The reason the itani-serco war is not credible is that there is no property to be saved, captured, or destroyed. This lack of physical property also explains why there is little conflict between guilds. There is really nothing tangable to gain or loose.

I think that we need a new class of objects that exist in the persistant VO universe. These objects need to be of utility to their owners, and vulnerable to capture or destruction by others. They also need to be concentrated in space to draw live players together in their use and defense. What could these objects be?

I have one suggestion: Mining Concentrator
This is a hybrid mining platform and factory. It would be placed on a rare ore roid where it would min continuously. The ore would be smelted into "Purified Helocene" which would be 100x more concentrated and valuable. The Purified ore would be slowly accumulated in the Mining Concentrator for shipment and sale. The Mining Concentrator is not the players ship.

How deployed: It is purchased at a station as a cargo item. Drop the cargo in the sector you want to mine in. A TPC constellation warps in pulling your Mining Comcentrator. It drops it off and warps out. You dock in the concentrator and enter the pilots seat. Stear it slowly to the rare ore roid and engage the mining beams. Leave and let it work. Dock again later and pick up your valuable purified ore.

How it is preserved: The player who owns the Concentrator can shut it down and put a shield bubble around it, or take his chances and let it mine. The shield could be queen strength - possible to defeat, but only with help.

How it is destroyed: While the Concentrator is mining it can be fired upon. It has heavy armor. When under attack it PM's the owner. If destroyed, the purified ore is exposed for salvage. The Concentrator can also be dislodged from a valuable roid with conc mines or balistic strikes with a loaded moth.

Concentrator Economics: It is like an investment that pays interest. Say it costs 5m. On a good rare ore it it produces 50 cu of purified ore valued at 2m per day. The cost to the owner is one taur run per day ( or an XC run every four)

The interesting part is how guilds compete for rare roids, and how they act to protect their concentrators. The best rare ore roids should be located in grey space so guilds can compete for them. The Purified Ore could also be currency to purchase special weapons, or cap ships, etc.

I'm interested to see what other persistant property ideas players have!
[edit] Here's a list of property ideas from replys below:
Scafolds for building cap ships
Capturable cap ships
A limit on elements needed to make cap ships
Deployable ore extractors
Expensive Cap Ships made with rare grey space ore

I was with you...then I wasn't, mainly because this idea doesn't have bearing on the Itani-Serco conflict. I think what's ultimately planned (correct me if i'm wrong PLEASE) is a (few?) dynamic system(s) along the border where stations can be attacked, destroyed, looted, rebuilt, etc. That would be quite nice.

Admittedly, I only read a small part of the original post (Im very tired at the moment), but I wanted to chip in that this (like rhapsody said) is somewhat in the works. Once the Devs feel comfortable releasing the next generation of the war, we will probably see an expanded conflict along these lines.
As Border Skirmish currently (or at least did) show, the victorious side earns the right to monitor Deneb B-12 until the next fight. This has already been mentioned as a basis for future "capturable stations" etc.

For now, one thing that it sounds like might give some decent credibility to your idea is a kind of Serco-Itani War "Capture the Flag" game. The sides fight for control of their flags similar to how the game was played back in Alpha. This is a stretch of course though.

Yea I defiantly think this game needs more in the way of infrastructure for players to build / pillage / create ect...
Don't get me wrong I love this game so far.

But what you suggest would be a good idea. Im not sure I agree with the mining collector idea It might be ok but it does not grab me straight away. I think the idea of capturable stations and stations that can be destroyed would be a good idea.

I think a great idea although i have NO IDEA how to implement it and maintain game balance would be Player Owned Space "Outposts" obviously make it so these stations are not the same as a regular station more of an outpost where people can dock and refit there ships. Make it so only Guild can build one and make it so that it takes a lot of money to create.

