This would mean that all bases would need to have an open market including the hidden ones. It also means that secret items will need to be made public.

I don't like this idea to say it mildly. It would also kill the resell markets. Everyone knows that some bases buy from other bases (whcih might be in areas not everyone can come) to be able to resell it for an little higher price.

Combining the Open Market with the Population Market is an absolute NO-GO in my opinion. Open Markets are the Phoenix equivelant of wholesale and Sell to Local Population is the equivelant of selling to end-users.

My idea is to change the code of the Sell to Local Population to also include an price for which you are being willing to sell to the people.

At the end of the day, the people living on the planet will start shopping and just select the items they wish to buy.

You will get something like this.

Trade Item Report------------------------------------------------------------|
| |
| QTY ITEM VALUE MASS |
| 452 Airburst Truffles (30496) - 1 mus 12 452 |
| 36328 Alien Livestock (30226) - 1 mus 0.1 36328 |
| 3428 Alien Pets (30139) - 1 mus 1 3428 |
| 270 Alien Prize Cattle (30006) - 1 mus 0.3 270 |
| 792 Booker Steak (30387) - 1 mus 2.4 792

Trade Item Offered to Population-------------------------------------------------------|
| QTY ITEM VALUE |
| 252 Airburst Truffles (30496) - 1 mus 12 |
| 15000 Alien Livestock (30226) - 1 mus 0.08 |
| 792 Booker Steak (30387) - 1 mus 3

This base is trying to sell off his Alien Livestock at an lower price, as it got loads of it.. and they think it can get away with selling some Booker Steak at above normal prices... Why, maybe its the only base on the planet having them and the pop haven't got any in an long time???

I also think that items not offered often should have got an higher demand then those offered daily, making sure that those fixed deals are getting less worthwhile.
Also what you could consider is giving the population demand more based on total income instead of mu's.. You could add the wages being paid to the income of the planet.. An maybe even move some of the R&R money to the planetary income.

There are lots of creative ways to handle this and also generate some competition between bases on the planet.
Think about the economic wars you could make with it. By offering the same items as your competitors at an lower price making sure that the other base won't be profitable anymore

This is the point I would propose changing, to enhance the non-combat side of the game - nobody is going to pay £2.25(?) to run a starbase which only has half-a-dozen complexes and a potential revenue at <$1,000 pw, (even if supplied with high-market value trade items).

I'm not proposing they have public markets - they would increase supply by providing an end destination for trade items - people would buy to supply their own small trade colonies, and perhaps have dozens of the things, visiting each in turn to keep them supplied.

If the public, planet-claiming starbase wishes to retain all the planetary trade for themselves, they could 'police' the planet, and kick off undesirables - just as they do with unauthorized colonies which may be expoloiting resources without permission.

It does however give the opportunity to fill a niche that is abandoned by some affs - entire large-population planets have no public markets, because the affs concerned cant be bothered. I am reliably informed that many dont bother supplying items to sell to pop either, and just coast on effortless income.

The infrastructure change may force affs to change this - but do they want to?

I was thinking of this as something which could be introduced NOW, instead of waiting for the infrastructure changes - since it is a simple case of removing a restriction, rather than coding a new process.

As for smuggling - illegal outposts and outposts illegally selling drugs are things that the change might open up; nobody is going to pay for a tiny starbase for those, either.

TonyH

Are you saying that a world population with interstellar communication should know that the starbase is selling on a weekly basis 4000 Jux Quarks to the population at 12$/mu but this information could not be found out by other starbase owners?

What we are saying is that you put your 4000 Jux Quarks on the market at 12$/mu. Then anyone can buy them, other players and the world population. Why should you care who buys them as long as you get your 12$/mu?

Are you suggesting that there should be a cut-down starbase at a reduced real price - e.g. no more than 100 factories/merch for say £1.50?

You don't get my point.

First of all it would clutter the Open Market reports with starbases who are forced to sell on the open market just to be able to sell to the local pop.

Moreover people can spot the restricted items as I need to channel it through the Public Markets and people can spot if I have an secret base somewhere.

And ofcourse people would be able to spot if other players got some trade-arrangements. Basically LOTS of things which are now in the dark (or harder to spot) are now available for everyone.

Well, I was just proposing a limited planetary sales facility (Not a full, open, market) at the existing 'free' outposts. Granted this would make paid-for starbases slightly less attractive, but on the other hand all these merchandising outposts will need the occasional paid-for update too - at very least an incentive to go for an 'enhanced' political, for the free updates.

