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[hkmist]

Since this is something far off topic from the DP tread, I will get a new tread on how I think the economic system in starsector should be, especially after 0.95, i think this is a chance to patch up some hole, or more exactly changing how credit should flow around player.
I think most if not all of my point are already in some where in the forum so please assume I am just trying to shamelessly getting them all in one post.

Part One : Questing

Questing(include pirate hunting system bounty), to be honest I think player's income should be 90% from questing(exclude trader/pirate here, which is another type of gameplay, need to talk later), colony income should never go about 30%(barely pay for ship maintenance and officer payout) of player income and more about make player live easier, I will sum it up later.

Since there are many active tread around these, i will keep it short on what I think need to improve, first what i feel after a 0.95 playthrough

A> Early game, Very comfortable, feeling so good because of the increased system bounty pay out, mission contact is your best friend, may be too best, some "mission" like selling good ship should be rarer or lock behind 20-30 relation to begin seeing them. Starsector early game is never these easy before

B>Mid-game, similar to early game questing is feeling good, but it start to feel not enough mid-range mission, may need to think about taking commission or get a list of medium or more importance contact. Some mission seem heavily under paid

C>Late game, another world, Not enough high-end random quest which is profitable, system bounty still pay out but it involve luck and not really fun, contact are still GOD

The questing experience is really good in 0.95, what I want to suggest here is

1. Number of "random bar mission" may need to scale with colony size(around 2-5), also having more mid to high end mission in large colony is better, reason later
2. Old random mission(those pop up in intel, battle type) need a rise, should take travel time in to the payout, those late-game 300k battle mission at 30LY away are never profitable(well unless you need their ship, and don't mention the over size problem), and pop more 200k mid-range mission, which in my opinion is the comfort zone for a ideal(200FP) fleet, not every battle need to be a final boss fight
3. Old random mission(Exploration mission type) I suggest it need a rework, all mission we have now(survey a single planet/ship) count as low tier and the payout need to have a little scaling on the planet size if possible, add new mid-tier "survey a whole system type" mission which payout will scale with how many planet in that system, and maybe a high end "clear all hostile and survey mission" which need to kill multi AI fleet, and add Exploration mission type to bar mission, if possible, higher spawn chance on market at the border of core world
4. All those pirate/militarily bomb that planet/raid/rescue type mission, many people have speck out, they are all broken and they need to take target defense into account, I don't mind throwing 3K marine to raid a market, just paid me what i should get
5. Spy and smuggler mission, don't think it is possible to take number of guarding fleet at target, can it? Maybe a bit scaling on target size and bonus if there are a radar/domain radar, it can be too easy sometime so I don't know what is the best way to do it
6. Trading mission, buying mission is ok, transport mission i never get mission related pirate attack, is there any? They pay too good in my opinion. And maybe I will talk more in trade section
7. Contact mission, not much need to improve, as state before some really good mission should have some relation requirement, and contact mission payout should scale slightly with the relation(maybe+10-20% when good with both faction and the contact, and a penalty for contact of hostile faction, or are they already there?), for some feeling of progress. And maybe some low pay selling favor mission for a higher relation boost? Too much can be done with them
8. More mission type, more more mission type
9. Mission payout amount of the same type of mission should be : Random mission(From Intel, include system bounty)>Contact mission(At 0 relation)>Random mission(Bar)

All suggestion are aiming for making player can always find some mission meet their playstyle and finance state in all game state, especially the 1. point is important to make player know where can find job to do. The downsize is there will need some balancing to not overdone it so player don't get flowed with stream of well pay job, but stably get the credit they need for a "decent(in 0.95 mean 200FP, around 200K per month?)" fleet and need some more work for a 300FP fleet(over 300K)

The whole idea of get player some kind of stable income is to counter some(well, only some) of the fear of losing ship and can't get back, and can always come back small. Please see this as a safety net system for all that hammering on the trade and colony part.


