Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Edited 2/16/2017 New line is in italic.

TL;DR at the top for your convenience. I would like:

1) A configurable announcement to a player docking at a player owned structure.
2) A method to be aware that a service module is in use and how long the longest running job will take.
3) An Access list entity, akin to "Public" that specifies anyone in a corporation who is currently renting an office in the structure.

I have only just dabbled in player owned structures, but encountered a bit of a messy problem when I decided to switch gears.

I set up a citadel with a research service and made it open to the public. 3 people started jobs there. I decided that it would be better to use an engineering complex to save on fuel upkeep. I closed the citadel to new jobs but I was unable to determine for how long the service would be in use by my patrons to avoid canceling their jobs. The total tax money collected is pretty paltry, and none of the jobs are very significant in scope or significance, I am sure, but a customer is a customer, in my book, and a deal is a deal.

In order to avoid going back on my deal, I have had to search my transaction history, find each person, and manually send them an eve-mail notifying them of the service shutdown. Then, I must take them at their word on how long the service needs to be maintained or how many of their jobs are active. I would appreciate any tools that allow me to reimburse or act in good faith towards a customer of mine.

There is also no way for me to notify people who dock at the citadel and maybe store some of their things there that I am taking it down. Some sort of configurable docking announcement would go a long way towards helping people to be prepared for my planned infrastructure changes.

The access list entity can be used to give better rates on station services for those paying a monthly bill to the owner for preferential treatment.

Yeah, but you probably shouldn't have to. Some sort of intra-structure communication channel would be useful in a public structure. Not really sure where in the UI you would want it, but some sort of bulletin or chat channel would help distinguish and personalize player structures.

+1

We definitely need some way for owners of a public structure to communicate with their clients.

I would like to see the structure browser upgraded with features comparable to the corporation app. It could offer a tab with the current functionality and a second tab offering a search function with advertisements similar to the recruitment tab of the corporation app.

When you're docked at a player built structure you get a third tab - the home tab, with bulletins and details.

If it isn't too much effort the structure browser icon could be added to the station services area of the hanger UI.

What I'm thinking of is a simple announcement in local, similar to how things work in missions where the players in a local area receive a notice that some someone or other sent a distress signal and more pirates are on the way. Anchoring a can is better than nothing, but I feel it is much more elegant, and probably easier, to put the local channel to additional use.

There are a lot of things that can be said, and literally anyone can put up cans around your station if they want to, making a station owner's announcements fairly obscure.

I'm all for keeping things simple and clean. Even for what little I do, I feel like I have as many chat channels as I'd like to manage, but a can is not flexible enough to do what I would like to do, which is conveniently convey to people in a polite tone everything they might need to know about what's going on. The announcement could be tied to station profiles, which is still being worked on to some degree allowing station owners to set them to their liking all at once. Using local chat also would allow for linking, further enhancing convenience for those wishing to make an announcements, and those reading them.

Cultivating a captive audience is a long standing business tradition, and the right to make an announcement to your clients in your own establishment is certainly used and abused by almost every one that exists today.

Interesting ideas all.