How to support trading factions

[Heraklion]

For ages I've been pondering how to give trading factions more reason to exist. Most seem to struggle although I note Bowex are very active at the moment. Perhaps they are hauling ore.

I want to encourage groups of traders, i.e. trading factions and clans. I'm not so interested in individual traders.

One idea is implementing something like the HC /escort command where traders that are escorted are 10 times tougher. Weapons damage to a trader that is escorted does only 10% of the normal damage. The attacking party would need to destroy the escorts first or be overwhelming strong to quickly destroy the transports.

Thoughts?

I like it, that would also actually give traders a reason to hire escorts. And after all a trading convoy escorted by a couple of fighters will provide great RP aswell.

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