Best Of

Re: Economy thoughts

I like so many of the ideas I've read here so far. I agree that the space component of the game could use a lot of love in the mining department. I like taking my freighter our, finding four rocks, parking in a field of gas and collecting it with drones, then returning to port with a full haul for a dailycredit. The harvest drone module in particular was a huge game changer for me. The few things I would love to see changed as just a minor tweak:
1. My freighter is not a combat vessel. I think it would be nice if, lacking weaponry altogether, it could turn fast. Normally it's a maneuverability vs power tradeoff on other ships: I have no power. I'd like to not move like molasses.
2. Most (>50%?) of the time, I find a decent haul pretty quick. But sometimes I hit an unlucky streak or happen to take the wrong path and it can be a long time until I get a full load of 4 rocks and a gas. If there were areas that more dependably had them, or some similar way of countering unlucky paths, that'd remove those few awful experiences of not finding anything.

Those are the "quick" changes, but #2 in particular brings me to suggest a broader-scale change that might address some of these grievances:

Have NPC (for now :P) planets that buy and sell different resources for different prices.

This makes sense to me. In the original lore description of the different races, there was usually a blurb about what made that race good in the galactic scale. Vonikin Krel make shipsims. Tukkav have great mining groups. I think it would both help the races or planets feel more meaningful if, say, we could go to Uycheon and purchase titanium for 50mk. Far off in the opposite end of the sector, there may be another station buying titanium at 130mk. Space truckers can find good combinations of stations that can turn a nice profit in exchange for the time spent flying around. Pick up titanium at Uycheon, sell it at Krell, pick up iriil at Krell, sell it at Pylos, pick up duramine at Pylos, sell it at Uycheon. Could even have different buyers for finished product too. Possibly at fixed price, so the RNG of personal market orders might still have a more lucrative buyer elsewhere.

But what about targetwarp, Squeakums? Well, one solution is to say targetwarp jostles the cargo too much and you can't use it. A better solution, in my opinion, is to just... let them. You can targetwarp to incursions already. And that consumes the cryosealed tablet, which is good! Maybe people start selling tablets. Maybe people do more caches and cosmpiercers to face the increasing demand for tablets.

What about the current mining system? No problem, that one can still exist. Since there is a reliable alternative source for minerals and gas, perhaps they won't be as hotly contested. If somebody wants to go out mining, there's a higher chance they get a quicker and bigger haul. You exchange reliability in getting exactly the material you want from an NPC "forge" to a cheaper cost but RNG materials (whatever you happen to fly across).

Regardless of whether the NPC forges are added or not, increasing the mineral and gas yields by a significant factor like Steve suggested still seems like a good idea to me.

Finally, I suggested this on discord, but since it's relevant I'll also repeat it here. It might also be a good source of demand for refined goods if the purchase/assembly of a new ship in the shipforge had its marks cost adjusted down, but then required the equivalent amount of marks in finished goods (UMM/paristeel/R-glass/etc).

Squeakums

Re: Returning Player - State of Factions?

Regarding the lack of open interfactional warfare, I'm going to say that it's not only a (very) good thing, but it doesn't signify a lack of interfactional conflict or personal character growth. In my opinion, constant open warfare as is typical in many other games is in fact detrimental to nuanced conflict and character growth. Characters in those situations too often become two-dimensional zealots, either in reality or in the perception of their opponents which is, to me, incredibly boring. I think that one of Starmourn's biggest strengths, both in mechanics and RP, is the abundance of alternative forms of conflict. I love being able, as one of the current leaders of CA, to go to another faction's territory to watch a concert and have everything be tense under veil of etiquette.

Zoe

Re: Returning Player - State of Factions?

CA is very active nowadays. Like, I just logged in to check updates and over 50% players online were from CA. That almost never happened in the past, now it's a regular occurence.

