Can player-owned space stations ever happen?

[anikaiful]

EvE's crafting system and economy? Put that in any game please. Even my Stealthy FPS shooters like Deus Ex. I don't care. It's the best crafting and economy put in any video game to date. Every developer could learn some very valuable lessons by studying these concepts as they are practiced in EvE in great detail. There is no shame in learning from their hard earned lessons.

Well, the crafting system of EvE is good for EvE and EvE alone - it fits the scope of EvE like a glove, but it's not so grand when put into context and/or scope which isn't EvE-like overall.

 

[Jools]

rented hangar as a place to call home - Yes
player owned stations - no

In my opinion the effort required to implement this feature well, heavily outfights the possible benefits even assuming the best case scenario.
I believe that this feature does not offer much in terms of game play, let alone game play that would fit Elite kind of space sim, and i think this thread somewhat proves it
There is a whole list of features that would benefit this game far more

I also believe multicrew to be a somewhat similar case. It sounds nice when we first hear it because of all the star trek we`ve watched and forget that in movies, the boring stuff which is 95% of a crewman`s life, gets cut out, but when you think about it and try to envision how the gameplay would actually look in detail you start hitting walls everywhere, the biggest one being that 99% people will want to be the captain most of their playtime. Some will say... i wan`t to be an engineer, others will say I wan`t to be a gunner... but you just can not possibly build gameplay for those roles that would provide occupation for a player for extended playsessions... it only sounds good on paper

I`m sorry for this little offtopic at the end

 

[Kristov]

For all of the fear and vitriol surrounding the game from people who don't even play it, EvE does have some good features that I wouldn't mind ANY other game cannibalizing.

EvE's crafting system and economy? Put that in any game please. Even my Stealthy FPS shooters like Deus Ex. I don't care. It's the best crafting and economy put in any video game to date. Every developer could learn some very valuable lessons by studying these concepts as they are practiced in EvE in great detail. There is no shame in learning from their hard earned lessons.

EvE's ship, loot and module balance (Pre mid-2014, I've heard they've been doing some weird stuff lately that has the players gnashing their teeth and pulling their hair)......

.......
.............

PleasefortheloveofeverythingsacredtogamingsomeoneatFrontiergoplayEvEandlearnhowtobalanceshipsPLEASEPLEASEPLEASE...... [cry][cry]

Missions in Eve are Meh. Don't bother taking anything from them.

Exploration in Eve has some key mechanics that if Frontier mimicked or copied outright would make Exploration in ED an absolute masterpiece.

Eve Online even does a better job of including story elements into the game than ED..... Nobody knows Eve Online for it's lore and world building, they know it for literally everything else about the game, yet they still have a leg-up on ED in this area when ED, which is supposed to be a primarily solo experience, should by all rights be leaps and bounds ahead of EvE in this regard.

The rest is a mixed bag. There are a lot of little pieces in Eve that get completely glossed over by the big picture and go unnoticed in that game because they are just one cog in the machine that if you were to take and drop them in ED it would blow everyone's minds.

I spent a whole year just learning about the game. Playing it was a secondary function, I was no-lifing it for 6-8 hours a day just soaking in all of the potential gameplay choices that I could engage in.

Sell it short for the occasional bad apple in the community over there. Feel free to complain about all of the mistakes that CCP has been making to drive away the player base in recent years, but if you think for one moment that Eve is a bad game you're a fool.

EVE does have a few things that would be nice to see, the economy, not one of them.

The economy in E: D works just fine, but you Windscreen, and so many others, are so used to the borked and broken economical models used in so many games, offline and online, that you literally can't see that fact.

