Trading needs to be harder | Ideas

[the570z]

I shoot every scout I see, because I don't know who it belongs to and I don't want to take the risk. If I see a scout belongs to someone I'm not worried about, either because I don't fear them as a hunter or don't see them on CPL, I leave it alone and save three turns. The hunter gets to find out some stats about when and how quickly I trade. The hunter benefits from this.

The local map idea you had brings up some good points. The scouts however id still disagree. First off, your in the minority, most people shoot any known hunters scouts on sight just in case they might be lurking. The only scouts they dont shoot are fellow traders and that just makes things worse for hunters because if you go to scout a gal you ping every trader in the joint and then none of them will trade. At least with the anon scouts traders shoot each others and save hunters the trouble. Either way compiling data is nice, but not really all that helpful as most folks dont trade at a certain time. Even if they did, knowing approx when doesnt help, you need to know when they are at the port.

Im going to suggest two things for local map. One is have a scan button on adjacent sectors so you can click to scan it, and two is change the red face so that you can click on it like a port and get an examine. If there is multiple baddies in sector it moves to an examine screen with all of them listed and you can click on attack trader for any you wish to shoot at(that are not in noobs.)

[N.ator]

1. definitely keep the local map how it is.
2. keep scouts how it is. i agree with page. it makes it harder for traders. spend more turns to do this. but i think this should only be in raical, and make all scouts outside of racial seen by all.
3. keep psf but alter it and make it less good
4. make the bargin button move

[JettJackson]

Scouts work both ways and honestly it was a novel idea at the time but I think it needs to go back. We are talking about making several pro hunter changes, it wouldn't hurt to make a pro hunter/trader change and get rid of unknown scouts. I don't know about any of you but I don't play this game to go and shoot scouts. That is a terrible use of turns compared to fun factor.

[Page]

4. make the bargin button move

Well this would also require stopping the enter key from working, because I for one know I have not manually clicked the bargain button in at least 7 years. Also this would very rapidly get incredibly annoying as you'd spend a large portion of your time trying to chase a moving button that is there for no other reason than an artificial attempt to slow you down. I feel this would just make trading frustrating on top of mostly boring (it has a couple of highlights when you get shot at, but few and far between) and would rather something that increases trader-hunter interaction instead.

For instance if there was a slight delay on CPL updating when people first appear (ie come out of lurking) of maybe a minute or possible two, so that hunters have a some time during which they can keep the element of surpise (think of it as taking time for the CPL signal to propogate across the universe)

[N.ator]

i agree i havnt clicked the button in forever. but idk its just an idea.




and page, about the lurking option. that can go both ways. i know i can drain a 3x in like 3 minutes probably, so that means if you lurk for 1 or 2 minutes, then the trader also lurks for that 1 or 2 minutes also.


1. bring back the trade arrow - with the real time experience gain

[Page]

Well the thought was the hunter would be notified by scouts that the trader was moving.

For an arrow on the CPL all that means is people have to pay less attention to see changes, it doesn't change balance particularly (not saying it can't be added, but it's a fair bit of work for little/no functional change)

[silverx2]

I think we might be going about this the wrong way. Lets take a look at what the real issues here are and then go from there.

1.) the PSF is extremely hard to kill. the risk vs reward is a tipped to much on the reward side. Turn rates have increased, making lost days due to a near miss from a hunter not as crippling as they once were
2.) there are less players playing, which means less people to actually hunt. In the real world if there is not enough prey, the predators die out due to starvation.
3.) Universal Exp, you can trade in a near unkillable ship, and then get into a cloaked WB and your game exp transfers over and provides an advantage.
4.) internet connections are not dial up anymore, the day of the super fast DSL connection feasting on the dial up 33.6k trader is dead and gone.

Solutions:

Lower turn rate on most trader class ships. If a hunter comes for you, but you get away, the turn loss from the extra moving SHOULD hurt you. currently its not a big deal since most traders get 6-8 tph if not more.

We need a new group of fresh new players, people for the hunters to actually hunt.

Give traders and hunters separate EXP systems. Just because i can trade doesn't mean i should be able to shoot more accurately. Give certain perks for each "class" the higher your trader EXP the better the deals, maybe you get special deals. the higher your combat EXP the higher your shooting accuracy. If a hunter kills someone in a trade ship the hunter gains combat EXP the trader loses Trader EXP. combat vs combat would gain/lose combat exp. trader vs trader would gain/lose trader exp. the cloak takes the highest of the two numbers so a really high combat can still see a really high trader and vice versa.

Provide 3rd world countries with e-machines and dialup modems, and shortcuts to smreals.de as the only thing capable of running.

[Beausoleil]

Provide 3rd world countries with e-machines and dialup modems, and shortcuts to smreals.de as the only thing capable of running.

That "Page cannot be displayed" error is sure to win them over =P

smrealms.de =P

[Kard]

Make barganing actualy neccesary.

You go into a port, you get a bad price. You either accept, or haggle. If you haggle, you gain a large bonus, the more rounds of haggling, the better the deal. Go to high or to low, and you get kicked from port, and have to re enter and start again.

This will make time spent at ports, go way up. Do you stay and haggle one more round each trip at the port, which gains you 10%-20% more money over the course of your turns, OR do you just accept the price, or only bargin once, so that you are not IS for 10 seconds, getting podded.

Add the moving bargin button, and it gets crazier lol.

[JettJackson]

Make barganing actualy neccesary.

You go into a port, you get a bad price. You either accept, or haggle. If you haggle, you gain a large bonus, the more rounds of haggling, the better the deal. Go to high or to low, and you get kicked from port, and have to re enter and start again.

This will make time spent at ports, go way up. Do you stay and haggle one more round each trip at the port, which gains you 10%-20% more money over the course of your turns, OR do you just accept the price, or only bargin once, so that you are not IS for 10 seconds, getting podded.

Add the moving bargin button, and it gets crazier lol.

I against this idea, the relations with races works fine, plus this would probably a huge code addition when its not necessary. Like I have stated, lets not do all or nothing here. Lets try the few fixes already mentioned first and if it is still unbalanced then further down the line we can make more adjustments.

As for whether or not people would actually bargain for the risk, I don't see the point of risking a pod for 10-20% unless its a highly defended planet route, in which case we are making the rich richer there.