How to support trading factions

[Wuselkobold]

- Transports are slow and turn like a rock, while Freighters are fast and agile. In my opineon, Transports should be used in long shipping runs, from House to House, using the 'highway' Trade Lanes (For example the Independent worlds, straight forward routes without sharp turns from TL to TL). They should exclusively dock at the distribution bases which every house has at least one of (Kensington Shipping Platform and Trenton Outpost for example). These bases should provide profitable routes to the other Houses, with many options where to go next, so Transport pilots are not tempted to dock at the main House Planets/Bases.
The small transports could pick up the delivered goods and use the 'country roads' to deliver them on the Bases they are needed on, with moderate profit but doing more runs in the same time. The big Transports would keep their freedom to go all across Sirius, making big profits, while the Freighters could be doing distribution work inside the Houses, which would give them much more traffic (wich is much needed in Bretonia, Rheinland and Kusari).

I'll quote myself and a suggestion I've made last year to the topic of how to give freighter pilots some incentive for actually flying them.

The above mentioned thing could be realised by adding sale locations on the docking rings of planets, where transports can't dock.
An example: New Berlin needs Luxury consumer goods. So we take a full load in our Large train and can either go blockade running and drop them off on Altona Station, or take the longer routr through Kusari, and drop the goods on Mainz Storage Facility.
Now another player takes his Humpback/Ragnar, buys Luxury consumer goods on either of the two bases, and transports them to Planet New Berlin (Docking Ring) where they are bought for a moderate profit, the credits per hour should be somwhat around the standard cooperation trade runs maybe?

This would greately increase diversity, give freighters, which are fun to fly and pretty ships a real purpose.
So, Transports for long range trade runs, freighters for all the short runs.

And yes, I do realise this would require lots of work to realise :(

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A wild goose chase (RP story)

[Ark]

Cannon- I like your idea (understatement.) If the possible abuses are countered.

I'd also like to throw in my support for Unseelie, Rudo, and Hawk. No sane player enjoys a game where they have no chance to win. That's where ragequit comes from. That's also why trading is only ever a means to an end. Money, for a ship that can fight. Or survive, at least. If you're not meant to be able to compete while making money, why the ptrans? Why does "right place right time" reward more than time consuming work? Fun and profit at another's expense more rewarding than grind that harms no one? (Worlds less risky, too.)

I'm truncating my post because I'm too tired to be concise.

[Friday]

The reason I don't want to buff transports (apart from the fact it is not my responsibility) is that buffing transports by themselves does not encourage group play. It makes transports tougher and if anything encourages individual play.

Buffing transport armor if you have an escort addresses complaints related to bombers killing the escorted ships before the escorts can do anything about it.

I guess capships could be escorted in a similar way. I noticed in the recent event that there was something of a lack of escorting fighters for the caps.

When I use the word faction I'm not refering to only official factions but any group of players.

What about buffing Transport energy under /escort as well?

It would make the use of energy-chewing Type 4 Turrets more viable against enemy bombers.

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[evildead]

That COULD work evildead, but it should be limited to the system you're in.

If it matches you with anyone in space you will lose time a lot. let's say you need an escort from NY to Leeds and your merc that you got matched up is in damn Shikoku.

Well we can search the locations of those mercs and get the one who is near us I would like the ADMINS To tell how is i this idea

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[wilwerin2]

Good Idea with the Hull, but DONT give money Bonus, or lower the Money for people flying alone, the money making is already way too fast, don't make it even faster.

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[Zeb Harley]

While I am pretty certain that noone wants to see Gunboat-Tech on my transports, I suggest the following for trading-factions:

Pitstops or Docking-Depots.

Corporations would be able to install dockable depots along dangerous lanes. I imagine them like the borderstations but on a more exclusive basis:

Small, maintained by robots and only accessable if you can identify yourself by showing a faction ID. There might even be NPC-escorts that escort your ship to the next Corporational Depot if you have the proper ID.

Now this would probably not increase traders working together but would drive more traders into trading-factions and thus encourage people to travel along certain routes.

At the moment we have the situation that many traders travel individually along the same route although there would be some safety in numbers. If they would make even 3-ship convoys it would take quite a large group of pirates to endanger the convoy.

But our Disco-traders do not work that way. You can't force them to cooperate with each other. Most traders see trading only a stepping-stone to something they consider to be more exciting.

You can already have a great bonus of picking up a new player and teach him how to scout the lanes towards your remote destination for the better of the both. I do this whenever I have the time.

Last but not least I don't make any non- military sense of multiplying a ship's defensive capabilities by escorts since a trader momentarily has no need at all to get stopped by pirates by simply detouring them.

Yesterday someone asked me if I ever get pirated and the correct answer should have been: I never see any pirates on my travels from closer than 10k if I don't provoke it. Instead I have to get my battle-training in Connecticut, which is why you will meet me there with transports frequently to be fit for a trader's worst-case-scenario.

