Most timers in the game run down in in-game time. TempKoS, mutes, Attack-without-factional-repurcussions, etc. However, station rent is charged even on time spent offline. The problem this causes is that if people take a little break from VO with station rent, they return to a lot of lost credits and, if they're a crystal player, almost no crystals left. And there doesn't seem to be any advantage of the existing system. Therefore, the suggestion:

Make station rent charge in in-game time rather than real time. To make sure it doesn't just make station rent cheaper overall, the rent for time spent online could be higher. For example, what is charged currently for a week of real time, could be charged for 48 hours of online time.

This also makes sense to discourage afk-ing, since it means incurring additional station rent for basically just sitting and doing nothing.

-1 we all know this is a crystal sinkhole

-1 you are under no obligation to pay for more storage. Just move your items to other stations. Also, after a certain number of months of inactivity in game, you already stop getting charged.

-1

For example, what is charged currently for a week of real time, could be charged for 48 hours of online time.

This also makes sense to discourage afk-ing, since it means incurring additional station rent for basically just sitting and doing nothing.

I guarantee it will not do that and will only serve to hurt crystal players even more than before while doing nothing to premium players. If I were on crystal and literally knew every second I spent in game would cause my rent to go up, and possibly go higher than before, I would just not log in unless I had a very specific reason to do so, and would probably just play less in general because I'm getting punished for it.

Discouraging players from logging in seems like a very bad idea.