Requesting shuttles

for players that are requesting shuttles, they should be able to enter a min quality like 2500 missions, or such

as a thought, doesn't have to be this way, just a thought, what if prices for shuttles, and other DT stuff auto-adjusted based on supply demand. that is if their is a high demand of shuttles or EP, or HTS, or, or, or. then the requested price would increase, like for corps, and if their is high supply, the prices would decrease.

Agree

yeah, at the higher prices shuttles used to be, i'd wait weeks for a shuttle to sell, then after i forced the price down to what it is, i can't keep up, if the market itself would recognize the demand increases as price drops, and decreases as prices rise, while sellers want to sell more at higher prices, and less at lower price, i mean econ 101, right? so rather than buyers and sellers waiting around weeks for some one to get a clue to change their prices, the market should adjust some what on its own!

i lowered the shuttle prices because i want any one to buy in, cheaply, but, i'm happily not keeping up with demand, it'd make since for the offers/requests to self adjust, similar to corp trade strat

They are not worth producing and selling at the current price. not with conversions (gc/cash). even 2 g/c is pushing it. Its not profitable the way it is for a level 6 corp. I offered a few to be nice, but really its a loss. only used shuttles might be worth the current price.

well, yes, but when i sell at 2 gc, i end up waiting weeks for any sales. thing is, if you can produce a shuttle for a 2 GC value, in a building game, whats to stop some one else from building them? considering thats the point of the game? and if they can build it for the price your selling, why buy with a rare resource, something they could build with a common one?

GC is a much more limited resource than cash. for a person to buy anything off a space station, they have to rent a dock for 5 GC, buy a shuttle for 2(?) thats 7 before they even buy something that they could buy or build themselves. and then its very limited to what you can actually buy, for some things you can buy weapons, but have to rent an entirely different dock to buy the ammo? its why space is pretty much limited to nukes, and people who do interplanetary trade.

the cheap shuttle prices are necessary. and i will keep them their. but i'd rather see the prices rise to a more medium price, so that more shuttles are available at the prices people are willing to pay.

again, i'll keep the prices low, but more automatic adjustments to the prices, would make the market more fluid

its this same concept that has my mobiles priced at 15GC, i'm not breaking even, not even close, but i am making GC. which is the point, selling things at conversion GC/Cash loss, giving my customers more value by trading with me, and making enough in-game profit to cover the losses, and keep going. and yes, i'm making enough cash to do it.

space has been around for a long time, years, but its still not caught on. its the thought that you can't do anything for a loss, that keeps prices higher than people will pay for. and keeps space pretty much dead

what if, when you swipe your card, convert it to game cash, and buy military assets, what if, you could rent a dock, buy a few shuttles, and end up with 1.5-2 times more stuff? it would make space trade very attractive. but that would mean that some one has to sell at a loss. i'm willing to do it, to get GC. I've seen big and great players in the past willing to overpay cash, just to get the GC, why not set up in space, selling valuable products, cheaper than what they can be bought for? that why, i plan on expanding to from the Crucis, and Libra space stations, to Cervus, and Colombia, to provide cheap GC based HQ air offense and defense

I'm looking at getting into the space part of the game, and am currently trying to crunch all the numbers. It seems to me you have to cough up the GC to do just about anything up there.

It is also very dead up there. I mean there is 20 space stations/markets, and if you took all the products on all of them and put them on one space station (with 100 Mil units capacity) it would still only be 80% full.

IMO there is one main problem that is deterring more people from using the space markets.

The need to hire/buy a docking station to purchase products.

To buy a docking station you need 200GC, chances are the majority of players would not be able to afford this unless you are pretty well established in the game which would mean you have been playing for some time. So that leaves Renting.

Renting costs you 5 GC per month. Problem is if all a player is looking to do is make a one time purchase. Or even if he/she just wants to make purchases when they can afford it. Then for the rest of that month that space is going unused. The problem with that is if its just a one time purchase then those 5 coins at the current conversion rate would equate to an approximate 180 BILLION Fee on a single purchase.

I believe this keeps Many buyers out of these markets. Which leads to less quantity being sold on these markets. Which in turn leads to the need for buyers to sell their products at higher prices to turn a profit.

For example.

If I rent a dock to sell products from I have an expense for approx 180 Billion.

If I only make one sale I need to recoup that expense in one sale.

However if I make two sales, then I can recoup that expense by dividing the 180 billion (90 b) and only charging an extra 90 b per sale instead of the 180 bil for 1 sale.

Obviously this will keep happening the more sales the better as the expense never changes for the month.

This will obviously lead to more people wanting to offer products on the space markets because there are actual profits to be made. Which will in turn increase the amount of people needing to rent docking stations so the GM's share for his effort in creating this feature of the game will equal out, which is fair.

Another matter is having to rent more docking stations if you want to offer different types of products. Perhaps being able to sell any type of product a seller wants on one docking station would the seller a greater chance of finding a potential buyer. Or at least consolidating a few of the markets so it wasn't necessary to rent some many different docking stations, which drives the prices up.

