Economy / Barges - Ores storage capacity

[BobMacaroni]

From our perspective, the state of the Barge is now ideal.

This is a good point, from the POV of stimulating activity on the server (or keeping current pirates active).

To state the obvious: Mining areas and trade lanes are two of the main areas for lawful/ unlawful interaction and they should be designed with that in mind. Both lead to jump gates and jump holes whose locations become very important in attack/ escape strategies. It all has to do with predicting in-game behavior and being able to create encounters.

When we create a system that works "too well" we often lose out on a bunch of imperfect things that actually make the game more engaging.

The biggest problem with keeping Bases stocked with ores is there is a lack of people willing to mine.

IMHO we need to think creatively about how to both stimulate mining activity and simultaneously create impediments to that mining activity. Every improvement should ideally create economic and RP opportunities for both lawful and unlawful.

To go out on a limb, I would even say that improvements in POBs should go hand-in-hand with innovations in pirate technology (tracers and surveillance tech available only to unlawful IDs, for example). Rather than giving pirates caps, they should be able to commandeer lawful caps and change their IDs. I understand that few will agree with these ideas.

An example from the original FL is trade lanes are created and Lane Hackers learn to hack them. In RL we have AI being developed by all the big names and simultaneously all kinds of bad actors are adapting AI to their own purposes.

Thinking deeply about Barges is great, but sometimes problems are actually a feature, not a bug.

+1