I know the previous discussion went awry but I have thought of a variation that wouldn't change the current system much, but would promote more fights for stations. Got some inspiration from sids post on charging for R/Rs.

The station inventory essentially gets divided into two portions. You have a secure inventory, that works exactly as the current inventory. You get the same base storage, and you don't lose any items when the station is lost.

You get a second inventory, called the common storage/marketplace(not shared with other players, but can be viewed). You can only store commodities and addons(no manufacturable components). This storage CAN be looted. Goods can be moved into this inventory any time, but you have to wait some time before they can be moved back to your secure storage(after moving them in for the first time). You also get substantially less storage per person(say 1k cu). Your goods also get listed on a marketplace once moved here, available for purchase by anyone who can dock at the station. You can only set the price atleast 0.y times the average system price for the goods. No upper limit.

The station charges a non-zero %of the listed price, decided by the station conqueror. The sale tax gets credited to the common storage of the conqueror, and the remainder goes to the seller immediately. The bought goods also get transferred to the buyers secure storage immediately. In short, the conquerors collected tax and players items on the marketplace cannot be moved to their secure storage for some time, till say a few hours have passed.

This duration provides a window for attackers to attempt to claim this storage. When a station changes hands, all goods and money become available for the conqueror to move into their secure storage, if they manage to hold the station for a set amount of time. If successful, they keep everything.

Some pros:
- You get station looting, without making it a huge pain for a lot of players.
- You get a marketplace.
- More station fights, and make them worth fighting for.
- Potential earnings from taxes.

Some cons:
- You get a marketplace, pirates hate this. The proposed system would let them get a chance to snipe the tax these trades made however. We could also have the market shut and lockdown(thus preventing trades)if an attack is detected, though I'm not sure how an attack could be properly classified.

Some reasonings:

- The market(goods + money) is viewable, to let people spy on them, sniff for trades, and organize attacks when the time is right.
- No manufacturable components, because they don't have any system prices yet.
- A small available common storage, to prevent people from moving large volumes of goods easily.
- A tax, to let people who fought for the station recoup their losses, and let potential aggressors make money.
- Enforced limits for listing prices and tax rates, to prevent people from bypassing the tax and gaining a free way to move goods.
- Have the aggressors hold the station for some time before being able to claim the loot, this prevents them from catching the defenders unaware and give them some time to mount a counter.

I have tried combining 2 very hated ideas into something more digestable. I have probably over looked some loophole, so please critic this. Station fights have become a bit stale and need something new.

Let me preface this by saying I'm not against there being some level of threat involved with the use of the conquerable stations beyond the loss of access.

The biggest problem with this suggestion is not that item loss may be unpalatable, but rather that item loss through this mechanism is largely out of the control of the individual. I'm all for mechanics that drive conflict, but nobody wants to come back after going to sleep and/or work to find they have lost expensive or hard to replace items because nobody was available to defend a station. Removing control from a player is one of the last things that should be done.

A major problem, in my opinion, surrounding conquerable stations or any large scale conflict is the imbalanced nature of the conflict. By this I mean that, both sides having equal skill, the winner is the last side to get bored or leave. Without some mechanism to decide a winner outside of people being able to stick around, people are left with the threat of loss with with almost no recourse. Especially when you consider that some station attacks are completely unopposed.

I also don't believe this is the way to implement a marketplace, but that's a topic for another thread.

- You get station looting, without making it a huge pain for a lot of players.
Pain is very subjective, and often associated with loss of time. Not everyone has the time to mine 1k ore and transport over and over and I don't believe the game is well-situated at this time to support such losses. The argument can be (and has been) made that people could just use capships, since there are so many, one could potentially be made available. However, I don't believe that capships should be required to get capships, unless we're talking about upgrading to the next tier -- of as yet unavailable capship.

- More station fights, and make them worth fighting for.
Stations need more purpose to make them worth fighting for, before trying to implement some sort of item loss mechanic. This would most likely come in the form of expanded manufacturing.

