Usefullness of trading factions. Or uselessness rather...

[fencore]

Mmh, the burden is on the trading faction to make their task appealing. Oftentimes, in a trading faction, you pop a new player in, go "Here's your routes, have fun" and that's that. At least from most of the trading factions I've been in.

Because of that, at least with OSI, Stygian, VIctor, and myself try to give our guys something to do that'll have some sort of reward, whether it be feeding Corsairs, hauling contracts for the Freeports, or scouting out new clients. When you're actually doing something to evolve a faction's RP, it becomes much more about enjoying the roleplay and less about the trading itself. Of course, to back that up, we do hand out credit bonuses at the end of the month. You get a percentage out of 100 million depending on how much you hauled. I can't remember the last time I ran a profit run, even. Been moving a lot of RP cargo lately. I personally find it more entertaining, since it's not really work per se.

Granted, there are people who trade just to make money for their pew ships. I don't think we should necessarily restrict those people, but I'm all for giving a little more control to the official factions over tech. If we kill independent trading too much, you won't get those moneymakers to roleplay any more than they would before, they'll just be grinding their route longer. It'll be traffic, not conversation, which isn't always the best thing.