This thread is a fortnight late, fireworks are meant to be lit on the 5th of November...
Anti Xeno:
In general terms, I'm comfortable with the 10,000cr reward for thargoid scouts, maybe an uplift to 15,000 for the fancier ones such as the berserker and inciter variants. Interceptors, are probably looking at an order of magnitude increase in payouts.
Conflict Zone / Massacre missions:
Shoting at things that shoot back at you is immensely more risky than shooting at rocks (mining) so it should pay more, but fighting humans (NPC's) is not as risky as fighting thargoids, as such it shouldn't pay as much as AX combat. Similarly it is riskier than space trucking goods, should pay more than that playstyle. I'm not going to suggest values for this as it would need to be balanced against the other areas of the game, and they are also going to be reviewed.
Trading:
The old adage of mindlessly running A-B trade loops of imperial slaves (indentured servants) for 5,000-->7,500cr profit per unit, or the endless tradeloop from A-B of any other, presumably less controversial, commodity is naff. Stations must have a finite volume in which to store commodities, as they store unsold produce they ought to run out of space for constituent commodities. Bulk trucking endless supplies of the input commodities oughtnt to be a valid playstyle.
There needs to be an element of dynamism in the economy, so for example, a refinery won't endlessly consume minerals if it's sitting on 750,000 of refined minerals that no one has bought/delivered. There should also emissions generated for the cargo delivery, as stored produce increases, so does the payouts for the delivery of the material to their end-users. Similarly, the inverse is true, as the volume of products stored in the station increases, the market demand and thus the price paid for its constituent resources should decrease.
Completing the dynamically generated delivery missions and or buying / selling produce as a trader should reduce the volume of produces stored and increase the demand for and price of input commodities. So, in the case of a refinery, if someone starts trucking away carrier loads of metals, then the demand for and price of minerals should increase on the stations market. If no one is bringing the minerals, and the produced metals are disappearing fast, the price of those minerals should go up.
Let's tie this to the BGS, If a glut of products sits in the market for too long, or a demand for input commodities isn't satisfied quickly, the faction running the station loses influence as a result of a dent in their economy. Similarly, if the station is enjoying a golden era of reliable incoming supplies and steady exports of its product, the economy in the system gets an uptick and the faction gains influence. The influence shifts would be because of the contentment of the population arising in their belief in the ability of their ruling faction, and the desire to maintain the status quo, or the exact opposite, if things aren't going well they want a change of leadership to better manage their economy and thus improve their quality of life. The uptick in influence would represent population / voters / supporters shifting allegiance.
Rare Goods:
Seriously increase the potential earnings, this could be done by removing the distance cap, if someone is crazy enough to haul 80 tonnes of rare goods to Colonia, let them make a billion from it.
Smuggling:
With the exception of the good old days of smuggling missions, #Robigo, or the old typo "Snake in XY tonnes of [Contraband]" missions, smuggling has always been a loss maker, why oh why oh why would any sane player go and buy a commodity that is illegal is a system / starport, and risk a substantial fine if caught smuggling it in, to then sell it on the black market at a significant LOSS? You'd be as well just flushing your credits out the chaff dispensers on your ship. If goods are illegal, they are difficult to obtain, if someone wants them badly enough to break the law to get them, they are going to pay over the odds to get them, so they ought to be worth MORE on the black market. That sort of black-market economics is so simples even a meerkat can understand it.
Lets make smuggling a high reward but high risk playstyle. We live in a galaxy where parking tickets are death warrants "Loitering is a crime punishable by death" make smuggling the same, you run the gauntlet to get into the station, but if you get scanned, you get vapourised, station and cops light you up. Make it so smuggling is a crime that adds to your notoriety, and hurts your reputation. Add extra obstacles to smuggling, for example "search light" patterns to have to navigate through, get caught in a "search light" and it won't matter how many heat sinks you've popped, you're now lit up on the scanners of the cops like a Christmas tree. But most importantly, make it so it's worth the hassle and the risks, make it damned lucrative, make it so that the higher the security status of a system, the more elaborate the defenses against smugglers are, but the more difficult a station is to smuggle into, the more generous the prices paid for the contraband in the associated black markets
With Odyssey, maybe not immediately, but there will be station interiors, make it so you don't just rock up to the main menu, "black market please", make it so you have to know the guy who introduces you to the kid, who tells you where to go, and you may meet the proprietor of the black market, or a bunch of local hoods who mug you, or or or. Make smuggling into something you can RPG the heck out of it.
Squadrons / BGS:
Now, if we let squadrons become truly affiliated with a BGS faction, or a few, there could be an interesting way to band together, coordinate your efforts and resources, and make a difference for a huge reward if you get it right, or a financial kick in the crotch if you goof it up. If the BGS factions lose money / influence, so does your squadron, and those proffits/losses would be dispersed to or recovered from the squadrons membership.
So, we've established something of a rudimentary economy in the trade proposal, and you want to work a corner of the bubble, you need to look after both the inputs and outputs of the stations you are working. This is why BGS affiliation could tie in so nicely to squadrons, their chosen BGS faction has a station, in their playergroup they have miners, they have traders, they have combat pilots, and the squadron would need to coordinate the efforts of their players to achieve best results for their BGS faction(s). Internal squadrons comms might be OK if you're going mining, take your stuff to [starport 1], if you're going trading we need products moved from [starport 2] best selling them at [starport 3], if you want to shoot things, we have a war/pirate problem in [system 4].
