Potentially, but if this cargo rack requires 20k hauled to reach the 50% mark. It could put off alot of players and reduce engagement, etc.
That's statistically unlikely, though. Top 50% for bubble trade CGs has never been above 10,000t and even for ones with high-value rewards at that threshold very rarely goes above 6,000t.
I suppose the question is whether a fixed 6,000t target would be more or less popular.
I suspect for anyone who actually needs the rack, the risk of not collectively hitting T5 at all is probably quite a bit more significant than the risk of not reaching 50% personally, on this one.
Competition -> FOMO -> Maximum engagement -> Better stats for shareholders -> Better stock price -> Improved company worth.
The first two steps, sure, even if not everyone finds that motivating - CG tier thresholds and overall participant counts
do tend to end up higher where there's a relevant reward.
The last three don't follow, though.
3 -> 4: Frontier have virtually never presented
active player counts for ED to (potential) shareholders, and the one time they did it was a "monthly active" count which was about 100 times higher than average weekly CG participation, so CG competition is barely going to make a dent in those numbers anyway. (Sure, it's public data via Inara, etc. so shareholders could use it but most of them are going to be considering more fundamental aspects of Frontier's business). Total sales figures are sometimes presented ... but anyone joining the game now/later has COMO (Certainty...) so it probably doesn't help with that.
4 -> 5: Frontier's share price has been pretty much uncorrelated with ED player activity levels throughout the game's history (one big drop in both after the Odyssey release aside) and that will probably continue. How well Planet Coaster 2 does will be a much bigger deal than a few hundred more players hauling fake aluminium for a week.
5 -> 6: Frontier isn't structured in such a way that its stock price affects the company's actual value (no loans secured on stock value, no dividend payouts, limited use of stock options for employees), and too many of the shares are held by David Braben and family (with a substantial chunk of the rest being held by boring pension funds and the like) for any other shareholder opinions to matter very much to the board.