E: D has over 20,000 systems inhabited by Humanity currently, and they are all no more than 2 hours away from each other at the most. There are thousands upon thousands of sources of ALL raw, processed and finished materials and goods in the bubble. With the exception of Rares, I can get ANYTHING from any one of thousands of different systems. So you can't control the flow of resources, it's literally impossible without hundreds of thousands of people all working together 24/7/365 to corner the market in anything. Rares can't even be cornered as FD made that impossible specifically to thwart any attempts at hydraulic despotism. We can't even corner the market on meta-alloys, there's too many sources of them that we know of, gods and FD only know how many sources of them we don't know of yet, but you can bet your ass there are more sources of them out there, simply because FD knows a hell of lot more about economics than most gamers do, as evidenced by them having a very well functioning intergalactic economy running in the game.

You and so many others keep thinking local market economics, which is what other games have always used, since it's the most widely misunderstood and abused one. You can practice hydraulic despotism to your heart's content, even when it shouldn't be possible, you can, because that's fun! Local market, hell even global markets, all rely on there being a finite source of materials and goods, and rely on someone being able to control those finite sources totally, hydraulic despotism at it's finest. That's impossible to do when there's thousands of sources all over the place, without, as I said, hundreds of thousands of players working 24/7/365 to get control of every single one of those sources. We have a well functioning intergalactic economic model in E: D, working exactly as it should, except for 1 little thing...prices fluctuate far too much, but that is actually logically consistent with the fact that markets don't share data, one of those things so many people whine about, remember? There's a reason they don't share that data that all of you local market gamers simply don't see. If they shared it, there'd be no price fluctuations anywhere, what you paid here would the be same as on the other end of the bubble, no difference at all. The laws of supply and demand work very differently when you have an essentially infinite supply and demand, there wouldn't be any differences in prices. I know this is rather messed up and wrong to some of you, but again, you aren't looking at this properly, you keep looking at with the broken framework other games have used. 2 hours from ANY source of raw, processed and finished materials, and all goods, anywhere in the bubble. Prices would not fluctuate, they would be static, especially if all stations shared data on their markets.

So, FD doesn't let the markets share their data, so the prices fluctuate, therefore trading can actually BE a successful career option. Otherwise, well, what's the point in buying Tin at 20c/t when you can't sell for anything but 20c/t? Trading wouldn't be profitable at all in and of itself, only missions for moving cargo would make you any profit. Mining would be profitable, since the cost of getting the raw materials is quickly offset by the prices you get for them, but moving those raw materials from A to B, on your own dime? You'd take a loss every trip, doesn't matter if it's tin or robotics or drugs or imperial slaves, the price you paid would be the price EVERYONE would pay. That's really how it SHOULD work, as the profit in trade isn't in buying when everyone knows what everyone is paying for something, it's in the manufacturing side. 2 hours from any 2 points at most in the bubble.....

 

[Windscreen Smudge]

EVE does have a few things that would be nice to see, the economy, not one of them.

The economy in E: D works just fine, but you Windscreen, and so many others, are so used to the borked and broken economical models used in so many games, offline and online, that you literally can't see that fact.

E: D has over 20,000 systems inhabited by Humanity currently, and they are all no more than 2 hours away from each other at the most. There are thousands upon thousands of sources of ALL raw, processed and finished materials and goods in the bubble. With the exception of Rares, I can get ANYTHING from any one of thousands of different systems. So you can't control the flow of resources, it's literally impossible without hundreds of thousands of people all working together 24/7/365 to corner the market in anything. Rares can't even be cornered as FD made that impossible specifically to thwart any attempts at hydraulic despotism. We can't even corner the market on meta-alloys, there's too many sources of them that we know of, gods and FD only know how many sources of them we don't know of yet, but you can bet your ass there are more sources of them out there, simply because FD knows a hell of lot more about economics than most gamers do, as evidenced by them having a very well functioning intergalactic economy running in the game.

