why not just reconfigure the way donations are made? Add a simple multiplier prefix to each resource slider that bases the amount needed to advance on the number of fleet members. This way a fleet of five people could level there base at the same speed as a fleet with maximum membership. Also, why not add a perpetual holding project that is infinite that you can dump anything into to get FCs. Call it the "Fleet Recycler" Anything you don't want just dump in and get FCs the same way selling loot to vendors gives you ECs.
What is needed is a dynamic projects system which calculates the amount of items needed per project against the current fleet members. To stop any abuse, the project is "locked" per say to only those members in the fleet when it is started.
i.e. You start a project which is proportionate to 50 members on your roster. You go on a mad recruitment drive & get an additional 50 members. Now here's the crutch - Only those original 50 members may contribute to that active project.
You start an identical second project which is now proportionate to your new Fleet roster of 100 members. Contributions to this project are scaled up to account for your new members.
This works in reverse as well if you only have a very small fleet. Project contributions scale either up or down depending on your current roster.
Same with the provisions - small fleets don't need as many so less contributions per project = less amount of provisions per completion.
What this does is allow smaller fleets to keep at pace with the larger ones. Abuse will be kept to a minimum due to projects being locked to current members when started.
However, there needs to be a balance point to stop fleet leaders kicking members or members leaving just to get cheaper projects for the fleet. Again, this could be worked in by the following.
No more than "x" amount of members can be removed from a fleet in "x" period of time. If more than "x" members are removed in "x" period, any new projects started in a 7 day period will still require contributions as if the removed members were still part of the active roster.
This also applies to members leaving the fleet as per normal.
I would go as far to say that 2 other cool downs need to be introduced and should have been there right from the start.
Leaving a fleet puts you on a 12 hour cool down timer during which you can not join another fleet.
Removing a member takes 12 hours - during which time, they can not access Fleet stores & bank or contribute to fleet projects.
Again, this removes the abuse factor.
Finally, (and others have already suggested this), a new console on normal bases needs introducing. This allows smaller Fleets struggling to fill projects to get members outside their fleet to donate to help complete them.
i.e. To post a project, Fleet must be under "x" amount of members for 90 days
Fleet must have been active for at least 90 days (pretty much obvious as per above!)
Only normal projects may be added - NO PROVISION projects allowed
Project must be active for at least 7 days to be added
NO Upgrade projects Allowed
NO Dilithium may be contributed to the projects - anything else is good.
75% Fleet marks rewards to those contributing instead of the normal 100% for normal fleet.
Anyone contributing "Must" be in a Fleet to begin with.
However, if you had dynamic projects which adjust themselves based on actual members, then the console probably wouldn't be needed.
Those paying attention to patch notes, are already aware that S8 has pushed the line out even further in terms of Elite Fleet Gear superiority over those without. Sense the launch of the star base system the debate has raged back and forth about how to deal with the small fleet issue. This latest advance simply makes this discussion more important.
Many of the large fleets have completed or are close to completing the main star base project. Of course everyone is frantically grinding away at the Spire, but honestly in terms of resources, the side projects have always been fairly easy to fill compared to the main track. At least for the big fleets I'm involved with.
I'm writing this to open (yet) another topic for purposed solutions, to the big vs little discussion.
I have two proposals, first many of the big fleets have many members who have a hard time actually getting Fleet Credits. They may have access to the best stores but they sense the can't contribute that fact is fairly meaningless. This problem could help solve the greater issue. As some folks are aware, this currently a market for buying and selling fleet marks (FM). Folk from smaller fleets pay folks to donate large numbers of FM.
While I recognize that this market wouldn't exist if there was not a need for it, however I personally find it exploitative, making smaller fleets expend still more resources. So to solve this, I purpose a the creation of some kind of mass donation console, that allows small fleets to register their projects, and allows any player to donate to those registered projects. This could solve both the FC problem some large fleets experience and help ease the burden on the small fleets.
My Second idea is sponsorship, like many of you this last week I created a bunch of rep sponsorship tokens for my various alts to speed up their rep grind, and like many of you I'm sure you have noticed how much faster that rep grind is going. So lets do the same for star bases. Create a project on level 20 SB to sponsor other SB, While how this would be handled would need to be discussed at length, it could go a long way to helping out the small fleets.