Anyways just some thoughts and suggestions.

Anyways before I sound like im just a negative nelly let me say I do like the idea of space markets and the interplanetary interaction it brings with it and I'm excited to get started in them myself. I just think these ideas would encourage these market to flourish. I hope you guys find them constructive

ben, thanks for that. your basically saying what i'm saying, and probably dozens of players in the past have said. Space is 2 expensive to really be fun.

if one was to swipe their card, the cost of a space dock, would be about 20 dollars. thats way over priced to gain limited access to an extra feature. let alone, a rarely used feature. although, from another perspective, 200GC, that you can lease out for 5GC a month, you'd make your money back in 40 RL months. thats the kind of investment that it seems W3C are pushing on us. if you look at country investment funds, it takes over 20 years for the money to pay itself out

like i mentioned, many players have griped about the high costs of space, how ever, the GM has done nothing to change prices. when space first came out, we where able to convert game cash into Gold Coins, and even then, 200GC was allot. now with out the easy GC supply that we enjoyed in the past, 200GC is rather impractical.

the game masters have excepted the "space taxi," idea. this feature, would allow a player to purchase from space, with out ever owning/renting a dock, or shuttle, but pay a fee for some one else to transport the item. this feature would breath new life into sim-space, how ever the GM have a huge list of other features they want to add first

that being said, not having the space taxi, and the GM year after year refusal to lower space prices. their is no solution to improve the popularity of space, coming from the GM. its up to players to create an environment that space is fun, valuable, and challenging.

thats why my solution is to undercut cash prices, for GC. GC and cash are 2 different resources. you can't make apple sauce out of oranges. if you want to maintain a multi-world empire, buy pop, multiple enterprises, or such, then level awards, and monthly ranking awards are only going to go so far, before you have to swipe your card. those that want to do that, i tip my hat. I'm a poor boy, i can only afford 4 dollars a month. so in order for me to be competitive, i must be creative, insightful, intuitive, and resourceful.

if you look now at the Cervus space station, stealth bombers are going for 15.9GC for a batch of 25. The current FB market price for that, with 300Q, would cost 177B. which would be an actual 4.9GC price. but for the 15.9B price, 5GC for a dock, and 2GC (as mentioned above the min break even price for a shuttle,) your talking 22.9GC for 25 Stealth bombers, for 30GC, you can start an enterprise on FB, and buy them yourself?!? Even at a 4.9GC price, you'd be better off saving a little game cash, dropping your 30 for a CEO, and spend 30 days buying all you can, before you close your CEO. Like you said, their is little value to buying from space. even with lower docking prices, one would be better of to just set up on FB, or somewhere, and build stuff yourself. this is a building game after all…

so the only real value of space, or anything, would be to get a deal. something for less with GC, than you could with cash. if those 25 Stealth bombers where priced at 3.5GC, then you compare what you'd get after 5GC for renting a dock, 2 GC for a shuttle, then you'd be around 7ish batches of stealth bombers. thats a 1.23T value, or 34GC, you've actually managed to save yourself a couple GC in the process, more with current shuttle prices, and the seller has gained almost enough for another month of registration on FB.

this works if their is demand, and demand is based on price. mentioned above, when ever i tried to sell shuttles for 2GC, i'd wait weeks for a sale, current prices, i can't keep up! same with my mobiles. when they first came out, i sat down with a friend, figured the cost, and put up offers for mobiles based on that. i didn't sell one. even a some what reduced price, nothing. their are some mobiles on Crucis, that have sat their for months. my prices, i've had several customers, and i've sold probably over 1000 GC worth of mobiles. but i'm taking a big cash hit doing it. and gaining allot of GC. my customers are getting value, and i'm making profit. every one is happy

i love the libra station, space parts, i'm always disappointed in sales their. its like everything else. the only thing over their that actually moves near its building cost, is the SMUs, everything else, just collects dust. although by lowering my prices for the concept that if some one wants to build shuttles, why buy all the parts? they probably just want 1 or 2 things, to help them get started. so i sell them cheap enough to make it reasonably easy to get started, but 2 expensive to rely on my parts. but knowing how rarely those things sell, even at rock bottom prices, i laugh at the guys that buy my stuff, and turn around trying to sell it for 10 times what i did. i just move more parts over, and undercut them again. lol but i do hope the SMUs catch on, thats what i'm hoping will eventually pay my dock costs on libra, but the greatest attribute any good sim-player has, is patience.

certainly their are players that would rather swipe their card, and others such as myself, that would rather take the cash hit to do more, in game. so if you get a guy that has war dec'd on him, or he's planning a weekend run, he might swipe his card for 36 dollars, and then go to Cervus, or Crucis, and get things he either doesn't have time to build, or gets a better value for his money. it would set up players like myself, that have the money to burn for GC.

