Best Of

Come September I will be shutting off my market orders until January, just to see how the market balances out. I'm not saying I am the jesus of the space economy, but let's just say that before I started my scheme, elessium's market price was two marks (it is now at eighteen).

Also, I am going to go out on a limb here and say that I can absolutely ignore the whole space economy and nothing about my game changes. That's how broken it is: it's inconsequential. There is nothing about it that I want

And beforr you pull out the next station mission mechanic, I will stop you right there and say that made things needed negatively, not wanted positively.

I can't provide any data, but I'll chime in with my own impressions, because I never really expected to get too into space gathering and manufacturing. However, with the changes to how comms spawn according to economy, I really enjoy mining these days. It's nice to be able to look at my current cargo (please please please add location and type filters) and say, "I need some iriil today," and know where I can go to find it.

Despite my own enjoyment, though, I don't have the time to do a lot of mining. Especially when I also want to haul intermediary products out to factories in the more remote subsecs or do some incursions. So, I have several high-paying market buy orders (as in, x3 or more for high-use gas).

I think that's probably okay? I imagine this is kind of what the system is trying to drive towards, and might even be why the autofactory PMOs are so broken? (I don't know about that, they seem egregious, but it's a thought. Like, shove marks into people at the end so they have enough that they're okay with buying base comms at higher prices?) Though with faction programs probably a decent portion of comms are staying within the faction, so the general market doesn't see them.

And it definitely wouldn't be okay if we had zero dedicated miners, but my orders do get picked up fairly regularly (I don't think there's been a day when some resources haven't been delivered), so there is at least one person making money out there.

To be fair, I...don't really care that much about making big money. Probably if I wanted to maximize profit, I wouldn't have such high buy orders. Though to that, even my highest buy order prices still allow a decent profit margin if I did try to sell, but actually moving produced goods on the market via offers or orders isn't really a priority for me. I just like being able to make stuff and use the stuff I make.

Maybe if factions could create orders, and arrange to pay out more if the order was fulfilled by a faction member? That would be neat.

I understand CA seems to be essentially doing this, but, well, there's a limited number of people who find joy in that kind of bookkeeping, and honestly it's likely they gravitated naturally toward CA. Faction-created orders would allow the same thing, but without the need for a personal accountant. Or at least, it would greatly reduce the manual work an accountant would have to do.

Would be pretty cool RP if it were fabricated, imo

@Cubey:

Hopefully my commenting on this thread is not once again mistaken for an invitation to contact me OOC in game. Now that that's out of the way.

Something I don't recall ever being brought up is the fact that the economy is exclusive in more ways than @Azlyn mentioned. It's not only the production side, it's every single thing about the economy. All manufactured items are necessary only for those who are otherwise engaged in space activities - scoops, tethers, probes for gathering, batteries, astromechs, etc. for those who take part in space combat. I don't really know what could be changed to player-made but as it currently stands I have zero reason to engage in any part of the economy except by choice. Even when I do choose to fly somewhere to hunt or whatever rather than gatehop, it's so easy to avoid incursions and compiercers that I haven't bought any supplies in RL months. So I think that, if there were a way to incentivize (without being detrimental to) non-spacers to take part in the consumption side (as well as production) it would be a boon.

Correlation does not imply causation. There are so many actual factors surrounding why there has been a lull regarding Cosmpiercers, including: burnout from doing something repeatedly with low rewards/little action, RL issues preventing major players being able to participate, financial barriers preventing people from participating (which I think proves that the participation barrier is still too high, maybe?), and even fallout from derailed discussions like this one.

But this thread isn't about cosmpiercers, and it shouldn't be about defending very basic systems that cater to a very particular playstyle, either. This game is still in beta, and the economic system is very much still in its infancy. There is so much room for improvement, and I've seen a lot of good ideas in this thread that would contribute to its development. If there are actual reasons that someone thinks each individual idea is bad, they should absolutely expound upon those views with solid evidence, but explaining to people that they're playing the game wrong and that that's why they're not enjoying themselves is extremely frustrating and continually derails the thread from actual discussion of sorely needed advancements to the system.