I wasnt going as far as factory production, but...if the proposal outlined was implemented: I'd take two; My current situation is I am trying to build up one of my two larger outposts into a full starbase. If this were in effect, I'd convert one immediately, and one would follow within weeks - And I'd keep one as a 'minibase' even when the other got to full starbase size.... net more revenue from my positions, but accross the game as a whole... I dont know... I'd think so.

Added production across the board might upset things...

TonyH

...if a concealed starbase could sell to the population, wouldn't that imply that it is advertising it's location in some way for those people to actually come and buy goods...and thus lose it's concealment?

In the same way that all the cocaine dealers are shopped to the drugs squad by the street peddlers who buy from them, in RL? Or the way somebody who imports 500,000 tax-free cigarettes or imitation Prada handbags is immediately reported to customs and excise by the shop-owners who care more about honesty than extra profit?

TonyH

How can items that are legitmately for sale at competive prices be considered clutter?

Do you think that it is reasonable that an entire population shop at a starbase on a regular basis but nobody off-world knows about it? Don't you think that this is a rather dubious part of the game that needs looking at?

Why would these not be on the private market or conducted through authorisations?

So what you are doing is to make it even harder to generate stellars unless you only sell stuff at the price you would get by seeling it to the locals - This would remove trade as we know as you would remove the possibility to sell the goods at a lower price in order to attract trade as the locals will just buy it instead......

Brian, DTR

The clutter, i think, would come from having 100s more goods on the market, solely put there for the locals to buy. This would put players off even trying to buy the items, as they would assume the locals will get there first. it makes it harder to spot genuine attempts to sell stuff to other players.

The locals would presumably buy goods based on their local value.

Therefore an item like the Booker steak for example, which has a local value of 0.2 would not be particularly appealing to the people of Booker if the local starbase is selling at 1. However, on a planet where the the value is 2.4 a local *will* buy it because that is what it is valued locally at.

There may well be locals buying the goods at the prices set by the base, but it would probably be very few as I guess in theory they probably have NPC sources of those goods anyhow which are cheaper.

That also implies that you may actually be able to sell goods that have been imported locally for *more* than they are locally valued at....just perhaps not at the same rate as if you sold them at their/or cheaper than their local value

(NB the local value effectively becomes a guide to their value, not the amount you will sell them at)

Please explain

Have you looked at the market print outs for starbases with 100s of tradegoods?

Personally i ignore them, you can't see anything you want from the output, too much clutter.

On the other hand i rarely look at starbases list when i'm looking for goods, thats what the trade item list is usefull for, which makes the clutter less relevent.

With regards to Brian's point about good I'm in agreement with Weenie in that it makes it more realistic as well as giving the planet more 'choice'. Also i'd assume that the population wouldn't buy it all if you had enough goods, and if they will by a wide range of goods then it would stimilate trade.

The current system sufferes from the "this good is better" situtation, especially when you can get enough of a high value good to fill a populations market requirement.

I assume there will be a local price/demand for each good for the population, or at least for ones they have been introduced for (special actions to introduce more goods?), even if that price/demand isn't known to the players?

I think the lack of clarity would be that a starbase may have umpteen different trade goods that are primarily to be sold to the local population mixed in with the local goods that are targeted at traders.

Because of the various local values, and because a starbase selling goods would be looking to get a portion of the multiplier that a buying starbase would enjoy when it sells the good on, it may be difficult for a trader to differentiate from one starbase report what goods represent a good buy price.

Perhaps one way to solve this would be to have a 'Locally produced' section at the bottom/top of the market so that traders can see which goods they would most likely be able to make a profit from?

...of if that would be too much coding (in that the market would have to check each good against the planet of origin) perhaps a second Market Sell order could be used to put items in the seperate section - that may have the benefit of allowing the starbase to put other trade goods not neccessarily from the same planet, but which are primarily aimed at traders.

The second Market Sell would be for all intents and purposes the same order (and locals could still buy from it) - it just appears seperately.

ie;

Riva (1166) may look like this;

Strabase Specials
Quantity Selling Sell Price Item (Num) Quantity Buying Buy Price
500 1.00 Booker Steak (30387) 10000 0.10
50 5.5 Booker Gecko Skin (30398) 1000 3.5

Other Goods
Quantity Selling Sell Price Item (Num) Quantity Buying Buy Price
50 11.00 Andersitic Sculptures (30776) 10000 10.00
10 26.50 Antique (30312) 10000 25.00
17 16.47 Atlantean Silverware (30047) 10000 15.00


My main concern is what effect this would have on Perishable Trade Goods - will it be more difficult to sell them because more go to waste if the local pop decide not to buy them...

