Too much trading

[Ash]

I've had another thought about why there's been a drop in server activity recently.

In the old days the were more golden trade routes than there are today. These were routes that were cash cows, less distance and more profit, routes similar to the Tokyo - Berlin diamond run. Now i'm not condoning the existence of such a route but it leads me to my point.

When money was easier to make, people spent less time docking with trade lanes and more time doing what they came here to do; namely shooting and role playing as the characters they wanted to be. This, in my opinion made for a much more lively atmosphere with the inconvenience of a few extra lolwuts. If I had a question to ask it would be this:

What would you rather do? Spend a few extra days trading to get to do what you want or occasionally putting up with the extra idiot?

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[glassofwater]

Personally, I'd like a happy medium. Somewhere in between. Maybe 1/4-1/3 more profit. At least then as you said you can be the character you actually wanted to be, rather than grinding for days.

[AshHill07]

What would you rather do? Spend a few extra days trading to get to do what you want or occasionally putting up with the extra idiot?

Hey, I fly in Liberty, I see idiots every time I login. The issue is more that even though tradeing is a pain in the backside people still manage to get hold of these ships and go randomly engage people, increasing the amount of tradeing they have to do has already proven that it doesn't work, so I'd say yes, less tradeing.

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\\ CDR David Roberts \\ CAPT Steven Eversman \\ VADM Ash Hill // RDML Chris Murray // CDR Mick Connors //
\\ SFC| Patrol-7 \\ SFC| LNS-California \\ SFC| LNT-Century // SFC| LNS-San.Francisco // SFC| Patrol-5 //

[GTB]

Keep in mind some only trade to buy the better ships at first, once they've done that trading is less of an interest to carry on doing. Unless you just love trading all the time.

[Ash]

Keep in mind some only trade to buy the better ships at first, once they've done that trading is less of an interest to carry on doing. Unless you just love trading all the time.

But then bear in mind what this game was actually designed upon. Shooting and pretending to be the person in the game is what makes it all so exciting. If you're interested in trading then cool, money shouldn't be a motive for those who are.

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[Visivicous]

I'd advocate increasing the profit of all trade routes, by as much as 100%, but keep the rest of the economy the same.

Alternatively, drastically increase the cargo capacity of trade vessels. I actually like this idea better, just because I recall seeing trains in vanilla carry 20K (or was it 200K?) of cargo.

So double trading profit, either by increasing the sell prices, or by increasing cargo hold.

I actually like trading, and would continue to trade even if I did not need the credits for my other characters. It just gets irksome with such a low return. I would like to see more for my efforts.

I think that doing this would calm some things down. Players who trade just to support their other characters might not be so miffed at losing one shipment if they knew they could make it back quickly. Pirate activity might increase because it would become decently profitable to do so as a primary income.

(All of the above are my personal opinions, and may not be grounded firmly in logic or common sense. Take it or leave it!)

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[Hone]

It doesnt matter how much you make, thats all relative, its how centralised it is. 86 focussed on spreading out activity, and that proved to be a mistake, as the galaxy is too big to be highly populated everywhere, resulting in everywhere being lowly populated, being less fun, discouraging people to log on, becoming even more lowly populated, vicious cycle.

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[Visivicous]

I wonder if there is a way to add a script to jumping. Basically, the script would check all of the cargo within the ships that are to be jumped. The cost of the jump, fuel wise, would increase exponentially, depending on the type of cargo and amount of cargo. High value cargo would become impossible to jump, eliminating jump trading. Exclude from the script food, water, oxygen, basic alloy, and the different jump fuels. That way people could still jump, even barge jump, to supply PoB's. Leave these commodities at the current profit ratio, but increase the profit/value of all other commodities as in my first post.

Jump trading with transports would become impractical, and jump trading with barges would be impossible. Jump supplying with transports and barges would be possible. Net profit for regular trading would be way up.

(And, once again, all of the above are my personal opinions, and may not be grounded firmly in logic or common sense. Take it or leave it!)

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[SMGSterlin]

Conversations like this always go back to the standard reasoning and activity "circle" argument of "we need traders to keep trading so pirates can keep pirating so police can keep policing", even though that's not a circle, and that's a chain, which can easily be broken if the trading part becomes too annoying, which it's getting there, imo.

Actually, the whole traders>pirates>police thing is flawed. Not sure who came up with the idea that this is how it HAS to be, and if we don't, the mod will explode. But yes, if you make trading easier, and you make money easier to get, even though it will cut down on trader activity, those credits are going to be put into things which cause activity.

Whether it be POBs, which require coordinated effort from numerous players to maintain and build, or new pirate/military/police/PvP characters, which leads to players getting into fights with other players or at the very least, grinding missions with other players. Or, in rarer cases, the money gets put into competitions and things, as prizes, which also leads to player interaction, even if it's on the forums, and in turn, the won money gets turned into one of the things like above, which all generate player interaction.

So yeah, when you make getting credits easier, it really stimulates the activity of the server, it doesn't hurt it, contrary to popular belief...

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[Scumbag]

Kinda like real world economy right? Countries with low wages have a lower standard of living compared to countries with high wages.