Look, I'm in the middle of juggling a bunch of economic stuff, I'm not going to come in with a chainsaw and just start implementing heavy-hitting changes unless I'm really sure that they're correct. The last six or so years of doing this has taught me to drop in changes conservatively, and then adjust them once the basic *change* is even shown to work (and clearly, we've had issues with even the mechanics of station limits and purchasing additional space). I've already discussed a lot of other aspects of station-storage fees on the suggestions forum thread, people can check there for more info.

So, to those who are impatient.. tough. But on the upside, you should be a lot happier within the next two months.

I do have a very meticulous order to the way I'm doing things. Whether it's the best order and plan is entirely debatable, but it is a result of careful thought.

I believe that we still have faith in you Inc. regarding getting the game to be more interesting. I believe that the limit of 50k is a reasonable limit, however you should probably keep in mind that it is an arbitrary limit and as such go they do not make much sense. Rather we should have an economic limit where it becomes so expensive that you CAN raise it beyond but you have no incentive to due to cost.
While I am heavily hit by the limit I do not think that it inflicts too much damage across the board, most should be able to keep to within 50k cu.

A conservative approach is probably the only way to go, and people will be impatient and some will be annoyed by the changes. As you say, tough. As long as you listen to any reasonable complaints that we may air, and I believe you do exactly that, I do not see how you can do it any better.

So, keep at it, give us, give us, give us;)

I'm not against an exponential (or whatever) pricing curve on extra storage space; Ray and I considered that. But, for the moment, I do actually want a completely arbitrary (and relatively low) limit, while I'm mucking about with economic factors.

I'm not really sure that an economic curve on storage space makes a lot more "logical" sense than the current one. Why would a station decide that your "additional" space (on top of a large existing amount) should cost 50c/cu, where the other guy gets his for 1c/cu over the minimum. Unless the station's motivation is to basically "allow available space to be shared by everyone", in which case arbitrary limits make as much sense as anything else. If "sharing" a fixed amount were the issue, the most logically mercenary would be some sort of bidding system based on storage-space demand. But, that could be a bit complex.

Anyway, thanks, I am plugging along, trying to make stuff happen :).

Eventually I think there should be actual finite limits on total space at each station, and let supply and demand determine the price. Of course, that would tie in with player/guild owned stations, and isn't terribly meaningful until then. Plus, you'd want a way to build onto the stations or build new stations to add to supply, so it's not just a demand problem.

Yeah, my thinking was just to use arbitrary limits until player stations come online. That being the real long-term "expansion" in any event. Costs of expanding stations, and upkeep of larger stations, would essentially balance out that scenario.

Would it be possible for stations holding cargo above their limit to be highlighted/colored in the PDA>Inventory list (red?). And stations in which players have purchased extra space be colored as well (blue?). Or a station sort by amount of cargo space used.

Yeah, that's possible, and a good idea. We'll look into it.

What happens when I have goods in Deneb that I can't sell?

(i.e. I stockpiled Neut III's in O-3, then tanked my Itani standing to KOS, leaving me unable to dock with said station - and probably also to get anywhere NEAR said station, as I'm also Serco KOS.)

Will the Itani Government still charge me for the storage space? And does that payment auto-deduct, or can I ignore the invoices until they send the Itani Collection Agency after me?

That's problematic, and part of the reason why we aren't going to be "billing" people who are "over-limit" for a few months. Ie, if you have over the station limit already, you won't be able to add to the inventory there, but you also won't be billed for it. You will *only* be billed for new space that you actively rent.

I was originally going to pursue a "remote-sale" option, but some concerns over ease of manipulation of trade routes and automated speculation came up, so that's been scrapped for now. It was a stopgap measure until we had actual "remote delivery" stuff in place, which would probably work something like this.

So, for the moment, you can't get to your stuff, nor can you sell it, but you also won't be billed for it in the near term.

(In answer to your other general question, payments auto-deduct).

so set limit on the storage space at any given station. As more players add goods the rental prices goes up due to demand. As players sells or moves goods from said station the rental prices will come down.

Yes. Professor Chaos just said that.

The problem is, you (or rather, I) don't necessarily want stations to have obscenely high prices that prohibit entry into trading for newbies, or whomever, which always becomes the risk when you start giving such things fixed limits. Which is why it's also easier to hand-tune fixed, arbitrary limits, for the moment, before moving on to player-ownable station expansions and other stuff. Before making anything dynamic, you want to have an idea, ahead of time, of what ballpark numbers are desired to produce a relatively balanced system. That at least allows you to set ranges to keep things from cascading out of control. As of right now, I'm not entirely sure what those ranges are yet.

Aside from that, game development is all about "the most fun generated per hour of development time". Creating an amazing storage-expansion-purchasing system that fluctuates dynamically, displays real-world evidence (in the form of added "storage" appearing on stations), and is itself resalable as a speculated commodity (storage futures?).. is all very cool, but not the best bang-for-the-buck on our development path.

Yeah, finite station space is far future for sure, but it's good to hear what the vision is on fine details like that. This is a good stepping stone I think.

As far as the newbie trading problem, one or two month vouchers for the first two characters on every new account for the expanded space would be a good solution, I think. Kind of like the eight hour trial, but longer and only applied to the 50K or whatever it is storage space.

Another possibility for the newbies is for there to be various intergalactic "U-Store-It" stations, with massive space available and little else. I strongly doubt most newbies will run into problems with the current limits, as anyone with enough knowledge of the game to know how to crush a demand while taking maximum profit (Stock then Sell) isn't a newbie anymore.

And as for a good in-game reason for these new arbitrary limits...

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Can you not simply base player stations off of the code powering docking with capital ships? I know that I would LOVE to man turrets on destructible stations...
But thats kind of far off, from what I gather.