The CAC, the Economy, And Other Such Shenanigans

Matlkael

Okay! Since the Economy is the next Big Thing to be tackled by the admins, here are my ideas for it.

To start, my thought is that the "ground economy" (bashing as a faucet, gear repairs as drains) should be more integrated with the "space economy" (incursions and NPC orders as faucets, manufacturing materials as drains).

Just to make sure everyone's on the same page: a faucet is an activity that generates new marks and puts them into the game, while a drain is an activity that siphons off marks from the game.

• buying credits from the market = not a drain nor a faucet; the marks just move from one player to another
• PC material orders = not a drain/faucet; marks (and materials) move between players
• NPC material orders = a faucet
• PC and ship death = a drain

Currently, the ground economy and the space economy are only vaguely linked. The faucets of the ground, for the most part, never make it to the drains of space. Manufacturers are finding it difficult to make money because they're only drawing from the space faucets.

My general idea, then, is to find a way to have grounders use up manufacturing products, too. The CAC, I think, is a good place to start. It'd need some rework, of course.

First, change the way the bonuses can be obtained:

• Experience: requires 20 array
• Hacking XP: requires 10 sensor, 10 countermeasure
• Captaincy XP: requires 10 mine, 10 astromech
• Stats: requires 5 transteel, 5 paristeel, 5 hdsastrium
• Damage: requires 10 rglass, 10 QPC
• Ship Damage: requires 2 of each missile and battery

These are mostly random. If a faction has all the necessary materials in their faction storage, then the bonus can be activated. This introduces no new faucet into the system; rather, it incentivizes factions to buy up products from manufacturers (who can, theoretically, increase their prices and profits).

Once the bonus is activated, it stays on for the entire RL day. At the Synch, if the faction still has enough materials, the bonus automatically activates for the next day, so on and so forth until it's manually turned off or the faction runs out of the proper materials.

The bonus starts out at 1%, and each day that it stays on, another percentage point is added up to a total of 10%. It has to be consecutive; missing one day will reset it back down to 1% (or maybe it decays at a rate of 1%? Not sure on that one yet).

In any case, the hope is that the bonuses will be noticeable enough that ground bashers will want to support their faction via donations, and the factions, in turn, will use that income to buy materials from manufacturers. With that in mind, the bonuses can be changed in order to cater to players on the ground. Some ideas: increased resistance vs PVE attacks, increased damage in PVE, et cetera.

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Another issue with the manufacturing side of the economy is the tediousness of resource gathering. In my opinion, the amount of resources that spawns isn't too much of an issue (for now); the problem arises when you may have to scour the entirety of space to find that one specific resource you need.

With that in mind, I propose adding in preferential spawning for zones. For example, the zones around Vai (maybe the entirety of Syndicate space, plus a few zones around it) would produce a lot of iriil and astrium. So, if you need those resources, Vai would be the place you scout first. And then maybe Ibyssian is where you go to get vandium and titanium. So on and so forth. The idea is to cut down the time it takes to gather resources by lessening the space you need to scout for them.

That's all. For now.... 

Kirin

Thanks for starting this thread

Mining 

1) mostly I like mining the way it is for the moment. I do think there needs to be more equalization in useability. Further some gas spawn rates likely need to be upped

2) Rather than have specific zones for collecting resources probably let players construct two structures in space with materials. This acts as a faucet while allowing alternative uses for unpopular materials  

a gravity well - ‘traps asteroids through intense gravity’ - allows asteroids to spawn near it at an accelerated rate. I would imagine using ultarine and elessium and stesium and lasting for a RL year. Limited to one well per sector

a gas sieve - this gigantic structure collects gas as it floats around in a sector. You do not know what gases it has trapped but need to TAP SIEVE to fill your scoops. Again I would use astromechs or UMMs to construct this

COSMPIERCERS
One potential way to use more resources would let cosmpiercers have a maintenance cost. Probably each time a cosmpiercer is captured it could require a new salvo of missiles to defend and sensors to detect. The payments from piercers could be increased slightly to compensate the system

i like the ideas for bonuses through CAC as suggested above.

Matlkael

Kirin said:

COSMPIERCERS
One potential way to use more resources would let cosmpiercers have a maintenance cost. Probably each time a cosmpiercer is captured it could require a new salvo of missiles to defend and sensors to detect. The payments from piercers could be increased slightly to compensate the system

My issue with this above idea is that it's a repeat of Station Missions 1.0: punishment mechanics by introducing unnecessary upkeep. Furthermore, it increases the faucet (increased marks generated by cosmpiercers) rather than tapping the already-existing large faucet generated by bashers.