Another question is whether by opening up the market sell to the local populace, does that also open up the Market Buy order to them as well? ie could starbases find themselves in the position of selling on trade goods that are not sourced from resource complexes, but from NPC production?

It is broken though.

Currently it's essentially pointless to trade in low value goods, there are enough high value trade goods to saturate a planet.

I agree it's possible to make money, most of my trade ships make money each week and about half my starbases have population generated income, but that still doesn't change the fact trading is broken.

This is the soundest point I have read so far

No it is not broken, and yes, the design is such that doing nothing will change very little. But there are many players in the game that want more depth. Just as I get many requests for new ways of blowing the crap out of enemies, I also get many request from players wanting to improve planetary economies. There is therefore a demand to add depth to this area of the game.

What we want to do (keeping it vague as all will be revealed in detail at the pubmeet) is to satisfy all parties. There will still be the basic system we have now, this being that the population will buy what you want to sell them, starbases will generate stellars through merchandising and everything will go in as before.
There will be some changes as to how this will be achieved, i.e. adding 5k food to the market at .2$/mu instead of selling this amount to the local pop, but they will buy it as this will be defined by the standard template.

The difference however will be that those that want to push this side of the game can do. Their world may have an affluent population so that they are prepared to pay 0.5$/mu for food, so the player may visit somebody else's starbase and buy the food that would normally have been sold to the local pop to place on his market.

From the above comments, all that is really needed is a way of defining what items you want to check market reports for to cut down clutter. How is this any different to the Tesco or Argos websites? You don't log in and see every item available...

I guess that depends on what you consider broken to mean...

Personally a system were the population are equally likly to buy their weekly trade limit of food, as they are of diamonds (depending what the starbases decides to sell them) seems flawed to me ¬_¬

I don't want to spawn a thread of broken or not broken but I think that although this is a good point, it also forces starbase owners to coordinate their sales or suffer losses. It also forces you to sell products to different bases or have to "wait" until the world can absorb products.

I suspect that many players are sitting on huge stockpiles of products that could be sold on the open markets for the right price. The problem is that they don't want to sell the products for less than they could get at their own base and thus slowly dribble the products over time to their own populations.

I believe that most of the "problems" alot of players have is that they don't sell based on supply and demand but rather what they think they should be able to get for a product. Example: I sold 30,000 hive eggs at only $1 each, yes at a "loss" but it brought many players to my base where many other products were sold. I could never move that many life forms so it was all "profit" to me. I used that money to buy and sell products elsewhere for even more profit....

I look at the markets and wonder why people put products on the market for extremely high prices and they get mad if the stuff doesn't sell. If you put Industrial mods on the market for $150, you won't sell them... Try putting them on the market for $75..... I can hear the shocked gasps of horror BUT what good are a pile of IMs you aren't using vs the stellars you could be generating from"dead" inventory?

If you have piles of common goods that you can't move, sell them at 50% off and they will disappear. There is plenty of capacity to buy these products on the planets but people would rather sit on their goods and wait for top dollar. Bad business can't be fixed by rule changes....be creative.

That's all I'll say about that. I am not worried about rules that make it easier to generate profits, I'll be happy to do business in either environment.

Goth

HI,

Allow me please to make an observation followed by a request.

I remember a time when discussions were taking place on game changes a year ago where it took me a number of weeks to understand from the postings exactly what people were talking about. It turned out that some players had the advantage of being present at the previous pubmeet.

May I ask that KJC package the same presentation that will be offered at this years pubmeet and forward to all players on the same date. In that way, players not able to attend are properly briefed with the intent, if not necessarily the results of the debate on that date.

Further, should debate at the pubmeet alter or add to the presentation, an amendment notice be sent to all players.

In this way, all participating players can acquire a common understanding of the plans in a far simpler fashion and over a much shorter interval.

Regards to all

Archangel

If the details could be released the day before (on this forum, or wherever), I think it would be far more beneficial. It allows everyone to see whats happening at the same time (not just those lucky *!** who have the days off to go). It also means those who do go to the pubmeet have had a chance to read and re-read the proposals so can give a more thoughtful repsonse on the day, so yu get better feedback (rather than just their initial knee-jerk reaction).

