Topic: Docking Permissions
First off, I'd like to say that I like the idea of docking permissions, and I'm not at all against them being implemented in the upcoming patches. I just had an idea while reading the blog that might make the restrictions a bit more interesting and maybe even a it tactical.
If you have not read the new blog yet, this is the part I am writing about:
...owners will be able to manage docking access via the relation system. The ownership will be decided in the period of two Intrusions. Losing the first Intrusion, the defenders will lose docking access management rights and the second will decide the new owner of the outpost. Later on the Intrusion timer system will also be revisited.
Now, while this is all well and good for securing one's island against attackers, it works in a very black and white way. If you don't own the outpost, anyone can get in. If you own it, no one you don't want in can get in. What I would like to see, and what I'm going to propose, is a way to restrict the number of corps that are blacklisted, that scales in difficulty (price) the more you want to keep out.
Now before I go into how this could be achieved, I'd like to show you why I think its a reasonable idea and why the game world supports it. It comes down to one statement that was also made in the blog:
...the facilities currently used by the Agents are owned and loaned by the Syndicate.
So, if they are loaned to us by the Syndicate, what good does it do them to allow corps to shut out other corps and potentially reduce profits? Even when an outpost is owned, there is still NIC going to the Syndicate for every transaction, with some going to the owning corp. The way I see it, the Syndicate should charge the owning corp a fee to keep other corps out to compensate for the potential lost NIC.
Now onto the important part: the part that will affect how you play the game.
The actual cost of restricting corps isnt as important here as how/if the fees will rise exponentially as you want to restrict more corps, and how to prevent gaming of the system.
The one major issue with charging per corp is people making dummy corps with only a few people to be able to be able to dock up safely. I would propose that any corp under X number of players is free to restrict access to. Keeping out the alt scout corps would be key in security, and they are in essence not a separate entity from their alt's main corp.
Another concern is restricting noob corps, as they can have thousands of members. Those would also be free.
The last that came to mind was if fees should be assigned based on the number of players in a corp. The larger corps could cost more to restrict because of the higher potential for syndicate profit, but that could simply promote inflating corp numbers through alts.
For those of you who want concrete numbers to look at, here's a (bad) mockup of the fee scaling:
Corp - Weekly Fee - Total Weekly Fee
1st - 100k NIC - 100k NIC
2nd - 200k NIC - 300k NIC
3rd - 350k NIC - 650k NIC
4th - 500k NIC - 1.15mil NIC
5th - 750k NIC - 1.9mil NIC
6th - 1mil NIC - 2.9mil NIC
So, what do you think? This is not only about having a fee to restrict, but the idea of it being progressive and harder to restrict many corps at the same time. Feel free to present alternate ideas that are in line with this one.