Another Starmade business type: Warp Gate Guild

[Jojomo]

Most people seem to recognise that a working economy is what will drive player behaviour and war, and is necessary for a sandbox game like SM to be good. People have ideas for businesses already: ship designer, builder, miner, resource trader, caravan escorts, etc, and I thought I'd just voice my thoughts on another potential one for the list (although I'm sure I'm not the first to think of something similar).

Using a homebase to construct a large invunerable warp gate hub, with multiple warp gates in many directions, for profit, is the idea in a nushell.
Run by a player "Spacing Guild" (Dune!) faction.

1. Gates need to be worth going through: maximum range, and/or to other points of interest (other large bases, another warp gate, large rare asteroids...)
2. Players pay for jumps, probably at a rate based on ship size.
   
3. Probably easier to only take payment for outgoing jumps, let incoming jumps through free (easier, and has the side benefit of encouraging more base traffic)
4. To avoid the annoyance of paying per jump, factions could be offered monthly "subscriptions" to make any number of jumps without further payment
   
5. Gates have an "airlock" arrangement of force fields: a flat grid across the gate face, and a large bubble grid that can hold any ship that comes through. Ships get held in the "airlock" until payment for the jump is recieved.
6. "Airlock" grids don't need to be solid, make them a net that allows smaller ships (50m?) through free, and allows ships to be fired on by base turrets while held, if necessary
7. Home base would be very heavily armed, to be able to destroy even massively shielded titans that decided to block gates without paying (huge push/pull turrets would be handy for this too)
8. Gates at the other ends of warps would be vulnerable (unless the operating faction became large enough to split into "sub-factions") so would need to be incredibly heavily shielded to survive attacks (and heavily armed, and probably protected by a drone fleet)
   
9. Spacing Guild would probably be best (for business) to stay strictly neutral in all third party disputes, except where another faction actually attacked the Spacing Guild, in which case they could be blacklisted from all Spacing Guild facilities
   
10. A large response fleet would need to be operated by the Spacing Guild, to respond to attacks on remote gates, and to protect customers at the gate hub (and adjacent sectors?) from camping griefers/enemies
11. Hub control room operates gate "airlock" grids by logic, and monitors sensors that detect shield damage to remote gates (?possible?)
12. Payment stations on arms atached to each gate for quick payment by users? Does SM have ability for one faction to transfer credits to another, without any physical meeting/interaction?
13. Gate chains to other galaxies? (Hard to build and protect, but would potentially be very popular...?)

Potential issues:
- Warp gates compete with chain drives and possibly future "hyperdrives". Can compete on convenience/ease and range aspects of travel.

Secondary benefits for the base:
- more traffic for other businesses at the base (trading, repair, ship sales, etc)
- operating faction would need to be well behaved and trusted for business to stay healthy

 

[terra mining corp.]

I like this rp idea,I tried to make something similar on server , a large warpgate with armored doors it looked impressive.But the problem is people could approach at high speed and derp through the armor gate!

 

[nogg]

I like this rp idea,I tried to make something similar on server , a large warpgate with armored doors it looked impressive.But the problem is people could approach at high speed and derp through the armor gate!

your welcome, for showing you...

 

[Jojomo]

I like this rp idea,I tried to make something similar on server , a large warpgate with armored doors it looked impressive.But the problem is people could approach at high speed and derp through the armor gate!

I didn't know that, but I think probably point #5 will take care of that issue.

 

[Scypio]

Gate chains to other galaxies? (Hard to build and protect, but would potentially be very popular...?)

Just jump 8 sectors toward the second gate and you're ready to go without paying anything.

Also, you'll have tons of gates with a developped network. A few factions, NPC factions homebases and you'll have so much gates to put on the map. With travel to another galaxy it would be even more gates. I do not say that it isn't a bad idea but corrently i don't feel like this could work without ending up ugly. Not to mention that with chain drives people aren't used to play around warp gates.