Thats what I (and others) were saying - the market site would be even more cluttered with this. An improved filter and an item link to its TM would be very useful (which is sort of what Tesco do<g>). When I see a base selling 100s of trade goods, if I dont recognise them, then I wont buy them. if I have to ask the player selling it what its TM is, then I will persue that further and cut a private trade deal (off market). Which defeats one of the purposes of the open market.

I have no problems with the idea per se - though I think there should be an option to set whether locals can buy the goods or not so the governor can control whats bought from his position by local npc's and so that the market site can be filtered to exclude items sellable locally. The opposite should also be possible (allow locals to buy, but not externals - if you are wanting to boost the local economy, you dont want foreigners buying the stuff even if you do get the cash. you might have been selling it at a reduced rate to help the locals also). This is how real world trade works too. Governments set taxes on items they want to control local consumption on (tobacco, alcohol, etc) and make it illegal to sell goods to external traders (encryption software, technology etc in the USA).

Mark

I agree - it may not be broken, but it is damaged. It seems a LOT harder to turn a buck these days: I've done the whole 'make money through trading from starbase to starbase routine' and it's a lot more difficult than it used to be.

It is ****** hard to find a planet with a large population, without a starbase already raking in the nil-effort merchandising complex basic income. Loads of starbases operate 'closed' markets, and thus restrict planet merchandising income to the planet 'owner' - and even if they cant be bothered to cater for the 'sell to population' aspect themselves, they dont want to dilute the basic income - and nobody is going to run a starbase with only 6-12 merch complexes, even if they were given permission to take that aspect of merchandising.

My proposal was something which I would expect could be done relatively quickly, because it doesn't involve anything new, and would add something to the trading side of the game - which hasn't been developed at all in comparison to the combat side. It also would make possible a potential for 'black markets' (if it's still possible to hide outposts these days).

The infrastructure/merchandising changes are a seperate aspect which may need further discussion.

As for the balance between food/diamonds etc... I did put forward a proposal for a segmented market, by value of trade goods... about 18 months ago now... I think changes were put aside because the infrastructure changes would take care of things...

TonyH

Actually the dilution factor probabably isn't a big issue, the "local" income is the lions share of starbase cash and that isn't effected, the "global" income would be reduced it's true but i'm sure you could come to a deal with someone. If that was the only issue i mean...

I hope it will, but the more people talk about it the more I think it won't still we can only wait I guess...

Alternativly it could destroy all trade good trading because for a the relativly small investment of an outpost any starbase owner currently selling on a local market could instead ship to his own outpost on the distance planet and sell there taking all the profit.

Possibly... Currently, that is pretty much what happens with most high-value stuff, I think. People just ship their own unique trade items to starbases they own as far away as possible. That's what I'll be doing, with the only low-volume, high value unique I have access to - pass it to a trade partner for now, maybe ship to an allied, or my own, starbase later on.

It just seems common sense that demand for trade items would go up, therefore trade activity would go up, if there were more 'sinks' for trade items.

I have an o/p on a planet with a pop of just 20K, and a trade demand of 49MU's at $1. Shipping in a few hundred MU's of a high-value unique trade item would be worthwhile if it could be sold by the outpost, over several weeks. It would not be remotely worthwhile turning it into a starbase just for this tiny market though...

If I cant buy the uniques to sell, there's a bigger incentive to go and FIND some, which would generate more exploration/SA income for kjc maybe...

This is what I am trying to suggest from the start.

One market for the locals, which is not normally shown to everyone, only for those who are on the planet... and one public market for the merchants.

We could make it an order which every ship thats landed or docked can issue "Get Local market". Actually you should also be able to buy from the population that way, so that you can increase your low volume resource complexes a bit.

Think about it though - if a base sells goods at a different rate to locals and traders, then you risk losing that local market because it would not be too difficult to see that they are being ripped off!

Assuming Local value will still be involved, presumably what the locals buy from a starbase market will mostly be governed by the price they are put up for sale at - that is, they will not be in a rush to buy goods that are excessively greater than the local value (ie; trade goods produced at the base that are aimed at traders), whilst they would buy imported goods that the market sells at/around the local value (which already takes distance factors into account).

If a trader wants to buy goods that you have set at the price you intended for locals - then you don't lose out. Similarly if a local buys a goods at the 4/5/6 times the local price that most starbases set then again, the base doesn't lose out.

It does mean that if someone has the will to look through all the trade markets then you can see what starbases are selling locally...but, assuming that NPC information passes across the galaxy, why would it be secret anyhow?

The one real concern is that perishable goods may take longer to sell

Maybe perishable goods in starbases should degrade slower (larger, high power using super freezers and what not)?

