Small quantities of goods at stations

[Switeck]

There should be a non-zero chance of offender and fugitive ships arriving at the witchpoint beacon along with "regular" traders. The odds of them should be considerably higher at anarchy systems than corporate states.

[Zieman]

I wouldn't do that. I find it odd enough that for every exiting trader another one is added. I can live with it, because it is simply for playability: the likeliness to meet another soul shouldn't drop to 0.

However, this is completely different if a ship is killed (as opposed to jumping out). Why should another ship be magically called from out-of-system to replace it? If you as player have the urge to empty the system, you should be able to do it. So if you kill all the pirates, you should be hoorayed, not have magically thrown more pirates at you from the witchpoint. It isn't justifiable in-game.

Good points.

So, is the trader replenishment restricted to those traders who hyperspace away?
Felt a bit dumb if killing a trader resulted in another popping out of nowhere, same thing with docking ones.
Of course, traders come and go - some element of randomness should remain. Meaning that if a player wants to empty a system, he/she can do it (not an easy or quick task without "Killit superweapons"), but eventually someone's bound to jump into the system.

Sorry if my writing's a bit confusing, this heat wave seems to interfere with my brains (what's left of them )...

[Ganelon]

If you kill all the pirates in a system (or a significant number of them), then you've eliminated some competition, which could make the system quite attractive to ambitious pirates from neighbouring systems.

It wouldn't make much sense to have pirates automatically replaced any time one gets killed, but they would logically come and go from the system all the time, as they go about their piratety business. There should be a random chance at any given moment for one to enter the system or one to hyperspace away. If you're in a system for a while, the cumulative effect of that random chance could result in anything from a rather quiet little system to a "crime wave".

I'd think it would be similar with traders. They'd be coming and going all the time, and if a lot of them build up, "Hmm.. Is there a convention going on or something?". If enough of them hyperspace out to make the system seem like a ghost town, well, it might give the impression something bad is going on and they're "getting the heck out of Dodge" or maybe they heard of better prices elsewhere.

Galcop/Navy probably would automatically replace any of their units that get killed because they're trying to maintain a certain degree of order and a certain patrol density.

Aliens, well, they're alien. Their logic doesn't need to make any sense to the player. Maybe better there if there is usually no rhyme or reason to how many of them show up or when.

But sweeping the system to kill all pirates could be at least mostly possible, but then the player would logically have to keep patrolling to deal with any as they show up from elsewhere if they want to *keep* the system clean. That's a whole sort of roleplay element possible right there for the player that likes to play a vigilante/bounty-hunter or maybe sheriff.

From the pirate player perspective, pickings might be slim for a bit if they've just raided the spacelane heavilly. But if they lay low for a bit, it should start to repopulate since there'd be traders naive enough to not have heard of that player who is the "scourge of the 8 galaxies" or maybe it'd be those NPC traders daring enough to risk it anyway because of the lower competition for the market.

[Commander McLane]

So, is the trader replenishment restricted to those traders who hyperspace away?

To be precise, it is restricted to the use of the AI-method performHyperSpaceExit (you'll have to scroll down a little bit from the link's entry point), so it happens every time an NPC jumps out.

The replacement will have the same role as the outgoing ship, which means that if a ship with role "pirate" jumps out, another pirate will actually be found at the witchpoint.

This behaviour can explicitely be prevented by using the replacement method performHyperSpaceExitWithoutReplacing instead. This method was created because especially in the context of missions it makes no sense that a ship with a custom role gets replaced automatically. For instance, if you're hunting the Constrictor and he decides to jump out, it would make no sense that another Constrictor would jump into the system at the same moment. After all this ship is meant to exist only once.

If you kill all the pirates in a system (or a significant number of them), then you've eliminated some competition, which could make the system quite attractive to ambitious pirates from neighbouring systems.

It wouldn't make much sense to have pirates automatically replaced any time one gets killed, but they would logically come and go from the system all the time, as they go about their piratety business. There should be a random chance at any given moment for one to enter the system or one to hyperspace away. If you're in a system for a while, the cumulative effect of that random chance could result in anything from a rather quiet little system to a "crime wave".

There is the question of communication. How long would it take until pirates in neighbouring systems would notice the elimination of pirates in your system? If you kill a lone pirate, chances are that nobody would ever know. Even if you kill a group, I don't think they would transmit a "mayday" to neighbouring systems. Perhaps if one of them got away... And what would the transmission time be? And finally the travel time. Even if the next system is only 1LY away and we assume that transmission of news happens instantly, a full hour would pass until a ship could emerge at the witchpoint, because that's how long it takes to travel. And of course, the farther the neighbouring system, the longer the travel would take. So at the end of the day I find it highly unlikely that pirates from neighbouring system would replace the ones you've killed quickly enough for you to notice. You would have long left the system yourself.

However, I would be in favour of a random replenishment. Why should pirates be bound to one system only? Why shouldn't they switch systems once in a while? So having a pirate (or group of pirates) jump in at the witchpoint randomly after every couple of minutes seems perfectly reasonable to me.

[Loxley]

Even if pirates could somehow know that their brethren had been eliminated I'm not sure that would necessarily make a system attractive to them.

In my mind, at least, the scene goes a bit like this,

Pirate minion "Hey boss, all the the pirates at Riedquat have been killed."

Boss "Really?"

Pirate minion "Yeah, we should get in there and clean up."

Boss "Do reports say what happened to these guys?"

Pirate minion "Apparently some total badass reptilian in a Caddy blew them all to kingdom come."

Boss "...And you still think we should go the Riedquat?"

Pirate minion "Yes boss."

Boss "I've never promoted you have I?"

Pirate minion "No Boss."

Boss "Long may this trend continue."

[Cmdr Wyvern]

Even if pirates could somehow know that their brethren had been eliminated I'm not sure that would necessarily make a system attractive to them.

In my mind, at least, the scene goes a bit like this,

Pirate minion "Hey boss, all the the pirates at Riedquat have been killed."

Boss "Really?"

Pirate minion "Yeah, we should get in there and clean up."

Boss "Do reports say what happened to these guys?"

Pirate minion "Apparently some total badass reptilian in a Caddy blew them all to kingdom come."

Boss "...And you still think we should go the Riedquat?"

Pirate minion "Yes boss."

Boss "I've never promoted you have I?"

Pirate minion "No Boss."

Boss "Long may this trend continue."

BWAHAHAHAHA!! Yeah, good one!

[Cody]

I see that you've had a facelift, Wyvern. Very nice!

[Cmdr Wyvern]

I see that you've had a facelift, Wyvern. Very nice!

Thanx!
Though I'm still not pretty to look at. Oh well, modelling isn't fun anyhow.

[caracal]

I see that you've had a facelift, Wyvern. Very nice!

Thanx!
Though I'm still not pretty to look at. Oh well, modelling isn't fun anyhow.

I'm sure the lady dracolids find you quite dashing.

[Cmdr Wyvern]

I'm sure the lady dracolids find you quite dashing.

They do. Despite it all, Mrs. Roh'i need not worry about her paet'a wandering. I'm blissfully mated, thank you.

[mcarans]

It has indeed been discussed before.

Unfortunately the highly protectionist nature of the galactic cooperative of worlds seems to explicitly forbid stations' markets from making more than 128 units of cargo available per commodity, per standard day. This generally leads to the artificial restrictions you noticed...
One other restriction is the ban on broadcasting a station's commodity prices. The main station has got a special licence to broadcast its prices on a system wide basis, but no further than that.

I think it might also be because the galactic cooperative were once limited by 8 bit computers...

I prefer your handwavium though.