thats my though, anyway

@ Orbiter: kudos for a well-thought-out position. A few observations: 1: I am going to say again, and keep on saying, that free trade of GC between players (and even gm )would solve all of these problems to everyone's satisfaction; nay, to their boundless joy(except, apparently, the GMs). Space would become a far more active place, as more players would be able to afford to get into it. I am a huge player, and even I cannot make myself shell out the kind of US$ it would take to buy a space dock under the current level of participation. 2: This will never happen. Too much profit involved on the gm's end of it, by now. Only a few of us vets even remember those days, so there will never be an outcry. Just like rotary dial phones, non-computerized engines, and lever-action rifles. They won't miss what they never had, so let's fleece 'em (say certain people). 3: As soon as I get my fleet built up (another 50 or 60 shuttles) I am going to try to buy yours at the max price in an attempt to get gm to raise the max limit, and to help defray your costs a little better. Look for them to also raise the min., so that even fewer people will get into space. Counterproductive, but that seems to be the pattern. 4: I'll quit before I go on a rant; I would like to buy SCMaint Units from you, if there is a way to do it without buying a space dock. PM me with solutions or counter-offers.

well, for one, even when their was free trade of GC between players, space was pretty dead. you could raid a few C3s, convert the cash to gold, and buy docks, with my old account, i had over 20 docks, that i soooo much miss. but when they took away the GC market, i felt betrayed by the GM, and truly it was, after players had spent years building, relying on a game feature, the GM just took it away. do to personal life, my boys are getting bigger, and need a more attentive daddy, and what i felt was a betrayal of the GM to its long term customers, i choose to delete my account, and start over. i mean the fun of the game is to build up!

but even when players could easily convert cash into gold, their still wasn't much demand in space, except for nukes. which ironically for me, has been an area of the game i've never gotten deeply into. i've got them, but not allot, never have.

as far as defraying the shuttle costs, well, i purposefully pushed the price to what it was, it wasn't the GM, it was me that did that. frankly, as i said, i got sick of waiting weeks to sell shuttles. with out swiping my card, i'm very limited in what i can do. i've always been good at the space game. i wanted to build shuttles and sell them to cover the cost of a CEO, or second world. at 2GC a shuttle, and one every other day, per shuttle corp, that'd mean 1 shuttle corp, with about a dozen support corps is all you need to support a second CEO. if only no, you'd be lucky to make the needed GC each month, go into space and try to sell things at cost, again, if only then i'd be set. it'd be great if it worked that way, or the GM figured it out, that they are ruining their own game by over charging for features, if they weren't over charging, then more people would be using them.

so i lowered the shuttle prices, and lowered mobile prices, and shuttle parts, in an attempt to bring more customers into the space game. the more popular it becomes, the more popular it'll be. i'm good enough at econ, and i've given up playing the war game, so i've got tons of game cash, that i can take a hit, to make this work. but i wouldn't mind bring the prices up a little, i might have over done it a bit. i do still wanna keep shuttle price cheap, so that more players can buy in, tho

If a player sets up a Country on FB, and between their various countries, can make just 50B a GM, thats over 2T a week, if they invest 65% of one week of that into stealth bombers, and sell them at a hit on the Cervus station, they can support their entire FB empire, while still having some cash for an actual defense. while players on other planets can shop and get a deal, w/o needing to set up an entire second world

think about FMUs, some one could under cut FMUs on a space station, that would be huge! their customers might end up doubling their corp profits, and the seller could walk away with a decent chunk of GC.

interceptors, helicopters, and ammo! your under attack, if you could drop 5 for a dock, and with a chunk GC, you could buy 100 wings worth of stuff at 450Q, it could make a huge difference. when the seller, over 6 months of planning, grabbed out all the low priced stuff, and upgraded, and can walk away with a little gold. current LU prices, buy 100 i wings 13000 interceptors, and upgrading them, would cost 3.3T or 91GC, no way you could do that in your 48 hour prep. what if you could rent your dock for 5, and buy those for 70GC? and i didn't factor in the ammo? for some one like me, i'd love to sell them to you for 70GC, and an equivalent price for the ammo. you could save your country, and i'm happy.

we could talk bombers, fighters, mrmb, oaamb, conventionals, on and on. but the point is, why would some swipe their card to pay 91GC for something, that they could just buy with an equivilent amount of game cash?

as far as the SMUs, mac, i don't think their is any way except via the space station, maybe direct sales, i think those still work with SMUs, but if it'd make you feel better, maybe i can buy one in a couple weeks, and you can rent it from me? i've been wanting another one on libra anyways, you can use it for a while and then move out?

Re: spacedock rental: That sounds good; I can get some restricted supplies and try my hand at a space game with more options. Btw, thanks for the explanations in the last post, I feel I learned some things that hadn't registered before.

it'll be a couple weeks, i'm just a little short of buying a dock, after all the bragging about my mobile profits, most of it went into expanding that, so that i can keep a steady supply coming, its been quite the investment, and allot of fun. but i'll get you a dock on libra, so you can buy SMUs, and i'll expand that part of my shuttle program, i've got 43 of them going, thats like 20K a week, i'd like to double that, but i've held off, like everything else, they aren't going fast enough to justify that. but maybe things will change, and you're investments will make it worth the effort.