Why have two lists? It doesn't appear to gain anything I can think of?

There is an difference between selling wholesale and to consumers..

I suggest that you try to get an copy of Microsoft Windows at wholesale prices (or OEM) directly from Microsoft UK.

Thats easy if your buying bulk.

And as some planets people sell to are buying in the order of 5000 units a week i'd count that as bulk.

How much is an food is an mu anyway? Are we selling to population, or local traders? etc etc

I would expect that there would still be some element of local/world trade in play.

If we assume that local sales are a mixture of selling to local traders who will distribute those goods to other colonies around the planet, and colonists in the vicinity buying direct from the starbase then that would imply that it may still be cheaper for a colonist who lives close enough to buy food from the base selling at 0.2, than buying from a trader who brought from the base selling at 0.19 because the trader will have added his/her own markup.

It would obviously depend on the price difference though, the demand for that good, and possibly on what variety of goods a base sells (ie; the bigger variety of goods available, the stronger the customer base would become).

Depends if they consider that extra 0.01 stellars an mu worth the cost of crew for their shuttle

Though that assumes that the travel costs are the same no matter how far a shuttle journey is.

...and it would possibly cheaper for a local trader to move goods 1 or 2 sectors away by ground transport rather than by shuttle (possibly because it doesn't cost as much to employ someone to drive a crawler as it does a shuttle, and/or a crawler can carry more cargo).

Dependent on the value of the good undercutting another starbase by 0.01 shouldn't give you the whole market - a market share advantage yes - but not the whole market as that implies that the local population are only interested in price.

The market sell price should only be one factor (albeit a major one) as to where the local population buy from. Others could include;

Stability of market prices
Variety of goods available
Facilities available at starbase (Recreation and perhaps Hospital complexes)
Direct sales to people in the immediate vicinity of the base
Ease of access for the planetary population
Level of Security? - higher the security level the more off-putting it is?

Or the lower if it means more 'crime'

just to play devils advocate here could a starbase not allocate so much of its shuttleport capability to assist with the delivery of goods to the planet surface? hence free delivery ( just like tesco's )

This of course differs for different races I know we have several Mohache villages within the mountians - or are we getting too in depth now .

Currently I am writing up the presentation. I came across a point - this being that while outposts cannot be used to generate stellars directly from planetary populations, there was a question mark over whether they could generate illegal revenue. This revenue would in fact be removed from legitimate starbases on the world.
Example: You could sell items via the black market, however this would reduce the merchandising stellars of the starbases on the world.

So if the only starbase on the world normally produces 50k$ through merchandising, the illegal sales of goods via the secret outpost was to the sum of 5k$, the starbase would only gain 45k$ - obviously they will then come-a-looking!

This we felt did not violate the free stellar aspect of the game.

Sounds to be that it would be really easy to destory another affilations revenue streams if you could do it with a free outpost.

I'm assuming it's not going to be that easy?

I'm a little confused - Is this actually a facility which is already in, or one which will be introduced?

As for destroying revenue streams: I was only ever proposing the facility to 'sell to local population' rather then the core 'merchandising income'.

So, for a particular starbase that I used to control, the basic $21,114 profit from the 99 merchandising complexes, generating income from local and global factors, would be totally uneffected by an outpost, which couldn't grab that income.

The planetary trade good demand for 645 MU's of trade items, at a basic price of $1.02/MU, could be grabbed by an outpost - a maximum loss of 16K, even if the starbase made a living by selling ambrosia, and decided to sell nothing.

More likely they are selling goods worth a few thousand stellars, and would loose half of it due to the drop in value due to exceeding the demand. $2K/week - in competition with an outpost with seven merchandising complexes (should be easy to spot at that size).

What I was envisaging would be trade outposts of maybe 2-3 merchandising complexes... potentially meeting any drugs demend, instead of just the trade item demand.

TonyH

I'm looking forward to these changes and in seeing what depth they bring to this part of the game, but I have to agree here, it does seem that this may provide an easy option for attacking revenue income.

Perhaps the percentage should be across all the outsposts on a planet as a whole (so 5% of income will be divided between the number of outposts, so the more outposts someone puts downm the less each of them would bring in) - after all, just because you can get hold of things illegally, it doesn't mean that all the population are going to do it that way. I would summise that there is only a certain percentage on any given planet that would have access too and/or be willing to trade in black market goods.