Part Two : Trading(and smuggling and raiding)

Introduction, long and boring

Spoiler

We all know there are issue in the current system, many thing can be exploits and not much thing can stop this, but is it ture? Let see what we can do in starsector about trade, what change in 0.95 and their risk

The honest trade:
Normal legal excess/deficit trading(not in black market),
With the commodities info panel it is still possible get some profit on a honest trade under the 30% tax, and with the new trade type contact trader roleplay is more than survivable now in 0.95, the good thing.
 A trader roleplay fleet is always on the risk on pirate attack, but honestly player roleplaying as a trader it is just spice to the gameplay

Expedition loot trading :
It is some thing we all explorer do, 0.95 seem like pump up the salvage amount on most POI, my first expedition to deep space ended in less than a month because I get a full hold of heavy weapon in my first stop and I just can't drop them since i am too poor , It is also possible to get rich by bring more cargo ship to expedition, the good thing(maybe)
The risk of expedition is always about the luck on profit, even most early game small ship rush can back to core safety

Privateer loot trading :
Something in the grey zone, It is always profitable to play as a privateer, attacking hostile faction trade ship with commission is always a winning, I suppose this is what most player use to surive before mission is a thing, and won't get old. 0.95 don't add much exactly on this, but privateer fleet usually in the ideal fleet size so skill renew have benefit a lot. Well, attacking trade ship is what wolf pack suppose to do
Risk? we all want combat in starsector right? What risk are there fighting a trade fleet?

Smuggling :
One of the sins in starsector, no doubt one of the most profitable job in starsector. The idea itself is legal as a playstyle, getting the most profitable commodities to the most profitable black market, easy enough? Not enough? 0.95 introduce the mighty Revenent, the multi-propose one ship end all phase logistic ship, even most mod don't go that far. With the renew of phase skill fleet effect and the sensor fleet burn speed bonus, Smuggling is never that easy. Oh, forget we get some new mission too, but we better just forget it since why bother do it when you get 100x more doing it yourself?
Unless you are smuggling to a hostile market, get caught by patrol usually won't end in combat, losing relation is the most risk a smuggler usually face 


Raiding :

Another sins of starsector, one can be very profitable by choosing the right place to raid, TT's Culann always get raided to the ground for their blueprint, pirate base get raided for the finance lost they cost to player colony, low defense market get raided for all those high value commodities. Just don't forget raiding too much will kill the goose. And for those ruthless raider 0.95 introduce a bland new raiding system with a new raid type mission, a new taste of chaos
Since raider usually raid after clearing defense or target a weak defend market, risk is minimal.

Enough introduction, sorry if it seem too long and unbearable to read, just can't make thing short and readable

[close]

For a long time smuggling and raiding seem not balanceable, one of the reason is the economic is basically broken, one is in the name of freedom of choice, and the another is Alex seem to want to keep thing simple by changing number first.

It is a really old idea of adding more risk to the activity around blackmarket trade and raiding, and I still think these is the only way to work thing out here, also some change should be made to the market too. All change is about adding addition cost(some should be deadly) to all illegal activity

Since i am not really know how to code so something may not possible or need insane amount of work, feel free to correct me and if possible find some workaround together

So these is what I think


Right now after a blackmarket trade if player is not turn on transponder and no patrol are around it is almost safe to go, suspicion level will not change at all. And relation change is small too.

What i think is a rework on the market and blackmarket trade system,

The market:

The market itself is quite balance when everything is normal, what cause the market broken and easy to exploit is when deficit happen

Market should have a cash flow limit for buying, scale with the market size(20k at size 3 to 640k at size 8.) and slowly recover each day(not reset). It work similar to how the demand affect the price of commodities but apply to all commodities of the market. And is only affect player sell price but not the price for player buying.
 
Example:
Player selling its loot to a size 4 market, the market have a buying pool of 40k, at the time player selling more than 40k(not include tax if possible in code level), on top of the demand price drop, a additional price drop(should be 200-300% higher than normal demand drop) happen because the market don't have that buying power and can only afford a much lower price.

