Since Guild has not included me in the source code I have no means to really judge how hard it is to implement a given change so I just define the behaviours I want and let the devs handle the detail. <Shrug> Not my problem but I doubt it would require "acres" of code unless Guild decides to use assembly..

If your thinking I am creating a money sink that would not impose a large burden on most players then your correct. Some would suggest a "soak the rich" approach but that never really works in real life and I have no reason to believe it would work in a virtual world either.

Peytros please dont post like that again - your lack of trolling is ... scary.

I think this whole thread sucks. and its not a dozen ships i have, its dozens. and no, i dont want to be bothered to have to fly to every damn station in grey, and some in serco space i cant dock at, and sell a quater million cu of shit ive accumulated over the past 5 years. and i doubt most others with characters more then a couple years old would either.

Any change you make would only serve as in inconvenience at best. It wont stop people from hoarding, It dosent take a rocket scientist (no pun intended) to figure out how to but loads of shit on trial accounts and just leave them penniless. The only way to stop that would be a change to eula not allowing multiple accounts (that won't happen, GS would go broke). The only other way is having your storage charged regardless of the state of your account, how active you are, or if needed, impounding invintory. Since guild would probably like to draw back some of it's vets that have left, I think they'd be quite well pissed to find all their stuff impounded, so I doubt that will happen either.

Could the storage rates be doubled without hurting newbs, yea, tripled, sure. Would some traders get a bit sore over what is really a trivial amount, yep.

Honestly any increase in cost of storage sufficient to make a dent in the amount of credits in circulation would have to be truly massive, like 1 million a week for every 1000 cu. And really, ecka, this would help you, in a war of attrition sence. the pirates would go broke well before you drop down below 10 billion.

And really, ecka, this would help you, in a war of attrition sence. the pirates would go broke well before you drop down below 10 billion.

This. I'm still confused about how giving money meaning is going to hurt the trader/miner crowd. But then again, they never were very smart.

PaKettle: The change that myself, Maalik, and most others have presented would be a minor change to existing functionality, while the change that you propose is considerably more involved. I think it's a very safe assumption that the former would be easier to implement than the latter. I do not think that is significant justification alone to discredit your idea; I don't think a system based on time spent in-game makes much sense in a persistent MMO.

Ecka: One who takes the time to read my posts in the suggestions forum objectively will easily come to the conclusion that my suggestions are not specifically biased toward improving the lives of any given category of players, but toward improving the game as a whole. I am obviously more inclined to notice problems with the game that directly effect my characters' style of play, but even then I have been known to support suggestions which would make piracy more difficult if it would improve the game. I realize you have a vendetta against me or the guild my main character is in or something, but let's try to keep your personal issues out of the discussion, kthnx.

"This. I'm still confused about how giving money meaning is going to hurt the trader/miner crowd. But then again, they never were very smart."

well they might not see the difference between giving money meaning, and simply adding four zero's to the cost of everything.

giving money meaning sounds more like increasing its value, the second, is hyperinflation, which destroys the value of money.

currently the only ways to make a large amount of money (without exploiting bugs) are well, pretty boring for the pirates. as such i fail to see the point in having hyperinflation and trying to make money harder to get at the same time. That sounds like simply taking fun away from the pirates for the actions own sake. Let's not forget we play this to have fun, usually as a leisure activity, not as another job.

Also making competitive fighting ships (other than the hog and ec107) cost more than they do now for a full load out would really really push new players away from combat, and the 107 requires 50 bus kills.

Actually Ladron, The change Id really like to see but is likely beyond what the devs will do is to have several different charge systems that would periodically change at each station depending on the local situation along with a number of other local policies. Ideally it would reflect the ever changing administration and politics.

If Incarnate thinks it is too difficult a change - so be it. I am not going to forward a lesser solution unless I am sure the one I want is in fact unworkable. As I said, we dont really have a way to know for sure.

