These forums have been archived and are now read-only.

The new forums are live and can be found at https://forums.eveonline.com/

EVE Fiction

 
  • Topic is locked indefinitely.
 

Story Background: Help with Current Economic Backstory
Author
Previous Topic Next Topic
Roga Dracor
Gladiators of Rage
Fraternity.
#1 - 2011-10-19 17:16:34 UTC
OK, so developing some ideas for a story involving the overall economy of the cluster. My particular quandry is maintaining an in character aspect to the payment methods of crew, staff, dockworkers, etc.. I know it seems like nitpicking, but, I have never cut an employee in Eve a check. And that bothers me.

The obvious solution, I think, is a subsidiary branch of the SCC, devoted to clusterwide wage issues, working condition disputes, strikes, and so on. Even the Caldari have been shown to have strikes, so, there must be some overt and covert labor organizations fueling the fires. Likely those damn Gallente.. Evil

While the Amarr do not tolerate labor disputes, they still pay taxes to the SCC, which must rake in an obscene amount of ISK. Certainly enough to pay out the exhorbenant insurance policies that Capsuleer crew's family are said to collect upon their unfortunate demise, as well as, the Concord dockworkers and station crew, funding all the myriad projects of Concord and so on. Such labor organizations, tied to the Secure Commerce Comission, as said, could be my answer.

Anyone ever contemplated similar thoughts? Or have a spur of the moment revelation they'd like to share?Blink

It's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then, and it's a poor sort of memory that only works backward.
Telegram Sam
Sebiestor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#2 - 2011-10-19 20:30:57 UTC
I've wondered something similar myself. Who pays for the energy when I dock and recharge my ship's capacitor? Why is the hangar space for all of my ships and junk free, no matter which corporation's station I go to? One's standings with the particular corporation seem important to about anything except this. It would seem like storage space on a manmade object in space could be fairly costly. Especially if you consider the tens of millions per week it costs to keep a comparatively small Player Owned Station fueled and operating. Where do the isk to maintain NPC stations come from, and why do capsuleers get to dock and store for free?

In Eve: The Empyrean Age, the stations seem to be something like a combination dockyard/hotel/barracks/shopping mall. Like a self-contained port town, really. There are business enterprises (bars, doctor's offices, etc.) that serve the ships's crews and dock workers. The businesses pay rent to the station's owners. So if we follow E:THE's model, I suppose some corporation (Ishukone, Republic Justice Department, whatever) would own the station. It would use some of the facilities for its own operations, and the rest of it to make money on:
-Rents to business tenants
-Fees for use of its public manufacturing and/or lab slots
-Ship repair fees
-Maybe broker fees from buy/sell orders. (Anybody have information on that? Who are these brokers that the fees go to?)

So it's in the station owners' interest to have a lot of traffic at the station. The more traffic, the higher the rents they can charge tenants and the more fees that are collected from pilots for the various services. So to encourage traffic, they provide pilots with free docking, cap recharge, and hangar space. Therefore they pay the wages of the dock staff and other station operations staff. How's that sound? Smile

At the same time, it also makes sense that SCC would want to create a uniform standard (that is, free docking and storage) throughout all stations. They're the committee in charge of facilitating smooth interstellar commerce. It seems to make sense that SCC would want a uniform standard for docking and storage at every station, instead of a hodgepodge of unpredictable charges, barriers to entry, etc. all over the cosmos. So it could also make sense that SCC would pay the wages to provide docking and storage. As you said, SCC should have plenty of cash, from the tax on buy/sell transactions and other sources.

That still doesn't explain who pays wages for the crews of private ships such as our Hulks, Rifters, etc. It seems kind of a stretch that either SCC or a corporation would pay wages for the crew of a private ship. The ship's owner might use them for something 'anti-commerce' or 'anti-peace and harmony' like piracy or factional warfare. Then again, maybe SCC or the corporations could consider ships' crews as expendable commodities to be used up like anything else. I don't know the EVE lore on ships's crews really, but somehow they part doesn't seem very fleshed out. Anyone?