You may ask how this make sense?
One thing the market is broken is because if a deficit happen, it buying power should never go up to meet with the sky high commodities price. And if there are no deficit, all player selling basically is not the market's interest.

e.g. if a merchant have 10k in his bank and he need 100 commodities with a value of 100, when a deficit happen and the merchant willing to pay for 200 for 1 commodities, he only have enough credit to buy 50. The price go up because someone need it, not because they are too rich and want to pay 300% more

Q&A>

Will it make normal deficit trade not possible?
Depend on how you see the trade, small trader should not be affected that much, and large trader will want to do business with larger market

Isn't 40k for a size 4 market too small?
It is the credit flow around player too much, if you check the commodities info of a market, most market don't make much at all, is it just the buying power of market broken now. And by value one batch of commodities is around 40k(drug is 70k+), so yes a size 4 market can barely buy 1 batch of commodities in deficit price.

But the market are selling over 4M commodities why can't it buy more?
These is one of the reason why starsector economic is broken, those commodities(supply ,fuel, crew and marine excluded) should not be there at all if it is not in excess(at lease it number should be much lower), they are only there because player need to buy them, gameplay reason.(And it was one of the reason why raiding is that broken profitable)
Since I only want to patch those exploits and not make a trade simulator, let it be.

If a market is in shortage state and don't have the buying power for all it shortage, how to help them?
With the contact mission system, let the station commander give buy mission of the shortage commodities on a higher than normal but lower than deficit price, with some relation boost. And if possible, it should check if the player is the one cause that shortage(We know these happen everyday, do we?)


Black market:

First is black market trade with transponder off should also raise suspicion, just go up slower. And it need to tie to the total trading amount and the market size(should use with cash flow limit, 50% of the limit should reach the highest suspicion), like a size 3 market will get alarm by a 50k trade immediately but a size 8 market may only have minimal suspicion, and if possible, player relation should also play a role so player get more suspicion if the market is hostile to them. Also suspicion level should be shared in the whole faction and have a memory of at least a month

Than it is the difficult part, like what is working now, if player is suspicion and have ringed the bell, they will get confronted, and I have think of 3 pattern, what happen should affect by the suspicion level and faction relation and some RNG.

a. A low suspicion or lucky roll, as before player left the market and get intercepted, what difference is if no patrol are around, spawn a fleet with one shuttle or something to intercept, and if player get intercepted everything work as before but the relation hit should scale with the trading amount more, if not player still got a smaller relation hit scale with the trade amount

b. Middle suspicion or unlucky roll, player get confronted right after they finish the trade(when hit the trade button) by some corrupted officer or local gang, player can pay a cut of the total trade amount(30-50% of credit and goods value they buy), talk the way out(Story point), or fight for their live with marine lost and take relation hit

c. High suspicion or bad luck roll, this time it is the law enforcement get the player, a 100%(or more) trade value fine, 50% fine by talking out(Story point), or fight for their live with marine lost and take relation hit, also the fleet itself take damage when player escape depend on the market's defense, more if there are military base and ground defense, these damage should be able to kill ship

Ideal balance between all outcome should be around 70:20:10 at low suspicion and 30:40:30 at extreme suspicion

Raiding :

Not exactly trading so keep it short, mostly old idea

1. Ground defense and military base should do some damage to the fleet when they raiding and bombing, not a small one, and can kill ship too. They may not have the range to shot something fly pass the planet they should still able to do something when the planet is attacked.(You say orbital bombardment is in safe distance? Change the line to low orbital bombardment please)

2. The new raiding system and the integrate of mission system into it are both very interesting, and I think this one should had already bring up, every addition marine into a single commodities should give a much lower result, and a higher death rate, now it is just not enough

3. Raiding should give a relation hit to all faction which is not hostile to the faction get raided

4. A old idea, Raiding and Bombing is still a military operation so it should cost supplies/CR

5. Also a old idea, all market should have some kind of protect structure

Summary :

All this change is to provide some from of cost and risk to player so there are no guarantee profit, and with the cash flow limit, trader and smuggler will need to go to bigger market for selling, passively increase the difficulty of smuggling since usually big market have much better defense and will cause more damage if it fail.



