The game really could use more credit sinks and making credits with cap ships is absurdly easy matter a fact it's a little fucking busted but whatever I'm getting ahead of myself.

Conq stations too while I'm at it.

Downside is this would probably negatively affect new guilds that want to gain a foothold in grey space but that's late-game content as far as I'm concerned.

The only way I could be ok with this, is if everyone's credits were zeroed out. Otherwise this just pulling up the ladder after achieving credit wealth. Old timers sitting on billions of credits could just leverage their immense wealth to reload while newer players would have to be much more careful.

I'm all for credits getting zero'd out that said I can't imagine that'll garner much praise from returning players...

If this is perceived as pulling up the ladder the fix is simple, reloading in capships should cost twice as much for the capship owner and the normal rate for folks on user keys, capships don't come with any penalties at the moment and trivialize a bunch of in game activities including making shitloads of credits...

Unless there's a bunch of broke newbs running around with capships running about I really don't see how this change would disproportionately impact newer players.

Furthermore if some newb is really hurting for "free" repairs in your capship the solution is pretty trivial, there's rep guns and /givemoney.

Furthermore if some newb is really hurting for "free" repairs in your capship the solution is pretty trivial, there's rep guns and /givemoney.

I mean, if you are really looking for a credit sink, wouldn't givemoney work as well?

What about the idea of buying rearm & repair kits in cap-dock stations, that give one (or a limited number) or rearms/repairs per unit. That way players can still get the rearm/repair benefits but they need to do some inventory management. The kits could or could not count towards cargo space. Would also add some more planning to Unknown sector expeditions, since now you need to make sure you bring an appropriate amount of supplies for the players you want to support.

What about the idea of buying rearm & repair kits in cap-dock stations, that give one (or a limited number) or rearms/repairs per unit.

This is more aligned to what I've been planning. Basically, I was looking at having "repair nanites" be some kind of replenishable stored medium, a bit like "ammo" for repair guns and such.

But, more feedback on different tradeoffs and thoughts are still welcome. While this has been a part of my "big picture" for a long time, it wasn't really a near-term priority, and if people think there's a greater importance for it right now, then delineating why that is would be useful perspective as well.

yea everyone with no money, players who dont accumulate wealth and spend their time in combat all day will be A+ with everyone losing the wealth they have accumulated through years of dedication and work. the rest of us, not so much.

(why not come for our inventory next, since its easily valued at more than our credits in some cases)

we definitely need to be able to calculate our costs of operations so we can include the overhead spends in our player to player trade prices and tracking spends one repair at a time isnt going to be desirable. the nanite thing is a good idea because we can figure out how much its going to take to "fill our tank" as it were, and how much work gets done farming on that tank.

aint no noobs getting free repairs on capships. they will need to pay up and that money should go directly into the captains bank account. lmfao.

Absolutely no. The devs already removed a cappie's ability to farm sss. No. Just no.

Do you have feedback that is relevant to the suggestion? This is a forum for discussion, not a vote.

-1 to no free reps. Despite the constant args of caps being OP, they arent and free reps are a nice minimal perk. The glass freighter is already easy enough to kill.. Why make even more reasons for newer players to NOT build a capship? This would remove an incentive to build.
-1 to zero credits. Regardless of how many years vets have been here and the credits were "easy to get" for them, the newer players put in the grind to earn those credits honestly. Zero the accounts and watch your playerbase evaporate even more than it has in recent years. Resets never do any games good in the short term, and if youre trying to retain players this is not beneficial.
Both bad ideas IMO.

Zero the accounts and watch your playerbase evaporate even more than it has in recent years. Resets never do any games good in the short term, and if youre trying to retain players this is not beneficial.

Off the top of my head, I think there's only like a dozen or so people who have really extreme amounts of wealth?

Some of those people, but probably not all of them, likely made intensive use of bugs in the economy in order to generate their wealth.

Some of them have since been banned, as well.

I think zeroing all credits would be unhelpful, but there are alternatives: like just "clamping" the upper limit of credits at 1B, or doing some kind of one-time "buy-back" where those players get some compensation in Crystal or ship liveries or.. something. (Kinda sucks to give stuff to someone who may have actually exploited the game pretty badly, but, whatever).