- You get a marketplace, pirates hate this. The proposed system would let them get a chance to snipe the tax these trades made however.
A well-positioned marketplace would actually be a boon to players interested in interrupting trade. Keep in mind that not all aggressors are pirates. However, restricting access to the marketplace to those with access to the station prevents players from even having a chance to regain their lost items. This, once again, removes control from the player.

Could this be a viable mechanic at some point? Definitely.
Is the game at a place where it should be allowed? I don't think so.

Ultimately, while I don't believe this should be implemented for the existing conquerable stations, perhaps it would be something worth applying to player-owned stations.

The biggest problem with this suggestion is not that item loss may be unpalatable, but rather that item loss through this mechanism is largely out of the control of the individual. I'm all for mechanics that drive conflict, but nobody wants to come back after going to sleep and/or work to find they have lost expensive or hard to replace items because nobody was available to defend a station.

The original thread included a time-lock concept, preventing immediate looting. This was originally only stated in "hours" (although I was thinking "a lot of hours" when I wrote that), but later in the thread was more specifically stated to the idea of days, weeks or months.

The idea of the mechanic was that people would not "come back from sleep / work" and find their hard-earned items missing. But rather, that they would learn their items were threatened and might be engaged in trying to organize a re-take of the station.

Similarly, people who had not played for extended periods of time were going to be automatically excluded from risk of theft, much as they already are from excessive station-storage rental charges (currently 6 months of inactivity).

Various other modifications were also proposed on that thread, including the concept of different tiers of the conquered inventory slowly becoming at-risk over an extended period of time (after a conquest), or only a percentage of the total contents (over time), etc.

Now, obviously, the play-time availability to any given player is very personal. As someone who works long hours and has little free time, I certainly understand that. At the same time, it seems like there's probably some level of "progressive threat" that is palatable to a reasonable cross-section of people. Like, I dunno, what if people had two weeks to re-take the station, and avoid losing anything?

The OP here modifies the proposal with (essentially) a "zero-risk" and an "at-risk" inventory division, with benefits (marketplace) for the at-risk part of inventory. The same time-constraint concepts, from above, could be applied to any at-risk inventory, and would have some mitigating factor for the "loss of control".

Ultimately, though, the challenge of the previous thread was not anything related to logical merits of different ideas, but rather that some players were unwilling to read the thread, and were very reactionary based solely on their pessimistic assumption that all their content would be instantly stolen. You can't really talk to people who have their mind made up, there's no room for discussion or interpretation or nuance.

Hopefully this thread fares better.

Overall, I like the idea.

The station charges a non-zero %of the listed price, decided by the station conqueror. The sale tax gets credited to the common storage of the conqueror, and the remainder goes to the seller immediately.

I would change that to 'station owner'. Station owners should be able to set a tax for items sold on the station marketplace to cover the cost of maintaining the station.

While I'll agree a conqueror should be able to loot the market fully or to a limited degree, I think the incentive should be for them to not do so. Perhaps a discount on all purchases made by authorized individuals. After all, for the marketplace to be successful, sellers would have to make more than they risk losing.

I don't like the exception of manufacturable items. Set a minimum price for each item if necessary. It doesn't have to be pushed out to all stations.

I do like the cu limit. I'd go lower, personally.

I don't support the argument of benefiting the conqueror as the rationale for the marketplace. But that's just a nitpick on my part. I would provide the same benefits to whoever owns the station at the time items are put on the marketplace.

-1 definitely need more conquerable stations first or some kind of storage crates that are manufactured. I think it's too easy to just target these 3 stations repeatedly.

On reflection, I would question placing a marketplace in the conquerable stations. Since the primary purpose of the stations is building a goliath or trident, is potentially drastically reducing the work required in keeping with the goals the manufacturing requirements were set to?

what draugath said.

-1 to this in existing conq stations.

-1 What Greenwall said about what draugath said.

-1 what csgno1 said about greenwall said bout what draugth said

what draugath said. -1 to this in existing conq stations.

-1 What Greenwall said about what draugath said.