Faction identities seem to have crystallized pretty solidly. CA is the stonks/enterprise mixed with the generic good guy "we care" faction, Song is same authoritarian business as usual (didn't have a Lord Commander change in literal years), SH's anything goes attitude resulted in most activity centered around a few large dynasties/corporations owned by active and enterprising players. Which frankly is what happens in unchecked anarchy states like SH.

There isn't really any open conflict and frankly I wouldn't expect any, ever. Raids on each other's capitals, PvPers fighting each other in the open? That's just not happening and if you ask me, good. Cosmpiercers are very active but I'm not sure if any actual pvp is involved, since there's plenty of unclaimed ones still. PvP arena events are alive and well, though meta shifted recently due to massive balance changes for each class.

Cubey

An idea to rework the Evasion stat

Currently, our stats have options for 2 offensive stats and 3 defensive stats. Normally people specialize in one offensive stat depending on their preferred kill route. Lots of points are dumped into regen, and some (50-150ish) into life-force.

Evasion is mostly ignored. I don't think it makes for a terribly fun stat with its current mechanics, and I had an idea to rework it into something that does.

Turn Evasion into Shielding.

Thematically, it makes sense. We already have pseudo-forcefield armor from FlexaDerm-style, nano-thickness transparent layers on certain armor descriptions.

Mechanically, it could be something like a shield that has a maximum value of (base HP for your level) or (baseHP / 2) or some flat value like that. Then the stat comes into play with how quickly the shield regens to its max value. At 150 it heals 15% max shield per WW tic, at 200 it heals 20%, at 300 (effective) it heals 30%. If the shield is about half as big as your HP pool, that's roughly 250-500 shield points regeneration every tic for a max level character, depending on how heavily they invested into it.

Why the change?
It gives us another defensive stat to play around with meaningfully.
It slows down burst openers with a big chunk of extra hit points to burn through.
Sustained damage is really high. This would make it so there are easier windows to play around with swapping HP/aff Wetwiring prios.
Once the shield has been depleted, it gives you opportunities to take advantage of burst damage windows.

500 damage shield every 5 seconds? OP!
You have to consider that in order to get to this point, the person will have to have allocated points from elsewhere. So their HP regen is lower, their max hp (and therefore their HP regen) is lower, or their offensive stats are lower. It gives an opportunity for somebody that wants a tanky playstyle to do that in exchange for offensive capacity, which is a niche many enjoy and we currently don't cover. I've also just thrown out random numbers, these could be adjusted up or down as necessary.

With a bit of extra coding, this could also provide an interesting opportunity to do something with EM damage in PvP (where it might be extra effective against shields or something like that).

I'd love to hear your thoughts on the suggestion (regardless of whether you love it or hate it or anything in between).

Squeakums

Announcements post #216: Regular RP events.

From: Storyteller Damiel, Pew Pew Pew
Subject: Regular RP events.

Hello again,

I thought the event, and this piece of news, deserved their own announcements...

The Voidseeker event also marks the start of a new regular schedule of storyteller-led roleplaying events.

There will be one every month from here on out, in the third week of each month, and will very vaguely roll through the factions - purely based on location, rather than participation. This is literally only to make it fair on the storytelling team.

This month is Song, as it's in Hororeon, but as I was approached to lead, I am going to be doing this with the help of Soren and Eukelade. We're all excited!

So far we have the following pencilled in:

June - Scatterhome
July - CA
August - Song
September - Scatterhome
October - CA

... and we will aim to follow this routine for the forseeable future.

We are happy to come up with our own events and to fully lead them, HOWEVER, player requests are our bread and butter - so if you have an idea or request for an event that you would like storyteller assistance with, contact your faction's storyteller! (HELP STORYTELLERS)

It is a flexible thing, and times/dates and everything, pretty much, can be adapted to suit.

We do not need (or want) them to be too grand or complicated (though if it's appropriate they can be!). Nor should they always involve new items or places.

