I'll go ahead and admit that cargo nerfing is probably a bad idea..
It would totally be nice to see trade factions being granted access to something with more than 5,000 cargo space, in addition to or in place of a special commodity.
Building on this idea, perhaps trade factions could be given access to 7,500 cargo transports, but add a line to their ID that they cannot haul ore if using a ship with a capacity above 5,000. It would be nice to see Barges return, just down-sized and given 20,000 cargo, and limited to one per faction, to be used as a mini-storage. I liked the concept of a mobile storage platform that required no upkeep like a PoB needs.
(12-04-2017, 07:51 PM)Sand_Spider Wrote: I'll go ahead and admit that cargo nerfing is probably a bad idea..
It would totally be nice to see trade factions being granted access to something with more than 5,000 cargo space, in addition to or in place of a special commodity.
Building on this idea, perhaps trade factions could be given access to 7,500 cargo transports, but add a line to their ID that they cannot haul ore if using a ship with a capacity above 5,000. It would be nice to see Barges return, just down-sized and given 20,000 cargo, and limited to one per faction, to be used as a mini-storage. I liked the concept of a mobile storage platform that required no upkeep like a PoB needs.
I agree, 7.500 sounds good. Not so happy about the 5.000 restriction of ores, however. There are trading factions that carry stuff from PoBs.
I honestly wouldn't mind restricting 5ker to trade factions only, and just replace the miner id'd 5ker with 4,3ker + a small Money Bonus (50 Million)
Otherwise, I'm against any ships that can carry more then 5k cargo (except the Barge, should also maybe only be available for pure trading factions only, so this finally forces Player to corporate with pure trading factions again)
Seems I'll voice an unpopular point of view: I'm generally against buffing things for balance just because "buffing" sounds/looks/seems more positive than "nerfing", technically the difference is the same, whether it's a good or a bad thing is just a matter of perspective.
Our economy is already bloated, values are higher than Jesus on weed, while a good few years ago having a few hundred millions was an outstanding achievement, today top caps with top equipment are aroudn 1,3-1,5 billions, and are nearing the account corruption limit. Buffing is hardly the way to go. On the other hand nerfs aren't unknown to the community and mod development, even today - with the current low playerbase - we get changes like PvP balance including a more or less healthy mixture of buffs and nerfs here and there, why should economy balance be any different then?
Economy has been balanced with calculations including a maximum of 5000 cargo space per ship in the past years, at least six, apart from the Barge we've never had any ship with a bigger hold than that during my time here from 2011 september until now. I reckon introducing bigger transports en masse would ruin that balance and do more harm than good overall. Would that worth simply because it's a "buff" and not a "nerf"? (You'd achieve the same difference by nerfing other things, really.) I don't think so.
Yesterday when the idea came up in OFL once again, and this time formed into an actual mature discussion (that's already an achievement in OFL), I began hypothesizing radical solutions, such as restricting mining factions to 3,6k cargo limit, so that trading factions become useful once again without taking away the actual core competence of mining factions (mining), or breaking the economy. Meanwhile others came forward with more moderate ideas, compromises, like an only 4,3k limit on miners, so that they can keep using battletransports.
Later a more dynamic approach came to my mind: Let's grant corporate factions 3,6k cargo and 1x mining bonus by default, then give them two attribute points to allocate. One point worths either +700 cargo or +1,5x mining bonus. Factions can then decide if they wish to fly 5kers with no effective mining capabilities, 3,6kers and elite mining equipment, or a balanced combination of 4,3kers with subpar mining capabilities. For factions with a profession set in stone it was proposed the idea could include one of the points forced, so that we don't have a BMM suddenly uncapable of mining or Interspace Commerce jumping into the Platinum extraction and refinement business all of a sudden.
I don't expect any of the above to happen anytime soon, these are just ideas with an attempt of ample reasoning behind them to support, but brainstorming and civilised discussion is pretty much the purpose of this thread... so flame away.
In a time when a measly 18 km scanner costs 250.000.000 Cr and some armor plating is more expensive than the ship itself, I must strongly object to the idea that the economy is somehow "bloated". Try to earn that with a 5k Storck carrying some random stuff, which in turn was earned by a Serenity (3 times smaller, 3.6k), carrying Bio Neural Arrays and Aluminium, which in turn was earned by a Dromedary. The cargo space and the size of the ships simply don't add up if you don't give the larger transports a bonus. Not to mention that some high value cargo can't be transported to the best buyer across Sirius due to RP restrictions for most transport-only factions.
(12-04-2017, 03:28 PM)SnakThree Wrote: We have been pondering about, how we could specialize and deviate these factions in order to provide more balanced approach to choosing your ID for certain type of activity.
The times where players need to be spread out between factions are long past. There are now more factions than players, and too few players to find to interact with if you spread them out even more.
Players should be encouraged to stick to the same factions and to the same characters in those factions to promote players friendships and meaningful RP. That's done by giving factions more rights and gear, not less.
Any attempt to nerf factions activity for the benefit of another faction's activity will just end up creating more 0-personality drones players switch to make credits the fastest, which ends up in anonymity and little identification with your characters or friends.