Late game money sink ideas

[Kissamies]

So it's easy to earn credits in this games once you have some and, short of PvP and Thargoid hunting, you don't generally lose credits. Once you have all the ships you want to own and have equipped them the way you like, there's nothing to spend credits on. Some players have many billions of liquid assets. I'm trying to think some uses for them here.

Power Play
Above the current "employee" level of gameplay, the players could become "investors" or "benefactors" investing their money on fortifying or expanding to certain systems. This would make the thresholds to go down or, if PP was changed to use the mission system, generate more missions. If the operation succeeds, the investor makes some profit. He might also get some fraction of his money back on a partial failure.

Megaship ferry partonage
There could be megaship ferry lines that require player funding to operate. If the goal for the week is met, the ship jumps. To be inclusive, poor players could also contribute by shipping jumponium to the ship. Paying credits implies that NPC pilots are hired for that.

Owning a station
This would naturally be quite a money sink. The initial purchase should cost a lot and then services beyond the basic ones would need to be bought as well. The services might also require money to keep running unless they make profit, that is, other players show up and use them.

Fleet Carrier
Much like the station above, but the whole squadron can contribute, making it easier. I imagine many small squadrons might have a single whale member that pays for the most of it.

What do you think? Can you think other money sinks?

 

[varonica]

What do you think? Can you think other money sinks?

Money sinks really need to be something the players want, nothing you have mentioned interests me in the slightest, and I can't really think of anything that would attract me as a money sink. The thing with money sinks is they are only required in games with active markets to control the amount of money floating around in the game and prevent inflation pricing goods out of the budget of new players. I can't see a reason to have them at all in ED since all prices are set by FDEV.

Several of your ideas have merit as part of the game, and indeed one of them is planned, the Fleet Carrier, but they should be included as part of gameplay, not just something to spend money on, we need more game play urgently, not just things to spend money on.

 

[Kissamies]

I think ideally these should generally be something you only want to do when there is nothing else left to spend credits on. Otherwise players would complain about cool features locked behind a grind wall.