TLDR Version:
1. Create console lets anyone donate to registered projects
2. Create SB sponsorship, that works similarly to Rep sponsorship.
My Second idea is sponsorship, like many of you this last week I created a bunch of rep sponsorship tokens for my various alts to speed up their rep grind, and like many of you I'm sure you have noticed how much faster that rep grind is going. So lets do the same for star bases. Create a project on level 20 SB to sponsor other SB, While how this would be handled would need to be discussed at length, it could go a long way to helping out the small fleets.
I wholeheartedly support this idea. Make it fleet mark intensive, to generate fleet credits faster, too.
The problem I see with it is logistics: Is it an item that can be posted on the exchange? Who would be able to claim the item? I could see it being restricted to fleet leaders, but what if the fleet leader is not on for a week?
Other than that, fantastic idea and I hope Cryptic considers implementation of this idea.
What is needed is a dynamic projects system which calculates the amount of items needed per project against the current fleet members. To stop any abuse, the project is "locked" per say to only those members in the fleet when it is started.
And here's how its still abused:
1. All but one player leaves fleet.
2. Only member starts a project scaled for one, fills in resources. If necessary, other players can provide doffs, etc tradeables by mail.
3. If free project slots left, the member invites another player in and leaves. The new only member repeats from step 2.
4. After all projects running, invite everyone back in.
Ok, as a leader of a rather large fleet, I do not like the scaling ideas, as I see no reason to pay more for the same thing only because we are succesfull and have over 500 members. So far I haven?t seen a single scaling idea that would prevent me from abusing it. Neither does this one. Ideas in red:
What is needed is a dynamic projects system which calculates the amount of items needed per project against the current fleet members. To stop any abuse, the project is "locked" per say to only those members in the fleet when it is started.
i.e. You start a project which is proportionate to 50 members on your roster. You go on a mad recruitment drive & get an additional 50 members. Now here's the crutch - Only those original 50 members may contribute to that active project.
You start an identical second project which is now proportionate to your new Fleet roster of 100 members. Contributions to this project are scaled up to account for your new members.
This works in reverse as well if you only have a very small fleet. Project contributions scale either up or down depending on your current roster.
Same with the provisions - small fleets don't need as many so less contributions per project = less amount of provisions per completion.
Good, we can fill the projects every 20hrs with a skeleton crew of 10 to 20 characters. Even better, once the base is completed, we can invite everyone back to the fleet and the projects get bigger, which allows more people to contribute. Scaling the provisions with the fleet roster is a nice idea, as you now pay more for less provision on higher tiers.
What this does is allow smaller fleets to keep at pace with the larger ones. Abuse will be kept to a minimum due to projects being locked to current members when started.
However, there needs to be a balance point to stop fleet leaders kicking members or members leaving just to get cheaper projects for the fleet. Again, this could be worked in by the following.
No more than "x" amount of members can be removed from a fleet in "x" period of time. If more than "x" members are removed in "x" period, any new projects started in a 7 day period will still require contributions as if the removed members were still part of the active roster.
This also applies to members leaving the fleet as per normal.
Don?t know how this prevents any abuse, I can easily move the members over to our second fleet before these changes are implemented and move them back once the base is built. If any new holding is to come, then we would move them over again a week or two befor it is implemented, no harm done, once it goes live, we will be ready.. All it takes is a bit of plannig, which is what any leader should do anyways.
I would go as far to say that 2 other cool downs need to be introduced and should have been there right from the start.
Leaving a fleet puts you on a 12 hour cool down timer during which you can not join another fleet.
Removing a member takes 12 hours - during which time, they can not access Fleet stores & bank or contribute to fleet projects.
This timer only increases the amount of administration needed to move the fleet members from one fleet to another and slows the whole process by 12 hours. It also makes the life harder for everyone who wants to contribute fleet marks and stuff to other fleets or wants to buy a fleet ship from a large fleet.
Again, this removes the abuse factor.
Finally, (and others have already suggested this), a new console on normal bases needs introducing. This allows smaller Fleets struggling to fill projects to get members outside their fleet to donate to help complete them.
i.e. To post a project, Fleet must be under "x" amount of members for 90 days
Fleet must have been active for at least 90 days (pretty much obvious as per above!)
