A question about player agency

Dillon Fallon

Dillon Fallon
Anyway, since someone hath resurrected my thread from it's slumber, I'd just like to reiterate my hope that the recent CG in Colonia might be the start of something.

I mean, scientists playing around with alien life they don't quite understand never goes wrong in sci-fi does it? ;)

We look forward to seeing more, with our usual patience and restraint.

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CMDR Nathan Atterlein

CMDR Nathan Atterlein
Rat Catcher said:
Bar cleansing the galaxy of pretentious Dictatorship controlled systems? (an impossible task)
Possibly Odyssey will have potential to do something similar, although I doubt it, otherwise ED isn't offering anything long-term to plan for, which is sad.
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You're always welcome to come help us murder the emperor. :p
 

Nadreck

N
From a suggestion I made some time ago:

My suggestion: If you are allied with a faction, and that faction has at least 70% influence in a system (i.e. just short of the 75% needed to trigger the Expansion state), and you have a credit balance in excess of 2 billion, you should be given donation missions even if the mission board wouldn't normally generate them.

If you then donate at least 10 million credits in one week (between server ticks), you get given an "investment opportunity" mission after the server tick. This will cost you one billion credits.

You then have to keep paying one billion credits per week for a number of weeks (you can't rush this by paying in advance). If you fall short, you go backwards by an amount equal to the shortfall (so if you pay 700m, leaving a shortfall of 300m, you lose 300m of investment progress that week). Sensible players will obviously ensure they have the funds before starting this.

After a number of weeks, the station you're investing in gets a service upgrade. All stations already offer refuelling, but a couple of weeks of infrastructure investment (2 billion credits) will add repair, or restock, or a new contact (you can specify what service you want to invest in). 4 weeks (4 billion) will add Outfitting if Repair/Restock is present: 6 weeks (6 billion) will add a Shipyard if Outfitting is already present (note: not at Outposts).

You can also invest in population growth: each billion gives 1,000 immigrants plus a 1% growth of the existing population. Double these figures for an Earthlike world (more room to expand into). Population will eventually be capped by the planetary conditions.

Planets with a planetary base but nothing in orbit can get an Outpost for 5 billion. Outposts orbiting landable planets can get a planetary base for 8 billion. New bases will only have Refuel initially, and will have the same factions installed as the base where the investment took place. This system won't actually support colonisation of uninhabited systems, or uninhabited worlds within inhabited systems (no existing base at that planet to invest in). Station-building will also require large quantities of materials to be shipped in (as with a CG).

Normally only one player can trigger this process, and other players are locked out until the investment progress is completed (or fails due to shortfall). The "Infrastructure Failure" state can still happen and might stall progress for a number of weeks (they hit a snag). Exception: if other investors are in the same squadron as you, your contributions stack on the current project.

This is quite a lot more expensive than adding services to a Carrier, but has a number of advantages: no upkeep cost when built, no danger of losing them when built (though another faction might gain control of the station eventually), and no limit on the number of investments a wealthy individual or squadron might make in multiple stations/systems.

Furthermore, a player with only a few billion can still make a difference. Annoyed that your favourite station doesn't have a shipyard? If you have (or can get to) 6 billion, you can fix that.

Developing stations across the galaxy will create a near-endless credit sink for the very wealthy for the foreseeable future.
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(short version: you should be able to pay to upgrade station services)
 

Danieros

D
Nadreck said:
From a suggestion I made some time ago:



(short version: you should be able to pay to upgrade station services)
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Factions already have something similar. There is a hidden "development level" for factions that can actually improve over time what services/modules a station from that faction has available.

It is not very noticeable because you usually just feed a faction the system assets, expand it and then move on, just checking once in a while if the influence is still good, since those are the parts that the game very clearly gives you feedback about.

But once in a while you may notice that as a station changes hands its services may actually improve. For example, a commodity market may be opened.
 

Dillon Fallon

Dillon Fallon
Danieros said:
But once in a while you may notice that as a station changes hands its services may actually improve. For example, a commodity market may be opened.
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That might be as a result of something restricted by government type. For example dictatorships, corporates and patronages prevent black markets being opened. Flip the system to democracy, communism or co-operative and there's a chance you'll see one. Flip it to anarchy and there should definitely be one.

Not strictly speaking improving as such, merely changing the attributes of a station to meet the requirements of it appearing, but personally I'd agree opening a black market makes a station more appealing, same with changes in security levels to open an interstellar factors.
 

Danieros

D
Dillon Fallon said:
That might be as a result of something restricted by government type. For example dictatorships, corporates and patronages prevent black markets being opened. Flip the system to democracy, communism or co-operative and there's a chance you'll see one. Flip it to anarchy and there should definitely be one.

Not strictly speaking improving as such, merely changing the attributes of a station to meet the requirements of it appearing, but personally I'd agree opening a black market makes a station more appealing, same with changes in security levels to open an interstellar factors.
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Black markets are definitely government-related, but I'm talking about normal commodity markets.
 

Ian Doncaster

Ian Doncaster
Danieros said:
Black markets are definitely government-related, but I'm talking about normal commodity markets.
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Frontier changed it a while back so that factions which open black markets also temporarily open commodity markets at stations which don't have them. So that's probably what's causing those.

(Maybe there were some weird consequences of being only able to trade in illegal goods? I don't know.)
 

Danieros

D
Ian Doncaster said:
Frontier changed it a while back so that factions which open black markets also temporarily open commodity markets at stations which don't have them. So that's probably what's causing those.

(Maybe there were some weird consequences of being only able to trade in illegal goods? I don't know.)
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Ah, that explains it perfectly. I guess that makes it not so bad for those government types, you get a black market but you also get a commodity market if it wasn't available (the other ones would be very far so in this case it's a good deal).
 
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