Eh, so, draugath said a bunch of things, but let's look at this one:

Stations need more purpose to make them worth fighting for, before trying to implement some sort of item loss mechanic. This would most likely come in the form of expanded manufacturing.

A risk of item loss is literally a motivation to make them worth fighting for. That's the whole concept.

People think the conquerable stations were made to allow people to craft things? No.

Craftable things were added to the conquerable stations, specifically to test conquest mechanics of stations.

Adding crafted stuff is relatively easy, but expanding a galaxy around conquest-mechanics is quite challenging.

But now the ownership of the stations has largely stabilized. And people accept "the status quo" as "the norm, and as it should be". But it's only that way to aid testing of a mechanic, which is not really being served by the relative stability.

One of the core contentions from the prior thread is "why would you want to create such upheaval in guild politics?@!#" Which, again, seems a little obtuse. Upheaval was literally the point. Creating cause for conflict. Or, as draugath put it: "Stations need more purpose to make them worth fighting for".

I think it's more palatable to create risk over a positive aspiration, like people conquering a station to be able to build content, which is why I started out with positive motivators instead of risk-based factors. But, that doesn't mean the latter should be ignored.

Nor does it mean that we should pretend like "the status quo" is somehow "normal". Many things in VO are ephemeral; this is a 20-year-old game, one the core thesis of which is "the only certainty is change".

So, I ask again, what about time-locks and inventory-percentage-risks and other mitigating factors to possible loss? Everyone just saying "-1, what draugath said" isn't useful to me. It provides no more value than the prior thread.

We're here to discuss the parameters by which such a concept might be more palatable.

None of which guarantees that I will implement it that way, anyway. But the process of discussion gives a voice to perspective, and helps illuminate nuances in the situation that might otherwise be hidden.

(Even if those nuances are ultimately criticisms, as long as they're critical of design concepts and not personal individuals, and give some rational reasoning as to why).

+1
I think the OP has struck a pretty good balance between traders/manufacturers and conquerors. Any manufacturer with decent inventory management can very well afford to keep their storage in a conquerable station limited to 10,000 cu. The only reason you'd want more than that is for some kind of mass-manufacturing, which honestly isn't sensible or efficient.

Some suggestions on the OP
1. The trade+risk system should apply to all rented storage, up to 50,000 cu.
2. Station owners can decide rent cost (in credits. Crystals remain as current)
3. Station owners also decide how much of a brokerage is charged on trades using the risky inventory
4. Station owners can provide for "safer" storage if they put in the effort. Certain mission trees might enable them to unlock limited "safe storage" slots, which could be rented out to other players for a fee. All rent from "safe storage" slots would be transferred over to the new owners if a station is conquered, but the inventory in these slots would remain intact
5. Manufacturable items should be tradeable in the risky storage. Since the holder of the inventory can set whatever price they want anyway, it shouldn't be a problem. Note that the tax owners charge on trades should be over and above the price set by the seller, and the total with tax should be displayed to the buyer. So the owner suddenly raising taxes doesn't wipe out the seller.

Draugath - The biggest problem with this suggestion is not that item loss may be unpalatable, but rather that item loss through this mechanism is largely out of the control of the individual...

It's not entirely out of your control. You can opt to not to use the secondary storage entirely, and you won't be affected by the suggestion.

The small risk you take is when attempting to exchange goods with other players. Realistically the "marketplace", which I agree is not a true market, would never be used for people to just put items in and go away. It would be used for instantaneous trades. Players in the game are too risk averse to leave their items exposed, and would rather opt to immediately trade with someone in the sector. You only risk your stuff being stolen if the station gets attacked during execution of trades.

The much larger risk is around whatever money the trade made for the owner. This is not an asset that was previously available to them. It's an additional income that they might lose.

Draugath - Stations need more purpose to make them worth fighting for, before trying to implement some sort of item loss mechanic. This would most likely come in the form of expanded manufacturing.
I agree, but as someone with no interest in manufacturing, station fights are only a credit sink. With a large amount of conflict revolving around them, it should also cater to people other than manufacturers.