Only normal projects may be added - NO PROVISION projects allowed
Project must be active for at least 7 days to be added
NO Upgrade projects Allowed
NO Dilithium may be contributed to the projects - anything else is good.
75% Fleet marks rewards to those contributing instead of the normal 100% for normal fleet.
Anyone contributing "Must" be in a Fleet to begin with.
Good idea, it takes a lot of time to move the members around, on the other hand, it removes the incentive to contribute to other fleets (mostly EC rewards) but there will still be people who would like such choice. (Personally love this idea, cause I cannot leave the fleet with my main.)
However, if you had dynamic projects which adjust themselves based on actual members, then the console probably wouldn't be needed.
That's sort of how I'd be inclined to do things
.
As far as I am concerned, the best way to help the small fleets is a sort of alliance systems, that allows the larger fleets to contribute to their smaller allies. Scaling will not work.
I wholeheartedly support this idea. Make it fleet mark intensive, to generate fleet credits faster, too.
The problem I see with it is logistics: Is it an item that can be posted on the exchange? Who would be able to claim the item? I could see it being restricted to fleet leaders, but what if the fleet leader is not on for a week?
Other than that, fantastic idea and I hope Cryptic considers implementation of this idea.
There are lots of questions that would have to be answered. I'm not purposing this as another avenue for the top fleets to make more revenue. But I'm not sure how it could be accomplished without that possibility existing.
A Fleet Sponsorship token would be nice and I'm all for it. That's not going to help much in the way of dilithium and DOFF cost requirements though. Small fleets are still going to struggle to farm the millions of dilithium required to advance fleet projects.
Double XP would majorly decrease the over all resource cost, yes their would still be major expenses, and thus the first idea. But over all the really exhausting grinding would be halved.
You'd still need huge amounts of dilithium and DOFFs. Sure on paper halving the costs looks great. In reality, a small fleet is still going to have a lot of grinding to do in order to cover dilithium costs alone.
No doubt. That's the downside of being in a small fleet - no one to spread out costs. We deal with it in our Klingon fleet.
Given the vast amount of doffs and dilithium needed to go from tier 4 and 5 on a single track (somewhere in the neighborhood of 100K doffs, IIRC), it still reduces the grind by half.
I understand that. 50k is will still going to be way too much for some small fleets. The game may not be around in the years it will take them to grind that out.
What do you expect them to do?
Reduce the cost dynamically with # of Players in the Fleet?
That would be abused as hell... make a fresh fleet, have 5 People in it, others mail these 5 Stuff and they can wrap up all the projects in no time, Full Holdings, Full Starbase and then invite "the rest"...
Decide on an arbitrary # of Players as "absolute" minimum for this?
Where do you draw the line? 10 Players? 15? 50? 100? And then... you still have the above problem...
And no matter what they do... there'll still be some "small Fleet" that will be too small for all this.
There is no actual way I can see that will not either "punish" small Fleets or make "big" Fleets smash through the roof as they would be able to just sprint through every project.
As others have mentioned, its halving the resources needed overall still doesn't address the main issue at hand. And that is that small fleets just don't have the numbers to spread out the costs. What good is a project that gives 2000 xp vs one that gives 1000 xp if the fleet takes a month to fill said project due to low numbers?
For example, the fleet I'm in has 28 toons registered. It qualifies as small clearly. There is 1 guy, ONE, that has donated over 80% of everything according to the leader boards. It takes forever to fill up any project and to get it rolling. Getting x2 the xp from a project would be great but it does nothing to help that one guy, or any other small fleet, to actually fill the project.
What you really need is a system that allows bigger fleets, who have so many members they have issues getting fleet credits, donated to smaller allied or affiliated fleets. That would cause real change to happen and it solves two issues at once. Large fleets have a place to drop resources for fleet credit, and the small fleets will actually get more then 1 project a month done.
A sponsorship token would just be icing on the cake at that point and I'm all for it, but you can't just eat frosting.
Cheers from Antonio Valerio Cortez III, Half-Celestial Archduke of the Free Marches Confederacy.
