With no doubt, ship trading has been controversely discussed a lot recently. While there are many people voicing problems about it, I would like to bring it up once again. I know incarnate has stated back a while that he certainly sees fit for it and would like to introduce it at some point.

In my opinion it is needed right now and is some basic thing that has just been missing. We once accidently had it but then it was removed again (it was also buggy). It would immediately add to a new market which would be open to traders and increase travelling activity, thus making more targets for pirates. In Addition, high value ships could be sold (No longer available ships etc.).

Before andyone brings up the Nation specific ship discussion again, here is the temp. solution:

Trading nation specific ships is not possible until the devs have worked out a way that meets their interest and idea of future gameplay.

So anything else, but Valks Proms and Raptor UDVs will be tradeable. Ships that make sense to be traded but have too high mass of course Need to be reduced to atleast 200cu. But that will not be a problem.

The Crystal Problem for f2p people:

incarnate has once mentioned that there would be a problem with f2p and ship trading because f2pers would get away without paying Crystal when buying ships from full subbed Players. Here is the link to draugath's solution for this:

Free-to-Play, Crystal and Trading Ships

Constructive comments, please!

If the only ships you can trade are ones anyone can buy, why bother?

I can see a market for Greyhounds and SVG's. Also IBG & SVG's.

Also behemoths and other ships that players may not have standing or license for.

+1...I agree with the OP. If i hauled crap load of greyhounds to Deneb, someone would buy em from me. And the people who didnt have licenses still couldnt pilot them if I remember correctly, but standing and location are the major issues.

The problem is that it doesn't seem easy for the Devs to just "turn on ship trading for non-valks and non-proms and non-UDV Raptors". If they are going to make ship trading possible they should iron out the bugs AND figure out what to do about nation ships at the same time.

I disagree...seems as though they know how to stop things from being jettisoned. Just put that same check only for the desired non-jettison-able ships. And I think its worth this temporary work around to get this ball rolling. And who knows this may be a good solution in the end and so could end up being adopted.

I agree on the whole with the idea but I don't think ships should be reduced in volume. It doesn't make sense for a Behemoth XC to be 200cu in volume and have a 200cu cargo capacity.

I'd pay to have IBGs, SVGs, and WTDs flown down to grey.

Ship trading, in and of itself, is not difficult. The biggest issue now that needs to be addressed is the free-to-play users and how they spend Crystal on ships. By just turning on ship trading, whether some ships are restricted or not, you cut around the entire Crystal for ship purchase issue. This is something that Incarnate has mentioned already.

I created a suggestion for handling this specific case, but it appears to have been largely ignored, either because everyone agreed with it and had nothing to add, or because the vocal majority here don't care about Crystal because they're all Premium Subscribers.

Free-to-Play, Crystal, and Trading Ships

I like your solution, draugath. I'll link to it in the op.

+1

Draugath's solution to the "crystal problem" makes sense, and I guess is needed anyway when people switch between ftp and sub (which if impossible today will probably someday be implemented)

I propose the following solution to the nation ship problem: The whole point of a "black market" is that people can get their hands on ships they're not supposed to get. However, the nations act against people who are engaged in this behaviour, either by stockpiling ships and then using them after losing permission, or by buying on the black market. Implementation:

1) Any player entering a section monitored by fraction X flying equipment from that fraction that they are not / no longer entitled to, lose standing and/or become tempKOS. Convoys from the faction encountered outside faction space could also count (and immediately engage)

2) Every ship has a tag "original buyer", and if the ship illegally enters nation space as in #1, the original buyer also loses standing. This prevents people/alts from running ships to people who have no interest in entering nation space and so would avoid the penalty for #1. Possibly add a (expensive/difficult) "remove original owner" mission in corvus, or better yet: "change original owner" so you can frame someone.

Those solutions are not reliable nor would the player-base, as a whole, like them. But I do like the idea of temp KOS for violators there's no real effective way to do it. You can easily avoid Serco and Itani convoys and nation space. And #2 is kinda crazy...