You and so many others keep thinking local market economics, which is what other games have always used, since it's the most widely misunderstood and abused one. You can practice hydraulic despotism to your heart's content, even when it shouldn't be possible, you can, because that's fun! Local market, hell even global markets, all rely on there being a finite source of materials and goods, and rely on someone being able to control those finite sources totally, hydraulic despotism at it's finest. That's impossible to do when there's thousands of sources all over the place, without, as I said, hundreds of thousands of players working 24/7/365 to get control of every single one of those sources. We have a well functioning intergalactic economic model in E: D, working exactly as it should, except for 1 little thing...prices fluctuate far too much, but that is actually logically consistent with the fact that markets don't share data, one of those things so many people whine about, remember? There's a reason they don't share that data that all of you local market gamers simply don't see. If they shared it, there'd be no price fluctuations anywhere, what you paid here would the be same as on the other end of the bubble, no difference at all. The laws of supply and demand work very differently when you have an essentially infinite supply and demand, there wouldn't be any differences in prices. I know this is rather messed up and wrong to some of you, but again, you aren't looking at this properly, you keep looking at with the broken framework other games have used. 2 hours from ANY source of raw, processed and finished materials, and all goods, anywhere in the bubble. Prices would not fluctuate, they would be static, especially if all stations shared data on their markets.

So, FD doesn't let the markets share their data, so the prices fluctuate, therefore trading can actually BE a successful career option. Otherwise, well, what's the point in buying Tin at 20c/t when you can't sell for anything but 20c/t? Trading wouldn't be profitable at all in and of itself, only missions for moving cargo would make you any profit. Mining would be profitable, since the cost of getting the raw materials is quickly offset by the prices you get for them, but moving those raw materials from A to B, on your own dime? You'd take a loss every trip, doesn't matter if it's tin or robotics or drugs or imperial slaves, the price you paid would be the price EVERYONE would pay. That's really how it SHOULD work, as the profit in trade isn't in buying when everyone knows what everyone is paying for something, it's in the manufacturing side. 2 hours from any 2 points at most in the bubble.....

..........

BAHAHAHAHAHA!

No.

Raw goods in Eve are infinite, just like ED. The only thing finite in the economy is player time invested. This hydraulic despotism fantasy of yours is a fallacy.

Even Eve's NPC economy, which is just a granule of sand on the floor of the game's financial ocean, works better than ED's economy.

Except that analogy doesn't quite work. In order for it to work, the entire weight of that ocean would have to be held up by that one granule of sand. It's because Eve's NPC economy is rock solid that the player economy works so well.

I don't know what you think I said about how I think ED's economy should work, because I didn't say anything specific at all, so all I can do with the rest of your post is sit here and speculate about what you imagined I said and try to extrapolate from there to try and decipher what your post truly means, because at this point it's just a bunch of random nonsense that was thrown at me for no particular reason.


But despite that, I'd like to point out that what you've said is complete bunk. I'll point to a real world, current day analogy to help you understand why.

Go look at the current prices of industrial metals in both local and global markets. Steel, Copper, Magnesium, Aluminum, etc... and then go look at a 20 year history. You'll notice that right now metal prices are unreasonably low for the season in the United States, even globally. This is because Latin America and China are in the middle of a recession. They stop buying, the entire global economy gets hit, not just Venezuela, Brazil, China, etc.... which otherwise can be considered, on their industrial raw goods side, largely insular. These materials are in abundant supply, there has been no shortages of any of them in decades, so they can be roughly parallelized with your concept of what would happen if all goods were in infinite supply.


Actually let's provide two. [heart]

A few weeks ago all of the major players in the Oil industry met and agreed to cut back on production. Why? Because they were experiencing exactly the "bad" scenario that you described. Oil was in abundant supply, prices were dropping too low, and prices were stagnating at the bottom end and homogenizing across the global market. So what happens when this scenario occurs and an essential commodity market becomes saturated in every market? Businesses stop producing the commodity because, SURPRISE! It's not profitable. Thus artificial shortages are created and the market becomes dynamic again.

Sharing prices isn't a bugbear. Sorry. Having a 1-dimensional facade for an economic simulation is the problem.