If you want an event, you will need to put RP effort in in-character. They should be run by your characters as far as is possible, we are here for those things that go beyond what a player can do. So we can animate/create NPCs, make world-enhancing places and objects, etc etc. But if it's a thing you can do in-character, you should do so in-character. The best events we have had have been mainly developed by players, with us just giving approval and adding the aboves and the beyonds.

We will judge whether things are necessary or appropriate. But we welcome ideas from players wishing to deepen their own lore/homeworld - so long as it has a lasting and universal benefit to the world/other players.

(Basically what I'm saying is - you can't be like "Because of my backstory I need [Genny to come and live on my ship/my org to suddenly be the one that founded Scatterhome/to change historical lore/a thing that only benefits my character].)

Appropriate ideas (but please, be creative!) might be:
- A concert where you'd like an NPC band to play.
- A conflict with an NPC org or group.
- An invasion by some animal or other.
- A public celebration or something.
- Anything that can be open to other players, big or small. It might just be that Breena keeps getting bread stolen and wants people to help find the shoplifters and question them etc.

Examples of past player requested events:
- A photoshoot with Jins and Juice magazine to foreshadow a new junk item submitted by the player.
- A photoshoot contest in New Dikamazi.
- Song on the Verge/Winterfest/Scatterfest - music festivals.
- Ironbound interactions at the Fetek factory, involving conflict.
- Scientific experiments aboard the Event Horizon.
- Lots more... see the events section of NEWS for more info!

Obviously we can and will also come up with our own ideas for events, as necessary, but we very much want you the players to be able to ask for the stuff you feel would drive the storytelling too! We are here to make the game fun for you!

Happy Arepee Erryone!

Damiel and the Storytelling team <3

Autoposter

Re: Yet another MODS thread

Thread necromancy! Since a lot of stuff has happened to mods since then, here's how they work now. Each manufacturer has a series of mods, basically one for each level range (5-25, 25-45, 45-65, 65+ if memory serves) and damage type, with the effects being more pronounced on the lower level mods. Mods still have to be reverse engineered, but you gain research credits for the manufacturer whose mods you take apart, which can then be spent on every mod from that manufacturer that you have reverse engineered at least once. Mods are obtained by the still pretty rare drops from bashing, which may be improved via talent after MIL 75, although I can't say how strong that effect is, from the xenozoology bounty (once a day, and only if there is no other promotion), and via shipment, which is a skill in each modding ability that allows you to trade five of each resource (disheet, paristeel, transteel, hds astrium, rglass, nanoplastic) for one of ten random assortment of mods once per RL week (you only see how many from which manufacturer there will be in the shipment, not what is in there).

The issue that still stands is that due to the effects of mods being rather limited, there is no reason to ever research or craft mods from all but one or two manufacturers, which provide the largest bonuses - nobody would go for a mod that gives +2 damage when they can have +10. Similar to Kirin, I believe there should be a secondary effect for each mod, at least for those with weaker bonuses, so that there is actually a decision to be made whether I want to use the +10 damage mod and only get the raw damage, or maybe go with the +2 that has a secondary useful effect, maybe an increased crit chance. There's a whole lot of effects we could come up with here, from slightly increased drops to more bleeding to more damage on Tuesdays, pretty much everything goes.

However, taking Kirins suggestion a bit further: make mods highly customisable. Let's say a mod is a combination of, say, ten generic components, which could come from any of the manufacturers, but the effect would scale with the amount of parts from that manufacturer. For example... I would then have to decide, do I want my weapon mod to have 10 parts of the thermal damage mod? Or maybe ten parts of the crit chance mod, giving me 10% more crit chance (numbers are wild guesses), or maybe go somewhere middle of the road, with five parts damage and five parts crit chance? This could also become the last skill obtained when learning to mod. I believe this would have several effects - first off, make modding more versatile. Secondly, give all mod parts a chance to be used, and a reason to exist.

Picram

Announcements post #213: Junk about junk.

From: Neritus
Subject: Junk about junk.

