Sirius under an economic crysis?

[Unseelie]

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.


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.

While I'm not convinced that the trade is so bad that we struggle to support ourselves, I do see where the lack of income from actuall rp routes is often a huge issue. I, personally, don't need money. I've a couple billion credits floating around, but when I'm in a tradeship, I feel a bit of pressure to earn some cash. When I'm on a strong RP route that doesn't earn me as much as I could flying out to, say, Theta...I get pretty frustrated.

When my RP ends up flying out to Delta because the Rhienlanders put Iridium in Engines which I can ship back to Bretonia...I get pretty frustrated, and not because of the profit or poor rp of the route, as they're both decent (could be a lot better if I could, say, profitably move Iridium from Tau 37 to Newcastle) but because there's an RP going on in NB. There's one going on in Delta, and one in London. I slip through each of these, and I cannot participate without stopping what I'm doing: earning money. I admit, its pure greed/statswhoring that makes me continue, but thats what a transport does, yes? That's good RP for a transport; keeping moving, keep earning profits, time is money, etc.

The problem is that RP is very much split up and divided along the system lines, and trade isn't built to happen, ever, in single systems. Why can't there be a loop, earning around 160-170 cr/sec (yes, a good route), which doesn't, or only breifly, leaves the home systems? In London, something that ships from NL to Kensington, from Kensington to Waterloo(or another base there) and then to Southampton, and back to NL? (admittedly, this would be hard to justify, as there's a bowex/gateway rivalry issue, but you see the idea) One in London, one in NB, one in Tokyo. I'd say not in NY, just because we don't -need- to draw attention to those systems. We could add, and Bretonia is my focus, so there my examples will be, an unlawful route between Trafalgar and Lisbon Rock(I'd suggest moving Lisbon rock from the cloud so near the leeds hole to somewhere closer to the london gate for this) and you've both smugglers and lawful traders working in London. A microcosm trade system, to be sure, but one that'll likely attract a few players. 3 or 5 transports, mostly insystem, so they can rp with the rest of the players such an attention to systems brings: Pirates, to prey on the transports, police to halt the smuggling, and military to hunt the pirates.

Such routes exist, right now. They're great, they earn about 20 cr/sec. Why can't such routes coexist with the long high profit routes? I can't see a reason why not. A transport player could become deeply embroiled in the ongoing RP, which would help teach new players about RP, and on to Nathrael's points.

And there we go. I absolutely agree with you here - but trading is the wrong approach to this. Especially for a new player. Sure, established people or people who come here and quickly make friends won't have it that bad, they'll try to get into a trading faction or group and then will get some RP along their runs. Trading itself will still be horrible and boring, but at least they get *some* RP.

But that's not how it goes for most people. Most people create their first character, when they are lucky someone sends them 100k to get themselves a Rhino, and then, guess what they do...they'll mine near Pittsburgh or in Pennsylvania, mine for hours, without a lot of fun and without a lot of RP. They'll mine and mine and mine, maybe until they can afford themselves a Camara or similar freighter. Then they will trade, and trade, and trade. They now will occasionally get RP from pirates (if they are lucky and don't stumble upon the 2millordai GB pierats), but it won't really be amazing. Maybe they can listen to some veteran players RPing along the way, maybe they'll even take a break and listen to them. Now, if the newbie in question is stubborn enough, promising himself "There *will* be awesome RP for me too, I've read the forums, it can't be that bad as it is now, just wait 'till I get myself my first fighter" or alternately "olol jst wait m8, i soon have enough cash for BS and then I pwn u", he eventually will accumulate more wealth and leave the most frustrating phase in his or her Disco "career".

Couldn't we do better? IMO, newbies should be thrown right into RP, they should be a part of the faction they chose from the beginning on, not just some dude in a Starflea grinding. Especially since said grinding is, gameplay-wise, absolutely no fun - you can't even hope to get into some PvP with a chance of winning (unless you have a Cap8 liner or a heavily armed Shire, but in that case, you ain't no newbie anymore).

Above, I mention that traders -don't- get involved in the RP, just because they flit through the system so quickly that they miss their chances to sink into it. I'd like to encourage recruiters, even though I know from experience that you can spend an hour going through the list of players from level 5 to level 40 and not get a single response to an offer for an escort job. In the same mind, I'd like to ask what happened to the players online list which I imagine may have been really helpful for finding people. There are those of us -looking- for new players...and just as being a new player is disheartening, finding new blokes..is really hard. I fly with all my ships over level 80 just to attract questions from new players, I get maybe one or two a week.

Are factions really that bad? Because I fly Bowex tagged ships, I'm evil? Really?


Finally, I'd like to adress the suggestion that profits be upped: Not by much. Here's why: I'm all for factions. Factions have money, they've multiple members with supertransports, and they should be sucking up new blokes for just the reasons Nathrael suggested. Being a new bloke without a group is likely to not get you great RP, and I buy into the idea that factions are supposed to be setting an example. Two bowex transports can equip a VHF in 10 minutes, a Perch in less. We're looking for new members, and making money easier to get...well that takes off a lot of the edge we have. The signing bonus, which makes us extra-attractive. Trading's always been a chore, and having more credits won't change that, it'll just muck up the balance of transports to pirates, which mucks up a lot of other things.
40 Million an hour/person is as far as I'd be willing to go, and that's probably excessive.

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