This would be a great idea I think cause it leads to so many other possibilities quite easily. Such as having purchasable upgrades for your station (turrets, armor, shields, cargo bays or even mining array's if there in a sector with asteroids) I think a ship construction ability would be a cool idea as well not sure how needed it is really. Maybe for Cap Ships when they become available, We could make it so you need a station with the capital ship array upgrade to produce them. That would also make more sense for miner's and Ore it could be used for building. Also it adds the ability to control star systems ( Not sure how that could be implemented maybe it could be nation controlled by have your guilds name as protector : <guildname>)

Something like that any way obviously this would need a lot more thought but I think that would open up a lot of possibilities and its maybe something the dev's are already thinking about. I think this would be great for Pirates and traders alike having your own little safe haven.

You could also make it so that the stations cost the guild money to maintain per week or something and make it so that the stations can be pillages or destroyed by other guilds making the game involve more conflict with guilds and controlling territory.

Like I said there is probably a lot more options and ideas this is just a few of mine sorry if I rambled a bit there its 6am :P Im sure a lot of these idea people already have so sorry if im just repeating old things

In general, every MMORPG faces this problem, truly. Anything that's easy to get ("credits" here or "gold" in that OTHER mmorpg) gets undervalued and the economy is based on rare drops of epic items, and the like. While VO is, in some sense, one step behind, that is, lacking some hierarchy of rare items (a la runes in Diablo 2), the problem VO faces is really not _far_ removed.

I think perhaps we have here an opportunity rather than a problem. The way I see it, other games introduce rare items, and it's those that drive the economy, all the while the gap between gold (the "base" currency) and the rare items increases. When it gets too troublesome, there's a server reset (or a ladder reset or what have you) and the economy starts over again.

Really, I think we owe it to ourselves to rethink the way property and really wealth is defined, and how it pertains to the VO universe. There's no easy answer to this problem, but the issue is: if there's no strain on money, it's going to lose value.

One thing I might propose, off the top of my head, is to tie players' money to their nation. Say, for instance, the Itani launch a raid into Geira Rutilus, destroying the SMV nemesis and the station in O4. The players involved would gain profit from whatever loot they get from the station, cool. However, the Serco government would need to pay for a new HAC and station, and in order to do so would ask their citizens to tithe maybe 2% of their credits to rebuild the station, and 4% to rebuild the Nemesis.

That's a sort of general idea, let's not bicker about different piecewise-linear tax-rates etc. The point is, this puts a strain on money, and gives lends a sense of urgency to the Serco-Itani conflict.

Other ideas: Pay-to-play events (pay in credits), daily expenditures (daily decrease in money, either constant amount or constant percentage)...that's about as far as I've got.

[EDIT] The important thing from my perspective is this: trying to introduce an player-side economy based on "expensive" or "rare" items is the WRONG idea, because it doesn't address the problem of capital losing its value _rapidly_. Let's think outside the box.

Alright, if it's going to go into economics, I'm going to have to point out before this thread goes completely intellectually bankrupt, that credits have absolutely *NOTHING* to do with it. Literally. They're pointless. Trade doesn't rely on invisible monetary units. Granted it makes life easier, *ALL* of the processes of any economy can function flawlessly with or without the concept of money. And believe me when I say that the important unit of currency in Vendetta Online is not the credit, but the ship. (That's right!)

Without credits, everything would more or less go the same. No doubt you'd have to trade units of ore, or services doing missions for your ships or whatever. It's just that instead of going

Procurement Mission -> Receive Credits -> Spend Credits -> Get Ship

you'd just have

Procurement Mission -> Get Ship

Obviously credits make things a little smoother though, as they're wild cards which can be traded in for just about anything, and are more easily divisible. (It would be awkward, doing a mission for one fourth of a Vulture, but being rewarded money equal to one fourth the price of a Vulture is a little more logical.) Without ships however, even with credits still in place, this would be a wildly different game. The point I'm trying to make is that there are process which put stuff into the game, and processes which take things out of the game. Be it money, ore, faction points, ships, or [insert type of property here], that is the fundamentals of economy.

As it stands, missions are the primary source of putting stuff into the game, as they magically create credits which can be traded. The factions which control every station have a magically constant and unlimited source of supplies, which can become yours. Additionally, mining magically creates stuffs, and NPC's are magically created, and can be looted for stuffs. That's it. Literally. Those four things are responsible for *ALL* of the creation of property in this game.

