I know I have mentioned (others too) this in various places, but it has all been unorganized and sporatic at best. I'd like to address this all in one thread. The "Problem", as I see it, is that Stations have no limits. In order for the game to improve, limits need to be enforced.

(Issue #1) Players are able to buy as many ships as they can afford at a station.

This issue is partially resolved by Crafting. As Incarnate has said, stations will require specific materials/minerals to build ships and weapons. This should restrict how many ships the station is able to build. When a station runs out of material, ships that depend on that material can no longer be built, or bought.

Crafting should also resolve the same problem with weapons, and minerals, as it would (above) with ships. Stations should only have a given amount of some thing.

(Issue #2) Players can store as much as they want at a station.

100 Ships? No problem. The station can handle it, somehow. 2,000 cu of heliocene? The station has it under control. Some might not agree that this is a problem, but I see it as a problem.

1) Stations need a maximum carrying capacity. This would require that ships and weapons be assigned a cu rating which indicates how much space/room the ship consumes. A station would then have a maximum capacity that it cannot exceed, and, when it nears this number, it refuses storage. The number should be proportional to the station's traffic proximity. Higher traffic, more room. Lower traffic, less room. It could, for instance, keep track of how many visitors it had the past week, and make adjustments for the following week. If the station determined that less players used the station, it would allocate less space for players to store items. Maybe the station owner wants a bigger quarters, or a research facility room for hazardous material.

2) Storage at a station should not be free! Hoarding heliocene at a station should not cost 'nothing'. This same concept should apply to all items that a player wants to store.
Stations could choose to grant predetermined amount of 'free space' to distribute to loyal faction members, but that would be a low amount. Anything beyond that amount should have a cost. The cost could either be up-front, one time price. Or a subscription-based service. Not paying? Your items are pushed out the airlock.

(Issue #3) Stations have unlimited funds You could say that stations are 'government run' but this is not necessarily true. Look at gray space, UIT stations. Even stations in Serco and Itani territories don't have to be run by the government, except for Military barracks and Capitol Stations.

1) Stations should have a limit in funds. They should not be able to buy everything you would want to sell to them. Stations would earn money based on things they sell. Then, they could only sell things based on the materials they have.

2) Stations don't need to buy everything There could be a mechanism for a station to refuse to buy an item. Either the station feels that it has more than enough of the item, or, doesn't have enough room to store it, or, the station has no use for the item.

On a side note: Players have the ability to sell ships and weapons back to stations. A station should only make the sale if the station carries that ship or weapon. Otherwise, the transaction should be refused. If the transaction is not refused, then the station can sell it as "Refurbished" or "Used".

I suppose this opens up a whole new area of possibility with regards to Ship and Weapon "decay". But that's not what I want to talk about, if someone thinks that is a good idea, I'll make another thread for it.

kihjin

Excellent ideas, kihjin. I think that some of them are more long-term than others, but they are all excellent ideas.

Instead of linking to this really LONG page that is more about crafting, I'll repost my ideas (summary) here:

Station Facilities:

Three types of facility: storage lockers, prototyping labs, and assembly lines.

Crafting requires facilities in a station. Facilities require space. In the facility a player or a guild will need to purchase equipment that allows crafting to take place. Different sets of equipment are required to make different items. Some pieces of equipment are small, some may take up as much space as a behemoth. Higher-level items require equipment that is more expensive and is also larger.

In addition, a player or a guild will require storage and/or locker space to keep the materials on-hand that are used in the facility, and to hold the items that the facility creates.

All deveopment is done in a prototyping lab, where you can make ONE of something.

All production of prototypes is done on an assembly line, where you can make MANY of something.

Players and-or guilds pay rent for the spaces they have, Assembly lines cost 1000cr * cu of space per week. Prototyping labs cost comething like 100cr * cu of space per week. Storage Lockers cost 10cr * cu of space per week. Or whatever - the costs can be approximated later on.

A player and-or a guild can designate facilities as personal or guild-usable. (Or make them public?)

This would eliminate the need for guild stations, since guilds could have a presence at ANY station they choose to, limited only by their funds. Same goes for personal stations.

If the guild or person runs out of money, items in the facilities are sold first, starting with assembly-line facility equipment, prototyping facility equipment, and then items in the storage locker. After that, the assembly-line facility itself is closed, then the prototyping facility, then the storage locker.

