indie Freelancer I can say I've almost never felt this pressure. Maybe add an option for corps to (cargo ?) pirate Freelancers and Zoners when using snubs (and / or freighters). Would promote teamwork and make Corp snubs and freighters more appealing to play.
Adding TLAGSNET ability to various Criminal factions
Now you might think, how could buffing Pirates make corps better or more popular ? The psychology is simple, people tend to group up in a herd when they feel threatened. Corps, especially with their wast fleets of escort craft, should be the first groups a new player should encounter and run to, when they want to be saved from big bad pirates.
According to Lore, only Lane Hackers should have this. But they sell various data to other criminals and I feel this should be represented by gameplay options. For example Mollys, Rogues, Unioners, Outcasts and GC could get at least access to /showscan.
Reworking reps and sellpoints so that mining companies have a harder time shipping the goods they produce to the sellpoints
And by this I would suggest making sellpoints for various Ores in the House space of a competing mining Corp. For example let's take Aluminium. Both Daumann and Kruger have quite good mining rates for it.
But they sell to Bretonia to a completely unrelated affiliation, thus they can make the trip themselves. If instead they would be forced to rely on a third party (Imperial ?) because the sellpoint was in a competing mining corp that they could not dock with easily it would be a boon for the Shipping companies to also get part of the activity. And would also make the mining corps suck up to the shipping corps (and vice versa) to keep their profits high.
As always, thoughts, suggestions, criticisms, prayers welcome.
) ideas.![[+]](/forums/images/collapse_collapsed.png "[+]")
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