One of the better suggestions I had seen was to have a slider that reduced costs, but increased the completion cooldowns for projects. The greater the discount, the greater the cooldown. Smaller fleets could afford the costs, balanced by increasing the overall length of time it takes to complete the base.
So...
Instead of grinding 3 Months + 3 Days Project (no actual numbers) it is better to grind 3 Days and Wait 3 Months?
Which effectively means nothing has changed...
Or do you think of a System that adds just a day or two onto the actual project which would again favor the creation of a small fleet, wrapping everything up quickly with less cost and then inviting the rest of your mates.
The Problem with Sponsorships is still: How do you keep track of all that?
How is it decided who's to be benefited, how do you link all these fleets? Is it permanent? A One-Off Deal?
If it is just a token... who's the one to get the token in the first place? Fleetleader? Appointed Bank Officer?
How can you see or decide who will get that token? Do you need to actively search for a "small" Fleet via Chat or Forum? Will it be an Ingame System?
How does one determine if it is actually a "Small Fleet" where do you draw the line?
10 Players and under are a "Small Fleet"? 50? 100?
In the original posts on the topic, it worked out that it would take small fleets longer to finish a base due to the increased cooldowns. What it did help with was reducing the dilithium expense allowing people in small fleets to have more to spend on other things besides dumping it all into fleet projects.
Again, nothing would have changed...
Small Fleets are not getting any of the good stuff soon.
No idea where you got this from.
It was just prophylactic as I don't think that most "Small Fleets" particularly care about why they're hold back, they just don't want to be hold back which usually comes with alterations like these to most proposals about that topic and the second part of that comes from my experience that people WILL abuse such a system.
A System with reduced costs for prolonged waiting time is only viable if it is with actual comparable numbers meaning:
- X Days worth refined Dilithium = + X Days Project Length
For Example: -24.000 Dilithium Cost (3 Days worth refined Dilithium) = + 3 Days Project Length
Everything lower than that would not only be stupidly... no ignorantly allowing Abuse in the Size of Illegal Alcohol Production during the Prohibition!
But what I completely forgot is, a System for "Small Fleets" is fine and dandy but we (or rather Cryptic) need to take into consideration how a possible System works with "Big Fleets" unless you want to restrict this System only to Fleets with an arbitrary number of Players as maximum.
Edit:
Somehow I feel the need to clarify that I am not against a possible solution to the obvious problem...
I just don't want half-baked cookies thrown around
Or cookies that accidentaly have ratpoison instead of flour in them... you get what I mean, I hope.
In a thread I made a month ago - being in a small fleet it's not too hard to get the fleet marks filled but the doffs, commodities, and Dilithium is like pulling teath!! No-one wants to part with dilithium they need for gear and no-one wants to part with harder and harder to get EC for commodities.
Anyone looking to get something cheaper and faster because they're fleet is small is going to be disappointed.
Ah I see...
Okay, I was talking about my experience and of most what I have seen, which lead me to the conclusion that no Solution is good enough unless they can do projects as fast as Big Fleets but cheaper in Price as I touched on briefly in the second part of my Post and you were speaking of an "Ideal" Small Fleet.
I guess we've just talked past each other on that matter
As others have mentioned, its halving the resources needed overall still doesn't address the main issue at hand. And that is that small fleets just don't have the numbers to spread out the costs. What good is a project that gives 2000 xp vs one that gives 1000 xp if the fleet takes a month to fill said project due to low numbers?
For example, the fleet I'm in has 28 toons registered. It qualifies as small clearly. There is 1 guy, ONE, that has donated over 80% of everything according to the leader boards. It takes forever to fill up any project and to get it rolling. Getting x2 the xp from a project would be great but it does nothing to help that one guy, or any other small fleet, to actually fill the project.
What you really need is a system that allows bigger fleets, who have so many members they have issues getting fleet credits, donated to smaller allied or affiliated fleets. That would cause real change to happen and it solves two issues at once. Large fleets have a place to drop resources for fleet credit, and the small fleets will actually get more then 1 project a month done.
A sponsorship token would just be icing on the cake at that point and I'm all for it, but you can't just eat frosting.
The first solution address the mass problem with a donation console. The second solution just ease the day to day grind.