This would require a small re-vamping of the guild system, where a bank account was created for each guild automatically that players could contribute to, and Cmdr/Council/LTs could draw from. Something like Solra's "Services", but one that actually works and doesn't crash all the time. >:P
(All the more reason to "clean up the guilds" and "clean up the active player lists")

I think if we give stations "total" storage limits, we'll be in a LOT of trouble when we have more than 500 active players. I think Stations are best left as "infinite boxes" for now, until we can get a handle on how much space the average player will tend to take up. Once the devs know that, then they can implement "limited storage in stations" if they want.

As far as fund limits, I agree about that as well. However, we'll have to give stations unlimited funds until it becomes clear how much "funds" the average station would need to operate. It's gotta play out. Once those numbers stabilize, then the devs can implement stations that have "limited funds" and then force the station A.I. to make financial decisions as well as material-storage decisions.

"Not paying? Your items are pushed out the airlock."
Any intelligent station would never throw items out the airlock, they would of course feel free to use your items for materials in manufacturing.

i'd like to see the universes resorces become more finite.

for example stations should have to build or inport anthing they sell so Station x may have 100 warthog mk2s onhand, but only 25 warthog mk3s. if player A buys 10 mk3s then the station will start building more, provided adaquit resoeces, or may issue trade missions where players have to procure a warthog mk3 and sell it to the station. Then if no one buys mk3s for a few days the station will stop producing them untill it sells off more of the ones it curently has. Also if the station has 100 mk2s and no one is buying them then maybee it will either stop buying them from players, or scrap some of them for their component parts.

Also i'd like to see station invantories be more dynamic, so that if i sold a positron blaster to a station that doesn't carry them, then the station either adds the weapons to it's sale list, or recycles it and adds the components to it's invintory.

also if storage space is going to cost money i'd like there to be enough of a heads up that i can be prepared to sift through my various station invintories to make sure i don't acidentilay forget to pay rent to the stations that store my strategicly placed trading moths

if stations had limited supplies, a serco with a high itani standing or vice versa could waltz through enemy territory buying everything if they had enough money.

Re: silentbob13
I don't think that's a problem, for the following reasons.
1) It does not unbalance anything. Any player(s) of any nation(s) are equally capable of this. Therefore it does not give any advantage to any nation of the other nations.
2) It would be extremely expensive. While I agree that station resources should be finite, I also think that they should be very large. It should be possible in theory for a Serco to come through Itani space and buy out all of the Valks and/or all of the resources required to manufacture Valks, but in practice the expense for actually doing this would be prohibitive. And if someone did become wealthy enough to effectively do this, or a group of players pooled their finances to do it, then after doing so they are going to be very much poorer.

I see "financial warfare" as being a new, interesting aspect of warfare, not as something that would harm gameplay.

even if one player could afford to buy all the materials of ships, he would still have to transport it one mini-frig at a time (i'm ignoring the posability of one moth at a time because, well come on! 120cu is NOT enough to cripple the itani's supply of say: plasteel.

Beolach said: I see "financial warfare" as being a new, interesting aspect of warfare, not as something that would harm gameplay.

I think that will be an OUTSTANDING benefit of any new economic model/station limits/resource limits.
So perhaps one player can corner the market on Valks? Does that person offer them for sale at a slightly higher price somewhere in Odia? Do other players just go shoot him? Perhaps a band of Itani would start making Valks at another station to replenish the supply and sell them for a lower price, making that other player's investment in Valks worthless?

The economic system NEEDS to be flexible enough so that this kind of economic warfare is possible. Hence guilds like TGFT, IGPK, EnB and others will finally be able to flex their economic muscle. (This scares me a little, but in a good way.)

I think that there's some great ideas here, but overall I don't like the finite resources thing (and especially not the paying for storage). But I would definitely like to see more price fluctuation among weapons and ships. This would have an effect like the finite resources, but would not bring PvP to a halt if all of a sudden, if the Orions ran out of Rev C's. With price fluctuation, it'd be possible, just not as easy.

Also, either way, it would encourage players to use more of a variety of ships, coming up with originals with the lesser-used items sold.