Part Three : Colony(Player owned limited company)

The most discussion of colony is usually on how troublesome you need to babysit the new born colony(The need to fly across half the galaxy to save the colony from a small raiding fleet) and how broken the late game income is from colony(which led to the bias that all late game player will swimming in pool of credit and play the game easy by using this pool to field a 10 Paragon fleet and snowball the whole galaxy, EVEN ALEX TRUST THIS).I suppose most player are very much getting trouble from the first and the latter is causing headache to Alex and modders who try to balance the game.

Here is what I think is the colony system flawed now :

1. The persean sector is big, but player usually only colony system close to core system.
There are 2 reason, 1 is how accessibility work, for getting the max profit they need to be close to the core. 2 is as simple as player need to go back to the colony too frequently either because they need to unload loot or the last thing player want to do, defense the colony from some unfun raiding fleet.
There are just no reason to colony in outer space.(well 0.95 make a change on this, but I think it is just a late game bonus now)

2. Player actually have limited control on the the colony's self defense, the only thing player can do is putting down as much defense structure as possible and pray for the best. Friendly faction raiding have long bugged many player and the inability of the colony to react to pirate activity is also a pain to due with.
What cause most stress is player usually can't choose not to respond to the threat since the result can be deadly e.g. If the spaceport of a size 8 colony is down for 120 day, it can bring a unprepared owner to bankrupt

3. Colony bring in too much credit, and only credit, when it grow larger. And it get more if player have more than one colony. Which bring more credit then a player can spend, at this state most activity in the game lost it purpose and player get into the true end game phase(not equal to late game), "do what they want to do".
"Do what they want to do" itself is not bad, the bad thing is it make most of the game look meanness when you reach that point, it is basically is playing another game. And sometime it get there too fast with a milkcow colony.


Player own limited company

Player is the founder and the first investor of the faction, but player never actually own the faction or is the "King" of a faction.

Player never own the faction fleet(you can't command that), player never own any thing stock in the colony(You need to pay full price to take from the stockpile), player can't directly control the colony people(You can't move people from one colony to another or directly close down a large colony)

Player have a lot of restriction already show they are not the King of a faction, so what are they?

In my opinion player is more like a owner of a company than a king of a kingdom, and that is why I have the player owned limited company idea, by moving player's position in a faction to work more like a company owner, or more exactly, a limited company owner.

Since it don't have much meaning to detail list what limited company differ from unlimited company, and not every thing of that can mirror into the game so I will only list what need to be change and why this can improve the gameplay.



The first thing i think needed is to separate player and player faction's account. Player faction get it own account for building and other colony related expense. Player can add fund but not draw fund from the faction account. And most colony related expense will draw directly from the faction account.(Taking item from colony stockpile and custom production still draw player account)

So what can player get?

Player can get a part of the colony income as a from of salary(or commission as current game play). The amount should be topped by the total player faction size(like how Nex calc, the sum of total market size multiple may be 10k), and the real income of the colony(So if all player colony not making money, player get none too, and player can get should never over 50% of the total faction income)

Is it just a nerf?

Sort of, but it also come with a advantage, when colonies get in a total lose stage(like a year of spaceport disrupt), player don't need to pay for the lose too, player only lose the salary income from the faction.(And for gameplay reason, faction account should never go into negative, maybe a extra colony grow penalty when faction account go bankrupt)
And this is also part of a idea to lower the tie between player and their colony so when thing turn bad, player have a option to let the colony taking hit and don't get the lose affect their gameplay.



It is about BENEFIT, not credit

The second thing is to make building a colony more about 'what can the colony do to my gameplay' than 'How much credit can I get'. A few thing I think is important

1. Accessibility
Quite a old idea that a lower accessibility colony should draw lesser attention, and a colony with a
accessibility low to a certain point should not get raid at all. And it make player have some bonus to colony in the deep space.
Also if gate is reopen, all colony in range with a gate should have full accessibility(or recalculate the accessibility from 'distance to core' to 'distance to gate')


