Charging for Hubspace

when trade hubs were introduced they were invulnerable to diplomatic attack and quickly became the unassailable repositories of most wealth in illyriad. the result has been that diplo action now only really hurts small players who need to keep their wealth close at hand for potential use.

it is conceivable that trade hubs would be heavily patrolled by the factions controlling them and be practically invulnerable to common thievery, but i doubt that factions would want to do that indefinitely for mounds of goods stored there and not for sale. in the current model, the factions make gold only when goods are posted for sale. i am proposing here that a more sensible model is to charge for the time the goods spend in storage. that would provide a cost for keeping one's goods safe from thievery and encourage players to list and quickly sell or withdraw goods in storage.

how to assess the fees brings up some interesting questions. i think the most practical way is to assess a flat charge per item over time without attempting to assess the value of individual items or charge based on it. fees could be assessed whenever a player withdraws items from a hub or proceeds from a sale arrive. in the case of a shortfall, the easiest solution would be to allow players to keep a negative balance at each hub, which could also influence faction relationship; an interesting alternative for goods being withdrawn would be force the filling of buy orders from the goods withdrawn until the balance owed is paid.

as a working figure, i am thinking 2g/item/week, with some variability for faction relationships; no charge for stored gold. the existing sale-based tax might be reduced; the idea is not to increase the cost of trade, but to reapportion it to better reflect the cost of protecting one's goods from thievery.