Merchant Archive

I stocked my vendors and went to bed, about 50k worth of furniture and another 100k worth of droids and harvesters. I'm used to paying a maintenance rate of 1cr per hour. I didn't realize this was bugged, I just thought it was cheap.

So now I read they "fixed" the NPC vendors and I'm gonna get charged a bunch based on what I have listed? This seems pretty dumb. I hope I don't get home tonight after work to find my vendors all laying on the floor, gasping their last breath because their union voted for a raise without telling me beforehand.

Anyway, I think if they want to have value-based fees, they need to be in the form of a VAT. Just have it tack on a percentage to the listing price and it gets paid when it's sold. Then higher-level merchants can get hose reduced (through bribes or licenses or whatever).

Also, what's to prevent me from just letting the vendor go into repair status, then pulling it down and creating a new one from the house panel? I mean besides the 20 minutes it takes me to empty a vendor and restock it.

I rather question anyone who thinks 1 credit maintenance is "normal", but I definitely agree on a couple things:

1) There are a LOT of people using (exploiting?) NPC vendors because they cost pretty much nothing to maintain. Notice needs to be given before changing this so vendors don't implode/explode from the huge numbers of items on them and the maintenance that will be charged. CS tickets will be submitted by the hundreds (thousands?) about lost items from vendors.

2) Vendor maintenance, if terminal maintenance fee is as designed, is too high plus it is difficult to understand. It doesn't update immediately and if you're not careful, you could have a problem on your hands. A per item posting fee, sales tax, or other mechanism that is preferrable.

I understand you wondering about my brain power with the fee of 1/hr, but here's where I came from. I never placed a vendor before getting novice merchant (I happened to have the XP laying around. I think I placed one bertender droid for a little while, not paying much attention to the cost, until I had enough XP to get hiring 1, and I immediately switched to NPC vendors because I prefer them. So I never really had anything to compare it to. I did notice however that when I got planetary advertising, the price didn't go up when I registered. I assumed that's a bug. And now it will be too high, and the advertising will stop workin gevery morning anyway. Excellent.

Anyway, I guess I'll see when I get home in a half hour if my 3 vendors are broken from lack of funds. I think I left each one with about 100cr in them last night.

I'm concerned as well. I went away on a week's vacation on Monday and made sure all my NPC vendors, houses, and harvesters were paid up to take them through the week's absence. Now I am worried that when I log on next Monday, I will find that I have lost no small amount of merchandise.