What about Markka?

[Verbmaks]

Heya! Verbmaks in (nobody care, and me too ). I always hearing some strange ideas for game, including fundamental mechanic changes. Most parts of these ideas already planned (but our buns are baked from such a long wait for these features ), BUT most of these suggestion do not includ any good ideas for player interests. So, more to the point, I was once at the Markka station and was pretty supriesed to meet there a whole one endo! And he didn't try to shot down my miner, fullfilled by arkanium! I wondered why it happened, why Markka so abandoned, why I can freely pass this station and do not afraid pirates, unlike Arma.

And I realised that Markka completely useless station: market doesn't profitable (even with lower taxes, the prices on market are inadequate), players do not have any stimul for visiting Markka. Just to repair miner ship on way to Origin station. Even shops are useless, because there no way to earn money, no one will buy ur ore. And this is what I suggest - let players make money on Markka station.

One of the reason of Arma interest - bots shop. You can fly for 50 km, mine lot of useless karnite and sell it for 4.7k credits per stack. Neat! You litterally can live on Arma now! But a huge concentration of miners draws attention for pvp players. You can easely create new point of interest in game with adding only one hangar on Markka station. Players could literally live on Markka, creating a huge amount of sell orders with much lower prices than Origin market (in theory).

And I can understand if you don't want to add bot's shop (Arma - militarry station, Marrka - trading, no pvp here and etc.). In this case I have only one suggestion - market API. Now some entusiastic endos created API for Origin's market, but, as I know, it build on CV tech (yeah, just screenshots of market converting in json data). Maybe it makes sense to make a normal API for all these markets (Origin, Markka, Arma), I think it will be very useful for traders who want to make money on the price difference, and will also serve as a good incentive for trading development.

 

[Askannon]

I think it could already be enough, if the different stations have different base prices (what the "NPC"/ore towers buy ores for) for certain materials to make exporting them more lucrative.
For example increasing the base exorium price on arma (as Elysium does not have native exorium as far as I know) above the 4354.56 you are guaranteed to get at the npc trader to more of a 5000 or 5500 price.

Markka is more difficult to assess, as it as a station has no draw on its own, but access to many resources.
One option would be to allow for reduced prices on common goods, but increased prices for everything from zone 4 and 5, maybe 3, and the moon exclusives.

alternatively raise the base prices by the reduced tax, so you have exorium not at 4354.56 but 4790.02.
It might not result in anything, but who knows...

 

[Verbmaks]

I think bot's prices serves as price regulator. At Markka bot's prices could be much lower than Origin's prices. Just to stimulate players do not keep all they's ore on Marka and make Markka market more profitable for trading routes (buy cheap ore on Markka and sell it on Origin).

I don't think that Arma prices should be increaced. Arma's market seems healthy for pvp station without access to charodium and exorium. Player activity regulated prices itself. And I really want to see same on Markka

 

[Askannon]

Thing is, you can only sell ore at the "NPC" terminals (they are in the game - ore towers and inside the market - and regulate how low ore can be long term), so Markka has no advantage, as people won't go there if there is no ore and won't sell there if they can't profit, which is why I offered increasing the base sell price to at least get people to carry low profit ores there to sell to the NPC.

 

[ZombieMouse]

One other big problem with Markka I have realised talking to new players is they they do not know it even exists! New players find out fairly quickly about Elysium and moon city, but Markka they have no clue about.

I've started construction of a mid-way station with friends and plan to do some advertising on Origin 2 once it's ready, to try and make new players more aware of Markka. But this is no real substitute for the devs adding some hint on Origin about where it is.