LNH - what the heck are you storing? a million tons of aquean? Granted there will be those who will find a way to avoid the fees - heck limiting the nuke mission is kind of a joke for the same reason. People cheat the system all the time even now and guild survives...feel free to steal from 4 hard working gentlemen. Seems a lot of trouble to avoid a minor expense but a possible fix for the exploit was already discussed. Also if you had read futher back I posted costs for a hundred ships...but it really isnt hard to figure out. 100 x 1000 = 100,000 . Is this really all that much for 8 hours of time in-game? Thats 1 load of ore or a single escort mission.

People cheat the system all the time even now and guild survives

PaKettle: You do realize that when credits are deducted from your character's account in-game they are not added to the GS bank account, right?

nah he's talking about me using trial accounts. I think inc or momerath can attest to me being far from one to want to steal from guild software, I maintain 3 paid accounts, have for quite some time, so don't even think about accusing me of stealing from GS.

edit: as for what im storing, fuck man i dunno. alot of it is ships, and not for hoarding purposes. I just don't bother to sell them off. They fall into disuse and sometimes i dont touch them for 8 months. theirs also a few thousand scrap metal and piles of loot i havent bothered to sell, just dumped it at the nearest station. I figure eventually somebody will offer me more than the station. take dentek cores for instance, ive got a couple xc loads, the sell price is what 4 credits, yea you can farm them, but having them on hand now is convienant. Also uc batteries take up 3cu each, a few hundred takes up alot of space.

~3k credits/week per 10k cu of rented space is absurdly low. 10k of free storage is big enough to seem infinite to most people which hurts immersion and I cannot fathom why, in terms of gameplay, anyone would need to store that much anyway. I like game mechanics that ask people to make trade-offs.

Nobody should be charged rent under the new scheme for inventory that they have not touched since changes are made. If you don't dock, no rent. If you dock and only repair, no rent. etc.

If you can't pay rent your stuff should be confiscated. Maybe the highest cu items should be taken first until you are under the free limit.

1k cu free storage and 30k/week for each additional 1k cu block seems reasonable to me. Nobody has explained satisfactorily why this is unworkable.

30k/week for each additional 1k cu block
That seems a little much. I'd lower it down to 10k for every 1k cu (ballpark). Otherwise you're going to end up paying for that 1k cu of stuff over and over and over and over again (aka, the tradeoff rarely ever benefits).

Maalik I assume you mean logged in but not visited/touched inventory. I disagree and will argue with a single phase.... U-Store.

They dont care if you visit yer stuff at all but you still have to pay for the rental of the storage space in a timely fashion...

Ladron the credits do have to come from somewhere and it costs Guild a lot of money to print out all those credits. :P

cutting the free storage in half probably wouldn't hurt most people. Making the rates 100 times as much wouldn't likely hurt people either.

The problem is, some like the op won't be happy unless it hurts people some people.

The solution from an immersion standpoint is to add some kind of warehouse station, most of the shit wouldn't be hurt by vacuum anyway, much of it would last longer (steel, for instance). The cool thing about space is their's so damn much of it, keeping your shit from simply floating away isn't that hard.

Having say 5000 cu of stuff you can store for immediate access and up to an additional 45000 cu that takes say 15 minutes to get to would be really the best of both worlds I think. You have your "local storage" or on-sight storage, and "warehouse storage". Even if you make a full 45k cu cost like 500k a month it'd be enough, considering that operating a warehouse in space, should be pretty cheap, the biggest cost being security forces.

This would solve the immersion standpoint without making massive inconveniences to anybody. You can still stockpile incredible amounts of shit, but only 5k on hand for immediate access.

Of course I argue from the point of view of traders, I am the commander of a trade Guild. I quote section D 1 of the TGFT charter, The Commander is responsible to:

"Exercise the Commander's best efforts to promote and advance the interests of the Guild."

Introducing excessive static charges for storage would not be in the interests of my guild members, so I would argue against it.

TGFT has always wished for a true dynamic economy, if that is implemented in the future then having station storage charges with dynamic costs would be realistic and immersive. The idea that a trader would pay a heavy burden of storage costs to supply goods which were in heavy demand at a given station is realistic and immersive. Tied into a full dynamic economy we would welcome such a mechanism.