Greetings, Sector!

Most of you will probably have experienced horrible lag when junk is dropped on death, or when entering a room with a bunch of junk. Those days are gone!

Junk has received a rework. Now, when you receive your first piece of junk, you will hastily assemble a junk bag. All the junk you receive will go in this bag. You can still use said bag like normal and GET junk from the bag if you want to interact with the items like normal. When you JUNK SELL, you will turn in all the bags you have and all the junk in them. When you die, you will drop the bags, and others can pick it up. Now, the server doesn't need to worry about dropping thousands of items all at once and sending all the related GMCP updates and such.

There will still be some lag during JUNK SELL when you're holding on to crazy amounts of junk. That said, the lag in this event should be cut by a fair margin.

NOTE: You should only be able to PUT junk items into a junk container. If you find any way of putting anything else into the junk bag, BUG it. Any items inside the containers will be lost when you JUNK SELL, and we don't want anyone to lose anything valuable because they've managed to get it inside the junk bag by some means!

Regards,
Neritus

Autoposter

Re: Economy thoughts

I left a couple of systems out. Performance. You can make a few marks doing the practice thing, and pretty good money doing concerts, but I feel like that's ok. I've not made all that much at it to date (though I've yet to make the top of the charts) and I think the return on time invested is fair. I suppose you could do one crappy concert and just repeat it over and over, but nobody would buy tickets after a couple of runs. If you work at it, it's fairly time-consuming to do well. Set up for my last show took me about 8 hours of work, on and off, not counting the time spent writing the song originally.

Daily credits. So this is huge at getting people to do things obviously. And once again, the thing to do is incursions. In fact, it's the only reasonable way to max daily credits. Kill 5 targets. Repeatable. Compare this with scooping gas. It's the same 5 scoops of gas or rocks delivered, but the time investment is just so much higher. Even if you 'cheat' at it and bring in scoops with 1 mat in them, it's still more time-consuming than blasting 5 things.

Ground bashing is also repeatable, but you have to kill 100 things instead of 5. For me that's, I dunno, about once an hour, give or take.

Daily xeno bounty. Not repeatable, which is fine since you can only do the bounty once, and it's a nice bonus to the other rewards from that.

Two practice performances, not repeatable. I mean, fair enough. Other than waiting on the cooldown, there's no investment other than walking to a bar somewhere.

The economic related ones are odd. So craft 10 items, not repeatable. Easy enough. In fact I do it every day. And then put those items in the incinerator cause I don't need them for anything. My shops are all set up with autocrafters, so there's no need for actual inventory. Which I will say is extremely convenient, one less thing to have to track. But incinerating items does nothing for the economy either, other than the pittance it costs me to craft those things. Submit a design. Only worth one credit, and doesn't repeat.... not a great incentive for designing things, which adds to the game, if not the economy. I'd say, bump this to 2 credits, make it repeatable, but tie it to accepted designs. Yes, you miss out on instant gratification, but you can jump start some credits in a day or three when your designs are approved.

Hack 10 terminals, not repeatable. I hate hacking. I've no idea how this compares to the rest, but it certainly seems like the time investment is fairly large.

Harvest a crystal. Easy enough, but opens you up to PvP. Probably fine as is.

Win a duel. Normally traded between willing victims, but it still gets people involved in PvP and serves it's purpose. Not repeatable, so you can't just kill Bob over and over all day for free creds.

So, I'd say look at the tasks tied to economic stuff, and up the rewards/lower the time investment. Add in something for people who are doing the autofactory thing, not just mining.

