Damaskinos

Question: There was mention of fixing these issues through mechanics rather than going after them retroactively with staff digging through logs. The question is, how much time and effort are developers willing to put into stopping this with mechanics? Secondly, how much time and effort do the players want taken away from alpha testing and content development to fix such issues at this stage of the game? I cannot answer that question: BUT I may have a suggestion that would work if the answer is YES this is important enough to devote developer time to fixing. Create an escrow mechanic within the Trade UI/backend. Two players enter a trade, they have the option to click "Ship Consignment" one enters as the Builder, one as the Buyer. A ship type is selected and resources for that ship have to be filled within the ship consignment queue. Game tags each item and resource that is entered in to the queue to the player that put it in. Once they are all present Builder sets a price. Builder cannot click build until the Buyer accepts the price the Builder sets. Resources are expended, ship is delivered to the buyer, gold to the Builder. Basically it'd be a temporary warehouse shared by the two players that holds all the resources required for that ship until they are all gathered. Put a time limit on it (X number of days or whatnot), if the queue isn't filled and the ship built, goods are delivered back to their tagged owners warehouses.