But one thing major factor in all this is that the smallest ship is still 125 cu...This means that in order to buy a ship from someone you have to have access to a ship with at least 125 cu, but you'd probably want more like 150 to 200 cu. This means that the only way a F2Pers could buy ships is if they would unlock the heavy miner moth. This is not impossible by any means as I know of several that have done just that...Oh but wait...the heavy miner moth only has 140 cu, which is still too small to fit any combat ship that a F2Per would want. There are only a few ship that are 125 cu anyways and those are all ECs.

Ok. So a F2Per or anyone else without the badge for that matter, could get their hands on an EC-107...big whoop.

IMPLEMENT SHIP TRADING EXCEPT ON VALKS AND PROMS AND UDVS AND LETS SEE WHAT HAPPENS!!!

Excluding UDV and Valks and Proms is stupid on the black market.

It's like telling a drug dealer he can sell Paracetamol and Ibuprofen, but he's physically incapable of selling cocaine because his government said he couldn't get it in the first place.

Well using the same analogy, he already has paracetamol ibuprofen and cocaine and he cant sell anything...at least let him sell his paracetamol and ibuprofen cause they obviously arent as "gamechanging" as cocaine...and stop being an analogical dick about ship trading...its needed but the obvious problems are the nation specific ships. So lets get something in-game now and see how it goes.

Sidenote:
Looking back a few months, incarnate has never crossed out a black market for the Military ships.
My "implement ship trading but leave nation ships out for now"-proposal was just so that every side, including that one which is strictly against the trading of Nation specific ships, can live with the feature.

We should rather not discuss now, the devs will decide on this. It's important that it is implemented in the first place.

Darth Nihilus: Yeah, fuck logic, let's just implement some shit we don't understand!

Honestly, after a couple hauls of a single ship in a moth, most people would realize their time is better spent hauling goods for the creation of a trident. Shrinking ship size to allow F2P people to trade ships is not a worthy effort.

Re #2: If only the end-user gets a fraction hits the system of reprisals is completely useless, as the end user will just stay out of nation space and have a buddy/alt with good standing shuttle in the ships. I suppose you can still create disposable alts, but since it takes quite a bit of work to get the license and standing for the top ships this will not be easy.

I admit that the better solution would be for borders to give some sort of chance to be caught, and a skill or intelligence based evasion system. That would also open up whole lines of smuggling missions. However, that requires new functionality to be implemented, while my proposal can be done with only adding an "original buyer" tag to a ship.

In VO, only the government makes the top tier ships. In real life, drugs can be grown or manufactured by many people. That makes drugs nigh on impossible to control, meaning that that analogy is invalid.

You don't see people that aren't in the military (speaking from an American standpoint) flying state-of-the-art military aircraft. I expect that if you did, they would very quickly lose "standing" with that nation... perhaps allow trading high-end ships, but add in a huge faction penalty to the nation that makes them.

I dont think we are sayi ng we should add something we dont "understand". The premise of the idea is a simple one. I was just saying we should get something in that IS simple to understand and worry about the complex things like nation ship trading later.

vanatteveldt: First of all, the word you're looking for is faction, not fraction. Second, #2 is completely retarded. It doesn't even do what you're trying to say it would do (you claim it would stop people from selling ships to people who have no interest in going to nation space, when in fact it would encourage them to only sell to people who they know damn well have no interest in going to nation space). Also, regarding this:

"the end user will just stay out of nation space and have a buddy/alt with good standing shuttle in the ships."

Um, duh? That is exactly how black markets work -- those with access to a limited-access resource sell it to those who normally lack access, and then the buyer enjoys having the thing and tries not to get caught with it.



tarenty: Your analogy is also invalid. Real-world military aircraft belong to the military -- fighter pilots don't own them. They also cost millions of dollars each, which equates to decades of labor. As a result, they're in short supply and are guarded very carefully. Contrast to Vendetta, where military aircraft are personally owned by the individual soldiers and their price is equivalent to a couple minutes worth of labor. Completely different.

Not that I have a problem with applying penalties to people caught flying ships they shouldn't. I'm all for that.