Right now pirates and the like have absolutely no way to gain a lead on the general location of traders and such. I think it would be pretty cool if in the bars of stations some number is displayed based on the number of players (the ones with no asterisks in front of their name) who have docked and undocked from said station in the last hour or so. It would be a simple and easy equivalent to "asking around" and would make hunting in grey with the current number of players active in VO much more viable and if traders are truly truly upset about it then they can just trade smart whenever working in grey, switching station routes every few runs to throw off any potential pirates that might be hunting around rather than just farming one station over and over again.

-Chaakin Tockoa

I like it, and not only for traders: as it currently stands, hunting players in VO is far too hard, largely because of the large space:player ratio. This also gives a use to the Bar, which is currently quite useless.

But I don't think the number of players is very useful. How about a text command /talk to bar tender

/talktobartender seen anyone lately?

>bar tender: pay me [1000-10000, random] credits, and my memory might improve

/givemoney bartender X credits

>bar tender: I remember seeing a few familiar faces through here in the last hour: [list of all players who have docked in the last hour]

Yeah, bribes to seedly locals would be great! Pirates could use it to find traders and traders could use it to avoid pirates.

It would add a bit of realism. I like the concept. Undecided if I want to give it my support though.

An hour is a long time on VO though. It might be more practical to cut it to 15 to 30 minutes. Or make the more recent the visit more costly, so learning about a player who docked there 1 to 5 minutes ago might cost 100-500k.

You might also add an ability to ask who the regulars are for players that have frequented the station x times in a week. Where x is a number of your choosing (no preference).

Another use would be to inquire about incoming or outgoing voys and what type of cargo they may be carrying.

What I meant was just a number, not the exact names of the players. That's enough for experienced pirates to start tracking a specific all on their own. As for having to pay to see it: I'm not all for that. Mainly because since you would pretty much have to check every station in every system and that something like this probably shouldn't be discouraged. It would add depth to both what traders need to do to stay under the radar and the frequency of pirates. Since npc pirates were taken out, keeping the factor of "space pirates" in the game has fallen completely on the shoulders of the one or two pirates on at a time. A lot of us are pretty experienced and can start a trail by just a little hint like this.

We know what you meant. What you meant was insufficiently useful to bother with. As for the money, we badly need money sinks and good info is never, ever free.

Fluffy, an hour is a long time, and the data would probably be more useful if not diluted by people who visited that long ago. 30-45 minutes would be best.

Yes, Vendetta certainly needs some more uses for credits and sinkholes of them, but you need to put said sinkholes in the right place. Pirates go hunting for credits and profit, if it's made to be negatively profitable to pirate, then why do it? To put it into terms for all ye lubbers: If we made all yer favorite commodities 10,000cr minimum and made them sell for 9,000cr maximum, why trade? Where the sinkholes need to be are in activities that aren't carried out to specifically make money: such as combat for control of an area or (this is where I would approve of lists of specific names for a certain amount of credits but would not want it to "overwrite" a simple free number representing activity in and out of that station) hunting a specific player. It just doesn't make sense paying over 250k to every single station until you get a hit and then having the person only pay 100k anyways, but it does make sense if you pay 500k asking around stations for a specific person that you want to kill. So this is how I might have it: something on the menu or the in the bar saying something along the lines of "Hello, it seems this station is pretty active* today." and then maybe having a list of bar commands that would give a list of specific players frequenting the station that would cost 50,000cr+. Those can be kept for another time, though... a simple number or representation of a number would be pretty easy to implement as of now with so many things going on.

*"active" being the variable word.

... as long as I can bribe the bartender to have never seen me.

Hmm, the advertising potential of interactive barmaids. Yep, Leebs, generate some posters.

It is really a good idea. Skulduggery, bribery and corruption are always good fun.

An interesting combination of ideas here.

VO is short on RP, and this could go a long way.

You enter a station sector, the barkeep starts logging info about you.

You can pay the barkeep to keep his mouth shut, but all the bar keeps have names, and change shifts, and some are more trust worthy than others.

A bar keep will drop a teaser for free, but will want credits for more. He will try to dish it out in parcels, so he can keep asking for more credits. Some bar keeps strait out lie.