Hello everyone! I just got home from citizencon and really had a great time there, meeting other citizens and being in person there was trully one of the best experience in my life of gaming! I loved what was presented this year but I have some interogation about crafting and base building The verse have an established society, with companies like Crusader industries, Behring, Sakura Sun...etc all these brands give identity, history to the verse. It feels a bit weird that we as players can create the same items. 1) in a world where I could print an official big brand TV at home, why would this brand still have factory, distribution network around the world etc... 2) How could these compagnies accept that people make their own perfect official replica of their product, in our world we know what happens when some dude in his room makes his own pokemon game, I have a hard time believing that hurston dynamics is less protective of its intelectual properties than nintendo :stuck_out_tongue: Isn't the whole crafting possibilities goes a bit against this establihed universe? but of course getting rid of crafting would be a huge hit in the game possibilities and the end game occupation. but still it feels weird, even if you have a good reputation with the company, having them giving you blue prints to make their product yourself at home and evend reselling it for your profit.. it's a bit hard to believe. so it's a bit hard on immersion but it's not my main concern. the way I understand it it feels like NPC driven and PC driven economy will be two different things and not that NPC and players will be part of a massive common economy. You can by a P4-AR from a shop in new babbage, or buy it from players in their base, the first one will be the result of NPC harvesting ressources, selling them to Behring, bringing it to a Behring factory then brought to a shop in a landing zone or some R&R station the second one will be the result of PC harvesting ressources, bringing them to their base, crafting it in their fabricators and bringing them to the shop of the base or space station. so you either give money into the NPC economy OR the PC economy. players will mostly want to get ressource for crafting for their orgs, or orgs without base will harvest ressources to sell it to others orgs of player wanting to craft items, ships or else. wich might pay more for sellers than selling it in trade centers. It feels like their is two economies, two games in one world, one played by NPC between them, the other by players between them. and with this it really feels like base building doesn't let players making cities that are part of the univers (be it affiliated with pirate society or the UEE) but more that it let them live in autharcy, let them leave the universe, living by themself with no use of the society, they collect ressources, craft weapons, ship or else all by themselves without the need for what centuries of human society have put in place. I'm no game designer so I'm not saying my idea is best but what if the base build by players had needs to be part of that whole universe, some dependencies of human society to prosper? I thought that maybe craftng should have a bit of restriction. only being able to create items from a "crafted" brand, specific items (weapon, components, ships else) made only for crafting (with some 3D printed design) a bit like open source project that you might find blueprints for. so no object from behring, origin, or other big companies. still you could craft to upgrade tiers of companies made items. so base would need to have cargo runners to go in to cities to buy stock T1 P4-AR (or if their reputation is high enough buy in large stock in companies distribution centers) bring them back to transform them up to full upgraded T5 P4-AR and then keep it for their security branch or resell it to either NPC shops with contracts or players this way even at end game there would still be meaning for shops in landing zones, players would still go there. NPC and PC economy would be closely linked to each other in one big economic loop, where even for players there is a meaning to sell ressources to NPC companies to produce the item they can buy to upgrade them and then resell it. might be easier to keep the 90/10% repartition of players vs NPC to guarantee players have a moderate impact on the verse economy without having to much control with abuses that can apears in some game with too much impact of the players. there could even be two possibilities to really craft companies items 1) counterfeit, a player base in a illegal system where you manage to get bluprints with a pirate mission involving hacking, you can create a spirit C1 if you want or any other item from a companie that you have the blueprint, but if you are controlled in a UEE supervised space with a counterfeited item, it is seized with a huge fine 2) temporary access for dynamic events, if yourreputation wth a company is at its highest level, at some occasion if their production line is saturated it can launch a dynamic event where you have temporary access to some companies blueprints, with an objective to produce a certain quantity of units before the end of events (they hire orgs they thrust as sub-contractor for a limited time) you need to reach the amount asked and whatever you produce in surplus you can keep for yourself or to sell to other players. this way you could produce companies ships, weapon or component, but only for special occasions (and it gives a reason to keep a good reputation with companies and not just maxing it out once to get a reward and then let it decays) well sorry for the long post, hope it was understandable as english is not my native language these are my only worries about crafting and base building -coherence of the universe -keeping interest in landing zone's shops even at endgame -base beeing part of the verse and not a way to take full independance from it -impact of players on economy and keeping NPC and players part of one unique common economy. thank you to everyone who read my post and a reminder that I have no pretention to be a game designer, I brought concern and ideas of solution for my concern as a player and I never claim my idea is truth, but would be happy to know what CIG think of either my concerns and idea. have a nice day in the verse!