Draugath - A well-positioned marketplace would actually be a boon to players interested in interrupting trade. Keep in mind that not all aggressors are pirates...
Addressed this above. People have also opposed a true risk free marketplace, even in conquerable stations.

Death Fluffy - While I'll agree a conqueror should be able to loot the market fully or to a limited degree, I think the incentive should be for them to not do so. Perhaps a discount on all purchases made by authorized individuals.
I agree, this would also make players use it as a true market than just for instant trades.

Death Fluffy - I don't support the argument of benefiting the conqueror as the rationale for the marketplace. But that's just a nitpick on my part...
I'm not sure I understand, by conqueror I meant whoever captures the station. With multiple owners it becomes difficult to figure whose inventory the trade tax goes to.

Sid123 - Manufacturable items should be tradeable in the risky storage. Since the holder of the inventory can set whatever price they want anyway, it shouldn't be a problem...
There's a minimum price that would be required here. The idea is to prevent people from bypassing the tax by listing items for 1c, and transferring credits outside of the market. Maybe the owner could decide the prices for these items.

This suggestion wasn't aimed to be something that could fit into the game immediately anyway. It's to bring back discussion on a very contentious topic. The marketplace is a benefit to entice people into ~maybe losing their stuff, and could be replaced entirely with something better. Players will oppose a change in the status quo unless they get a return. I don't mind the thread being hijacked on discussions around alternatives for these returns and other systems for inventory theft.

Incarnate, I didn't see the original thread when it first came around and the lack of a link to it in the original thread didn't help for reference.

As I said in my original post, I'm not opposed to such things as this. However, I also wound up not following my own advice, which is to look at a suggestion not in the current scope of the game, but in the scope of the game to come.

I'd say the suggestion on it's own is pretty good. I feel that the marketplace idea needs to be fleshed out a lot more and not be so restrictive.

I spent time off-and-on over a few hours writing this, so a few of the things might have been answered in other posts since Incarnate's last post.

--- Re-evaluation --------------------------------------
Lets look at this from the perspective that it will happen in one form or another.

First, I still think there needs to be more incentive to take and hold the stations. However, that's not central to the topic.

Looting
When it comes to looting, both systems are kind of vague on how ownership would transfer. I think this is an important detail to hammer out. People are obviously going to want a chance to reclaim or retain their property. I think that if the owner of an item is on the current key their items should not be available for looting after a period of waiting has elapsed. This was actually brought up in both posts. I may have read it wrong, but I don't think Incarnate's original suggestion was very explicit about this.

It was stated that the marketplace storage could be looted. How would this affect posted trades? I think posted trades should remain active until such time as they are sold or the the items are looted. If the controlling interest decides to loot the marketplace, it should probably wipe out all trades not currently owned by someone on the current key.

The Marketplace
The idea of a marketplace at the conquerable stations doesn't appeal to me, only because I like the image of Odia M-14 being a bustling hub of traffic and buy/sell trade offers.

Within the scope of the suggestion I think it might be too limiting. The point of a marketplace is to get items into the hands of those that want them. Why limit the types of items that could be sold or looted from here? Most capship parts are already valued in excess of 100k, it makes sense to start out just setting an arbitrary lower threshold for such items, at least until a better system becomes available. I think the greatest benefit to any marketplace is allowing people with differing play-times to interact with the player economy.

When items are placed into the marketplace storage and posted for trade it's mentioned that they should be held for a minimum amount of time before they can be transferred back into secure storage. What should this be? I'm a little torn on how this might be implemented.
* Trades posted with a specified duration and automatic transfer back to secure storage in the event of no sale.
* Minimum posting time with manual transfer to secure storage.

The first option would remove some anxiety around being able to reclaim posted items.
Either option would still be subject to whatever looting rules are decided upon.

