Whatever you do, it all falls apart when you allow alt accounts. As an example: If you even found some way to make it absolutely impossible for combat chars to mine, then what keeps someone from activating their alt account and mine the resources? Mining takes time but can be easily done when you run around with your alt account combat char. And it doesn't help to add some extension requirements to mine some specific ore. You'd just force the alt account to add these extensions. As it is now, pure industrialists (i.e. 1 account, industry specialized) play a niche role. The same applies to manufacturers.

It might aswell be that I have a false impression of how many alt accounts there exist. The basic problem remains that no one wants to specialize in only one specialty and keep it that way for the rest of his PO time. It simply is too boring.

And I am not whining because I can't afford a better computer and the costs of another account. I really could if I wanted to. I know that you won't ever be able to fully remove the alt account problem. Even if you would use some computer id and the internet ip to identify alt accounts and ban them, you would have to make exceptions for families. And these exceptions will be exploited.

I do see that ppl with alt accounts help the game as long as the player base is too small. But I also think that they harm the game in the long run. And maybe even keep new players from joining the game. What would help is to add more specialties. The more specialties you have, the less people will be able to cover them all with alt accounts. Adding logistics might be some way to start. Another would be to increase the subscription fee.

What should be done in any case is to level out the attributes as has been suggested before. Let the players decide which direction they want to go. Even if you were fully specialized one way, you would have the chance to experience another one without the EP penalty.

I like your idea about adding some Red Alert mechanics. Meaning that corps can build some HQ and use it to build other specialized structures. It could be fun to add some defense towers. This would be a possibility to exclude enemies from entering and using their structures. But of course, these towers need to be limited in numbers and ammo. Only then the artillery bot, which is already planned, make sense.

What? You mean like a bounty for killing one of the most dangerous agents? Like 1 mil nic for each killed agent? And after the kill, his counter is set to zero?
*duck and cover*

If you are able to deliver an assignment using a macro, then I see no problem closing the confirmation dialog aswell.

The only thing you can do when delivering multiple assignments is to ignore the dialog until you deliver the last assignment and then close that damn thing

did you try to use the semicolon? i.e. "player1;player2"

EDIT : sry, just realized what nonsense that was
they might aswell add the possibility to simply input the recipients .. so you could copy and paste the recipients from a file

If you view player bots as npc bots, then it makes sense to let them drop fragments aswell. It should be similar to the fragments that npcs drop. Letting an yagel drop perfect fragments doesn't make sense.

Letting them drop kernels is a bit different. I guess you meant to scale their rank because letting a yagel drop a heavy mech kernel seems a bit off to me. But scaling to which extensions? All of them according to the EP spent? It doesn't fit in if you kill an industry specialized player because this one should be an easy prey. More like Campana suggested: Scaling according to your knowledge base. But the question remains: What is a rookie/veteran player?

EDIT: You actually have two aspects here: difficulty to kill vs. size of knowledge base. Usually the difficulty should define the reward.

Considering that you don't kill as many players as you kill npcs (well you might want to correct me on this one , the fragments/kernels they would drop won't matter much.

Why not trailers? Add 3 trailers to a Sequer each with 80 U and you have your 320 U of cargo. Might add more fun to the gameplay than one single big hauler.

As I understand it, two things are requested:
- Some ingame WTT system
- Some ingame contract system

about the WTT system:

I don't really see the benefit of this because one of both parties is going to have a loss. The value of an item is decided on the market. When you set up a trade order, you will make sure that you won't have the loss. So why would anyone accept your order? Thus I doubt that this will be used often if implemented.

about the contract system:

I would think of contracts as "someone wants to buy something for a certain price in a certain timeframe". I could imagine this to be implemented as a black board. Similar to the Assignments window.

An applicant would benefit from it as it would be more likeley for him to get what he/she wants. On the market he has the risk of someone being online and buing the item before he has the chance to get a hold of it.

As an agent you would benefit from the guarantee that someone will buy a certain amount at a certain price. It happened to me a few times that I opened the market, then decided to mine some HDT for a buy order. But when I returned, I had to find out that someone was faster and the buy order was gone.

Both have the risk of a loss at the same time. The applicant of being forced to buy at a higher price if the market drops. The agent of having to produce at a lower price if the market raises.

It might be tricky to implement because you would have to make sure that someone who can't possibly fullfill the contract in time is unable to block the contract from others who could. Setting some timeframe is easily done. Setting some other requirements (i.e. extensions, bots, modules) might turn out to be a barricade for those who could fullfill the contract but are unable to take the contract due to too high requirements. Maybe some standing for fullfilled contracts might do the trick. Just like the ones you have for the Assignments. You would then have to add some seeded contracts for those who have a low standing. Might be possible to merge this with the Assignements window.

+1 for the contract system

If this annoys you, then you should try to find fields with more ore per tile. The charges lost at the end won't matter much in relation to what you get out of the tile. If you have to travel a bit, take a field container and get yourself a Sequer. The travel time won't matter much if you mine enough to completely fill the sequer. If finally you even grow out of these fields, then move on to the beta islands. I've heared they have red jucy fields.

So it is not a bug, it is a feature. It forces you to move on and not annoy newcomers because you deplete low level fields.

LAG has been constant for me, thus it doesn't seem have the slow down effect. So it shouldn't matter that much in which country I live.

What I wanted to point out is that whatever slows down the FPS seems to influence the overall performance. And in addition to that the FPS rate at the Terminal has been high (~15, after leaving the Terminal) although there have been lots of people. But the FPS dropped to a ridiculously low rate (~4) when nothing really happened in my vicinity.

EDIT: And it is not that the FPS drop from one moment to another. It drops slowly.

@Zoom:
I've been on a longer mining session. During that time, my FPS dropped down to 4 FPS. Back in the Terminal I had some 27 FPS. When I left the Terminal with my Sequer to empty my field container, I had some 15 FPS and just before returning to the Terminal it has dropped to 8 FPS. Funny thing is: during that time, LAG has constantly been around 80 ms.
Hope it helps to locate the problem or give a hint for it's solution.

Its easy to argue once you have reached mech status or are in a big corp. Those who start have neither. It sometimes seems that ppl forget that we still need more newcomers.

I no longer use an Argano nor a Laird and I have more than one medium miner/harvester module per bot. So I am not arguing from the I-need-help point of view.