While responding to the recent thread started by CCP Nullarbor regarding Corporation Tax, I once again found myself mulling over the "problem" of Starter fits usage by non-newbies.

While hardly a game breaker, it nonetheless does insidious work undermining the Risk vs. Reward nature of New Eden and will inevitably only serve to unbalance the fragile starting economy of Dust.

Currently, Starter fits exist as a free ride to anyone willing to play a mere Assault grunt. This is true for the clueless newbie and the paramount veteran alike. It shouldn't, though, in keeping with the principles of CCP, Eve and New Eden. These Starter fits not only allow several play styles to skate by on a free chassis but make those particular choice of play styles imbalanced with the others in the game. They also allow some players the ability to spend fractions of ISK (both initially and later) compared with others, who don't have the option of using a Starter fit to play in their chosen roles.

My proposal, then, is to make Starter fits available only to players in NPCs. Hear me out here...

In a metagame sense, the NPCs are paying players a contract fee to fight for them and, presumably, providing barebones fits for the clone Mercenaries to fight in. Why should these fits, meant for newbies to save them money and introduce them to a couple basic fittings, be free ad infinitum?

I say keep them free as long as the player is still in a NPC. Once the player joins a PC, they would then need to provide their own fittings at market value. I run a logistics fit that is 3500 ISK. I have the Exile BPO, mind you, but a Militia AR would make the whole outfit about 4k ISK. Hardly a bank breaker for even the greenest player. I would need to die 30 or more times per match for these lowbie fits to actually cost me a serious portion of my contract fee. What is the justification, then, for Starter fits if not cost?

In the incredibly unlikely event that a player runs out of money entirely while in a PC, they could either lean on their fellow Corpmates for a jump start OR simply rejoin a NPC for access to the free Starter fits, again.

There were two caveats with my plan. 1) NPCs would have a Corp tax to be determined at a fair value by CCP (I suggested 11%) and 2) there should be militia grades of every weapon and item available for purchase. In a metagame sense, again, these NPCs provide free fits and vehicles and they should incur some kind of returns on their investments.

At the end of the day, this would encourage new players to join PCs and it would teach them that nothing in Dust is free if they want to climb the ladder. They pay for their own fits once they are out on their own.

This idea came to me, but I should note that a very similar idea was being proposed by Kagehoshi Horned Wolf about a month ago in a New Player thread he started.