 

[anikaiful]

..........

http://i.imgur.com/qIKR0Qt.gif

BAHAHAHAHAHA!

No.

Raw goods in Eve are infinite, just like ED. The only thing finite in the economy is player time invested. This hydraulic despotism fantasy of yours is a fallacy.

Even Eve's NPC economy, which is just a granule of sand on the floor of the game's financial ocean, works better than ED's economy.

Except that analogy doesn't quite work. In order for it to work, the entire weight of that ocean would have to be held up by that one granule of sand. It's because Eve's NPC economy is rock solid that the player economy works so well.

I don't know what you think I said about how I think ED's economy should work, because I didn't say anything specific at all, so all I can do with the rest of your post is sit here and speculate about what you imagined I said and try to extrapolate from there to try and decipher what your post truly means, because at this point it's just a bunch of random crap that was thrown at me for no particular reason.


But despite that, I'd like to point out that what you've said is complete bunk. I'll point to a real world, current day analogy to help you understand why.

Go look at the current prices of industrial metals in both local and global markets. Steel, Copper, Magnesium, Aluminum, etc... and then go look at a 20 year history. You'll notice that right now metal prices are unreasonably low for the season in the United States, even globally. This is because Latin America and China are in the middle of a recession. They stop buying, the entire global economy gets hit, not just Venezuela, Brazil, China, etc.... which otherwise can be considered, on their industrial raw goods side, largely insular. These materials are in abundant supply, there has been no shortages of any of them in decades, so they can be roughly parallelized with your concept of what would happen if all goods were in infinite supply.


Actually let's provide two. [heart]

A few weeks ago all of the major players in the Oil industry met and agreed to cut back on production. Why? Because they were experiencing exactly the "bad" scenario that you described. Oil was in abundant supply, prices were dropping too low, and prices were stagnating at the bottom end and homogenizing across the global market. So what happens when this scenario occurs and an essential commodity market becomes saturated in every market? Businesses stop producing the commodity because, SURPRISE! It's not profitable. Thus artificial shortages are created and the market becomes dynamic again.

Sharing prices isn't a bugbear. Sorry. Having a 1-dimensional facade for an economic simulation is the problem.

Just stop trying to use real-world analogues in any sort of comparisons. One planet is too local and small niche to even consider in numbers. Country X provides this, country Y provides that, country Z is in recession... so what? In the economy scale of ED's Bubble that'd do squat nothing, nobody'd even notice if country Z went bankrupt and blew themselves up.

 

[Windscreen Smudge]

Just stop trying to use real-world analogues in any sort of comparisons. One planet is too local and small niche to even consider in numbers.

That is a fallacy. Macro-economics scales infinitely because... Stick with me here.... It's Macro-Economics.

 

[anikaiful]

That is a fallacy. Macro-economics scales infinitely because... Stick with me here.... It's Macro-Economics.

*rolls eyes* - get out of the box you lurk and think in a bigger scale. Anyway, this pseudo-economic talk has gone way past the topic of the thread's title.

 

[Windscreen Smudge]

*rolls eyes* - get out of the box you lurk and think in a bigger scale. Anyway, this pseudo-economic talk has gone way past the topic of the thread's title.

Buddy I don't have a box anywhere near me, I'm sorry.

You guys have been bandying about all of these simplistic theories on how ED's economy works and why for so long that you've completely lost sight of the goal of making it a functioning model. The element that you guys have completely removed from the equation in your considerations is one of the biggest driving forces in any economic system.

Human error.

It does everything from causing a $.05/lb spike in the average price of sharp cheddar to making people millionaires overnight or crushing the budgets of entire countries in a matter of days. The "not sharing market data" theory that you've cooked up is actually an approximation of that human error, which causes market fluctuations in what would otherwise theoretically be a static market.

The problem with how Frontier have implemented their approximation in human error is that it only works on a micro scale, not macro.

What would happen if the Federation put an embargo on all systems affiliated with Pranav Antal? What would happen if the Empire decided to double down on their military manufacturing and needed all of the Painite they could lay their hands on?

