Sirius under an economic crysis?

[Denelo]

Have to agree with this. Way too hard to get anything done at the moment. As a corp trader, I find that running in-RP routes earns me next to nothing compared to running normal routes - or worse, ooRP ones - on any other trader. Where I earn 10 million an hour running in-RP routes on my Shire, I'll earn two or three times that on my smuggler. Plus, actually trading using the lanes is dangerous - there are several systems where you'll be pirated for twice what you're earning just by sticking your nose through the door.

Now, the real problem here is that people consider trading to be work. And in fact, it is. The only way to survive on this server is to trade, sell weapons (involves farming), mod a ridiculous number of systems, or, in some very few cases, pirate. While mining should be another way to earn money, it's not. It's simply not viable. But that's a point for another thread.

As it stands, though, trading is the most easily accessible way to earn money at a reasonable rate. Therefore, I am forced to trade to keep my characters alive, while I would much rather be doing something constructive. I honestly think I'd probably slow down and RP my trader characters even more than I do now if I wasn't sitting there knowing I was losing money and would have to work much harder and longer because I was RPing. In short, I'm punished for stopping and RPing with someone. What this does is it actually encourages powertrading and discourages RP; after all, if I RP, I won't have enough money to buy X ship by Y date so I can RP with it with Z.

Give people a reason to actual RP traders, please. I rarely see traders stopping in a system and RPing longer than they'd be in the system anyways except occasionally Bowex and AIL (shameless faction plug there). Traders aren't encouraged to go through high-traffic areas, where they'd lead to the most encounters; they lose money doing so. I personally avoid New York like the plague simply because half the pirates of Sirius are there at any given moment, and flying to Fort Bush with a Shire full of Gold is sure to get me pirated for 10 or 15 million. Fight off the pirates? Shires are good, but alone they aren't good enough to out-fight anything more than a fighter or a PTrans who doesn't know how to fly his ship. Hire escorts? Doesn't matter how many escorts I get, because any pirate who's worth his salt'll still destroy my transport before he goes down, even if he has to dodge like a mad monkey on a sugar high while spamming CDs to do it. Plus, escorts cost money too, and thus I might lose just as much money hiring enough escorts to keep me safe as I would if I just payed all the pirates anyways.

Therefore, I want to trade... but the fact that I have to powertrade for hours anyways makes me tired of trading by the time I'm done, and I really don't feel like trading for the RP at that point. RPing while trading earns next to nothing - if I stop to RP whenever I can, which is what I'd like to do, I earn cash a sixth as fast as anyone else. In addition, Xoria designed trading for corp traders breaking embargos, blockade running, and using jump holes. In all reality, a corp trader would be quite law-abiding, and IC wouldn't just let anyone use jump holes and stay insured. They're close enough to Ageira that they'd probably support jump gates. As a result, you average corp trader can't run any of Xoria's high profit routes. On top of that, corp traders are even further restricted by docking - you wouldn't see an BMM transport docking on an IMG or Gateway base, nor would you see a Kishiro transport working for Samura. And every single house is at war with at least one other house, so every corp trader has to stay out of one house. Again, embargos; no corp trader in their right mind would take Libertonians goods to Rheinland or vice-verse. The same goes for Bretonian and Kusarian goods to their respective opposing nations.

Also, if you accept that you can't use jump holes, that limits trade even further. And that makes sense. You aren't going to be seeing Shetlands and Mastodons flying through Omicron Theta loaded with Gold... or you shouldn't be, anyhow.

In short, trading needs to be more profitable so we can enjoy RPing it instead of having to worry about earning enough money to even support ourselves, much less actually by new ships we need for other RPs. Before you go telling me characters should be supporting themselves, don't. My military people are hardly going to have to build their own ship up; they'll be issued their ship from a military stock. People come by lucky breaks. Things happen. Some of these things have existed in-RP for a long time, and it wouldn't make any sense for the characters not to have them. And so forth. Anyhow.

I rest my case.