And, before traders start screaming at me, I'm not claiming that I'm "going to do this" or anything like that, I'm just trying to contribute some information to a community-created topic on Suggestions.

People got unreasonably upset over the station pillaging idea, which was just intended as a discussion, and then said-angry-people kept muttering darkly long afterwards about how terrible I was, and I never actually did anything or put any of their stuff at risk.

So, traders, please do not "lose your shit" at me over my mentioning the idea of doing a buy-back or putting a cap on credits or something.

personally i dont keep credits on my main outside of general use (around 10 to 20 mil usually), i disperse them among characters i dont play. whats to stop players from averaging their credits among alts prior to an upper limit? in this event, nothing has really changed they would still be in control of the same wealth.

i would definitely encourage players to burn their credits on stable commodities and materials, a product like sss will at very least hold its value.

sss value should have increased with the sector cap (but didnt) so i cant see why its value couldnt double if this becomes a thing. If you can find a lower 1cu storage volume item it would be better, im sure there are many.

commodities would ensure you have station sales, over time, vs relying on players to liquidate your sss.

if a "buy back" means zeroing credits first i cant see anything short of a trident being of value to me, but if it means everything over the ceiling, it doesnt effect me at all due to keeping credits in various locations already.

i would definitely encourage players to burn their credits on stable commodities and materials, a product like sss will at very least hold its value.

So people would suddenly start spending their credits on items. The end result would mean everything item would be a potential credit sink; fulfilling this suggestion. This sounds like a good idea.

personally i dont keep credits on my main outside of general use (around 10 to 20 mil usually), i disperse them among characters i dont play. whats to stop players from averaging their credits among alts prior to an upper limit? in this event, nothing has really changed they would still be in control of the same wealth.

Nothing, in terms of spreading credits. Although (with items) there is a storage tradeoff, where you are billed a recurring fee for items, that you aren't for credits. So, there is a "credit sink" in that case.

If there were a "hard" limit on credits, it would become inconvenient after awhile. But that's not really what I was mentioning, more just "zeroing to 1B" for extreme-wealth characters.

if a "buy back" means zeroing credits first i cant see anything short of a trident being of value to me

Well, it's more like something applicable in aggregate to give some sense of returned value in a one-time tradeoff. It isn't expected to be perfect for everyone. But, I think all the extreme-wealth people probably have capships; although perhaps additional parts would be seen to have some value?

but if it means everything over the ceiling, it doesnt effect me at all due to keeping credits in various locations already.

Having things spread across locations, or characters, or accounts, or accounts-used-by-VPN, or anything else wouldn't matter in terms of our calculating an aggregated, total "ceiling". It's reasonable to assume we probably know what is connected. That's why I said "dozen or so people who have really extreme amounts of wealth" and not "characters with credits".

So people would suddenly start spending their credits on items. The end result would mean everything item would be a potential credit sink; fulfilling this suggestion. This sounds like a good idea.

That would at least put things into "play" in terms of being impacted by the economy. But, it would likely expose people to perceived fluctuations in item value.

I've been warning for a long time that there'll probably be an eventual deflation in capship-components in the player economy, due to changes in the economic implementation, and funds available to newer players.

the buying of goods isnt a credit sink at all, its simply storing credits in another medium for future reclaimation after the cataclysm, and likely at a profit.

this wouldnt be useful for extreme wealth players to reatin their entire wealth, its for everyone to retain some of their credits. it would likely take at least 60 stations to store even a billion credits below rent in commodities hehe, little bit of work...

point is, its only truly zeroing people who have little to begin with, i think smart people will spend as much as possible before trading their credits for compensation unless its one amazing package.

i would consider extreme wealth to be in the 20 bil range. thats not to say there arent characters with more, and even then wealth is subjective.. if i have a billion credits and most people have 50 million, they might view that as extreme wealth.. which leads me into:

i have a strange feeling this is all more about classes within the game, where its of no consequence for those with, to take losses in combat to those without and attrition as it were, but i also feel within a short period of time the pecking order will return to exactly what it was, the ratios might be smaller but still high enough that it doesnt matter..

things would have to get very expensive or have limited supply, before it ever matters. capships for example could either be made ridiculously expensive to replace, or just have a truly high cooldown on them.. depending on their cost it could take hours or even days of trading to replace them if you had nothing, heavy handed, vs a high cooldown, which just keeps them out of play which i think is the true goal here.

may be im getting off topic, but i dont think the initial post was clear enough to define the parameters of this thread. :)

point is, its only truly zeroing people who have little to begin with, i think smart people will spend as much as possible before trading their credits for compensation unless its one amazing package.

