Lecter, Repairs usually do cost more then the purchase price. I see no reason to change it.

.... and I gave most of mine away.

I hope someone can clarify this for me because I was under the impression that repair cost depends on the distance to the nearest station that sells the ship in question. Therefore a Valk X-1 will repair for less than the cost of a new ship in Itani space, but not in Pelatus or Verasi which are several wormholes away. The benefit of not having to fly a new ship from a station that sells it is reflected in the higher repair cost.

If I know I'm paying 100,000 credits regardless of an outcome -- 100,000 for a new Hound, or 100,000 to repair a damaged Hound -- I'm avoiding the activity entirely.

I don't follow, it sounds like what you are really saying is that you'd like the Hound to be cheaper.

I'm not sure death should be more meaningful across the board, either. I think that right now we have a decent balance between cheaper, still flyable furballers and expensive top end special ships. If you can't turn a decent profit pirating in a greyhound, then maybe the greyhound does need a reduction in price.

On dynamic warfare, what we need is a strategic interface that allows high ranking players to direct cap ships against certain objectives or to occupy certain areas. There could probably be a mission tree that allows one to do this after joining the military and gaining sufficient levels. Winning or losing a border battle will probably hold more significance than turning the color of a checkered board once the gameplay is ironed out. Imagine that if Serco or Itani hold a certain percentage of sectors in Deneb then a station becomes vulnerable to attack with the outcome possibly changing its alignment. Imagine this not only in Deneb but on a larger scale, with greyspace corporations and even guilds participating in outlying regions.

there is no point winning a battle in vo if you don't inflict some sort of economic crippling onto your enemy. What is the point of taking a sector if 2 hours later your enemy will be right back on your door step with no worry of if they win or lose? Granted it would be stupid to have this ability with cap ships but then we run into issues of having things only cap ships can take down.

No, Phaser, I think a Hound should cost 100k to buy -- if you lose one, that's what you pay. I like high replacement costs because they give a little edge to the otherwise FPS game.

And ship repair costs are related to distance from nearest sale point, which is as it should be. But that's still not sufficient to fix the overwhelming repair cost as a general matter. Try shooting a Hound, say, down to 3% in Odia. Your repair bill will be around 98,000 credits.

The reason you can't turn a decent profit in a Hound isn't because you lose them -- it's because the repair costs for a Hound used to take out a couple convoy moths in Odia are frequently more than the goddamn cargo is worth. If you lose the ship, rather than just getting damaged in the process of accomplishing your goal, then I have no problems with a large credit whack. The same should hold true of traders' ships: getting damaged but surviving should be less of a capital loss than getting blown up entirely. And I like the idea that repairing a Valk in Odia, or a Hound in Itan, costs more than reparing a Valk in Itan, or a Hound in Odia... all four of those repair costs just need to be about 50% of what they are now.

I like high repair cost, even though it typically keeps me broke, or flying cheaper ships. I think I am the perfect example of why high repair cost are important. With low repair cost it would be too easy for a vet like lecter to start an alt, get into a prime loadout, and do extreme damage for minimal repair cost. High repair cost also promote the activities of EMS and actually give repair modules a purpose. The corvus greyhound is a specialized ship, and it should be expensive to get, and to maintain. If you are getting it shot up, you are using it outside of it's specialization. Price and repair cost are one of the balancing factors of ship types. I have had characters that have had to park multiple ships in severely damaged condition until they could afford to repair it or talk someone into bringing a repair module. I think that stuff like that helps adds multiplayer elements to the game. I think it is humorous when your local mechanic shows up at the station and you bring out ship after ship for repair.

I dont mind the high repair costs because money grows on trees and when it doesnt anymore I'll pay EMS to fix me for a fraction of the cost

I'm not against significant repair costs, Roda. Encouraging a support role, even with the obvious fact that there are usually too few players online to make [EMS] viable and too few rewards to make that role one players want to play, is a good thing.

But when repairs are routinely on par with replacement cost, the system is broken. As I noted earlier, a 50% reduction would still impose significant repair costs.

As a final note, your contention about it preventing me griefing people with an alt is internally contradictory: if I have a throw-away alt, it won't have access to expensive ships like the Prom, CV, Valks, XC, Moth Heavy, Hound, etc. And even if it did, it's a trivial matter for me to transfer a few million credits to said alt. This is more about the long term impact on everyone of overly high repair costs, not about what those of us with hundreds of millions of credits can bear.

I find it ironic, that a guy like you that is rich is for reducing repair cost, where a guy like me whos bank account across all character surely equals substantially less than 50mil is for higher repair cost.

Perhaps it is exactly because repair cost are little more than an anoyance to you that you do not fully value the limitations it places on others, whereas I, that have been severly limited by it, see it as a powerfull factor. I already spend virtually all of my time in pvp and none trading. To allow me to maintain the very best ships on top of that is unreasonable.

It is already easy to fly cheap. I have flown a centurian with a hive fc and hx at level 1/1/0/0/0 and hunted moths. The hog2 is very easy to obtain at low levels and increadably cheap to purchase and maintain. The high end ships should demand a high end commitment, both in purchase, and repair.

That's cute, but it doesn't address my point, which is two-fold: (a) there should be a signficicant difference between repair and replacement costs, with the former being lower than the latter, and (b) that current repair costs are set too high.

It seems you disagree with at least (b), though you've yet to explain why those who focus on making money by trade and mining should be the only ones able to afford to maintain high-end piracy and combat gear; I'm not sure what your stance is w/r/t (a).

I don't see that repair needs any relation to purchase cost. irl some cars are still drivable but not worth repairing to like new value, or even like new functionality, because it would be cheaper to buy a new car.

We could take another approach to this. Keep all repair costs at what they are now, and triple the purchase cost for all ships above the basic cent, rev, and vulture models. Personally I'd prefer this approach, as we really need any credit sink we can get.

That's going to disincentivize a lot of activities: trading (lose your ship and you'll have to trade successfully for hours just to make up the loss), piracy (damage your Hound and it will take a couple mothloads of cargo just to pay for the repairs required), combat in anything but the shittiest ships.

I could care less, personally, since I have more credits than I could ever hope to spend and can make more very, very easily. But it seems pretty silly to log on for a few hours of "successful" piracy that results in a net loss of credits.

But hey, what do I care? I'm in the business of getting my jollies by breaking other peoples' toys -- the more it costs them to die, the happier I am to kill them.

Credit sinks: Yes.
Annoyance: No.
Fun: Yesyesyesyesyes.
Optional: Hell yes.