Poet

Economy thoughts

--Yes, I recognize this post is all over the place. And I don't have hard numbers, cause I really don't like math. I quit Eve when it became a resource management simulator, and Starmourn is headed the same way.--

Without further ado, some thought on the economy in Starmourn. See also, my thread on the mining specialization-
https://forums.starmourn.com/discussion/1029/mining-spec/p1

Separate systems:

Physical shops. (more please) most owned by NPCs Accessible in specific locations
Trade terminals x4 systems. Accessible only in specific places, except via artifact
Ship brokerage. Accessible anywhere
Starforge. Accessible in dock area or from ship in dock (and it's confusing as to where you need to be)(Also, new artifact lets you get supplies anywhere)
Market (space) accessible from stations, can be modified remotely with artifact
Refinery/Autofactory. Accessible in specific locations, some things can be modified remotely with artifact (not sure what the utility of this is in practice)
Junk shops. Accessible in specific locations, or remotely with artifact
Repair shops. Accessible in specific locations, or remotely with artifact
Collectibles market. Accessible anywhere
Promo market. Accessible anywhere
Rejuvenation (is this part of the economy? It's certainly a mark sink)
Cosmpiercer. Powers purchasable in faction territory, generally from a station
Token Equipment. (are the tokens listable anywhere?) Redeemable in specific locations.
Love shop. One location, with its own currency.

Currencies:

Marks
Credits
Love tokens
Gear tokens
Cosmpiercer vouchers
Ta-deth crystals

I can buy a starship from anywhere, but if I want a t-shirt, I have to be in a specific place.

Some of these are split up- can take market orders from station, but have to complete on ship with goods in ship cargo

Autofactory can be started from ship, but goods have to be in station/planet cargo

Trade skills- high entry cost, low/no ongoing cost. Goods appear magically and have no material requirements.

Unlike some people, I find plenty of mark sinks. Between promo items, ships, rejuv and etc, Poet is almost always broke.

There is a huge disparity in marks generation. Incursions are number one, once you can do the hard ones. There is, at least, a marks cost involved in purchasing ammo and repair kits. As compared with the second best method, ground bashing. Essentially costs you nothing, and nets you 10's of thousands of marks/hour.

Both these activities are reasonably fun (for me). I know some people hate bashing, but I don't mind. Incursions are better, in that there is more effort involved in getting to range and lining up the targets.

Hacking I don't care for, and know little about. Seems mark generation is fairly low, considering the consequences (bounties).

The 'actual' economic activities are all a loss. Having done them all, none of them make money. There is a ton of effort involved, and the upfront costs in getting set up are high. I have another thread on this, and my thoughts haven't changed.

-I will also note that there are Honors available for those who own 10 factories/refineries and that no one can do that anymore, as the cap is 9.

Materials need to be required for everything. I hate saying that, cause I like being able to make clothes out of thin air, but seriously. There should be crates of fabric that need to be bought and shipped about. Gems and metal for jewelry, etc. Right now, ship supplies exist in their own little world, and given the existence of the ship forge, there can never be a shortage of anything. You might pay more, but things are available if people put in the work, or not. The only reason to engage with the economy is to be nice to the new players, or to use the comms for guards and station stuff, that most people probably don't know exists. I would not recommend using comms for more of this kind of thing as a stop-gap, and in fact having to track it to keep the guards paid is really quite annoying. I can see using them to buy station upgrades, but just dumping them into ongoing maintenance is also annoying.

The other problem with this economy set up, is that only the fighting tasks generate any reasonable pay, and XP gains. The thought being, apparently, that things that involve 'risk' are the only valid ways to make money. The economy cannot work this way. There has to be a way to make money doing 'economy' things. Like hauling in rocks and gas. And it needs to earn reasonable XP. Maybe not quite as much of each as incursions, but enough that people are willing to invest time and effort into it.

Materials also need rarity adjustments. There need to be cheap, commonly used materials that are super easy to find in large quantity. Rare stuff that's expensive, and hard to find- but which you don't need much of in the recipes. Right now, as Holgorath pointed out, this is backwards. Iriil, which is supposedly rare, is required in huge quantities, and it appears to spawn at exactly the same rate as every other material. Everyone wants it, and everyone needs it, and no one can find enough. Everyone is paying 100 marks/unit or more trying to get some, without any luck cause even at that rate, people aren't interested in mining it. Also, at that rate, all the batteries on the market are sold at a loss, cause that price was set based on Iriil being worth about 40/unit.