I guess I'm not really following you? I don't think I'm making the same assumptions as you are.

If we actually decided to do something like this, we could just as easily level-set wealth, as opposed to simply credits. Then it wouldn't matter how the assets were stored. Ships, or addons, or tradable goods, or craftable goods, or credits. We could assess the value of any given account inventory in aggregate. (Again, not claiming we "should" or "will" or anything, just saying, this has never had to be purely based on "credits").

i have a strange feeling this is all more about classes within the game, where its of no consequence for those with, to take losses in combat to those without and attrition as it were, but i also feel within a short period of time the pecking order will return to exactly what it was, the ratios might be smaller but still high enough that it doesnt matter..

Why would the "pecking order" return so quickly? Again, a lot of the "extreme" wealth tended to be generated at times when there were, say, unreported 1-jump trade routes that generated massive profit with no downward limits on price with route usage (basically: bugs). As far as I know, there isn't anything like that anymore.

As you say, the concept of "extreme wealth" can be subjective. Credits are (intentionally) not that hard to come by in VO. But, I also don't see anyone generating 20B credits on the current economy.

I do agree, though, that this is a bit of a "perceptual" issue. Some players have a sense of the game being "unfair" because "old vets have lots of credits". But, I don't think they realize how small this group of ultra-wealthy players really is. Like I think the wealthiest person in the game hasn't played in like 14 years.

may be im getting off topic, but i dont think the initial post was clear enough to define the parameters of this thread. :)

I agree, the topic is pretty vague, so I've been kinda spitballing and going along with it. The underlying issue here does not seem to be "free reloads" so much as "some people have more in-game wealth than others".

Ironically, I don't think free reloads have any meaningful impact on the small set of extremely wealthy players. It would probably mostly hurt people who don't have a lot of credits. (But, I do get the idea of added "sinks" to prevent future explosions of wealth).

the order will return to what it was simply because it is what it is.. people with wealth tend to be ambitious and thats not going to change, they dont stumble upon their credits by luck.

theres lots of players who dont ever engage in money making unless its absolutely necessary, then there are others who engage in it just to do it, to some its never enough.. and thats fine.

sure it might be difficult to make 20 billion from scratch right this very second, its still what i would personally consider to be extreme wealth.

free or paid reloads dont matter one single bit.. having a station on hand is what matters; time matters.

you can have a trillion credits but if you cant buy what you want to buy, who cares? a 12 hour cooldown on capships, or a two per day limit, people wouldnt be able to infinitely deploy assets. if someone wanted to try to take another person down, their work to do so might actually be meaningful and their skill would be useful.

im not a skilled player, im all for being able to deploy infinite assets knowing that i can either bankrupt credits, or bankrupt available time to continue the battle. it makes no difference who "won" the fight if im still here doing what i set out to do and you cant afford to fight me anymore. call it what you want, ill take it as a win.

players with high skill level arent concerned about others being able to buy infinite light ships, but a low level player can easily shrug off a solo adversary with their capship and at this point, actually flying around in space.. thats what you see.. capship capship capship.. we can build goliaths in three days with a small handful of ships so everyone serious about playing has at least one.

to be clear, im not pushing for higher capship cooldowns, but id sooner see that than people mucking around with our finances for no reason other than to do it. the idea that minor repair credits even at high frequency is going to impact players with money is hilarious at best.

why's everyone assume vets are bleeding money, i only got about 50 mil

Also the pillaging idea was a great idea

I would be very upset if my wealth was zeroed out.
What is mine is mine. I worked for it. While you were shooting others I was trading.
my record for wealth creation is 50 million credits in one 7 day period. Wealth creation is a aspect of this game that I really like.
Seems kinda communistic to want to take other players wealth.
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