We'll never know because ED's economy isn't capable of that kind of scale.

 

[Aewarin Jameson]

...

Points well made.

It's probably the reason why FD had in mind the "blow up" mini base that you could carry with you and 1-use deploy somewhere.

 

[anikaiful]

What would happen if the Federation put an embargo on all systems affiliated with Pranav Antal? What would happen if the Empire decided to double down on their military manufacturing and needed all of the Painite they could lay their hands on?

What would happen if Feds embargoed X? Nothing much - simply route the stuff elsewhere. On one planet such embargo does work, yes - but not when you have some tens of thousands of ways to simply ignore such an embargo attempt. If Empire thought to go hoarding all the Painite? I bet a whole lot of people would get super rich in matter of moments, but unless people were willing to shovel their wares that direction, it'd - again - do squat all. On large enough scale, what Feds or Empire or Alliance decides is quite irrelevant and localized.

 

[Windscreen Smudge]

What would happen if Feds embargoed X? Nothing much - simply route the stuff elsewhere. On one planet such embargo does work, yes - but not when you have some tens of thousands of ways to simply ignore such an embargo attempt.

Really? Because embargoes seem to work pretty well against entire countries with virtually non-existent borders.

Question: Why, if I eject my cargo and you scoop it, is it labelled stolen?

Answer: Because you lack the appropriate documentation to show that it was obtained legally.

Question: If I dock at a station with a load of goods from an embargoed system, why wouldn't this same lack of documentation likewise make my cargo illegal?

Answer: No reason, it's just as illegal. Either way it's black market goods.


Again, 1 dimensional thinking.

 

[anikaiful]

Really? Because embargoes seem to work pretty well against entire countries with virtually non-existent borders.

Question: Why, if I eject my cargo and you scoop it, is it labelled stolen?

Answer: Because you lack the appropriate documentation to show that it was obtained legally.

Question: If I dock at a station with a load of goods from an embargoed system, why wouldn't this same lack of documentation likewise make my cargo illegal?

Answer: No reason, it's just as illegal. Either way it's black market goods.


Again, 1 dimensional thinking.

Countries: again, you shoehorn large scale into a matchbox.

And those two Q/As have nothing to do with what you were initially talking about anyway.

 

[Windscreen Smudge]

Countries: again, you shoehorn large scale into a matchbox.

And those two Q/As have nothing to do with what you were initially talking about anyway.

Please provide a logical description of the differences between, say... North Korea... And the territory controlled by Archon Delaine that create the discrepancies that you believe would cause these simple concepts to function with one, and not the other.

For every difference you find strong, weak or imaginary, I will find 10 very strong similarities that show they have more in common than they have in disparity.

Edit: But I'll be doing it in a few hours, I have something to take care of in a few minutes.

 

[anikaiful]

Please provide a logical description of the differences between, say... North Korea... And the territory controlled by Archon Delaine that create the discrepancies that you believe would cause these simple concepts to function with one, and not the other.

For every difference you find strong, weak or imaginary, I will find 10 very strong similarities that show they have more in common than they have in disparity.

Edit: But I'll be doing it in a few hours, I have something to take care of in a few minutes.

For that discussion, make your own thread as such isn't really in topic with 'can player-owned space stations ever happen'. For stations I can say nothing but: certain could, but what purpose would they serve the current ones don't already serve (except for being a serious money sink).

 

[Windscreen Smudge]

For that discussion, make your own thread as such isn't really in topic with 'can player-owned space stations ever happen'. For stations I can say nothing but: certain could, but what purpose would they serve the current ones don't already serve (except for being a serious money sink).

They could be a cornerstone to build an entire cornucopia of interesting game mechanics around?

Kind of the same as saying "Why should we have spaceships in a space sim? Don't you just need stars and planets and stuff to simulate space?"

