How to support trading factions

[sovereign]

My Raba is "escorted" by a Black Dragon while taking goods to, say, Freeport 10. I just happen to "get lost" and end up running into some IMG miners. We fight them, and I drop my cargo for their ore. I could just as easily be "escorted" by another Raba. Even if the armor bonus goes away when I drop my initial cargo, I can just not do that until I've slaughtered the hapless miners.

If you say "well maybe just lawfuls" I can make the same example with a BMM Shire.

I would rather that the system naturally lends itself to trading companies rather than any artificial bonus. Posting contracts for escort might be viable nowadays given the proliferation of mercs, particularly if you award bonuses on kills made during the escort process. I'm sure MercNet can handle some more advanced contracts- one of them right now supports no violence whatsoever.

That said, if someone makes an active trading company in Gallia I will buy them some ships. If you want that to happen, though, you should pull the SNACs off the patrols. If you're not totally convinced on removing the SNACs from the patrols, I'll write you a gorram dissertation on why they need to go, you just need to ask. I'm serious.

No, really.

I want to make it absolutely clear that they need to go. Cannon, if you have even the slightest qualms about that, just tell me and I will give you detailed reasons why, answers to aforementioned qualms as well as the possible issues I thought of, the whole works. This is not a casual suggestion. I have, as a dev, looked at this very carefully.

Got it?

Do that and people will trade in Gallia. I will fund them personally. I will switch to Gallic trading for my revenue (currently ore piracy). There are a decent number of other people who would gladly support Gallia in this manner if there were no bomber NPCs. This is, once again, not a casual suggestion, but a very serious one from a developer.

I won't bother thinking of other stuff until trading in Gallia is at least addressed.

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