If that console was linked via the sponsored fleet then we may have workable solution assuming the back end can do it. There is still a long list of issues to discuss. What happens if a sponsored fleet goes inactive? What happens if the sponsoring fleet goes inactive? But these are the issues we need discuss and find workable suggestions.
For those in smaller fleets, why not just use the "NoP Public Service" channel to access T5 SB vendors? You will still need your own fleets provisioning, fleet credits, and dilithium, but there is no admission fee otherwise. The only items you cannot purchase this way are full ships, but these can be purchased from fleets advertising ship sales for a few million EC.
This may be a stupid suggestion, but would it solve both problems if Fleet Marks/Credits could be sold on the Exchange?
Correct my thinking of course, but similar to the OP's console idea, My small fleet and nearly 500,000 Fleet credits can't buy me anything stuck in a Level 2 starbase that no one will contribute to. I'm similar to the ONE guy comment above... Now, if I could sell 300,000 Fleet Credits on the exchange for, say, 30,000 Dil or 300,000 EC (for a 1/10 or a 1/1 ratio), then I could afford to give up fleet credits in exchange for things that would help my fleet grow...
?
CM
"Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure science." - Edwin Hubble
My views may not represent those of Cryptic Studios or Perfect World Entertainment. You can file a "forums and website" support ticket here Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
I've seen the same thing too. People want to have what large fleets have, but don't want to spend what the large fleets spend. Can't have it both ways, which is why I liked the idea of a cost slider. If you want the base costs cheaper, you can do it, but you're increasing the time it will take for those projects to finish.
There many factors to be discussed in this, one of those factors is time. Traditionally gear get easier to access. This method does half the day to day costs, but it won't effect the special project costs at all, these folks will work just as hard or harder give the number involved. Yes it does mean sometime after sponsorship that some littler fleets will eventually gain access to T5. But they will only do so a good interval after most larger fleets are completed and they will have done it though very hard work, tremendous dedication, putting in more effort individually the most member of the larger fleets ever put in. Also having convinced a large fleet to sponsor them. A feat I am certainly will take no little effort by itself.
This in no way trivializes the Starbase building requirement, and it helps out everyone involved. This is a win win situation, meeting everyone's needs. No one loses, and if fleets are not interested they don't have to be involved.
Comments
i.e.
You start a project which is proportionate to 50 members on your roster. You go on a mad recruitment drive & get an additional 50 members. Now here's the crutch - Only those original 50 members may contribute to that active project.
You start an identical second project which is now proportionate to your new Fleet roster of 100 members. Contributions to this project are scaled up to account for your new members.
This works in reverse as well if you only have a very small fleet. Project contributions scale either up or down depending on your current roster.
Same with the provisions - small fleets don't need as many so less contributions per project = less amount of provisions per completion.
What this does is allow smaller fleets to keep at pace with the larger ones. Abuse will be kept to a minimum due to projects being locked to current members when started.
However, there needs to be a balance point to stop fleet leaders kicking members or members leaving just to get cheaper projects for the fleet. Again, this could be worked in by the following.
No more than "x" amount of members can be removed from a fleet in "x" period of time. If more than "x" members are removed in "x" period, any new projects started in a 7 day period will still require contributions as if the removed members were still part of the active roster.
This also applies to members leaving the fleet as per normal.
I would go as far to say that 2 other cool downs need to be introduced and should have been there right from the start.
Leaving a fleet puts you on a 12 hour cool down timer during which you can not join another fleet.
Removing a member takes 12 hours - during which time, they can not access Fleet stores & bank or contribute to fleet projects.
Again, this removes the abuse factor.
Finally, (and others have already suggested this), a new console on normal bases needs introducing. This allows smaller Fleets struggling to fill projects to get members outside their fleet to donate to help complete them.
i.e.
To post a project, Fleet must be under "x" amount of members for 90 days
Fleet must have been active for at least 90 days (pretty much obvious as per above!)
Only normal projects may be added - NO PROVISION projects allowed
Project must be active for at least 7 days to be added
NO Upgrade projects Allowed
NO Dilithium may be contributed to the projects - anything else is good.
75% Fleet marks rewards to those contributing instead of the normal 100% for normal fleet.