It makes absolutely no economic sense that a player would be charged the same for having 10 k of mixed ore stored in a mining station in Betheshee as they would for having an expensive ship and equipment cache at a major commercial station in a busy system such as Latos. To do so merely to try to drain money from VO is not immersive, it just reinforces the artificiality of the present VO " economy".

The present flat rate charge above 10k is unrealistic, but not onerous. To make it an excessive charge just to try to remove money made in game by legitimate means is not immersive , it is counter intuitive and plain annoying to those quiet traders who don't tend to read forums and just pay to enjoy a bit of trade and mining in the backwaters of space. With a dynamic economy having dynamic station costs would improve the game for them; introducing punitive static costs would probably result in them just giving up and letting their subs lapse. Several have said as much when this subject was discussed in game.

The original post started "Simple enough. We need money sinks" . This is not a good mechanism to correct the perceived imbalance in the VO money supply. The very rich players would just spread the stuff they wish to keep across the universe, then just put their feet up and chat to guildmates ( though moving 1200 samo would be an interesting exercise ). The mid range traders would probably just give up. The pvp enthusiasts would probably still just own a few ships , fight in b8 and tell the rest of us we are being "pwned" whatever that means in modern childspeak.

Anyway , don't think I am getting at anyone personally . I have guns in game to do that when the mood takes me. I argue the traders side since I want VO to appeal to many. I really don't think the original suggestion moves the game forward at all.

New idea for the short term: Conquerable stations have vast free storage space....

Atice: I guess it would be useful to list reasons why one might store an excess of stuff and try to work backwards to rental prices. I'll start on that later. :P

PaK: It seems like a good way to make change palatable to vets who have accumulated fatty quantities of stuff over the years. The old (current) rent system would apply to a stash until they chose to deal with it.

Look: I really like the Warehouse station idea. I don't think malicious intentions are an insurmountable problem in an open discussion forum such as this. I think we can discern what is bad for the game and converge our ideas toward what is good. The only thing I'm discouraged about is the fact that Incarnate has given no indication that he has even read the thread.

Ecka: A quote from my own personal Suggestions Forum Contribution charter, section A 1, I am responsible for:

"Discerning and arguing for what would make the game better as a whole, giving no precedence to my own personal RP needs."

Now that we've cleared up where we are both coming from....

As you still haven't explained why my suggestion is excessive I am now going to assume that you are simply unable. The thread has evolved considerably since the OP so I don't know why you are still directing energy toward it. That it falls short of what we might in our dreams wish for the game is not legitimate criticism.

You do not need much free station storage to make money trading. If storing excess trade goods allows you to make more money trading then what is wrong with introducing a simple diminishing returns / trade-off scheme? It is not black and white. If the new static costs are punitive then we simply got the numbers wrong. If you don't help us get the numbers right then you are culpable for them being wrong.

As it turns out, I took the last sentence in your penultimate paragraph personally. Why you would think I wouldn't?

To all:

I've spent a lot of time deconstructing and taking advantage of "game mechanics" for personal gain. Ecka would call them exploits, except many of them still exist and he's happy to make use. I once moved 320,000 CU of luxury goods 1 WH jump and then sold them all at once. (VO's first billionaire did something similar. I regret I was but the second) I made something like 400 million in profits. This was before the station storage limits, so of course that's OK right? Except it's not. It's a massive advantage to me, simply for playing two years before other people were. Same goes for all the new goods currently available. When they first landed, you could make 60 mil an hour trading new goods in-system. Completely ok right? The current rewards for escort mission are not going to remain, it's not viable for a working economy. But it's how it works, so it's fine right? Except it's not, it's a growing pain that eventually VO is going to have to compensate for.

This thread is full of suggestions for those eventual necessary compensations.

VO has to eventually attract thousands of players instead of tens if it's going to survive. New players are never going to materialize if they have no chance of ever competing with the long term vets who were here when "it was a game mechanic so it's fine". Changes will have to be made, start getting used to it.

This suggestion has the underlining matter of it being a temporary solution in conjunction with the obvious complaint toward the Devs, "They have more money, get rid of it.", a.k.a. "money sink."

