Aria Liune
Maelstrom Crew
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Posted - 2007.09.23 21:48:00 -
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Apologies if a similar idea has been posted, I did a search etc but nothing.
When we go on contract we are often asked to move away from a trade hub. In order to overcome the pain of being so far from a decent market we establish a resupply point and stock the hangar with lots of goodies for people to take.
The problem with this is a level of cash and trust. It's naieve to put 100's of millions of isk of stuff in one hangar and give everyone access and expect that at some point it won't be abused (either by a corp theft or someone just taking a little more than they need). Additionally these costs are often non-recoverable, so if you want to have a good stock of items you need to set a taxation level that reflects this. All in all this is pretty unsatisfactory, and the usual result is that corp gives you free munitions and you have to haul all the stuff you really like to use yourself.
A possible alternative is the market. You could bring down all those nice items you like and sell them at your resupply point so that your members can simply purchase what they need, saving time and making logistics more efficient. The downside is that anyone can purchase these goods (if in empire at least), and although the idea of making money from your enemies is quite attractive, at the same time resupplying them is counter-productive.
My idea is to create a sort of loyalty point store that is corp only. If you are at a station where your corp holds an office you can select an interface much like the loyalty point store. From here you can purchase items from corp hangars either for isk or shares.
The setup could be made quite flexible. Hangar access could ensure that only certain parts of your corp can take advantage of some of the goods on offer. This could be particularly important if you want to offer some items at a discounted rate, but only to those that have earnt it. Shares could replace loyalty points, so that a corp could reward members with shares that can then be spent (possibly alongside isk as well) within the corp store. Communistic based corps that trade donations for shares would also benefit by being able to claw back shares for items in order to ensure that members keep donating, and don't just get to the best access then stop giving but keep taking.
Feedback, comments, criticisms are very welcome - no doubt some of the bright minds here can make some good suggestions.
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