Some of the complaints with the economy worlds in a-tractor, is that
1) After a while, theres nothing to do
2) New players find it hard to start up as all the stuff is already done
3)
There have been some attempts by economy islands to rectify this by:
1) Resetting the island every few months
2) Stopping the island whenever the owner feels like it and then starting it up again later on, which is a different version of the one above
3) Adding other stuff to the island, such as weapons, for the uber rich to play around with
After thinking about the way other online games face this problem (as most owners seem very/absolutely/extremely reluctant to just let the island just carry on, rather like Zoric II), I have come up with the following measure:
When a player reaches a certain networth/wealth, that player immediately loses all possessions, buildings and sheckles. In effect, he dies, with one important difference: all the money he has is converted into galactic credits. As this happens whenever the player's wealth reaches a set amount, this means that what happens is that the player gets rewarded, or "heroed out" with galactic credits and can start all over again in that world if he wants to.
This, I think, is a rather neat way of utilising the galaxy system, especially since, the whole idea of the galaxy system is to introduce a sence of progression into the game. Of course, this idea will need to be hardwired into the code of the game, but I think the effort will be worth the benefits
Also, the above idea can be further enhanced with the system of ranks for worlds, where you cannot progress to a world unless you have "heroed out" of a world one rank below it. In this way, people will have something to aim for, and only at the last tier will there be a constant state of people leaving and entering, as at the other ones it will consist of people passing through. Obviously, you will not be able to make many galactic credits from the low level world, but at the high level worlds, will be able to make a lot more.
Here are some names for the tierd worlds (which I've burrowed from some sci-fi sources):
Low Tier: Feral World, Farming World, Death World(this last one also implies a deadly wildlife and enviroment as well as a low popualtion)
Medium Tier: Civilised world, Industrialised World
High Tier: Factory World, Technological World
Of course, theres no reason why an Farming World cannot be high tier, as they can have an active economy,but they provide nice themes and a reason why these planets are low tier(plus its just a name). Also, the worlds earmarked for this "cycling mode" will have to have an infinite credit rating, as I would imagine that the infinite playablility aspect will be slightly damaged if there was a finite amount of credits you can draw from it!
When I don't use three dots in a row you know I've done this in rough first...
