Thats the point they started to make an attempt and accidentally missed out on the fundamental flaw of their system which is logging out / disconnected giving players an edge in transportingg goods over those players who actually play the game. No game should ever reward players for not playing !
And after 10 years they still reward players to not play in space - so lets say they started to make an atttempt and gave up halfway through. They also never delivered the shields and torpedos they promised for motherships uppon sale which would have made big ships much safer for transport with a less heavy additional investment in structural integrity.
Instead they waited for players to spent on si for 10 years while leaving the flaw in place that made investing into si in part pointless.
Making it impossible to ferry goods to others places while being logged out could have been an easy fix - just relocate lootables to the last planet a player was on.
And yes cargo missions that were promised 6 years ago could also have helped tto solve the issue and even allowed the transport of L teleport units - get one to another planet delivered by a ship then a player can tp there under the restrictions of the L tp unit...
I agree with your post. I think MA missed out on the incentive aspect of space. If you look at Calypso there are incentives for visiting the PVP and lootable PVP zones. There is really no incentive to traverse lootable space so people have found a work around by logging off. I logged in to keep my account active but I was really inactive for a number of years and space in general hasn't changed all that much since I went into an inactive state until just recently, that's a lot of years with no major updates.
I am all for localized system TPs that travel to and from system locations and charge to do so. Maybe make hangars the locations for those system TPs. Those charges could be shared amongst ship owners in each local system so it doesn't negatively affect ship ownership it actually incentivizes it. Now between systems lootable PVP space shouldn't be the norm, there should be zones or lanes and there should be incentives to traverse those portions of space just like any lootable PVP zone planetside. Incentives could be special mobs, faster travel via wormholes to other planets, events, etc. etc. Non-lootable PVP should just take longer but there is still a threat from being attacked just not having your loot pilfered.
I still can't believe they don't have NPCs flying CAP, keeping the peace, and scanning for contraband, in systems. There is incentive to be a pirate but it should come with risk as well (jail, NPC and stations recognizes you as friend or foe, bounties place on you, etc. etc.) . They also need to implement ship scanning abilities. I am sure pirates wouldn't want to waste ammo and reputation on a ship that is carrying one piece of poo (my favorite lootable to carry back in the day) unless they are just looking for the kill. Do away with limited ships and increase upgrade options, allow space walk repairs for smaller ships or some type of astro repair bots, increase the library of ships and skills needed to use them, limited items should be driven by consumables that are crafted. Your base ship no matter what it is should be a lot like your avatar and you can kit it out respectively with armor and shields, weapons, powerplants, warp drives, cloaking devices, etc, etc, Space mining and specific gear and ships to mine asteroids is needed so badly I can't believe it was never implemented.
Allow for profit sharing and deed activity for space specific entities, orgs, or companies of some type. Allow for space zones in space that are much like land grab areas that implement tolls as taxes and maybe incentive societies to gear up and fight for control of the zone. I am all for LA type zones in space as well which would seem easy enough to implement and allow owners to change PVP settings, implement tolls, add creatures, seed mining in some way, and maybe control wormholes as well. If you don't want to bother traveling through risky lootable PVP or through toll zones that take time then find a warp capable ship.
In my opinion they put the cart before the horse when it came to implementing space they treated it as an investment from the get go when it should have been a fun aspect to the game that fostered travel and trade between the PPS and then rolled in the investment opportunities once it grew. I just don't know if they have the player base for this like they once did. There is a lot of competition in the MMO space sim market these days and many of them have grey markets where items are bought and sold with money outside of the game itself.