2. Benefit
Most industry in the game basically only give credits(it is both directly from the sale income or passively form the lowering maintained cost of in faction supply), which in my opinion is no different to player from having a structure like "ATM: give 10k credit per month".  There are great mod adding functional stucture and i think that is what colony building should be.
All colony structure should get some gameplay benefit to player's fleet, like how heavy industry can change the gameplay completely and the convenience of having a commerce in player colony. And maybe work like a skill-like faction bonus when player have some industry in their colonies.
Some idea of additional bonus to the industry in game:
A salary discount for crew and officer with farming and light industry, like your employee get some goods as part of the salary from the faction(Maybe a 1% discount for each unit of produce from those industry, up to 50%)
A discount on custom order with mining and refining, because most raw material is directly make by your faction(up to 20% maybe)
A discount on fuel and supply when player draw these from colony stockpile or/and discount on fuel usage/repair cost/maintain cost like how skill do, if there are fuel production and heavy industry(up to 20% maybe)
A small salvage bonus on having tech-mining like your faction have some knowhow on salvage
A patrol station should attract merc captain, there are always some merc in the colony, more when upgrade

So what is the difference of having discount then giving credit directly?
The main different is you get those bonus from you having the colony, and not link to how much credit your colony make or lose


3.Convenience
Colony should provide more convenience to player than needing player to caretake them
These are some old idea or already in some mod/discussion so I will keep it short

Remote paying for extra defense fleet/land defense using faction account(Nex already have it and it should be in the game)
Paying fee to stop raid from the faction account, and only need SP for discount
Colony defense should be able to put down a pirate activity by itself after some time if they are strong enough(or after get a defense boost from extra pay)
The colony should be able to report the position of the pirate base supporting the pirate activity after sometime
A rebuild cost can be paid to decrease the recovery time of a damage structure
A player faction contact will appear after a structure(trading type for a commerce/industry, and military type for a defense structure, max one for each type) is build and their importance scale with the biggest colony size, and can be accessible in all player owned colony, and they pay lesser than other faction contact

There should be more but I can't get them altogether so only the most needed thing I think is here

Ending
There are some other way to fix the system and this is what i think can do, hope someone may find these useful or give them idea for better way to improve the game

[JUDGE! slowpersun]

The economic system in general (both pre and post .95 patch) has always had some issues, prolly primarily because Alex has stated something to the effect that this game is supposed to mostly be about bashing ships together and not a trade simulator (although very happy that code was added to simulate commodity movement and shortages instead of just randomizing every port like the first Pirates! game apparently did).  But arbitrarily stating how you think a sandbox game should be played is kind of nonsensical, the point of a sandbox game is to play it however you want.  To be fair, this game isn't necessarily a full sandbox game (yet), but it clearly possesses more orthogonality than a linear storyline game.

That being said, yeah, the economy could prolly use a further balance pass beyond just the regular balance patch that is going to be dropped in like a month or two.  If I can earn like 2 mill credits in the first year of gameplay ONLY with trading, kinda negates the need for bounty missions (which also seem to need some attention).  I could arguably be "playing" the new version of the game "wrong," since you can now respec skills (ie, early game mostly combat skills, then respec to colony skills later is I guess the intended path?), but as already stated, there really isn't a wrong way to play a sandbox game... unless this game isn't really a sandbox game at all and I've been lied to!

[hkmist]

slowpersun thank for your reply and I very much agree with your view and especially the last line

I start writing these long long boring post because in the DP discussion Alex himself state some of 0.95 change(DP calculation) is to "encourage" player using small ship other than spawning Paragons, and the spawning Paragons bias base on all player will swim in credit lategame

He try to change player playstyle, since he is the one made the game and clearly he have his own vision, I agree he have the right to do it. And I like most change he made in 0.95(well, not the DP calculation thing)
But what I really don't buy is in the Paragons bias he basiclly accept the fact that player getting a lot of credit in the broken economic is normal and at the same time disapprove a playstyle built on the credit pool player can have, this bug me very much

If he don't want player using big fleet, and want player changing how to play the game,  instead of adding unfair rule(in my opinion the last thing a sandbox game should do), he should change the environment, in this case the long broken economic

Since he already doing a lot balance and i hear there will be some more change on the economic, let hope thing can go better

[JUDGE! slowpersun]

Agreed.  Especially the DP calc issue, and apparently how rushing to capture objectives quickly in order to get more dp points was the solution to skewed fleet makeup (ie, need frigs and destoyers now since they are necessary to quickly capture objectives).  This is bull shite, I like using escorting frigs and destroyers as cheap shields that can later retreat.  Seems this choice was made since it was easier to change than adding some in-battle support ships that require defense but can restore CR/repair (less micromanagement, faster battles; just also relearn the entire game like a chump)...