Anyone contributing "Must" be in a Fleet to begin with.
However, if you had dynamic projects which adjust themselves based on actual members, then the console probably wouldn't be needed.
That's sort of how I'd be inclined to do things
.
Beta player - forum knows jack as to when I started
_____________________________________________________
Many of the large fleets have completed or are close to completing the main star base project. Of course everyone is frantically grinding away at the Spire, but honestly in terms of resources, the side projects have always been fairly easy to fill compared to the main track. At least for the big fleets I'm involved with.
I'm writing this to open (yet) another topic for purposed solutions, to the big vs little discussion.
I have two proposals, first many of the big fleets have many members who have a hard time actually getting Fleet Credits. They may have access to the best stores but they sense the can't contribute that fact is fairly meaningless. This problem could help solve the greater issue. As some folks are aware, this currently a market for buying and selling fleet marks (FM). Folk from smaller fleets pay folks to donate large numbers of FM.
While I recognize that this market wouldn't exist if there was not a need for it, however I personally find it exploitative, making smaller fleets expend still more resources. So to solve this, I purpose a the creation of some kind of mass donation console, that allows small fleets to register their projects, and allows any player to donate to those registered projects. This could solve both the FC problem some large fleets experience and help ease the burden on the small fleets.
My Second idea is sponsorship, like many of you this last week I created a bunch of rep sponsorship tokens for my various alts to speed up their rep grind, and like many of you I'm sure you have noticed how much faster that rep grind is going. So lets do the same for star bases. Create a project on level 20 SB to sponsor other SB, While how this would be handled would need to be discussed at length, it could go a long way to helping out the small fleets.
TLDR Version:
1. Create console lets anyone donate to registered projects
2. Create SB sponsorship, that works similarly to Rep sponsorship.
Discuss!
I wholeheartedly support this idea. Make it fleet mark intensive, to generate fleet credits faster, too.
The problem I see with it is logistics: Is it an item that can be posted on the exchange? Who would be able to claim the item? I could see it being restricted to fleet leaders, but what if the fleet leader is not on for a week?
Other than that, fantastic idea and I hope Cryptic considers implementation of this idea.
1. All but one player leaves fleet.
2. Only member starts a project scaled for one, fills in resources. If necessary, other players can provide doffs, etc tradeables by mail.
3. If free project slots left, the member invites another player in and leaves. The new only member repeats from step 2.
4. After all projects running, invite everyone back in.
As far as I am concerned, the best way to help the small fleets is a sort of alliance systems, that allows the larger fleets to contribute to their smaller allies. Scaling will not work.
There are lots of questions that would have to be answered. I'm not purposing this as another avenue for the top fleets to make more revenue. But I'm not sure how it could be accomplished without that possibility existing.
The Devs had steadfastly ignored every suggestion to improve the fleet system in any way that would make it less grind or cash intensive.
Nice idea though.
No doubt. That's the downside of being in a small fleet - no one to spread out costs. We deal with it in our Klingon fleet.
Given the vast amount of doffs and dilithium needed to go from tier 4 and 5 on a single track (somewhere in the neighborhood of 100K doffs, IIRC), it still reduces the grind by half.
What do you expect them to do?
Reduce the cost dynamically with # of Players in the Fleet?
That would be abused as hell... make a fresh fleet, have 5 People in it, others mail these 5 Stuff and they can wrap up all the projects in no time, Full Holdings, Full Starbase and then invite "the rest"...
Decide on an arbitrary # of Players as "absolute" minimum for this?
Where do you draw the line? 10 Players? 15? 50? 100? And then... you still have the above problem...
And no matter what they do... there'll still be some "small Fleet" that will be too small for all this.
There is no actual way I can see that will not either "punish" small Fleets or make "big" Fleets smash through the roof as they would be able to just sprint through every project.
For example, the fleet I'm in has 28 toons registered. It qualifies as small clearly. There is 1 guy, ONE, that has donated over 80% of everything according to the leader boards. It takes forever to fill up any project and to get it rolling. Getting x2 the xp from a project would be great but it does nothing to help that one guy, or any other small fleet, to actually fill the project.
