I'd like to see a new stage to robot construction.

I'd like to see them made from components and commodities. For example, weapon mountings, drive motors, circuit boards, resistance plating (factional commodities can come in here), hydraulic joints etc.

The thinking here is that newer players would have more market opportunities and, since components would effectively compress materials, building bots on Beta and Gamma would not require quite so many scarabs full of ore to be shipped to the higher point facilities.

Anyone remember ffxi crafting system?  That used to make me cringe.  Side note good post.

Aye, that was a worry of mine. Doesn't hurt to put the request in though. Perpetuum looks to have one of the better crafting systems already; it was posted on another board and was what brought me here. Driving product demand is likely more important at this stage anyways; if you have no one to sell to, the crafting/economic system is moot.

One of the thoughts was that having some natural trading routes using some NPC generated resources. Foodstuffs, fuels, energy, etc. Something to drive a transportation system which would then become an attraction for 'pirates'. Drive PVP, add some more combat interest in the game. More fun, more danger, more destruction. Hopefully then, more players, more demand for parts and resources.

At that point then a quality system makes more sense to implement, both time and money-wise. I see people specializing in just finding the mining nodes and selling the info to corps, corps specializing in making particular parts (we'd need to have the skills adjusted as well so one person could not cover a whole production cycle), protetcion rackets or security corps to protect traders on runs, etc, etc.

When you have a larger playerbase, database restrictions might be less of an issue when you have the admirable problem of cash on hand and Devs with time on their hands.

By the way, I thank you all so far for not laughing or trolling me out of the forums.

Thank you. It would be quite a bit of code to inject. However, how much code do you think player-built structures took to inject? While I'm all for that ... players sense of ownership and stake in the game is a great way to help againt people leaving the game ...  I think a revamp of the construction and trading system brings in new players.

Unfortunately these types of MMOs rely on a good group of players, really determined to launch it into the mainstream (Devs cannot do it on their own).  Both forums and in-game are just been full of epeen, trolls and grinding content as fast as possible, whilst removing their competitors. Specially from certain group of players who unfortunately don't really care much about the success of this game.

Ingame PvP is what kept this game alive for as long as it did. It kept the market moving, it kept the players interested in fighting for their cause, it gave meaning to otherwise meaningless actions. Don't blame any specific group of players because pretty much everyone did things like this and they were not wrong or "killing the game". They were creating content and playing the game as intended.

The problem with Perpetuum is as groups of players left no one came to replace them. The numbers just went down besides the EVE exodus and Statecorp. Playing the game as intended causes a certain amount of rage quitting naturally. There has to be a loser for their to be a winner. Anyways, most of the people who quit the game in the end didn't quit because they failed in their objectives or lost a war; they quit because the population only went one way: down.

The game is PvP based hardcore. The reason for NPCs running around... sorry, standing around, a backstory and dividing the gameworld into 3x2 factions has to be found (how many factions does EVE have?:fuuu:)

Its build around several hundred of players, where each individual charactor logged in can only fulfill the one and only role he got his EP spent on. And even if he has subscribed long enough to maximize all extensions of different roles - he shall never be able to use them at the same time on the same bot. god forbid omnimechs...

Right now I think the DEVs need to focus on items that are low in complexity and have a high value. I am not saying that the OPs idea has a low value. It is a high complex feature with a possible high value.

Now that's a cool idea.

Although if it was to be introduced I think it would need to be done in such a way as to make producing things easier (ie reduce the time and material requirements for production).  Otherwise it would just be another barrier to getting products on the market and we all know how well that's doing atm.