Should the tax be a listing fee or a sales tax?
* Listing Fee - benefits the current station controlling interest.
* Sales Tax - benefits the new station controlling interest. This of course is assuming that posted trades remain active for a period of time after the station is captured.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sid123 said:
Manufacturable items should be tradeable in the risky storage. Since the holder of the inventory can set whatever price they want anyway, it shouldn't be a problem...
Aryko said:
There's a minimum price that would be required here. The idea is to prevent people from bypassing the tax by listing items for 1c, and transferring credits outside of the market. Maybe the owner could decide the prices for these items.

I'm opposed to relying on dump-and-scoop for large quantity item transfers, so I don't see a problem with someone posting an item for 1cr. An alternative or additional factor in the tax could be the size of the item. Just because you want to post it for 1cr, doesn't mean it won't still cost more for one party or the other.

--- Off-topic ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Incarnate, you quoted the below from an even earlier thread in your thread linked above.
It's hard to talk some people into attacking a station when they think it's just an expensive furball with no end in sight and no benefit.

This mirrors part of my own feelings surrounding the conquerable stations. I myself lost interest in even trying to do anything with them because that's all it really was. After spending multiple hours in a single assault (4 or 5 people on each side) and then losing it because our people either got bored or left, is kind of demoralizing. There's no real way to beat back the opposition, and ultimately someone will take or hold the stations. Not because of strategy or numbers or skill, but because someone could or would stay longer. Plus there just wasn't enough to them to make it worthwhile subjecting myself to that over and over.

One addendum to my thoughts on the marketplace. Perhaps my biggest opposition to having the marketplace in the conquerable stations is that it naturally excludes new players. Yes, they could get a key, but first they'd need to find out about the market and the stations, and then they'd need to track down someone who has a key to give them.

Death Fluffy - I don't support the argument of benefiting the conqueror as the rationale for the marketplace. But that's just a nitpick on my part...
I'm not sure I understand, by conqueror I meant whoever captures the station. With multiple owners it becomes difficult to figure whose inventory the trade tax goes to.

Perhaps I'm reading the op incorrectly. My thinking is that if I put goods up for sale under owner x and the station is not taken after the set amount of time, owner x now has the option to loot the inventory I put up and that the taxes / looting should not be dependent on the station changing owners.

Perhaps I'm reading the op incorrectly. My thinking is that if I put goods up for sale under owner x and the station is not taken after the set amount of time, owner x now has the option to loot the inventory I put up and that the taxes / looting should not be dependent on the station changing owners.

The owner under which you listed will not be able to touch your inventory. They only benefit from the tax on your trades. Only the new owner would be able to loot your stuff if they wish to. You stand to lose inventory only if the station changes hands.

The set amount of time is to force the seller to wait before they can delist their items and move stuff back to secure storage. This is to prevent them from moving their stuff to security before they log off.

This I disagree with. I don't think my position affects me agreeing with the overall intent of the op. But I believe that if we are going to make this change, that ownership shouldn't matter. All owners would have the same incentives and opportunities.

My problem with the op lies in the motivation for players putting part of their inventory up for sale. I see this as a shortcut to building a trident, a way to game the transfer of goods between players as well as potentially too risky to have a real marketplace vs an inventory transfer hack.

That said, I'm not sure that the dissenters are taking into account that this would be inventory voluntarily put at risk or that realistically in my opinion would not increase the frequency of station battles. It might actually result in longer periods of being under the same ownership.

Who is meant to benefit from this proposal?

There is already a marketplace for manufactured goods and people put in a lot of time and effort into obtaining them whether it’s mining ores, farming SSS and neural nodules or earning credits to trade or just build the parts yourself.

Not great if after doing all that some twats come along and steal it while you sleep because they are too lazy to put on time for it.

I'm not entirely opposed to the pillaging of conquest stations. I definitely agree with a time-lock based parameter. However, I'd like to throw in a potential twist to this, and I'll paint it in a scenario.

Player A claims the station @ 9am. They deposit 3 reinforced bulkheads, 2 fused composite platings. They then leave to go gather more stuff.

