Trading - Brainstorming Changes

[FooFighter]

Incidentally folks, this is nt about how pirating is ruining your day - its about promoting trading by making it as attractive an option in and of itself, not a means to an end.

Well, boosting profits alone or giving certain factions certain goods that they can only buy with full Guard Rep won't help anything here I think. Trading, in itself, as it is at the moment, is broken. Yes, most of us have to do it (smart people trade guns instead, which is much more profitable, or do bounty hunting because it's more fun; I pretty much only get on my transport to help out newbies), and boosting profits will make things better by not requiring you to trade that much anymore, which will make people happy, but it won't change the fact that trading will stay - to use your words - the means to an end. I think if you really want people to trade because they like trading and not because they need the cash, trading as a gameplay mechanism needs to be radically changed (oh, and I'd be glad helping to mod that of course *coughs*).

[...]dynamic economy[...]

Fully dynamic economy is a bad idea in my opinion - it'll just lead to weird ooRP situations from which only the "I dock everywhere"-Zoner Guard traders will profit. Give every faction that has a reason to utilize trading ships at least one good route (and make all of them about equal; maybe make smuggling a little bit more profitable taking in mind that it at least *should* be more risky than lawful trading - maybe allow people to engage smugglers like any other ships?). Frankly said, if you have multiple trade routes there most likely will be one which is "the best" and which will be spammed. In .84 it was the Diamond-Niobium run, now we have various smuggling runs and other routes which can only be flown by the hated Zoner Guard traders. If every trading faction had an equal route (which you wouldn't have to "discover" - working out trade routes is one of the most boring things to do, even worse than trading itself), people would spread much more I'd say, which might bring some life to the other houses (especially Kusari needs some love - who ever goes there?). If you want some variety, maybe use Xoria's economic events proposal to temporary create new routes for some factions (ONOZ FOOD SHORTAGE ON PLANET X! SYNTH FOODS FOR THE RESCUE! - a month later: thanks, we have enough food now, now go back to your normal routes). We *do* have an auto-updater, after all:).

[...]trading missions[...]

Trading missions sound nice, but here, I think you'd have the same problem as with just increasing profits. Yes, it would spread out people a bit, and add a little bit of variety, but soon will get just as boring as regular trading. It won't change anything fundamentally, but I think it could be quite nice in combination with other changes.


Oh, and one little thing regarding more profit leading to more caps...well, I don't really see much less caps nowadays. 'sair caps are legion, Order carriers keep roaming the eastern border/edge worlds en masse and OC caps aren't too rare either. NY has less caps now, which I'd attribute to the endeavors of the [LN] to keep the lolcaps away. Rheinland...uh, RNC, anyone?

If you are afraid of caps being spammed should they become profitable again, give the various player factions the right to regulate caps and preferably also GBs (to make sure they won't sit on every second trade lane waiting for traders - seriously, it's getting hilarious).