[hkmist]

Updated the last part and sorry for the late update to anyone if they are waiting for the update.
Having some busy days and lose the fire when i start writing the last part so it is quite disappointing, there are a lot of new suggestions this few weeks so some of the idea here may be a bit old or not on point , I hope it can still worth your time for reading

[robepriority]

Agreed.  Especially the DP calc issue, and apparently how rushing to capture objectives quickly in order to get more dp points was the solution to skewed fleet makeup (ie, need frigs and destoyers now since they are necessary to quickly capture objectives).  This is bull shite, I like using escorting frigs and destroyers as cheap shields that can later retreat.  Seems this choice was made since it was easier to change than adding some in-battle support ships that require defense but can restore CR/repair (less micromanagement, faster battles; just also relearn the entire game like a chump)...

Just taking the points is enough, they don't have to defend or control the point after you've deployed the larger ships.

[oooh_senpai]

Sounds like "let's destroy economy, but in my way".
Global market value is not a price for all things of one type, it's amount of money that factions are able to make from taxes for exporting it.
Player is not a colony king, he's the main investor. He claims the planet, builds something and allows people to live and work there, getting money from taxes.
Gate device is unique, so you no one except for the player can use it.
Player is able to buy or sell something in high values due to free market: people buy there it's cheaper and vise versa. So if some producer is selling smth to others for 100 credits per unit, but there's player who pays 101, the player grabs the pile that producer is ready to sell to him. That doesn't mean that he buys all the producer has, but all that he is ready to sell to some fleet, increasing in price with each unit. Same with selling.
Don't you think there is something like darknet and infrastructure for black market? If black market trades lead to such things like instant checks, there's no black market. Not only for player.
Your buying power will actually increase if you won't spend money. That's what happens when planet has a shortage: it's not buying enough thing x, so it has more money for it.
Almost all around the world there's always excess. And that's cause of concurrency in capitalism. And there's no problem in player buying goods anytime since that means that he pays more than others, even then there's deficits.
Bombardment should not lead to losing ships cause it will kill bombardment as well as raiding should not lead to rep lose with other factions since they are so much separate.
When player takes stuff from a colony he pays for production price over production capability.

I see there some actually good changes (qol and more missions), but mostly it's about i wanna player to get cash only for missions cause i like missions and don't like trading. But irl money are made on trade and not on missions. Bounties and raids payout should be better in rc14, at least. So no one makes you trade or create a colony.

[Sutopia]

Sounds like "let's destroy economy, but in my way".

Agreed. Some of the suggestions are really just overcomplicating stuffs while not aware of current mechanics balance.
The most notable ones are about colony: I don't think OP understands how current colony works at all.

Caretake is outright lies since .91. It's the cost that came with overly exploited income, which also incentivizes more battle, which was how most balances were about.
It's just that the game didn't specifically warned player that the cost exist. They took the income as if it's free real estate then rant about the countermeasures.

[Ad Astra]

Trade is fine, it barely builds up any faction Rep, that's what balances it, we just need faction rep to be worth crap lol.
If faction rep becomes valuable, then missions will still be a preferable activity (especially since trading is as boring as watching grass grow).

I think colonies are supposed to be powerful, they are a massive money sink, costing more than several capitals each. They are also meant as a necessary step to face the future endgame baddies apparently.

tl:dr: if building TT reputation lets me make Artemisia Sun my sugar mommy, then I won't have time to trade because of running so many missions all the time.

[hkmist]

Sounds like "let's destroy economy, but in my way".

Yet that is the point, although it is a bit different, it is to destroy the economy "related to player", there are no edit to anything on how thing work within NPC factions and the global market calculations.

