Credit Flood, Taxation and Fee's Discussion.

[jammi]

So far as money sinks go, this would be one of the laziest cop-outs imaginable. Money sinks should be things players feel drawn to spending money on, not things that skim money off their account 'just because' without rendering any other service or effect. Talking about Freelancer's "economy" is a bit of a farce in any case, because of how static it all is.

At the moment gameplay ideas on this server should be centered around making the mod attractive and fun to play - hello, it's a 12 year old game which now barely attracts 80 players at peak times. Mechanisms like this will simply drive people away. I really can't see a single redeeming feature to it.

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[SpaceTime]

Really bad idea. The ones posted before me already explained why. The best way to drain credits from a cluttered economy is to create new, extremely costly toys that people want to manufacture.

[Alestone]

No.

Because 3 characters are apparently not enough:

You will take away the fun out of the game if you turn it into a chore/grind.

Agreed... This is, in effect, applying the POB maintenance model to Everything.

It will also be putting an additional burden on new players who are trying to fight their way into the economy, whereas the people that it is aimed at will be least affected.

[AeternusDoleo]

From every other game I've visited with a half decent working economy...
Consumables!

Make operating bigger ships, that is gunboat and upwards, expensive. Turn their main guns, mortars etc into ammobased ones, with ammo payloads that don't drop (but leave the secondaries/point defense turrets as is for vs-npc use). That makes capital ships expensive to operate.
Add some elite fighter toys - mines at a premium with juuust that bit of an edge over the standard nukes. Bomber torpedos at a premium which fly a bit faster and blow with a bigger bang. It won't alter the balance of the game much, but it gives people a chance to dump excess credits.

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Wide awake in a world that sleeps, enduring thoughts, enduring scenes. The knowledge of what is yet to come.
From a time when all seems lost, from a dead man to a world, without restraint, unafraid and free.

Mostly retired Discovery member. May still visit from time to time.

[Croft]

Consumables work to a limited degree but they are random and can cause issues if there's power involved (the old Hunter ammo in WoW is a good example, or the tech 2/faction ammo of EVE.) Directly purchasing more damage basically raises the bar for everyone, making those with money more powerful whilst those without are left disadvantaged and ultimately leave.

Money-sinks, again unpredictable and more often than not ineffective. It requires the item being sold to be worth the cost e.g. more power, which leads to the previous issue. Or a more familiar scenario, the suggestion that caps should be locked to official factions, same deal just replace factions and caps with money sink and large amount of credits.

Fees on the otherhand are consistent and predictable (depending on the type) but they are hardly money sucking vampires and can potentially put players off if they feel they must grind to play.

I'm no economic expert, but like you folks I've played my fair share of games and seen the systems at work with the best ones hardly being noticed, we all buy ammo and bots/bats without thinking after all, along with fuel for cloaks and jumpdrives. The trouble is the systems we have hardly make a dent in the majority of pockets when compared to the potential income which leads to a surplus of credits and stagnation.

Personally I'd prefer a cost for Jumpgates and docking with upkeep depending upon ship size/power, nothing huge, maybe 200 credits per ring dock, 1k for mooring and Jumpgates. Ship wise 20k a week base for fighters light to meds and upwards of maybe 300k for large transports and caps? It'd need to be ironed out but you get the idea.

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Jimmy The Rat | Croft's Feedback | The Rat Pack

[Jack_Henderson]

From every other game I've visited with a half decent working economy...
Consumables!

Make operating bigger ships, that is gunboat and upwards, expensive. Turn their main guns, mortars etc into ammobased ones, with ammo payloads that don't drop (but leave the secondaries/point defense turrets as is for vs-npc use). That makes capital ships expensive to operate.
Add some elite fighter toys - mines at a premium with juuust that bit of an edge over the standard nukes. Bomber torpedos at a premium which fly a bit faster and blow with a bigger bang. It won't alter the balance of the game much, but it gives people a chance to dump excess credits.

This.
The money needs to be spent.

Some major cashsink have been removed.
BS-scanners... useless now.
Costly bases... cheap now (ok, they were really too expensive before).
BS and Caps in general are expensive, but also rather unattractive as they die so fast in pvp => no cash sink

But an economy only works if you remove cash again bc no one feels like logging the cash-cows (that drive the activity cycle) when you are too well-off on billions of credits.

Some ways to blow cash would be really good.

Jack