4Game

I saw a post about how someone would want to change carriers and one thing I didn't see is a reward to disperse from each other and populated portions of the bubble, or punishment for staying.

My proposition is;

Add a tax system where the more populated the system, the higher the tax, and the more populated the system the shorter the timespan the tax is due, with the tax being based on value of the carrier, and whatever the carrier makes. As an example, staying a high pop, a few large pad stations, etc. A 0.5% carrier value, 50% transaction tax, due every week. A low pop, 1 medium pad station, will have a negligible carrier value, and 5% transaction tax, due every 3 months.

Add NPC transactions. Current NPCs interaction with carriers is purely cosmetic. I propose depending on the pop of a system, the tariffs set by the carrier, and how many other carriers/stations in the system, NPC's will use and pay the carrier. This means if a carrier is stationed in a high pop system alone they could actually make money, however if the system becomes filled with carrier carriers there's next to no chance of making any money. All of these transactions arent in real time however, they are calculated on a day by day basis, and based on peak amount of carriers in the system that the players carrier stopped in at server downtime.

Final proposition is unpopulated system, NPC transactions. All of my propositions so far favours dispersing amongst low pop systems, or high pop low carrier systems, not heading outside the bubble. this transaction system bases pop on system unique traffic. So if a new mining hotspot is found, this encourages carriers to not only hover in system, but also in a line from the system to the bubble, as well as line up to colonia. The added benefit being no tax.

The final part being allowed to see how many carriers are in system in galactic map (to know whether to jump there or next to there) and lower carrier maintenance cost, and have the main money sink be based mostly on taxes. Of course there will need to be tweaks to make sure that transactions versus tax versus maintenance doesn't long term equal to massive profit, but the best case scenario means negligible profit over a week, and worst case means losing a a billion over a month, with the norm being low cost to staying out the bubble, and same cost staying in the bubble, and carriers being pretty evenly dispersed.