But best of all, this brings in the "financial warfare"!!! And also, this allows fighters to pay traders to...for example, buy a bunch of axia posi's and sell them to a station, where the fighter will quickly buy them to put in their inventory.

On this note, this does bring about a problem...Sercs would be able to buy valks when they don't have sufficient standing. I beleive that it should be made that you need good standing from the originating faction of the ship/item to use it, except for Corvus, who would just offer it at an extremely large price.

I think that if someone with high standing sells something special to someone with low standing, there should be a chance (depending on where the sale takes place) that the sale is found out. If that happens, the seller gets a big standing decrease.
Offcourse for this to work the standing system will first have to be fixed to include some form of 'history', but that's another thread.

The "problem" of a Serco buying all Valks would be fixed by having to rent storage space (above a certain free amount). Storing all those Valks is going to cost him quite a bit of money...
But on the other hand, once the faction system if fixed, a Serco with that much Itani standing probably really is Itani friendly and wouldn't pull a stunt like that.

fooz said: but overall I don't like the finite resources thing (and especially not the paying for storage).
Well, any economic model will not work without constant dev intervention unless there are limits. Limits are necessary to create scarcity, which influences supply and demand, which basically runs the economy.

I disagree with you STRONGLY on the paying for storage. I think that, since the devs are considering re-doing the entire interface and economic system, hoarding materials must have a cost, and that cost should be commensurate with the amount of materials you have in-station. Once crafting gets implemented, prototype and/or production facilities that guilds and players have in-station should be MORE expensive per cu than just using space as a storage locker.

Eventually I also think that stations should have limited space, so that players must compete for storage, with the most valued stations (Sedina D-14) getting the most per cu of space that they offer. However, the initial economic model should have unlimited-space stations so that the devs can figure out how much space to allow for each station based on player activity and where they end up storing things. In fact, I'd like the physical proportions of the stations from the outside to be logically consistent with the inside space. Corvus V Hold in Sedina D-14 would be a HUGE station, Pelatus would be a tiny speck in comparison.

fooz goes on to raise an important point: this does bring about a problem...Sercs would be able to buy valks when they don't have sufficient standing.
Let's just enforce the license levels and give faction hits/bonuses for financial transactions as well.
So, a higher-level player may be able to sell a n00b a Valk, but the n00b will simply be unable to "select" that ship to use until his licenses meet the minumum requirements. The error message could go something like this: "The Station Chief refuses to let you fly that ship until you are a more experienced pilot. Come back when you are 8/10/10/-/-" Simple. Solved.

Now, as far as selling nation-specific ships to hated players...
If you sell something (could be something MORE than ships eventually, perhaps other items or cargoes) that is nation-specific, the V-O game transaction engine checks the standing of the buyer and seller. If a high-level itani sells a shipment of 10 IDF Valks to a Serco Pilot with -1000 Itani standing, that seller receives a faction standing hit. The actual AMOUNT of the standing hit will have to be discussed, but it should be painful enough that selling more than 3 or 4 nation-specific ships would be suicide. Of course, if the Itani does that too much, he'll won't be able to buy Valks anymore and the problem will solve itself. Simple. Solved - except for the AMOUNT of faction hit that will be implemented.
Unlike Noid, I don't think that there should be a CHANCE that this faction hit would happen, it should be a CERTAINTY.
Selling to a Serco pilot with +0 Serco and +0 Itani would incur NO faction hit whatsoever.

Of course, then we'd need to fix the broken standing system, where you can have +1000 Itani and +1000 Serco at the same time. These standings should be OPPOSITES. This has been discussed elsewhere, but there should be diametrically opposed factions (Like, say, Tunguska and Orion, Itani and Serco, etc. etc.) Where a gain in one direction is an automatic loss for the other faction. As these boards ably demonstrate, it's impossible to please ALL the people ALL of the time...

Of course, then, enter the Pirate or the UIT Arms Merchant. As is their role, the UIT will act as middlemen betweeen the two warring nations. The Itani could sell it to the UIT Arms Merchant, and the UIT would sell it to the Serco. No faction standing hit is taken by any party, and the UIT makes a tidy mark on his re-sold wares. The Serco will have to pay dearly for the Valks, and they may as well just stick with their SVG's...

Back on-topic...

