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Territories and what to do about them... a suggestion. (also on Reddit)


HamyMac

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I really resent paying ingame cash for something that is a game essential and for which I already pay real cash on a monthy basis. You can't play without a territory and you can't succeed with only one). (This is a long one because I think there is a whole other way of doing this without the need for 'causeless' territory fees.
If the objective of the fee was to clear out casual players and make those abandoned tiles available again, then just saying you lose everything if you don't pay is getting a little 'real world' in what is obviously a fantasy game that most people play to 'avoid' the real world for a while.

The territory system per se is fine, but it seems mainly for zoning mining rights and I think territories should be free (and mining units recalibrating once a week would be often enough, but I digress!). If you are a real miner, then you will want a dozen or ten teritories and micromanaging a fee structure, even with monthly renewal or 13 week top-up is going to be a hole chunk of game time just adding funds to a territory account... and that's no more fun that calibrating thirty mining rigs a day...
You can spend too much time in micromanaging game devices that don't progress your gameplay... and there is already way, way enough micro detail in building ships, organizing production lines and trades and generally getting into space to blow stuff up, never mind the intricacies of actually doing that successfully!

The game is very slanted towards builders and producers, but there are those players who just want to buy ships, fly to space and pew-pew to their hearts content. These people wont be interested in personally owning whole chunks of real estate, but neither will they all (as the player base grows) want to be tied to an org. They will want a small hangar area to store ships, and a storage space to keep refits and honeycomb for repairs.
So... why not set aside a number of tiles, say twenty-fifty hexes, scattered a hundred or more kilometers apart across the planets and away from the markets, with each hex divided into six rentable 'parking lots' at 250kh/week, where people who just want to 'buy and fly' can base their ships without claiming oversized territories and abandoning them. If they leave the game, their lot becomes vacant and their ship can reappear on open ground nearby when they rejoin, their container can be reclaimable (with all their stuff) when they have hires another parking lot and hit the Deploy Element to place them. .

The parking lots would be just that, a place to park two or three ships, perhaps with up to a max four XL containers (deployable without the need for a core). Each lot would be unique to that player who is paying the rent. The parking lots become vacant if the rent isn't paid. That leaves builders and industry guys to claim and expand their territories for a one off fee as normal, but also delivers an income stream into the game. That way industry can thrive on territories and casual/pvpers can have a base in the game that suits and does not exceed their needs.
This would then encourage makers and builders to set up a small community of markets near the parking lots, where a similar arrangement of a limited number of hexes, divided into three could be used as store fronts for fuel and scrap makers to service the needs of the parking lot, which would also allow some of the de-cluttered marketplace store fronts to re-open around the planet... complete with all the weird advertising that inevitable appears, but with none of the chaoss it created at the markets.

As for abandoning territories How about this: after three weeks of neglect (the average holiday duration, plus one week) buildings and elements begin to visibly deteriorate, but can be repaired (a timer can be shown on the main map at that time to indicate when a tile can be salvaged.. see below).
Over a further six weeks (9 weeks in total) buildings and elements become unrepairable and after ten weeks the buildings and elements (now basically collapsed into rubble/or shaded out with a grey overlay) can be salvaged at 30% of the original construction materials by making a 'Salvage Claim' on the Territory Unit, hitting the build button and collecting everything into a dedicated 'Recycling Container'. The Salvage Claim would be unique to the player who makes the claim.
Just to add a little spice, if a Salvage Claim has only a two hour duration and costs a million quanta, then no one player could salvage a whole territory in one go and may not return for twelve or twenty four hours. As soon as the claim runs out after two hours, any other player can step in with a new claim (alts of course would aid the greedy, but it would potentially offer competition). I would suggest that the Recycling Container actually does the recycling and would need fuel and must be deployed from and gathered up to a ship. The Salvage Container would have a work cycle that is independent from the Salvage timer.. so a player salvaging a territory may have to wait another half hour while the recycler reproccessses the contents. The Salvager cycle converts ALL the materials salvaged to Ores or Pures, so no-one goes off with a free factory or a complete building#s worth of honeycomb... this would keep element production unhindered by loads of second hand elements flooding the market.

I'm sure this isn't infallible, but you then have revenue streams from more casual players paying rents and from salvagers paying salvage fees without hitting the producers with a ground rent for the 'inactivity' of owning a territory. Additionally you end up with a cleaned up planet and a whole new way to play the game.

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I really resent paying ingame cash for something that is a game essential and for which I already pay real cash on a monthy basis. You can't play without a territory and you can't succeed with only one). (This is a long one because I think there is a whole other way of doing this without the need for 'causeless' territory fees.
If the objective of the fee was to clear out casual players and make those abandoned tiles available again, then just saying you lose everything if you don't pay is getting a little 'real world' in what is obviously a fantasy game that most people play to 'avoid' the real world for a while.

