Faction Mark Generation

Ikchor

Late night discussion in game has me pondering ways and means for factions to generate marks on their own, without relying heavily on (in)voluntary deposits from players. I'm just going to list off what I've thought off of the top of my head in the discussion and subsequently hope that my thread doesn't immediately get flagged for review as that has been an on and off thing for me all week
Most of this would be handled by whoever holds the accounts privilege/factionpower, naturally.

None of this is intended to be a major revenue source so much as a means of funding other faction ventures like subsidized ships and ammo for newbies, gear for returning players, marks rewards for doing things that benefit the faction et cetra. Small stuff.

- Faction held refineries
This got tossed around for a different reason but it'd be a nice steady drip feed of marks for factions. Maybe tie in a cosmipiercer influenced bonus to production so there's some reason for them to exist? Not crucial, since the main benefit is they'd never shut down and ideally won't be limited by the 3 of 3 types limit.

- Concert proceeds
Holding a concert in a faction should generate income for that faction based off ticket sales. Would this significantly impact groups like K0NF3CTION and Omnifarrous? Yeah probably, depending on the size of the cut but you're using faction property to make money, something should go to them out of courtesy. Maybe as incentive, there is a price multiplier for faction bars but Lamentations doesn't have that. The trade off between them is that at Lamentations you're not making as much but its all yours and to prevent this from being used ALL the time and defeating the point: Only three(?) acts per Sync can play at Lamentations whereas faction space is limitless. After that it's up to the factions to decide how to draw bands into their venues.

- Direct purchase of resources
Long story short, something similar to the other IRE titles comms market would probably go a long way to helping out.

- Trade Terminal Income
Recurring cost of having a shop in a faction's trade terminal network, set by economic types. Omni network is free but you can't use marks to boost your ranking on the list.

edit:
- Faction Designs
When a design is shared to faction listings, the download cost is doubled. Half goes to the designer, as normal, and the other half goes to the faction.

These are just my thoughts and suggestions, if anyone has anything to add, please do so!

Cubey

I agree that letting factions control refineries/factories would be a good idea. Right now many of them do that anyway, just by proxy (player characters who are also faction leaders). If factions could place resource orders and also put commodities up for sale on the market, that'd be cool and also allow player miners to sell their resources in a hassle-free way.

BTW factions already have a way to generate marks on their own, via credit sales. It's a small thing but it's something.

Ikchor

Not gonna disagree with you on that one, but with daily credits that method has had some of its oomph taken out of it in my opinion. I'll just start off my thoughts on this with a big disclaimer: This is just speculation on my part, and I'm aware what I'm thinking is a bit of a stretch.

Daily credits are a double edged sword (dagger? since it's a small thing?) for faction credit sales, since not only could the daily credits reduce the amount of credits purchased during the sale but they also reduce the amount of credits rolling into factions from purchases on the site. The sales probably don't even show a reduction like this but I think the effect is a possibility.

Course I could be completely wrong and underestimating people's need to have a big ol' credit pile for when auctions come around.

Steve

Factions being able to buy and sell commodities straight from the market order/offer system would be really nice. I'd want to have permissions available for who can buy and sell, too, so that the faction can buy and sell from its own faction people if it so desires, or block off a specific faction (or all others).

Faction-held refineries and factories on the factional planets would be handy, even if we had to shell out a quarter of a million marks per. Much more useful investment than the security cameras that can't even spot enemies entering and leaving!

Trade terminal shops having factional fees on them would be good.

Refineries and factories having fees for being hosted on faction-held locations would be good.

And what Cubey said about a hassle-free way to support miners is exactly right. It's also worth mentioning that there's the player involvement dynamic there, too -- asynchronous ways to participate in the community are important, especially when the game's community is as small as it is.