Most of the thing here is wanted to slow down passive income and try to patch easy to exploits money earning trick. To be honest all sandbox space game's economy are somewhat broken, and star sector is ok in the sim part, it is the "how player can interact with the sim" part need some more work to prevent exploits. I say starsector's economy is broken is only because player can easily make a lot of credit with how the system work now.

Half the reason I write this is I think it should not be that easy(although I don't really care how much other can make in the game), the other half is Alex care about how much player can make in the game and how they play the game with that money but not doing enough to change how that work. And I don't think my idea is all right or possible, this wall of text is more about wanting change to current unhealthy situation.

"Global market value and Player is not a colony king"
Yes that is the point i am saying, I know it is the taxes of export and player "faction" is earning from the taxes, so that is where the problem now, why "all" taxes income go into the "investor" while it is the faction's earning ? and we know even with the method I suggested to split the income player can still get a return greater than almost any real investor can get, and it is still a huge amount of passive income in game.

"Gate device"
Gate reopen(with a invasion) is part of my hope on the endgame, I still hope the gate tab is there not just only because player is using it
Just call that suggestion a dream

"darknet and infrastructure for black market"
Yes i think there are a system under how those thing work in game lore, that is why i think the game made thing too easy for player trade in black market, you can even walk in with transponder on and only get a few point of rep damage.
Think of how NPC smuggling fleet sitting next to a patrol fleet, you can say what we see is just a game design choose for player to take advantage, but I think that can be explain as all those smuggling fleet are working under some permit from corrupted officer and mod boss, which player don't have. That is why i think a instant checks can be possible, since player on theory is taking the pie from some local profiteer, and I don't think they are happy.
(And if you don't mind something too RNG and turn base battle, I highly recommend a game call Star trader : Frontier, Its system around contact and market have many good point I hope star sector can have, although the RNG in the game is a bit too harsh)

"Shortage and buying power"
Depend on how you think the state of shortage work.
Think of how the globe shortage of IC work now, price go up because supply is limited(not zero), everyone is willing to spending more, they don't stop buying and this hurt their account, and the most important thing of the behavior is they all know they can't get enough supply in near future so their only choose is buying as much until they can't afford(buying power limit), which result in price raise of their product(not ready happening in star sector), cutting produce line(lower consume, in game), or leaving the market altogether(shut down the industry, only player can do).
When you can see a shortage there are already someone spending much more and the high price is the result. Buying power isn't increased while in shortage, they already bought everything on the market they can buy with a higher price so there are a shortage, and so it make sense to see sometime there are shortage goods with a very high price in open market, just think that is the limit of buying power.
And meta specking, the whole plan of buying power is to add a need for selling high value good in large market's black market, which is more well guard and more dangerous for smuggler with the black market change I suggest. So what I need is something sound reasonable to cover up the whole plan, not really need to 100% theoretic correct

"no one makes you trade or create a colony"
Having a bounty hunter/mission only no colony play though is fun and I also looking forward to the RC14 reward rebalance too.
Although the sad thing is when one make a element into a game they have to make it somehow match with the other element of the game, at the moment black market trade and colony income get to the point they overshadow other way of income(which are, in my opinion, more related to the fleet battle game play), they need to be fix somehow

[Euripides]

Don't think players should even have colonies with where the game is right now tbh

maybe like a starbase, a planetary outpost, stuff that wouldn't have more than maybe 10's of thousands of people at the high end. Really feels like the entire colonizing side of things is really out of place with the rest of the game and is detrimentally affecting pacing and design

Progression (taking into account colonies staying a gameplay element) imo:
>scavs (mostly questing income)
>scavs setting up orbital station/outposts (mostly questing income supplemented with minor trading income from a station, outpost, etc)
>feudal lord (earning political reputation, now 'permitted' to own an actual colony somewhere under tithe to a faction, maybe more than one colony depending on reputation, quests, etc)
>faction leader (enough political/military power to declare your own faction and fight to establish own existence
>End game crisis (AI returns, invasions through gates, subjugation of the entire sector under your banner, etc)