It's definitely an interesting idea. My question is: who will be able to set the "buy at" price? The market fluctuates a lot, but organizations with huge stockpiles of gold will be able to effectively set a minimum price- if every organization has a "buy at 3000," the credit price will never go below 3000 ever again. Everyone will know that if they try to sell less than that, someone will just buy and resell it to an organization (and they'll lose gold).

Won't the market just eventually creep upwards? Organizations will start at a minimum of 3000 per... as credit prices rise, they'll go to 3500 per. That's the new minimum. If prices rise some more, they'll go to 4000. The only way for it to drop is if all of the organizations decide to lower their purchase price at the same time.

Edit: Well, unless three lower and the fourth goes bankrupt due to people dumping large numbers of credits at inflated prices. *coughs*

There was a similar idea to this one here. Just thought I'd bring it up so people can see what others though of that as well...
Personally, I like certain aspects of this, but I can see some flaws...
-In an org owned manse, who controls the stockroom?
-How should perms work in the manse?
-I'm not sure about shared normal artifacts, but maybe there are things that could only be bought by a city/commune, not exactly sure what

Because the edit was on the first page, I'll repost:

Edit: See, my problem would be something along the lines of this eventually being the case:

(Serenwilde): Randomlowbie says, "I'm thinking of doing some Astral hunting, one of our cubixes free?
(Serenwilde): Nejii says, "Yep! We've got three unused at the moment, they'll reset after a day's use."
(Serenwilde): Randomlowbie says, "Great! Astral, here I come!"
You curse loudly under your breath, throwing 2000 credits to the wind.

well, I don't see a problem with the credit market, because if people -want- to sell credits for lower so their commune can use them, good for them. (I remember.. someone in the wilde *isn't good with names* selling credits on the market with proceeds going to our Glade fund, this would be similar, in a way) However if they don't and a Commune/City needs credits to buy a ship, they can try to buy more competitively.

And I highly doubt personal artifacts would -ever- be allowed to be bought this way.

Assuming organizations don't engage in price fixing, competition as well as supply and demand would still see the credit market fluctuate. A fierce competition between cities to create a ship (or buy the latest DU item) may ratchet up the price to 10,000 gold/credit which would be a windfall for those selling credits. At other times, there may be a 'soft' demand for DUs or cities who willingly buy at super inflated prices may find their gold suppy dwindling and prices will adjust.

For cities to build items/ships/whatever, they'd probably also need gold and commodities as part of the building cost rather than just DUs.

oooh



A way to get rid of some of that stockpile of thousands of metals Magnagoria has!

Cities and communes would never be able to purchase artifacts meant for individuals. That would just be ... wrong.

However, maybe a "city/commune" artifact that gives every citizen a mana boost (at a monthly power cost) or something like that could be in order.

I would actually call player housing personal artifacts. Even though they aren't entirely bought with credits (some parts are), they are personal benefits you can purchase for your character.

If cities and communes can purchase those benefits for everyone in their organization, then what incentive is there to spend a fortune and get your own? While manses aren't too much of a problem, because aside from shops there's no mechanistic advantage to having one or not, the same is not true for ships. You can just start using the free ones, which are likely to be as good if not better than private ones.

If the goal is to encourage greater access to varied stations on a ship, or larger numbers of vessels so interaction can be more frequent, then I think there are better ways of helping individuals to purchase their own vessels easier, or making smaller ships more viable, or stations more equitable, or something.

But cities and communes being able to give ships away to the people in power really rubs me the wrong way.

How about we just lower the cost of manse rooms and ship components across the board!

Again, buying directly with gold is best. I don't see why cities/communes would have to go through the trouble of buying credits to do this.

With the caveat (again) that this idea is just part of a brainstorming session, I would imagine city or commune owned ships would be different than player run ships. Perhaps there'd be a maximum number of rooms or only player ships would have artifacts or city-ships would be naturally slower. On the other hand, maybe city/commune owned ships also might be capable of things that personal ships can't... maybe something where cities/communes fight out in aetherspace? Attacking nexuses? Just a thought.



You are missing the main objective of having a means whereby players can convert credits to gold more easily.

I don't like the idea of city/commune ships having access to anything that player owned ships don't have access to. It is, in my opinion, against the spirit of what makes IRE games justifiably "Free to Play" in their entirety. Of course, that's subject to personal opinion, but it sits ill with me.

If cities/communes could purchase 'ships' which are quite different or limited compared to player ships, that would be a lot more palatable. I'd still prefer it was quite distinct from what player ships are used for, though.

Maybe they can make big docks in aetherspace, or like the aircraft carrier idea suggested previously. Large, slow vessels that can carry an armada somewhere, or get small ships safely to their destination.

I had once envisioned battles over the nexuses in aetherspace. The city/commune nexuses would create their own little one-man ships to defend itself (but unable to leave the location around the nexus), and each city and commune having its own mothership that could protect or attack other nexuses.

In other words, only the mothership could attack and (potentially) drain an enemy nexus. The nexus itself could create dozens of little one man ships (able to be run by whoever is available) that couldn't leave the location around the nexus but could attack the enemy mothership. And player ships could come in and engage in battles on either side. However, only the special mothership would ever be able to drain a nexus. (Not sure if Rhysus would consider that "against the spirit" of IRE games being that player ships would not be able to drain a nexus.)

We probably will NOT do this but thought I'd share where my mind was at one time.

That's wicked!

It allows players to retain the ability to purchase unique, meaningful aetherships, gives everyone regardless of their ingame wealth a chance to participate in aether space combat, and encourages exciting aetherspace battles with different types of groups involved. I love it! (Not so much the mothership thing though... but I don't really get it)

Edit: Oh wait, yes I do... that would be cool too!

The problem is, most solutions would mess with the credit market. The easiest (Not necessarily best) way to do that is to simply throw more gold into the game, but that deflates credit prices and makes things harder for everyone. Converting credits directly to gold, at fixed prices, would set a minimum to the credit market. I'm not sure I agree with that; it would either be too low, or too high. It's better to let it all happen organically.

No, there is a justifiable difference there. But I wouldn't want to see, for existence, artifacts twice as powerful as those available to personal ships being outfitted on city-purchased ships. The pod swarm idea is an interesting one but I think you could accomplish the same sort of game concept without creating this whole "city mothership" concept and just expanding the range of available ship types. Say, for example, explicitly selling one-room, unexpandable Aetherpods for a relatively cheap 250k, rather than the 600k it takes now to accomplish the same thing.

Well, no, there would never be artifacts "twice as powerful" available to city ships. Not sure where that came from.

Anway, the "mothership" design (having only one ship able to truly attack a nexus) was meant to limit what is able to interact with a nexus and not just having (for example) a rich city (or rich group of individuals for that matter) able to purchase dozens of ships and able to wipe out everyone else's nexus. Limiting motherships to one ship per city/commune makes balancing nexus aether battles easier to manage (like having a mothership eventually blow up if it drains a nexus for too much and too long and having a long wait for your nexus to recreate/reform the mothership if it does blow up, so aetherspace battles over nexuses are rare). Without going too much into the design of something we probably won't do, the motherships do make a lot more sense than for aetherspace battles over nexuses.

Yes, I imagined the Magnagora mothership being a giant skull and the Serenwilde mother being a big beehive with the smaller pod ships being bees.

Protoss Carriors Vs. Drones!

Someone on staff has played Star Craft Brood War

Couldn't have been Elcyrion or anyone similar!