The territory system per se is fine, but it seems mainly for zoning mining rights and I think territories should be free (and mining units recalibrating once a week would be often enough, but I digress!). If you are a real miner, then you will want a dozen or ten teritories and micromanaging a fee structure, even with monthly renewal or 13 week top-up is going to be a hole chunk of game time just adding funds to a territory account... and that's no more fun that calibrating thirty mining rigs a day...
You can spend too much time in micromanaging game devices that don't progress your gameplay... and there is already way, way enough micro detail in building ships, organizing production lines and trades and generally getting into space to blow stuff up, never mind the intricacies of actually doing that successfully!

The game is very slanted towards builders and producers, but there are those players who just want to buy ships, fly to space and pew-pew to their hearts content. These people wont be interested in personally owning whole chunks of real estate, but neither will they all (as the player base grows) want to be tied to an org. They will want a small hangar area to store ships, and a storage space to keep refits and honeycomb for repairs.
So... why not set aside a number of tiles, say twenty-fifty hexes, scattered a hundred or more kilometers apart across the planets and away from the markets, with each hex divided into six rentable 'parking lots' at 250kh/week, where people who just want to 'buy and fly' can base their ships without claiming oversized territories and abandoning them. If they leave the game, their lot becomes vacant and their ship can reappear on open ground nearby when they rejoin, their container can be reclaimable (with all their stuff) when they have hires another parking lot and hit the Deploy Element to place them. .

The parking lots would be just that, a place to park two or three ships, perhaps with up to a max four XL containers (deployable without the need for a core). Each lot would be unique to that player who is paying the rent. The parking lots become vacant if the rent isn't paid. That leaves builders and industry guys to claim and expand their territories for a one off fee as normal, but also delivers an income stream into the game. That way industry can thrive on territories and casual/pvpers can have a base in the game that suits and does not exceed their needs.
This would then encourage makers and builders to set up a small community of markets near the parking lots, where a similar arrangement of a limited number of hexes, divided into three could be used as store fronts for fuel and scrap makers to service the needs of the parking lot, which would also allow some of the de-cluttered marketplace store fronts to re-open around the planet... complete with all the weird advertising that inevitable appears, but with none of the chaoss it created at the markets.

As for abandoning territories How about this: after three weeks of neglect (the average holiday duration, plus one week) buildings and elements begin to visibly deteriorate, but can be repaired (a timer can be shown on the main map at that time to indicate when a tile can be salvaged.. see below).
Over a further six weeks (9 weeks in total) buildings and elements become unrepairable and after ten weeks the buildings and elements (now basically collapsed into rubble/or shaded out with a grey overlay) can be salvaged at 30% of the original construction materials by making a 'Salvage Claim' on the Territory Unit, hitting the build button and collecting everything into a dedicated 'Recycling Container'. The Salvage Claim would be unique to the player who makes the claim.
Just to add a little spice, if a Salvage Claim has only a two hour duration and costs a million quanta, then no one player could salvage a whole territory in one go and may not return for twelve or twenty four hours. As soon as the claim runs out after two hours, any other player can step in with a new claim (alts of course would aid the greedy, but it would potentially offer competition). I would suggest that the Recycling Container actually does the recycling and would need fuel and must be deployed from and gathered up to a ship. The Salvage Container would have a work cycle that is independent from the Salvage timer.. so a player salvaging a territory may have to wait another half hour while the recycler reproccessses the contents. The Salvager cycle converts ALL the materials salvaged to Ores or Pures, so no-one goes off with a free factory or a complete building#s worth of honeycomb... this would keep element production unhindered by loads of second hand elements flooding the market.

I'm sure this isn't infallible, but you then have revenue streams from more casual players paying rents and from salvagers paying salvage fees without hitting the producers with a ground rent for the 'inactivity' of owning a territory. Additionally you end up with a cleaned up planet and a whole new way to play the game.

(Edit: btw, props to NQ for the Panacea note about attending to the player base's opinions. Appreciated.)

 

Edited by HamyMac
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There now.. that's better;
 

Quote

I really resent paying ingame cash for something that is a game essential and for which I already pay real cash on a monthy basis. You can't play without a territory and you can't succeed with only one). (This is a long one because I think there is a whole other way of doing this without the need for 'causeless' territory fees.

 

You must not play many Sandbox MMO games.. as this is pretty much standard.
You pay a sub for access to the game, it does not entitle you to anything in game, except for maybe the ability to train talents.

If you do not want to pay for territory you do not have to, you can mine enough to pay for the parts you need to buil din space and/or build a spacefaring miner to get your ore from asteroids. This is perfectly doable solo.

So your presumtion is pretty much false on all counts.

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OP used the word causeless. 
While I don’t believe it’s an actual word, I do think their intent is correct. 
 

IMHO tax should only be levied on hexes in the safe zone and could be justified as Aphelia keeping the peace in lieu of NQ developing real NPC enforcers ala EVE. 


Same for space stations in the safe zone they should be taxed in exchange for being eternally “safe”

 

outside the safe zone taxes should not exist at all.  What is reason for them to exist out there in the wilderness. 
 

of course there is no planetary PvP so you could argue that tax will be removed when planetary safe zones are removed. 

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