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Zhulkarn said:

Vega said:

@Zhulkarn even considering the funds you get per month, it doesn't even cover the cost of ammo from every person needed to take down those piercers. So if factions used the money they got from cosmpiercers, it is still a donation from the players, since they are footing the bill. That's Matlkael's point. 

In CA we do not pay for ammo. Ammo pay for us!

But I understood the point of Matlkael and answered despite that. It is a long term strategy, one you have to invest initially and it will pay back over time of course depending on your strength to hold onto them. Like investing in a dividend share, that is boring but potentially has solid return on the long run. After all the game has ample amounts of peace time too. 

True, but it doesn't really pay the players back, ideally, it would, but I don't see that happening with how scarce money for Factions is unless it comes directly out of player pocket.

@Zhulkarn even considering the funds you get per month, it doesn't even cover the cost of ammo from every person needed to take down those piercers. So if factions used the money they got from cosmpiercers, it is still a donation from the players, since they are footing the bill. That's Matlkael's point. 

-- Updates - #165 -------------------------------------------------------------As always, please report any issues in the usual way.

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So! Station Missions are in. Initial thoughts: I love that we have more things to do as a faction. On top of cosmpiercers, we have our new Storytellers, and now this. That's really great - with group bashing being sub-optimal, there wasn't much mechanical reason to do stuff as a faction. This is a step in the right direction.

However, we (at least, the Song players I've spoken with) have seen some problems with the system. First, there's no real reward for completing missions. The "reward" is you can dock at your faction stations. Basically, we're constantly fighting off disaster and not really gaining anything.

Furthermore, the system adds more pressure to faction marks, plus more demand on the overall resource economy. The only supply of faction marks are from cosmpiercers (which are inadequate; you need to hold a cosmpiercer for around 10 RL days, from my last check, just to break even with what you've spent in terms of ship supplies) and from donations of citizens. As for the resource economy, I think the problem is more on the supply side (specifically, the tediousness of gathering resources) rather than the demand.

With that said, there are some solutions which we've been developing.

First, instead of a punitive reward for Station Missions (that is, if you don't do it, you get a penalty), make it more of a formative one. First, allow factions to set a tax on docking and setting up a shop. Let's take Danica Station, for example.

Song sets a docking tax of 500 marks. There's also a tax of 100 marks to set up a shop at the Danica trade terminal. Song can also set discounts for groups, such as for citizens or for allies. Now, let's say Danica station is at full station health (hull 100%, life support 100%, shield 100%, average of 100%). That means Song gets 100% of the 500 marks it taxes for docking, and 100 of the taxes for shops.

But, suppose that Danica's hull goes down to 50%, for an average of 83% (50%, 100%, 100%). That means that, for example, Nykara would pay 500 marks to dock at Danica, but only 83% (415 marks) actually goes into Song's account. The other 85 marks gets lost to wherever.

This would solve a few things; that is, it'll add to factional mark income, and make station missions more of an actual reward to complete. Plus, it won't actually generate new marks into the game (it'll still be a net drain); the marks that the faction would get would be from the players. The problem is that I'm not sure if just taxes would make station missions justifiable; it looks like station systems decay too fast and require a lot of resources to maintain (as the system currently works). It might be cheaper to just let them decay.

This brings up a tangent: right now, station systems seem to decay too quickly, and there's not enough materials in the economy in order to upkeep them. This leads us to problem #2, which, I'll admit, is a broad issue with the economy of the game.

Basically, gathering is a pain. It takes a ton of time and much tediousness to scoop up a gas (you need to slow down, make tight turns) or tether an asteroid (you can only do it one at a time, so you need to go back and forth to a station between each one). The supply itself isn't really the problem; I've seen a lot of asteroids and gases while flying. The difficulty of gathering is the issue.

I've already posted this in another thread (and hashed out the idea on Discord), but here are my quick fixes (maybe?):

First, make multi-tethering possible (again). So instead of going back and forth to a station each time, you can just tether a bunch of asteroids and then drop them all off at a refinery in one go. To prevent someone from tethering something like 1000 asteroids, just make each tethered asteroid slow down the ship. Bigger ships are less affected (superhaulers power!).

Second, turn gas scoops into gas vacuums. Point a ship in the direction of a cloud, and everything inside the ship cone gets sucked. You could clear a cloud in maybe 2-3 hits, which would cut down scooping time from 10 minutes to maybe 3.

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SO! IN SUMMARY;

1. Turn the reward of Station Missions into an actual reward via improved tax collection.
2. Tweak the numbers on station decay and mission requirements; they're a bit too quick or too high.
3. Make multi-tethering of asteroids possible.
4. Turn gas scoops into gas vacuums.

Thank you and good day.

Station missions should reward you with a good pile of Captaincy XP.