 

[anikaiful]

They could be a cornerstone to build an entire cornucopia of interesting game mechanics around?

And what sort of game mechanics would those be? I seriously can't see a thing they'd add beyond acting as a money sink. Before you say that they could do X, I'll just say that so could all the currently existing ones. Beyond creating a money sink (and a "hangout") player owned megastructures don't serve a true purpose.

 

[Windscreen Smudge]

And what sort of game mechanics would those be?

It's already halfway there, Frontier just need to flesh it out.

Player factions can become dominant in a system and become the controlling faction of a station.

The problem is.... That's it. That's all that happens. There's really no benefit to taking over a station. You can't do things like change the stations politics and affiliations, control it's commodities, move it's resource extraction sites, adjust the security, manage the budget, etc.... All of the fun little micromanagement games that a lot of people really get their jollies off engaging in and would add that element that many people say is missing from ED (including myself), Depth.

So if Frontier wanted player owned stations could already be a thing, and people wouldn't really complain because it would integrate well with what already exists, and few would begrudge a player group owning a station or two due to the amount of work that's involved. Players making new stations could become a new community goal scenario, with players submitting their request assuming their player group has enough assets to warrant it and at Frontier's leisure a community goal could be started with 3 different activities which can result in 3 possible outcomes:

Build the new player owned station

Build the station but organize a financial coup in the process to ensure that it becomes an independent station

Or prevent the station from being built at all.

Lots of potential fun and engaging gameplay could be added here, but we won't see any of it because people can't get over their trauma (often non-existent as the people who complain the loudest typically never played the game) concerning some poor experience or another in EvE Online.

That's the internet for ya.

Just as the glimmer of a good start. You can build an entire standalone game around the idea of owning a space station if you wanted to.

 

[anikaiful]

Just as the glimmer of a good start. You can build an entire standalone game around the idea of owning a space station if you wanted to.

*shrug* might be interesting for some people, true. But lets put things back to reality - a whole lot of us are billionaires by now, but that's but a trickle in an ocean. A thousand or so billionaires might make a station reality, but that's about it - outfitting A-class Cutter or whatever ship or a fleet of them is pennies in comparison. These megastructures aren't available for "generic public" for that particular reason - cost. The (NPC) owners of current stations are whole societies afterall.

I'm in no way opposing player owned megastructures, not at all - just that we need to keep in mind such are not attainable (without handwavium) by *Small* groups at all (and definitely not at all by a single player... well, depending on how long lifetime they have).

That said, building any of orbital station -like structures should require a CG-style event (in a sense) - with two CGs running, one "for" the other "against". But unlike our typical CGs, it'd be a tug-o-war - both CGs having a direct impact on the other. Or maybe multiple layers of CGs so that "undermining through mode-switching" would have neglible impact.

 

[Windscreen Smudge]

*shrug* might be interesting for some people, true. But lets put things back to reality - a whole lot of us are billionaires by now, but that's but a trickle in an ocean. A thousand or so billionaires might make a station reality, but that's about it - outfitting A-class Cutter or whatever ship or a fleet of them is pennies in comparison. These megastructures aren't available for "generic public" for that particular reason - cost. The (NPC) owners of current stations are whole societies afterall.

I'm in no way opposing player owned megastructures, not at all - just that we need to keep in mind such are not attainable (without handwavium) by *Small* groups at all (and definitely not at all by a single player... well, depending on how long lifetime they have).

That said, building any of orbital station -like structures should require a CG-style event (in a sense) - with two CGs running, one "for" the other "against". But unlike our typical CGs, it'd be a tug-o-war - both CGs having a direct impact on the other. Or maybe multiple layers of CGs so that "undermining through mode-switching" would have neglible impact.

If you're a billionaire start thinking about using your capital like a billionaire.

Start off small. You won't be buying an Ocellus station on day 1.