What you really need is a system that allows bigger fleets, who have so many members they have issues getting fleet credits, donated to smaller allied or affiliated fleets. That would cause real change to happen and it solves two issues at once. Large fleets have a place to drop resources for fleet credit, and the small fleets will actually get more then 1 project a month done.
A sponsorship token would just be icing on the cake at that point and I'm all for it, but you can't just eat frosting.
So...
Instead of grinding 3 Months + 3 Days Project (no actual numbers) it is better to grind 3 Days and Wait 3 Months?
Which effectively means nothing has changed...
Or do you think of a System that adds just a day or two onto the actual project which would again favor the creation of a small fleet, wrapping everything up quickly with less cost and then inviting the rest of your mates.
The Problem with Sponsorships is still: How do you keep track of all that?
How is it decided who's to be benefited, how do you link all these fleets? Is it permanent? A One-Off Deal?
If it is just a token... who's the one to get the token in the first place? Fleetleader? Appointed Bank Officer?
How can you see or decide who will get that token? Do you need to actively search for a "small" Fleet via Chat or Forum? Will it be an Ingame System?
How does one determine if it is actually a "Small Fleet" where do you draw the line?
10 Players and under are a "Small Fleet"? 50? 100?
Again, nothing would have changed...
Small Fleets are not getting any of the good stuff soon.
It was just prophylactic as I don't think that most "Small Fleets" particularly care about why they're hold back, they just don't want to be hold back which usually comes with alterations like these to most proposals about that topic and the second part of that comes from my experience that people WILL abuse such a system.
A System with reduced costs for prolonged waiting time is only viable if it is with actual comparable numbers meaning:
- X Days worth refined Dilithium = + X Days Project Length
For Example: -24.000 Dilithium Cost (3 Days worth refined Dilithium) = + 3 Days Project Length
Everything lower than that would not only be stupidly... no ignorantly allowing Abuse in the Size of Illegal Alcohol Production during the Prohibition!
But what I completely forgot is, a System for "Small Fleets" is fine and dandy but we (or rather Cryptic) need to take into consideration how a possible System works with "Big Fleets" unless you want to restrict this System only to Fleets with an arbitrary number of Players as maximum.
Edit:
Somehow I feel the need to clarify that I am not against a possible solution to the obvious problem...
I just don't want half-baked cookies thrown around
Or cookies that accidentaly have ratpoison instead of flour in them... you get what I mean, I hope.
Ah I see...
Okay, I was talking about my experience and of most what I have seen, which lead me to the conclusion that no Solution is good enough unless they can do projects as fast as Big Fleets but cheaper in Price as I touched on briefly in the second part of my Post and you were speaking of an "Ideal" Small Fleet.
I guess we've just talked past each other on that matter
The first solution address the mass problem with a donation console. The second solution just ease the day to day grind.
If that console was linked via the sponsored fleet then we may have workable solution assuming the back end can do it. There is still a long list of issues to discuss. What happens if a sponsored fleet goes inactive? What happens if the sponsoring fleet goes inactive? But these are the issues we need discuss and find workable suggestions.
Correct my thinking of course, but similar to the OP's console idea, My small fleet and nearly 500,000 Fleet credits can't buy me anything stuck in a Level 2 starbase that no one will contribute to. I'm similar to the ONE guy comment above... Now, if I could sell 300,000 Fleet Credits on the exchange for, say, 30,000 Dil or 300,000 EC (for a 1/10 or a 1/1 ratio), then I could afford to give up fleet credits in exchange for things that would help my fleet grow...
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CM
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I was wondering where my thread wandered off to.
There many factors to be discussed in this, one of those factors is time. Traditionally gear get easier to access. This method does half the day to day costs, but it won't effect the special project costs at all, these folks will work just as hard or harder give the number involved. Yes it does mean sometime after sponsorship that some littler fleets will eventually gain access to T5. But they will only do so a good interval after most larger fleets are completed and they will have done it though very hard work, tremendous dedication, putting in more effort individually the most member of the larger fleets ever put in. Also having convinced a large fleet to sponsor them. A feat I am certainly will take no little effort by itself.
This in no way trivializes the Starbase building requirement, and it helps out everyone involved. This is a win win situation, meeting everyone's needs. No one loses, and if fleets are not interested they don't have to be involved.