No, the idea was simply to have normal merchandizing complexes partially operate, rather than not at all. After all, mines DO operate in outposts, factories DONT - all controlled by the starbase/outpost status; i.e. If outpost: CAN sell 100 MU's to local population, CANT generate 'merchandizing' income, CANT operate market.

And, I must admit I dont know what shape the merchandizing is planned to be after the infrastructure changes are implemented... I dont generally plan more than six months ahead . I was envisaging this as something which could be introduced in the meantime, being largely a case of not blocking something which would happen anyway, if not blocked, which is always a FAR simpler solution, in every IT project I've worked on... and those are the ones that generally work first time, too .

There are arguments for and against. Why should merchandising income be 'protected' anyway? I'm still for, but it's a commercial game, not a democracy.

TonyH

Already suggested this.

Forgive me for being skeptical, but won't this just return us to/excerbate the same situation of the wallet wins that we had in BSE?

He does have a point there :-)

Sorry.

The thread is so long I just read the more interesting looking ones

Missed yours

I like the idea of two different costs.

I've encountered SA's which promise the creation of special complexes or bonusses for research conducted ... provided a base was built there. Problem is that the locations have all been too poor to make me spend an additional 2.25£ for a base that will be useless for anything else but what the SA's promise. At lower real life costs I may consider it. Not certain i'd go for it but if the rewards were great enough I'd certainly think it over

Gord

Isn't there an element of that anyhow because an affiliation with more big spending players can run more starbases and thus take advantage of more merchandising complexes?

Depends on what your SAs say, but both Resource complexes and research complexes work at an outpost - so no need to pay anything (beyond an occasional 70p to check up on research)?

It can be argued that everything in the game already has a real world cost. Only bases can generate stellars, so there is a real world correlation to the pound; it might be 20,000 stellars to the Pound (and will vary from base to base), but KJC would know the "average" (number of paid bases, times cost divided by stellars produced).

Hence the comment on exacerbating the situation

On second thoughts though, 1p per 10 complexes would probably work out less per week across all my starbases/outposts than I'm currently paying for 5 starbases. It would certainly work out differently for players running one or two starbases and lots of outposts, though.

Another thing to consider is that this creates the situation of real life cash limiting the growth of starbases, with people having to pay for mining outposts which are providing their main base's factories with minerals, etc etc.

I'm sure everyone can figure out a scheme that would lower their own cost at the expense of the way others have structured their positions over time... The point is that you knew what the cost of running 5 starbases was when you set them up, if it gets to be too much you can turn one of them into an outpost for a while. The flexibility of the current system is reasonable and predictable.

Paying per complex is so artificial that I hope KJC wouldn't really consider it. Most of the changes in the game are based around making the game more "realistic". I can't imagine a starbase governor deciding on whether to build another factory based on it costing him another RL $.

Right now, there are ways to keep RL costs reasonable and predictable. A pay per complex scheme would punish successful growing players by charging them more for being active and growing their positions. It would actually reward stagnant play (even more so it would reward scrapping of marginal outposts/base complexes).

Goth

Or, linking this thread back to the topic I started it with, from which it has had a nice wander...

Possibly the 'intermediate' level starbase could 'sell to local population', but not have automatic stellar income from just existing?

I'm quite keen on the limited starbase idea... to avoid the drive to scrap complexes to reduce real-life costs, how about just charging a scale depending on the number of active complexes?

e.g. 1-50 active complexes - free
51-100 active complexes - 70p
101-150 active complexes - £1.40
150-250 active complexes - £2.10

... I'm not sure where to go from here, but constructive criticism is welcome, particularly from the parties who actually control these matters.

And... to encourage the step up to an 'enhanced' political position... how about the first 70p charge for any starbase/outpost position counts as an 'outpost update charge' under the current terms... i.e. a £4(?) political could run unlimited starbases each up to 100-complexes, for free.

TonyH

I'm dead against this point, for the simple reason that it would remove what little life remains in the trading system, although I reserve the right to change my view after Mica releases the new infrastucture changes.

As to having a non-stellar-producing-starbase-outpost-hybrid that could have factories I can defeninatly see the use of that, and know of two locations i'd covert outposts too right now (but which aren't worth spending the full £2.25 on... obvoiusly it would depend how much this cost a week)

I'm not so sure about the cost per number of complex thing, because you'd just get sitiuations like with ships (where everyone builds to multiples of 10 hulls or 25 hulls based on tech / isr etc etc) which doesn't feel very natural to me.