And yet it is being boasted as a proponent of a dynamic economy.

Very political of you.

Ecka, more to the point this forum is for game development and it is not a RP forum.... Here you are not the TGFT commander.

Surb sorry but credit sinks are in fact required if the economy is to ever function correctly. EVERY credit that is brought into the game MUST be removed from it eventually in order to keep the economy in balance and allow the credits and material to actually be worth something. This is only a single sink of many that will be required.

Surb: This is ripe low-hanging fruit. If you disagree then, well, post something substantive explaining why.

I used to argue very loudly that VO needs more 'cost of doing business' expenses to make the game more realistic and enjoyable. I've for the most part stopped doing so because I alternate between pissed off or apathetic towards the subject of the economy.

As someone pointed out, and mind, there are already so many posts that I'm disinclined to read them all thoroughly or to go back to the original reference, Guild Software is eventually going to have to make a decision about the game. At present its a mediocre fps, with enough elements available to attract a reasonable range of players who aspire to different objectives. The direction the devs seem to be heading is towards more immersive MMORG gameplay. I hope to see that before I die. I'll just briefly hop on my soapbox here and say I think the 'parallel' development style they use is a load of bs. I'm not a developer, so the odds are pretty good that my opinion is whats actually loaded.

That said, I'm all for paying for storage 'if' it adds to immersion and 'funness' of playing VO.

As a stand alone fix, I do not believe it does. At present, I believe it would do more harm than good with respect to a number of peoples attitudes towards the game. Though tbh, I doubt I would be as strongly affected as a number of other players would, since I don't have a huge amount of stored goods and am already sour and borderline toxic at times.

That said, any change should be made as part of the overall economic improvement of the game. My suggestion would be to charge a one time storage fee that increases as one approaches the storage limit. The reason for this is that it does not penalize players who either cancel their sub temporarily or take a much needed break from VO.

This brings us to the hot button of credits. Should credits mean more in VO? Absolutely! Should they become so onerous to gain and and easy to lose that they effectively mimic rl? Absolutely not. I will cancel every sub I have and delete every character the day a trade 5 player cannot compete economically with myself (a poor TGFT) or Ecka (a slightly less poor TGFT) or an Impavid (who has made billions himself) or any other player. The skill based gameplay is the one thing I still like about Vendetta. So, yes, a more dynamic economy with realistic expenses would enhance my experience as a trader. Turning trade into a real grind just to survive like most folk living paycheck to paycheck experience does not. Credits should matter in the sense that their accumulation and dispersion adds to the 'funness' and not in the sense that they mimic real life for most folk.

That said, there's been a lot of bitching about how older players exploited a bug to get rich. Bull Fucking Shit. As far as I am concerned the ability to sell all cargo at the top price was a feature since the devs knew about it for years and did nothing. It is my contention that they changed the feature in order to forward the game towards the final vision. Anyone who has spent a week or two or more(depending on the amount of time they had to actually play) moving 400,000 cube of goods deserved every credit they earned. This was when trade had more of a 'funness' factor. There was a great reward. I had a strong 'incentive' to actually trade. Many times, as soon as it was known where I was working, I'd be visited by some of the legends like Swag Man or Azumi. These days, I trade a bit now and then but I would hardly call myself a serious trader anymore. Mostly because I don't have a lot of 'incentive'. Really, I often have to find the incentive just to log on most weeks.

Now there has also been some discussion I've heard arguing that when the magical day (we'll all be dead btw) comes that the economic revision is finally fully implemented, and we hit that magic vs 2.0, that players should be reset for fairness, that players should be reset both in credits and licenses to make it 'fair' for all the new players. Bull fucking shit. As I stated above, the day a level 5 player can't compete economically- Or I should extend it to a level 5 anything can't compete effectively in any aspect of the game, I'm gone.

Ok. Thats the end of what I'm sure the good Dr. will call a 'hysterical' tirade or something equally colorful.

Like I said in my first post in this thread, "how does this suggestion make this game more fun?"