Yields are also far too small. As it stands you cannot refine enough material to be able to sell large quantities of things cheaply and make it worth your time and effort. Holgorath indicated mining for 8-12 hours and making 80k marks, and I think that number is wildly optimistic. Even if correct, you can do the same thing in an hour in an incursion. Also, the quantity limits mean you can't refine enough stuff to be able to sell at a price that makes the finished goods affordable. If we paid what materials were reasonably worth given time and effort invested, batteries would go for 2500 marks apiece, and incursions would stop being profitable (and Ship Forge exists, so you can't ever charge more than 450/per)

People need to be able to move cargo from place to place for others. Give the freighters and haulers reason to exist. (And shrink the cargo bay on the Battleship, cause it's bigger than a freighter).

The cargo boost modules are much, much too small.

Drone bay module is good, but dedicated mining ships would be better.

Specializations probably also need to go. I know why the limits on ownership were put in, but we can't keep a full complement of refineries and factories, cause not enough people are interested, and then they freeze and we are short facilities again.

Refining straight up needs to go. Charging miners for bringing in materials is a slap in the face. Scoop the gas into the hold, and then just sell it. Yet another reason to upgrade to a bigger ship with a bigger hold.

It would also be nice if there were a way to easily see how much space in the hold a material was going to take.

Tl;dr Too many economic systems that are not connected to each other in any fashion. If I can walk in a circle and spam freeze and make 10k an hour, I should be able to make at least half that amount scooping gas.

Poet

Re: Economy thoughts

The hacking task can be done in about 20 min, or whatever amount of time it takes you to hack four level 15 terminals. Back to the topic at hand though...

I agree that what you call "economy things" are generally neither too entertaining nor profitable to really make them tempting to do over an incursion, which right now is the prime way to make money and daily credits. Hard devourer incursions with a targetwarp being used for both getting there and back again, we're talking about 20 minutes of "work" tops, with a reward of about 70-80k marks and 10 credits (I am certain leviathan incursions are 50 enemies, devourers might as well). I burn through about 20 batteries per organic incursion, could be less if I cared more for staying in optimal range. Using the 250 marks per battery as standard, we're talking about an "entry fee" of 5k marks per incursion, assuming you do all repairs at a station of your choice, so at the lower end we're talking 65k profit per incursion. I think an incursion takes me about 15-20 minutes (I've never looked at the exact times, sorry), so with targetwarps you're able to do three incursions an hour rather comfortably, meaning potential net profit of 195k marks per hour, paid whenever you feel you're done with incursioning and dock at a station. During the incursion itself, enemies will generally spawn around your ship, so if you don't fly around at full speed all the time you won't even have to look for them too hard, and once you've gained enough captaincy to use a skip drive, lining up shots becomes easy, especially because interceptors and corvettes can turn on a dime and give you nine cents change. There is no need for any artefacts, either.

Contrary to that you have mining, which requires you to find your desired resource to begin with. Without artefacts, you would have to either get lucky or comb sectors manually for resources, assuming nobody told you the location of one you were interested in. With hyperscan 3 (900 creds!), you can scan for a resource every 15 minutes. Average yield for one asteroid/gas cloud feels like 20 units, with wild deviations both ways being possible - I've had my hyperscan lead me to what can only be described as traces of iriil being left by another miner quite a few times. Granted, you can get lucky and sometimes find multiple resources in a sector, but it's far from guaranteed, and many people seem to only mine in their starting interceptor, so even finding a second titanium asteroid means you get to do a second trip to haul it. If memory serves, it used to not be possible to have a specific asteroid refined in the refinery, so one would either have to only pick up asteroids of the same resource with a freighter or superhauler, or forego the bonuses on refining completely. On top of that, remembering what my tethered and probed asteroids contain is apparently below my shipsim, so even if it were possible I'd either have to write it down or hope there's already a handy nexus script to do that as I can't code my way out of a paper bag. Either way, let's assume the worst case - all four resources found per hour are there by themselves, and you don't find anything during the cooldown, netting you roughly 80 of the resource you wanted... in some hours, unless you queued them up at different refineries. The best profit can currently be made with iriil, which costs about 15 marks per unit to refine at Danica for no bonus, and can be sold for 100 marks and more, so if we ignore the costs for tethers/scoops/probes, we end up with a profit of 85 marks per unit, so my 80 units from an hour of mining earn me 6800 marks. While captaincy xp for large market orders is generally decent, we're talking several hundreds or even thousands of resources shifted here - far more than my one hour of mining can get me.