Of course i'd be happy to pay/use-free-updates for weekly updates on certain platforms and outposts, rather than having to issue a "request update" each week.

you would still need to stop merch income from those (not necessarily the sale to local, haven't thought that through but it seems "better" in some way ) - otherwise within a year I could have about 250 RL-free 100 complex starbases on a single planet each earning over $25k a week net...

The limit to the game is the income potential - if you take that away by allowing merch income for free (even in a limited sense) you expand what any single player can do. You then need to look at an efficiently run aff, and expect them all to do that, and calculate the result on the game.

I know that I'm glad that I don't have to make game balance calls

Yes. Yes it will. Nicely noted Richard.

*withdraws support for that idea*

I wish i had a single starbase that earned me 25k net a week.....

Scaling the income potential according to rl cost could be an answer to that, for instance:

'Free' outpost - zero merch income - up to 50 active complexes
75p outpost - 25% merch income - up to 100 active complexes
£1.50 outpost - 50% merch income - up to 150 active complexes
£2.25 starbase - full merch income - unlimited active complexes

I'm still wanting 'sell to local population' to be limited purely by the number of active merchandising complexes - why should this 'resource' be protected, when mineral deposits, and resource exploitation proper, isn't?

TonyH

Because it's a resource that generates stellars, and you need to balance stellar generation with stellar destruction (in the form of wages mostly), otherwise you get problems (or rather kjc do)

In game reasons i guess the c&c overhead for the merchandising system requires x, y and z which are only avalible on a fully fleadged starbase.

Besides which if was fairly cheap (or free) to setup an outpost wherever you wanted to sell your trade goods you'd kill the trading systems as there would be no value to not doing so.

The 'Sell to local population' element of merchandizing is peanuts, compared with the 'Local + Global merchandising income' element.

An outpost I control, which would be a serious contender to be upgraded to a 'lesser' starbase, has a local max of $74, with a drop of $35 per ten complexes, and a global max of $24 with a drop of $3 per ten complexes.

Therefore, thirty active merchandising complexes, on full effectiveness, would generate $1,800 stellars pw, at a cost of $300 pw. A profit of $1,500 pw, for doing precisely nothing.

I did not propose that this be allowed at starbases, and would place limits on it's effectiveness if allowed at all on a less than 'full' starbase.

The trade-goods demand however, is 49MU's at a value of $1. If I managed to ship in an trade item with a value at that starbase of $12, which would be acheivable by carting it across two periphery boundries, I'd raise... $588 pw. Wage costs would be only $15, but I'd either have to source the stuff myself, which would require a supplier outpost... probably at least four or five complexes... a ship to support (crew, maintenance, piracy risk) - say another $200 pw. Net profit in the region of $300 pw - for quite a lot of effort (= trade activity).

Hardly a game-upsetter, compared with allowing ten mines and a thirty-factory mass-production line, knocking out 15 patches - enough of those totally undermines the changes imposed to limit the megafleet wars.

TonyH

I agree it's not peanuts - I make between $17k - $25k per week selling to the population and that's sharing a planet with three other bases, so I can only sell a quarter of the total demand on the planet.

It takes a lot of work hauling the goods across stargates and peripheries, making deals etc but I make sure I have enough to get this on a weekly basis.

cheers
weenie

...and if you're prepared to put in the effort to set up, and supply that number of outposts, you/we should be allowed to - after all you wont be getting any production from them. Destroying the trading system... how?

Lucky you... But, if you can fulfill the demand with similarly high-value items without buying in from all over every known periphery, and shipping in to [yet another] restricted-access system, I think you deserve every stellar. Alternatively, you could let a trusted trading partner fill some of the demand by setting up an outpost... :-)

Lets see... 2200 @ $49... gets you $107,800 pw. Maybe $100K profit!... about the equivalent of 20% of a 100-heavy-hull warship. And Starbases knocking out a complete warship a week arn't unheard of, and certainly wouldn't cost five times as much to run.

Planets that juicy are few and far between - I cant find many that hasn't been starbased and milked three times over, and dont fancy setting up under the thumb of some warlord. Being able to earn something half, or quarter, as decent without having to pay full starbase rates would be a nice alternative.

TonyH

Because it's practically zero effort and so there is no reason for anyone to trade goods because they would get all the profit from having a couple of ships do trade runs every month or two.

Affiliations with large areas of space already do this to a great extent between their own starbases, the outpost idea would just make the problem worse.

So even though it would be massivly benifitical to me personally I don't see how it could do anything but destory whats remains of the goods trade.

