How to support trading factions

[hack]

The assumption that "Oh, less money for trading means less LOLwuts" is a complete farce.

No matter what you do, they will get the money.

Can you say "Power Pirating"?

More Money, Buff them, give the escort a nice bonus.

---

Formerly known as LPI Police Chief Hull O'Brien.
Creator of Sgt. V. Price, 207th Precinct out of Chula Vista Station

[tyro]

give the convoys bonus to the ships armour and decent bonus to the selling price if they are grouped + they sell cargo in the same station + they have the same ID/IFF + the same faction tag - predefined tag of official factions, like Kishiro|, BowEx). It may encourage lonely "Interspace" traders to join factions and fly in convoys.

[Exsiled_one]

While your idea sounds awesome (Wholesale buy cheapens prices) problem is that I do not think FL hook can actually modify things based on how many people are in the group that share same ID and IFF.

---

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

[jammi]

In that case, what about escorts? In many cases, your escort will still be a member of the convoy, but they won't be using the same tag.

Even escorts of your faction. Bowex) ships are traders, but Bowex| ships are escorts.

---

News article library, feedback and content requests.

[Exsiled_one]

Yeah it seems there are issues with that. but as Jamie and I have talked already, it's not so much of a problem that factions have low activity, but corporation ID traders in general.

---

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

[Heraklion]

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.

I second that. If you add a money bonus to it, that's just asking people to find a way to abuse the system. I believe better protection should be more then enough reason to fly in a convoy.

Especially the idea about taking out the escorts first to drop the transports maximum armor back to normal is awesome.

---

[Unseelie]

Lets Increase transport hulls. There's no way to abuse that, none at all, not like a plugin that gives a ship 'free' money....oh wait...

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.

The issue with dropping a boost on transports is that they are a very, very diverse shipclass. Something that makes a Percheron balanced will make a Shire or a liner unkillable.
Things need to be carefully, carefully examined when it comes to changing the actual combat balance, and given different solutions to different tranches of the transport class, but this isn't a combat balance thread.

Encourage escorts by awarding them without penalizing the traders, and I guarantee you will see more and larger groups. I've already proposed a stacking system of rewards.

---

[Ceoran]

The assumption that "Oh, less money for trading means less LOLwuts" is a complete farce.

No matter what you do, they will get the money.

Can you say "Power Pirating"?

More Money, Buff them, give the escort a nice bonus.

agreed. Buff trading.

---

My Stories Outcast laws and structures Join Samura|-

Go play the game, within the given limitations. That is how role play games are played. Not by trying to work around those limitations or whining about them.

[MrHeadphones]

In 4.84, it was the Diamond-Niobium route (I was running Lux food-Boron like a newb), when the mining came out, there was the pennsylvania silver rush, I think, and the Dublin gold rush. All of these brought large numbers of people to certain lanes in Sirius, because they were the most profitable routes. Now, I have two ideas which could get more people trading, and more into groups or factions.

1. Raise mining profit back up again, but wait, there's a catch. Mining ships only get 1000 credits per unit, wheras every other ship type gets the full amount. This means that the miners are going to have to use *gasp* teamwork to make a good profit, which leads to more interaction between players, and so probably more impromptu groups and faction membership. Also, to those of you who are thinking that people will just leave the mining ship for transports with mining turrets, allow me to remind you of the fact that a mining ship gets an 80% yield boost (which could in fact be raised even further to encourage mining ship use)

2. Every 24 hours, a random route's profit per unit increases drastically through FLhook (say, 1000 per cargo unit). This lasts for 24 hours, but for the first 12, the majority of traders won't know about it. For the second 12, this information can be found by typing "sten stocks" or something. However, the factions that operate in that area would be sent automatic messages (possibly based on the /fm command) every 10 minutes or so right from the start of the bonus cash, giving the details of the increase. For example, Southampton shipyard needs an enormous amount of engine components and its stocks are low. Profit increases. the FLhook thing gives all Bowex), BMM- and Gateway) ships an /fm that engine components are in demand on Southampton. 12 hours later. this profit increase goes public to anyone who types "sten stocks", so you get independent traders flying the route, and after 24 hours, the profit from this route goes back down and another one becomes very profitable.

[Miaou]

I like your second idea about prices of a item falling and rising. It bring more realism to the game involving prices.

Your first idea is what I currently hate. All miner know that money flows when you got a mining operation going on (3+ miners and 2+ transports). What you don't understand is we can't always be doing these so we have to solo mine a lot which has its own problems (pirates). Our only profit is how much we sell it to traders, which a haggle till I get a good price, which is normally 5.5K per unit right now. Selling for 1k per unit is a bad idea, way too low for solo mining. Also, just because we are mining never means theres a trader sitting 10K from your ship waiting on your gold.

---

Characters & Stories