The subject basically says it all. I think bringing critical shortage items to a station should result in increased faction-standing with the station's faction or subfaction. I don't see why one should need to take a mission to gain faction-standing, especially if the procs the Trade Guild asks for are the things you just brought to the station. I'm not talking extreme increases here... just the same as a delivery would give.

Yes. Lets play outside the box!

Sounds good to me. Maybe make the standing increase depend on how much you bring (not just linearly). If, say, your shipment satisfies the entire need for the item, or a certain, non-trivial percentage, you could get an extra bonus.

Example: Station wants 1500 Sedina chocolates (because it's Feb. 14th). Trader A brings 30 units, which is 2%. Trader B brings 200 units, which is 13¹/₃%. Trader A gets, say, .001 faction standing points per unit (not cu, btw). But Trader B, because he was above the 10% mark, gets a 1.5 bonus multiplier to the standing increase. 20% gets 2 and so on.

Numbers are only meant as an example.

I'd say follow the generic delivery formula of more money = more faction... hopefully that shouldn't be hard to implement. But I like your idea as well tosh.

I just thought that if the station really needed the items (as it ostensibly does, else they would not be in critical shortage ;), they'd probably be happier if someone brought a bunch instead of a few. But linear progression is fine, too... just so boring :)

ahhhh, I misunderstood (or rather read too quickly). I'm good for either/or. I just want something. I'll let you and the devs work out the rest :).

Me? I'm just a jaded vet, trolling.

This makes a lot of sense. I'd go even further and suggest that <i>all</i> trading should affect faction standing, although incrementally less for lower-demand products. As I understand things, killing a hive bot in faction space increases faction standing by some amount (~1), on the theory that factions don't like hive and are therefore thankful to pilots who hunt them down. The same logic obtains with respect to trading goods, at least where there's some demand >0 for the good. (You can imagine a further step, whereby dumping goods where there is already a surplus--or goods produced at the station--results in a loss of standing.)

It makes sense that delivery of a highly-demanded good would result in a significant faction-standing increase; I'd suggest that even delivery of a marginally-demanded good should result in some fractional standing increase, if for no other reason than because through repeated trade deliveries a player previously 'unknown' to a faction develops a theoretical reputation or familiarity with that faction.

In other words: Stamp of Approval.

Use BBCode tags for text formatting. Other than that: I'm not sure if every single transaction should give faction standing. Some people may want to avoid gaining standing with a specific faction, but do not want to stop docking at their stations for a quick profit.

Yes to the surplus penalty, though.