There's also a few methods for magically removing stuff. Of course, making ships explode magically removes the ships, and part of it's components, but then some stuff is magically created, in the form of loots and scrap metal. Additionally, you can trade stuffs for credits at those stations, or leave it out in space for 15 minutes, at which point any stuffs disintegrate. Those three things are responsible for *ALL* of the removal of property in this game.

So, the only way to balance an economy is to create some system where the more stuff which is created, the more likely it is to be destroyed, and less stuff which is created, the less likely it is to be destroyed. This makes a sort of wave motion, and it's a lot of fun to play games that are balanced with wave motions. Of course, it gets kind of tricky doing that when there's so many ways to create stuffs. So, the trick is to tie it all to one source. What source? Ore.

From what I've gathered, that's where the game is headed, as it should be. All stuffs, everywhere, will inevitably come from asteroids. It will be traded, shipped, bought, sold, etc., but ultimately everything will have started as an asteroid. As for the removal of stuffs, I've also gathered that things will no longer magically disappear when left out too long, and that stations will have finite amounts of goods. This is a cause for concern, because it means the only way that stuffs will be able to be removed, is through magically converting it into space dust, via exploding ships.

But wait a minute! What if... the more stuffs there were in the universe, the more crowded things were. If that were the case, then there'd be less ore available for the average miner. If that were the case, then fights might break out over control over this property more often. Which means... the more stuffs there is, the more likely it is to magically disappear! Why, the system balances itself. Ships mine ore from asteroids, blow each other up, the space dust from the ships coalesces back onto the asteroids, and life begins anew. It's so beautiful I could almost cry.

Anyways, that's why control over resources does in fact solve the problem of property in VO. Yes, even militarily.

While I appreciate your comment and follow your argument, you are wrong. I'm in class right now so I don't have time to elaborate (I'll edit this placeholder in due time), but suffice it to say, for now, that because ships cannot be traded among players, they can not function as a currency. This follows from the definition of (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currency) currency.

[EDIT]: Rather than lay out my entire argument here, I've decided to turn it into a project http://tinyurl.com/2kysaz here. Some people write LUA, some people make skins, I model things. I haven't gotten near the good stuff yet, but it's coming, I just have problem sets to do now. Familiarize yourself: http://tinyurl.com/2kysaz

Questions? Ask.

Ooh, I'd be delighted to swap words with you.

Ships can be traded... though they need to be sold into credits first. Granted this sometimes limits trade of ships which can't be bought strictly through credits (Superlight, Nation Specifics etc.) that's only a minor detail. The method for packaging ships, and being able to transport them between players is in the works, and I suspect will be released into the game with the advent of a ship large enough to carry a sufficient supply of them, i.e Cappies.

Edit: Additionally, I'm not really concerned over whether I'm right, or wrong. Needless to say, I didn't research the wikipedia definitions of each word I used before placing it into my overblown post. I can already tell you that many of the things I said can be interpreted as wrong. The only thing I was trying to prove by assuming ships were the monetary unit, is that the value of any economy is in the raw goods, and to effect any changes, the raw goods need to be changed. The concept of money is only an incidental occurrence of trade, and changing the way it flows can only have effects if you force people to use it. (Likewise, the value of money only exists where people choose to accept it.)

America is not a rich country because the size of the numbers on our currency. It's because there's a lot food, and creature comforts. Money is simply a middleman for goods and services. It cannot be created, as producing more thereby reduces the amount of value of every other unit, but it can be destroyed. By which I mean to say, it cannot be responsible for the creation of all stuffs in the VO universe, unless the only way to create things is to purchase them from stations. Bye bye player influenced economy...

The fact that items need to be converted into credits in order to facilitate trade completely contradicts your assertion that credits are not currency.

The fact that items don't need to be converted into credits in order to facilitate trade completely contradicts your assertion that credits are not, not currency.

