[jimbob]

2) $$$$ Here we are in a sophisticated universe and we can only barter! I'd like to see a medium of exchange introduced. Some thoughts are:
-Populace can be taxed affecting their happiness
-Projects require money
-Minerals/organics/radioactives can be bought and sold on the open market with money. Maybe on a sliding scale...

I couldn't agree more! In addition to having a money requirement for projects (maybe to speed them up? [within reason]) and open market for resources (how about little space bazaars scattered about the universe like ruins... and the person who colonizes/owns the planet gets a % cut of all tranactions), how about the following:

1) the ability to sell any technology to the "open market". Anyone can then buy the technology that has access to the open market, but you the seller get a royalty fee every time it is sold! Of course players may buy it and then choose to trade it to other races, enter galactic software piracy

2) the introduction of Plug & Play components. That's right, introduce a component that is essentially a socket, into which you can plug specially designed components of the correct size. Then players can trade individual pluggable components to one another (or purchase with cash on the open market) that can then be integrated onto any ship with the correct socket size/type.
While this would require huge amounts of hard code change, just think of the possibilities!

-players that act as weapons and tech brokers (far more effective than trading whole shipsback and forth)
-players can get others hopelessly addicted to their components by flooding the cheap Version of their product, but then drop production (especially useful if you are the only one with the racial ability to make a certain product)
-by messing with the socket size/type of the component, you could regulate the use of the components you sell (player A only has Parallel ports, so you could cut him out by making all your components scuzzy, etc).
-You could also ensure that you sell an inferior product vs. the one that you actually use by increasing the bulkiness of the items you sell.

Just a few thoughts

[ August 29, 2002, 04:14: Message edited by: jimbob ]