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for those who missed it: the moral of it all is ----> traders with teeth are fun for pirates. - within reason.

[FooFighter]

If we're looking at ways to alter mechanics, you can increase strength, money, or speed. I'd suggest awarding an escort fee to escorts, without deducting from the trader's profits.

I'd actually go a step further and raise the profits to 20-50%. 8% of 20 millions (which is the average profit a trader makes per 30mins - 1 hour, depending on the faction he's trading for) are only a bit more than a million - it simply wouldn't be worth doing escorts credits-wise.

I quite like the idea of multiplying an escorted ship's armor value, too, but I think there'd be an even better solution: greatly lower the speed of fighters and bombers. As I said on the dev forums, the big problem with ships smaller than GBs is that combat involving them usually results in extremely frustrating lag/dodgefests. 1v1s may be alright, but group fights aren't - especially if one group is targeting the slow traders the other group is protecting, which, unlike the escorts, can't dodge at all.

Edit:

Good Idea with the Hull, but DONT give money Bonus, or lower the Money for people flying alone, the money making is already way too fast, don't make it even faster.

Hell no. Profits are already extremely low as they are - trading for a fighter takes at least two hours for the "poorer" factions (Planetform etc), and trading for caps is an extremely boring chore, too. Nerfed profits don't result in less lolwuts flying caps - collectively, they're a rather patient bunch and as it can be seen with certain individuals like that Rheinland Tiger guy, not even multiple sanctions can stop them. No, nerfing the credit just leads to pirates making higher demands (because the players behind them don't want to trade) and traders being less willing to actually pay up (because paying a pirate may add yet another hour of boring F3-spamming to your work schedule). The only way to regulate caps is through faction or admin control - it's that simple.

[jammi]

I note Bowex are very active at the moment. Perhaps they are hauling ore.

Well, I am, the others aren't as much. Bowex is active because the management is encouraging the members to be proactive. Besides this, we're also exploring alternate RP for more stuff we can do - which includes Shire runs at invading battleships at Leeds (if we're there and the convoy is free), ect.

I kind of boils down to whats the benefit of joining a trade faction?

Bowex has a cool ship (The Shire)

The Shire isn't why we get members. Again, it's being about being proactive. We go on recruitment drives on the forums and bag people ingame. Go find a newbie in a Starflea or CSV and offer to let him come along with you. When you get to Leeds on your run, give him the cash for a Clydesdale. He'll probably be grateful. Keep convoying with said newbie until you've got a judge on him - at this point, you either do or don't offer a place in the faction. Simples. That's not to mention recruitment of indy Bowex or other trade corps we run across.

That equation is already in place Rudo.

Not really? As-is, one bomber can chew through any number of standard transports. The problem is, bombers shouldn't be used for piracy - they're balanced to kill freaking battleships. Demanding cash is a online player technique. It shouldn't work that way - the traders wouldn't have that money on hand. Well, corporations wouldn't anyway. Any money that ship makes goes into the corporation's accounts. You're not making your own money, you're paid a wage. Still, I digress.

Back to Rudo's ratio that Dusty says exists.

If there's more pirates than traders - trader is undoubtedly dead. If there are more traders than pirates - the pirates just have to grind their way through the convoy (convoy is dead unless they have somewhere they can run to). If there's an equal number of pirates and traders - traders are still dead. Of course, this relates to bombers. Transports against Transports is a little more equal.

One thing many (many, not all) trading factions lack of is a stable escort/trader structure. You escort idea Cannon is quite decent. I would join up to soem of these factions like Bowex if I could do something other than trading e.g escorting without feeling...unproductive?

Bowex has an Ex/Sec wing. Currently you don't see much of it because I shut it down to reorganise. However, we will be styling it almost as an independent mercenary wing that has priority contracts to Bowex. What we desperately need however, is dedicated escort pilots. Most of ours were just part time trade captains, which was part of the trouble.

Get in contact and we can talk about it?

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[Araul]

More money

[Exsiled_one]

I personally do not understand what do people want. Do you want to kick mercs from the equation just because people aren't hiring them enough? Well that is their problem.

I would rather leave fragile ships and add the /merc option rather then buffing them up.

But that's just me. I find that (even if Jamie is right) hiring a bunch of people that aren't from my faction, to protect my faction, involves more people in roleplay and saves me members to actually trade.

let's say you have 8 bowex players online.
4 escort, 4 trade in big ships. You have 30mil / hour route and mercs want 5 mil per route, 15mil per hour I guess. Cheap mercs.

You have 4 trade ships that make 60mil per hour what translates to 240mil per hour and you have 4 mercs that guard and leech 60mil from that and we go down to 180mil per hour.


Instead bowex could hire 4 mercs (indies, factioned) and trade with 8 people bringing in profit of almost 500mil, and 4 escorts can get paid even 20mil then, what would leave bowex with 420mil of pure profit instead of 180.

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<span style="color:#33CC00">I AM GIVING AWAY MONEY TO CREATIVE MINDS*</span>