Yes. Stations should have limits. But until the economy and crafting are implemented and well-established, I think that the stations should remain "infinite boxes" until a set pattern emerges as to how much space the station needs.
Then, have the devs set the station sizes and watch the players race to "claim" unused space. Which brings up another point... (next post)

If stations all have limited space, what happens if some dork goes and buys up ALL the space, so that no-one can store anything in ANY station, anywhere? This person becomes the "Storage King" and all storage must go thru him at inflated rates? Or this person gets an ungodly amount of money doing BP, buys all the storage in the universe with enough credits in the bank to be able to hold onto them for a month, and then logs off for a month, locking everyone out?

If stations all have limited space, should there be a "free" storage space that is at each station for every guild and player? Say, One Behemoth Load - 120cu? That way this kind of abuse could at least be circumvented. I think that this "free" storage space would have to be "outside" of the normal economic model, then.

But I like this solution better (however it will be harder for the devs to implement):
Stations have A.I. just like the hive. If they get full, or close to it, they pay for and build a new section, and prices for storage in that station adjust accordingly, amortizing the cost of the new section over a month or three months or so.
Players must buy the storage/prototyping labs/production assembly line space for 2 weeks at a time, so that the station has some time to amortize the cost of the construction. Kinda like paying rent, you don't pay per day, you pay per month, and it protects both the renter and the landlord.
If a bunch of players leave and the space is unused, prices for the storage in-station go down, along with the normal supply/demand laws of economic scarcity.
It would be really neat if the outside station dimensions would change, be dynamic, and grow with time as stations grew and shrunk along with economic conditions. But that might be too much to ask right now.

If the devs do develop a station "A.I." that does this, then I think that really paves the way for player- and guild-owned stations. Those stations should be more profitable since the players can take chances and speculate on prices, hold the line on storage to keep their price higher, etc. That would be interesting.

I have 18000 Helio ore in one station.

Institute storage pods per player per station of a finite space, like banks in EQ, you get x number of slots of cu's to fill up, at that point your cut off till you manufacture/refine it down into smaller cu's or sell it off. That would be free to all, if you wanted to expand your storage amount past standard you have to pay x amount per cu of extra storage, one time fee for expansion, not a cr rate till empty.

Oh, John, we were agreeing on everything today until THIS...

NO. No one-time cost and that's it. That won't work with any economic model.

I think that in order for the economy to function properly, stations must charge rent. The price will fluctuate with scarcity.

Assuming that the devs set limitys on station space:

If the station is almost "full", then the rent goes up because the station A.I. senses the increased demand.

The Station A.I. uses the increased profits from those rented spaces to "build" more space for people to rent. This costs money, I don't know who the station PAYS to build this stuff, but for right now let's just assume that the money goes into a black hole.

With the extra space available, the station can accomodate more player storage areas, scarcity is lessened, and the rent price drops.

If players leave (i.e. "move out" of their storage areas), then the rent price drops until a threshhold level is met. Once that threshold level is met, then the station dismantles "X" amount of storage areas, permanently reducing its capacity until it decides to build more.

If players don't pay their rent, items from their storage areas are sold to pay rent. If their storage areas are empty, then they are "evicted" and their storage areas can be rented to someone else, or if there are a LOT of empty storage areas, then the Station A. I. may choose to dismantle some of the areas to save money.

OK Now I'm thinking... Well, who WOULD the Station A.I."pay" to build more storage area?

Should there be NPC agencies that do this? Or perhaps players could have a building/construction skill? Perhaps there is a new class of ship - a "Construction Barge" that allows you to build station components?

Matter of fact, nevermind stations, HOW are our Ships "Built?" OK, this is a new thread starting NOW.
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/11431

FYI, maximum station storage capacities has already been implemented. It isn't in effect yet, but will go into effect right around the time of the economy-redux, to combat the problem of people buying ships/equipment ahead of time (anything over the max limit will be discarded).

I think the other ideas are cool, and will mull them over.

Inc,
Will we lose lets say 900 neuts if we got a 1000 at a station? Cause if so I'd like to liquidate my assets.

Oh well. I guess that answered THAT thread.
Mind telling us what those limits ARE, incarnate?

LeberMac, great thoughts.

Thanks Incarnate. Can't wait for the changes :) Seriously.