If their miners ignore the need for minerals at their refinery and production is threatened, the station will have to increase its buy price to lure in other suppliers (NPC) and its profits will drop because its raw material costs have increased. Similarly, if no one is looking after the delivery / distribution of its produce, it will have to reduce the sell price to have a fire sale just to get rid of the stuff. Stack the two of them and it's going to be operating at a loss. And if they suffer you suffer, you're in this together remember. BUT... The converse is true, if your squadron is a well oiled machine enabling efficient operations and thus this hypothetical station is making a mint, your squadron is going to get a healthy bonus from that BGS faction.
Fleet Carriers:
Fleet carriers are in a bit of an odd position, basically everyone that's willing to mine for ~30hs can get a carrier, and going by the clutter in the system map to any system that has a reason to be there, there appears to be eleventeen billion folk have done that. But what to they really do, other than being an e-peen, or one CMDR's way to avoid ship transfer fees? There are a few cases of some ingenious businesses with them such as selling engineering cargo in the engineers system, meta alloys at deciat, landmines at eurybia etc, or some guys selling thargoid hearts etc but those are the minority. Mostly they are used by parking them near supply stations for community goals for CMDR's to fill the 25,000t and jumping to CG systems to allow CMDR's to sell the goods there - just look at how quickly the alliance coal sack nebula CG got tanked through use of carriers as bulk haulers.
But maybe that is their (new) niche, not as a carrier like an aircraft carrier, but more as a bulk cargo carrier? And maybe if there were a way to advertise its intentions with a message declaring the flight plan and desired cargo viewable BEFORE DOCKING, such as "This carrier is affiliated with [squadron] when it is loaded with 25,000t of tantalum it's going deliver transport the cargo to Beta Hydri to help build a Farragut Battle Cruiser" this could be a new way of making carriers player magnets. Help from random CMDR's could be beneficial to the squadron intertwining with the BGS mechanic listed above, but if your carrier said that it was helping to build farragut's you'd likely find guys like me blockading it. So now to load your Farragut build supply delivering carrier, you really need a combat escort. As such the carrier is effective as your own personal plaything, but really comes to life when you engage a squadron to fully leverage it. #emergent_content
Talking about emergent content for carriers, the fact they are invulnerable is a bit of a cop-out. However, because of PG & Solo, they have to be, otherwise every carrier owner would be getting snipped to smitherenes by solo trolls. But lets say carriers are vulnerable to weapons fire, but only in open... Y'all want to use your carrier the FCS-Fedneck to help the feds build more Farraguts, as an Imperial, I want to oppose your efforts, I can blockade your carrier sending y'all to the rebuy screen before you can request landing permission, so y'all move to solo / PG, now you're unstoppable... That is unless, well, it would be a shame if something were to happen to that nice carrier of yours, which I can't do in Solo/PG, as in those modes your carrier remains invulnerable, it is only vulnerable to weapons fire if the assailant is playing in open. So what are you gonna do now, hide in solo while I knock out your carriers drives, crippling the ship for 72hrs rebuild time; or are you going to "grow a pair", wing up with some buddies, and frag-cannon me back to Facece?
You could even add carrier repair gameplay for limpets and or space walking when we get to that part of space legs, but this would need to be only able to be done in open, so it can be opposed. But that opposition brings risk with it, for the greater good, and in support of your overacrching goals you are willing to take a risk and try and repair the damage the assailants have done to your/your squadron's carrier. But if I'm still online, and you start popping repair limpets, I might start shooting them down with point defence turrets and lobbing plasma volleys at you.
Mining:
This isn't going to be popular, but I think mining rewards, as they stand just now, are something that needs to be beaten to within an inch of its life in a vicious assault of excessive violence by whoever swings the nerf bat. That is unless there is the dynamics injected into the economy I mentioned in trading, at which point places that are screaming for a commodity will pay silly money for it. But what we have just now, whereby the risk-reward ratio being such that people are able to shoot some rocks for five hours, and end up with a cutter load of sparklies that is worth a billion is just silly. OK, sure, bulk tax, you might make 600m for your bulk bundle o' blingy boulders, but that's still 120m/hr, a carrier in 45hrs, as if there weren't enough of them already. But if carriers became the mainstay of the haulage fleet keeping the galaxy's economy in motion, then yes, there is more reason to have carriers, and well-managed carriers could create opportunities for economic growth that would increase mineral demand, and thus profits from shooting rocks, creating wealth that funds new carriers, further perpetuating the economic growth. But if there aren't miners making the minerals there isn't going to be as active an economic cycle for everyone to profit from.
TL-DR:
No well thought out proposal is complete these days without the ubiquitous TL-DR for the benefit of people with an attention span the size of their chosen social media platform's posts, so here's the one for the above proposals: Make combat pay more, even more so AX combat, and Tie squadrons into BGS, and link Carriers to Squadrons / BGS, make the economy need goods in and out of stations to function, and make carriers vulnerable to attack in open. Make combat pay more, even more so AX combat, tie squadrons into BGS making profits / losses alongside their chosen affiliated factions, and link Carriers to Squadrons / BGS as the mainstay of the galaxy's logistics, make the economy need goods in and out of stations to function, and make carriers vulnerable to attack in open.
Top foruming 