Great, you've got an Outpost. What does your Outpost have? Not much, it's the Honda Civic of space stations. Not even the cushy Honda Civic with the seat warmers and XM radio either. No, you've got manual windows and when you went to change your flat tire on the way home you found out someone snicked the jack out of the trunk while it sat on the car lot. So you'll have to buy upgrades. 500 million here, 900 million there, 1.5 billion to get some extra capital coming in, etc....


Just because the station would open up a large pool of assets to you doesn't mean you'd have free reign to do what you'd like with those assets also. Got an outpost worth 5 billion credits? Great, now all of the galactic banks are going to want you to maintain a 7 billion pool of liquid assets to ensure your financial stability, they want to see you maintaining security in your space, they want to see you doing a reasonable amount of business to maintain your financial viability (no buying a station and sitting on it, feeding it credits with smuggling and CG's.) etc... Then, once you've done that for a couple months and you've gotten your AAA+ Galactic credit rating and 30 billion in profits, you can sell your used jalopy outpost at a fraction of what you paid for it and buy a Coriolis station.

Oh, and if you read my post I quoted, I stated just what you did about the CG. I personally think it's a nice passive implementation of how the event would be handled in a game like Eve. In ED you basically have to do a bit of politicking with your neighbors and get them to give you a hand instead of cutting your throat. Throwing some of your personal bank account into the CG to sweeten the pot wouldn't hurt either. [yesnod] In Eve you'd be fighting tooth and nail for weeks to take control of the station and then hold it while the vultures try to take it from you while you're vulnerable and still getting established. Setting it up as a CG event fits nicely with the rest of ED's gameplay.

 

[Miklos Atreides]

If you're a billionaire start thinking about using your capital like a billionaire.

Start off small. You won't be buying an Ocellus station on day 1.

Great, you've got an Outpost. What does your Outpost have? Not much, it's the Honda Civic of space stations. Not even the cushy Honda Civic with the seat warmers and XM radio either. No, you've got manual windows and when you went to change your flat tire on the way home you found out someone snicked the jack out of the trunk while it sat on the car lot. So you'll have to buy upgrades. 500 million here, 900 million there, 1.5 billion to get some extra capital coming in, etc....


Just because the station would open up a large pool of assets to you doesn't mean you'd have free reign to do what you'd like with those assets also. Got an outpost worth 5 billion credits? Great, now all of the galactic banks are going to want you to maintain a 7 billion pool of liquid assets to ensure your financial stability, they want to see you maintaining security in your space, they want to see you doing a reasonable amount of business to maintain your financial viability (no buying a station and sitting on it, feeding it credits with smuggling and CG's.) etc... Then, once you've done that for a couple months and you've gotten your AAA+ Galactic credit rating and 30 billion in profits, you can sell your used jalopy outpost at a fraction of what you paid for it and buy a Coriolis station.

Oh, and if you read my post I quoted, I stated just what you did about the CG. I personally think it's a nice passive implementation of how the event would be handled in a game like Eve. In ED you basically have to do a bit of politicking with your neighbors and get them to give you a hand instead of cutting your throat. Throwing some of your personal bank account into the CG to sweeten the pot wouldn't hurt either. [yesnod] In Eve you'd be fighting tooth and nail for weeks to take control of the station and then hold it while the vultures try to take it from you while you're vulnerable and still getting established. Setting it up as a CG event fits nicely with the rest of ED's gameplay.

The core on having a station is that once you have it you'll have to maintain it. The means a lot of work
You will have no time to cruise space and having fun, now you are top manager of an outpost and you aim your career to be CEO of an Ocellus.
In fact you will enter a completly different game (in this forum mentioned as "Station Mayor"). No doubt, its totally intresting to ride this path too.
Maybe we can have it as a counterpart of Arena . I would give it a try.
Anything else ist just a goodie for posers who need to "own a station".
If you intend it for groups there are minor factions (Player controlled) they "own" already stations. Maybe not to the extend you like but its already there.
This will be expanded over time. I am pretty sure.

Regards,
Miklos