Player B comes in, assaults station. They end up claiming the station @ 9:30am. This initiates two things: The time-lock for ability to steal, but also an auction-esque mechanic. The manufactured items go up for sale. At the end of the time lock period, the new station conqueror has the option to sell the item to the current highest bidder or claim it for their own.

I believe this time lock should be a pretty sizeable duration, the lowest I think that would be reasonable is 8 or 12 hours. This would somewhat mitigate the ability for theft to happen during someone sleeping. This could honestly be as long as 1 or 2 days.

Regarding the 'auction' portion, this auction should be accessible from somewhere beyond the station, giving ALL players the option to bid. I don't have a solid suggestion on where to set this access from, unless it become a menu of its own that can be accessed from any station?

I do also like the idea of a limited secure storage. I feel like 1000cu would probably be close to the right size. This would allow you to secure a *finished* component. You would not have nearly enough to secure all of the dependencies for building one.

Not great if after doing all that some twats come along and steal it while you sleep because they are too lazy to put on time for it.

This is the kind of response we'd prefer to not have. It shows you didn't bother to actually read the thread, and aren't really interested in discussing the topic.

I believe this time lock should be a pretty sizeable duration, the lowest I think that would be reasonable is 8 or 12 hours.

I just want to point out that my earlier response on this thread suggested two weeks:

what if people had two weeks to re-take the station, and avoid losing anything?

The reason being, people often live busy lives, and it may not be reasonable to expect someone to respond within only 8 or 12 hours. Let alone be able to set aside time for a re-conquest of a defended station.

Additionally, some people have massive amounts of accumulated content at the conquerable station, in which they've invested a lot of time and energy. Contrary to popular belief, I've never lacked empathy for that issue (I literally called it out in the original-thread OP); I was just unsure what level of balance would be considered reasonable (where "reasonable" is also not "the game should stay the same and never evolve"), hence my creation of the original thread.

This drives to both the time-lock length, and the idea of limiting secure storage to only 1000cu. If the common-case total storage usage of a intense trader individual is well above 1000cu, then saying that anything above that should be sold at auction on the next conquest is a bit unreasonable, and giving them 8 hours (where they might not be available for days, or weeks) would be similarly impractical for them to respond.

The overall concept of an automated Auction is interesting, however?

Basically, the point here is to create a secondary motivation for engagement and station "ownership". Currently, we have the positive motivator that is "to manufacture new content", but this adds a negative motivator "to retain existing content and goals". One doesn't need an kind of immediate action to create this motivator. A timelock can easily be weeks (or perhaps even months) and still provide that value, as it creates "the psychological specter of disaster", and any possibility of that is likely to create a motivation to engagement.

When it comes to looting, both systems are kind of vague on how ownership would transfer. I think this is an important detail to hammer out.

Basically, the concept was that if someone was on a key that was used to re-conquer the station, they would not lose anything, as long as the station was re-conquered before the time-lock expired (most of the iteration after that was what the time-lock meant, and were there different periodic time-locks that expired to expose an ever-increasing percentage of inventory, and other concepts).

But, yes, there are lots and lots of additional details and specifics around that. However, we didn't really get that far, as the core issue was.. simply how reactionary some people were to "any idea" of the change.

I think the most core, fundamental issue is simply dealing with what re-conquest time is palatable to people who have significant existing inventories at the station that would be put at-risk (and, again, "don't change the game" is not an answer).

I think that's probably also the core for this OP as well, even though the inventory being made available on this system is entirely voluntary and has zero impact on risk of existing stored content. It appears that the psychological perception of potential loss is sufficiently anxiety-inducing that people are still reacting to that concept (like IToken, above), despite the fact that it would be freaking voluntary.

My problem with the op lies in the motivation for players putting part of their inventory up for sale. I see this as a shortcut to building a trident, a way to game the transfer of goods between players as well as potentially too risky to have a real marketplace vs an inventory transfer hack.

So, I think there's merit to discussion around that; and my first question is to ask.. how big of a jump is it to go from "pre-packaged capship kits" to an inventory transfer like this, and how negative is the impact?