Besides, ships are still a more important unit of currency than credits. If you're going to try and disprove my entire argument based on a logical fallacy, bear in mind that credits are just about worthless in this game, therefor *any* thing is by comparison more important. (Nevermind that you're just nitpicking, and none of this is relevant to my point by any means.)

One currency does not invalidate another simply because it exists.

see above

These ideas of what is actually of value in VO are interesting. I thought the discussion of what becomes of value when currency is cheap is especially relevent to VO. Let me reposit the property question:

I think that we need a new class of objects that exist in the persistant VO universe. These objects need to be of utility to their owners, and vulnerable to capture or destruction by others. They also need to be concentrated in space to draw live players together in their use and defense. What could these objects be?

I'll get to this in a bit, but my point was if it's something that can be bought, even if it's expensive it will soon be nothing more than another thing with which to get more money. That is to say, there's a bigger issue to address, which is that the thing which should feel most like property, and have the most value: credits, doesn't.

That said, the prospect of introducing items that make more money doesn't charm me very much, because really what's to fight over? Money is infinite, and easily obtained. What do people fight over in real life? Land, governance, principles, and when there's a non-hyperinflated currency, money.

missioncreek2 wrote:
"I think that we need a new class of objects that exist in the persistant VO universe. These objects need to be of utility to their owners, and vulnerable to capture or destruction by others. They also need to be concentrated in space to draw live players together in their use and defense. What could these objects be?"

This is a great idea and it ties into another common issue that ive seen discussed on this board, capships and how to limit how many there are in the game.

Say there is a certain element, and there is a fixed amount of that element. Say 100 units. And you need 10 units for the reactor core of a Capital ship. Everyone will want that element BADLY, they will fight over it. And you are also set at a limit of 10 cap ships maximum no matter how much money people have. If UIT has 5 units and Itani has 5 units, they better get together and make a trade so one of them can make a cap ship. The person selling their 5 units can make a fortune.

When a cap ship is destroyed, all the mining ships will swarm in and start sucking up that element. Suddenly, having the very best miners on your team becomes very important!

Doc slightly updated http://people.fas.harvard.edu/~chartl/VE.pdf

Rhapsody raised an itneresting possibility with taxes. The big issue it addresses is that currency can extend constantly, thus so can ships. Both enter VO sourcelessly and without major consequence.

By selling items into currency we are placing equity into that currency instead of the ships. By making it decay, our original stake in these items does as well. Thus, these items exit the economy. I suppose we could store our money in 'ship futures.' But bartering for everyday trades in, say, Sedina, with a warehouse full of ships in Dau strikes me as inherantly tough/inconvenient.

Now more onto the original topic. I could see capital ships being a higher currency class. We'd do this by creating hurtles to leap in their construction. For example; I would think these behemoths would have to be produced outside, as the massive buggers can't fit in stations. Why not have anyone who builds one have to commision a temporary scaffold somewhere to produce the thing?

In this way, the capital ship becomes an invested in liability even before it's built. Thus; it's a juicy target for rivals. It might be that we'd model the supply chain with NPC or player missions. Thus, the scaffold could be tracked down easily by tracking the movers. Bam! Instant live, complex, location and property-centric warfare!

Remember... Dynamic Economy is coming. you might need to stock your station with ore and other equipment from time to time to keep ship prices lower and to make sure your ship is available. look for the Dynamic Economy threads

Now I'm just shamelessly ripping from another thread here, (that I'm too lazy to dig up) but here goes; once mineral competition becomes an actual issue, it's ownership over the asteroids that will make the difference. To reiterate yet again, that's what *ALL* that shit I wrote up earlier was there to point out. For dim people like rhapsody,

IT'S ALL ABOUT THE BLEEPIN' MINERALS!

So the idea I'm supposedly ripping off of is a deployable ore extractor. Attach it to your favorite 'roid, and get exclusive rights. Maybe it mines while you're gone or something, and all ya' have to do is ship it out. Perhaps they can be blown up, but then the owner gets a log of the kill, and in monitored space, it acts as a penalized friendly fire kill, or whatever. Point is, adds another layer of 'ownership', since it's there even when you aren't.