Talking credits... In our example, I would stand at zero for my hour of mining as I'd only brought in four scoops/tethers. This can obviously be better with a freighter or a superhauler, as I could simply bring in all the asteroids I can find, but you're still talking about a very slow gain. I'm picking up pretty much everything with my superhauler, but positioning this spaceworthy monstrosity only becomes somewhat bearable once you get the 180 and overload maneuvers. We're still far from calling it "fun" though, and I dread to imagine how the turning rate of a superhauler with eight asteroids strapped to it would be without the mining specialisation. My suggestion would be to change the credit task to "queue up x batches of resources", with x being 25 or more. That way, credit gains might become comparable to incursioning, although still somewhat slower if we're using 25 or more (which would slightly more than one average asteroid, and about one good sized gas cloud). On that note, increase resource yields as well. No more single digit yield asteroids at least, and maybe a slightly better conversion rate of scooped gas to refined gas wouldn't go amiss either. I think 4:1 instead of the 5:1 we currently have could work. Maybe even tweak that on a per-gas base.

The thing with the economy right now is that nobody wins. Resources are produced to be destroyed again, mainly in the form of upkeep or spent batteries (which, talking from the perspective of an RL environmental engineer, you might want to probably save for some degree of recycling, especially if so much of a valuable resource went into them...). Refineries have to be cheap, or go unused, meaning the owners sit on the costs for the foreseeable future - refineries at Danica cost a little more than 50k marks, and people either set the price to be exactly the cost, or make one or two marks profit per unit, meaning we're talking of 50k units of resources going through just to break even! It's the same with autofactories, to a slightly lesser extent.

Economy things are not just ironically unprofitable, but also intangible in Starmourn. There is no impact on anything whether a market order is fulfilled or not. Starships are conjured from thin air, as are most other things. If it neither makes a profit nor a direct difference for the player, why do it? People have only so much time at their disposal, and will naturally gravitate towards what is most "profitable" or "fun", and right now economy is only fun if you either really hate yourself, are extremely altruistic or an unhealthy combination thereof.

How to solve that is a different question, and a difficult one as well. I say make economy more visibly impact other systems as well, but not in the "you need x of this and y of that, or you can't do z" way, but perhaps more in a "we define certain criteria, and if so many are met, the faction gains access to certain perks". Those criteria could be something like "x amount of things refined/produced in the faction territory", or "x amount of materials stored", "x denizen orders fulfilled in the faction territory"... the resulting bonuses could be fancy shops in the capital opening up, or other perks like better prices at the existing shops, or new denizens perhaps with new quests, maybe even given only to those who have contributed in some way to the economic success. You could also try to slap them with an honors line or a fancy new title, but that will likely not motivate people for long. Of course, in lieu of other options, there's also always jacking up mark and xp rewards for doing them, but that alone might also not be a feasible long term solution, as there will always be a "better" option. So in order to avoid the arms race for more marks, the purpose of the economy could be more focused towards giving people a common goal to work towards.

P.S. Sorry if people said those things before I posted, I've been writing on this for a rather long time and should probably go to sleep.

P.P.S. Also sorry for text wall.

Picram