$1.5/mu isn't a high value item, i've seen local values of $0.1 up to $25, with most around the $1 - $2 range

Which, as you say, is exactly what is done now... so how can allowing outposts become new 'sinks' for trade goods 'kill' trade in any sense whatsovever? Especially since I wouldn't allow the REALLY zero-effort 'local/global merchandising' income which is the real reason that so many affs are content to sit on their butts raking it in, and totally neglect trade.

Exactly - that's why I wouldn't set up a starbase in IMPerial space - too many restrictions, and privilideges reserved for the local warlord and his buds, by virtue of an unassailable warfleet. (Ok, so the DTR dont consider ANYTHING as unassailable, but if the game is to be the total preserve of the existing mega-fleet operations, can us small fry be told?). I consider the system 'broke' btw.

Given that the GM has announced that "Not all factions can have their own private systems", can we at least be allowed a tiny niche within the public ones? Yank, Skord.. all the juicy garden worlds already occupied by extensions of affs with their own reserved territory. And dont even mention 'IND' systems...

If allowing a megre income from a sub-minimal planet with a 20K pop would be so game destroying to the megablocks... maybe the game needs destroying and rebuilding?

TonyH

As I mentioned last time someone quoted that it depends what you mean by broken, surly anything that is not perfect is broken in some respects and as nothing is perfect then everything always needs to be fixed. stupid bloody quote anyway

a) it would kill whats left because there would be no point in selling to someelse so no trade.
2) the zero-effort is not the case because it costs real money so starbases tend to have a lot more in them than outposts and take a whole lot more effort to run.
c) if we are talking about non-free outposts being able to sell then it's a slightly different issue and would be depend on a delicate balance between cost and usefullness, in which case the sell to local pop is no worse than factories, in fact probably a whole load better, trying to get the balance would be hard though, you would have to charge enough to make it an issue, and not enough to make it not worth the trouble.

Edit: can't have b ) it seems, changes to a

This would not be out of line with proposal of mine, posted earlier in the thread:

So a 25% starbase would get you 25% of the global/local income... and 25% of the potential 'sell to local population' (or possibly each complex would only be 25% as effective).

If you can get it in before my next political update, that would be appreciated..

TonyH

I like this idea so thought i'd copy it here to add to the disccussion as an alternative to his orginal trade idea (which i didn't like).

I would like to keep this part of the discussion going.

I, for example, have a small starbase for the pure reason of recruiting and training troops of a certain race. I can see two futures for this starbase:

1 - With the system as it is today (either free outpost or £2.25 full starbase) I will maximise this starbase. Build as many factories/mines/research as my money generating starbases allow me to do. Just for the fact that it gives me more value for my money. £2.25 just to build a few things and recruit a couple of troopers isn't worth it compared to my 1000+ complex starbase which build huge amounts of stuff each week.

2 - With, for example, a minor starbase option I would be fully satisfied with keeping the starbase below 100 or 150 (whatever) complexes that could be the limit for these smaller starbases. In essence I would allow it to stay small without the drive to make the most of it due to the higher cost of running full starbases.

The saved real life money could then be invested in one more minor starbase or something else (a gift for my wife ).

As I mentioned earlier this would perhaps see some smaller starbases popping up in areas less populated (like asteroids, moons and non merch planets) making the player base spread our more in the galaxy instead of focusing as much as they do on garden worlds (why build a starbase that don't generate $40k/wk???).

All in all I do not believe KJC would loose money on this.

Hmm... for us foreigners please translate 'naff' into English. I cannot find it in the Oxford dictionary.

It wouldn't be an aff-related ability; The only thing stopping the IMP PD from setting up a merchant enclave within AFT Arial, apart from the fact that, as judged from the post to which mine was a reply, he wouldn't want to.

But maybe the IMP trade comissioner would, and would be able to.

I like the 'minibase' idea. I'm currently running one which I'd downgrade to a £1.50 position If I could... but would raise another up there from outpost level, for a net KJC gain of £0.75 (?) pw. Long term I'd retain the other at reduced level, and have the second as a primary - a net gan of £1.50(?).

TonyH

'munchkin factor'?

If there were to be different types of outposts, presumably representing different levels of civilian access, you could reduce security by the same amount as merchandising allowed, eg. 25%/50% of the outpost bonus.

You might even restrict the types of equipment to be placed there:
e.g. at 50% merchandising, the base is considered 'open to the public' and you cannot station military weapons and/or personnel there without scaring people off and reducing your merchandising ability.

Are there any objections to the mini-base idea?