Trading

[the570z]

First off, if these were my ideas, id have stated them as such, was trying to sum up the general mood in most of the threads on the subject to fatman in response to his comments on everybody wants to make traders die more often.

Well a lot of people feel that hunting should be the challenge of trading.

I think you are wrong, I am sure that a lot of the hunters want the challenge to be them.

If there were no hunters there would be zero effort required to trade, you wouldnt even have to fed at night. With rels giving perfect trades and MGU figuring out routes, trading is following the orders of a computer, you could just write a script that would do a better job since it could get on at whatever time needed. Hunting is the ONLY current x factor in trading. Do I think that should be the way it stays, hell no. But there are many who do.

Several changes over the years have been against hunters,

Wrong again over the last few years every change has been to help the hunters.
1. Unkown scouts
2. Name changes
3. Faster game speed
4. Smaller galaxy

1.Almost pointless as all it does is make traders waste turns shooting scouts and thus fed quicker. If scouts remained unnamed in combat logs, then this would have helped hunters. It doesnt and thus its of no use.
2. Again, a simple click of View news reveals who they are, this feature is pretty much good for lulz and nothing more.
3. Helps everybody equally, next...
4. Helps traders almost more then hunters as feds stayed the same size and most gals have a route running through fed or right next to it, making running a cinch.

now with a declining playerbase a lot of folks feel that hunting should be made a little easier

There is nothing wrong with making hunting easer as long as at the sametime you make it so it does not hurt so much when the trader gets poded. You talk about risk/reward? What risk does the hunter have now? No trader wants to lose weeks worth of work in 2 seconds.

Ive talked about moving to a rading system over a shoot to kill deal, extensively and was flamed for my efforts, if you like ideas like this, please support them next time!

as with a PSF and a decent internet connection it is pretty much impossible to die to a hunter

The PSF has always been hard to kill that has not changed. What did change that has made it the ship to use is game speed and galaxy size. You asked for faster games and smaller galaxies.

PSF has always been the ship to use except on routes FAR from fed. Game speed is irrelevant to that as every other trade ship gets more turns too. Smaller galaxies does play into the PSFs hands but that never stopped everybody from using them on anything but a jump route before.

As the game is and has been, hunting is the only challenge traders face,

I think you are wrong here also. I can not speak for other traders but I trade to see what level I can get to, how much money I can make for the alliance I am in or for myself. There are a few other reasons I trade also. I play around with the hunters, well no since in getting into this part.

So besides somebody trying to blow you up, what stops you from reaching your goals? You dont have to find routes, you dont have to negotiate, you dont even have to find where to buy your ship or the closest place to park. Without hunters you wouldn't even have to park, could just wander back and forth on the route all day and see who has the most time to play... Like I said, as the game is currently, everything regarding trading is done on auto pilot, zero player input required except for avoiding the occasional bad hunter like myself that couldnt catch anybody on his best day.

[Freon22]

now with a declining playerbase a lot of folks feel that hunting should be made a little easier

There is nothing wrong with making hunting easer as long as at the sametime you make it so it does not hurt so much when the trader gets poded. You talk about risk/reward? What risk does the hunter have now? No trader wants to lose weeks worth of work in 2 seconds.

Ive talked about moving to a rading system over a shoot to kill deal, extensively and was flamed for my efforts, if you like ideas like this, please support them next time!

I was supporting the idea of making hunting easier in the thread called "Trading needs to be harder | Ideas"
But I did ask for a smaller hit in exper lose when poded from a hunter. What I got in return was "

I rather raise the xp gain when killing than lowering the loss when dieing

I will say it one more time "There is nothing wrong with making hunting easier as long as you also lessen the lose to the trader"

[the570z]

I would say we should make traders more vulnerable AND at the same time make hunting ships no longer have to kill a trade ship to get the xp and the cash. The hunter shoots until the ship would be dead, and then gets an option, blow up the ship and lose the cash or take their money and let em go. Turn the hunters into pirates, pirates often would rather let ships go so they can rob them again later as if the traders cant survive and make a profit, there is nobody for the pirates to steal from. Giving them the option still lets you blow up members of opposing alliances to cost them in xp and money. Being raided also should cost some xp, but perhaps only a 10% of what a death would.

Is the gist of it, there were more details hashed out in the thread.

[N.ator]

feron think it through.. by making the ships cargo holds and everything decrease with higher turn rate then its potentally just making it a 1x. as for the amount of experience you can potentially gain.

[Grey Death]

rejected