General Fleet Carriers are becoming a big issue in Powerplay balancement.

[Bard Voronwe]

Hello hello!

It's a little bit more than one week that Powerplay is out, and what I find interesting is that Powerplay is basically highlightning all the many unsolved balancement issues of the game some of us is reporting since years.

A big issue with that is how Fleet Carriers are a great disruptive factor in game balancement, especially with rares and price balancement concerning merits.

Right now the meta of the game is basically filling your fleet carrier with rares, move it to where you want to reinforce/acquire a system and sell the whole cargo for maximum profit in merits (and credits too). Same thing can be done with disruptive trading, buying as many low-income commodities you can and buying back from your fleet carrier (or another fleet carrier) for maxium price and selling them for maximum loss (and maximum gain in merits).

I believe this was never what the developers meant for the game to be, and balancement is being heavily hit by this abnormal game-loop.

The easy solution would be basically to make all commodities useless Powerplay-wise if they pass through a fleet carrier, this would solve both the rare merits buff and the low-income-trading merits buff too.

As an alternative another solution for at least rares (and the one that makes more sense considering the game as a whole) would be to make rares impossible to stock into fleet carriers as powerplay commodities used to: I think that rare trading was never meant to be done "by volumes", instead by "strategy" with routes and time loss.

Discuss,

 

[kofeyh]

Or Frontier could have not put the modules on the top of a massive hill? The issue isn't carriers. It's the mechanics.

Frontier does this all the time. Add new mechanics then put a massive, massive grind between the player and the end goal.

Rather than punish players for trying to wade thought an interminable massive wall of grind, maybe ask why is the massive wall is there in the first place. All frontier has done, is tried to buy time and slow commanders down, and if there is one thing I know, players will always route around Frontier.

Once people have unlocked modules, the only people engaging with powerplay will be those into it to at least some degree.

 

[Bard Voronwe]

Or Frontier could have not put the modules on the top of a massive hill? The issue isn't carriers. It's the mechanics.

Frontier does this all the time. Add new mechanics then put a massive, massive grind between the player and the end goal.

Rather than punish players for trying to wade thought an interminable massive wall of grind, maybe ask why is the massive wall is there in the first place. All frontier has done, is tried to buy time and slow commanders down, and if there is one thing I know, players will always route around Frontier.

Once people have unlocked modules, the only people engaging with powerplay will be those into it to at least some degree.

I can agree at some point, but this is not the focus of this thread.
The focus is: rare commodities have been designed as something you take in low quantities ad sell very far away for a great profit.
Which is good. Like it or not is balanced.
Fleet Carriers negate the "low quantities" part. Making the whole mechanic broken.
Even more broken with Powerplay.
(We could talk about Powerplay balancement and I would be more than glad to do so, but this is not exactly the topic right now).

 

[Ian Doncaster]

The easy solution would be basically to make all commodities useless Powerplay-wise if they pass through a fleet carrier, this would solve both the rare merits buff and the low-income-trading merits buff too.

For low-income trading a slightly better option might be to declare any commodity sold by a Fleet Carrier to have its galactic average price. You'd still be able to use them to build stockpiles for a rapid unloading run - which I think gives an interesting strategic option - but the price exploit wouldn't be there.

(That would also allow low-income trading to get a bit of a boost: for something you have to do deliberately the merit payout is absolutely terrible without FC-washing)


Rares I think are trickier because FCs do break the primary assumption that you can only pick up N at once and then you have to travel and sell them before getting the next batch. On the other hand, a bunch of people loading up a Cutter full of cargo racks and collectors parked just outside the station also breaks that assumption and is probably not much less time-efficient as a FC. Rares may just need to be balanced around the assumption that people will do that sort of thing, and be relatively useless to solo pilots.

Or Frontier could have not put the modules on the top of a massive hill?

Frontier can add a button that you can press to instantly become rank 100 and the relative merit balance of particular activities and particular ways of doing those activities would still be an issue because the merits also move the system progress bars.

 

[kofeyh]

I can agree at some point, but this is not the focus of this thread.
The focus is: rare commodities have been designed as something you take in low quantities ad sell very far away for a great profit.
Which is good. Like it or not is balanced.
Fleet Carriers negate the "low quantities" part. Making the whole mechanic broken.
Even more broken with Powerplay.
(We could talk about Powerplay balancement and I would be more than glad to do so, but this is not exactly the topic right now).

Carriers just set where people are; rares are still gated at 10 minute intervals, and arguably, you can jump 190LY or so in less than 10 minutes (so pinballing between as little as two rares systems can happen inside of 10 minutes). So you can loop rares just jumping between a few and doing pick up/ drop off.

Carriers are just a symptom, not a cause. I get what you are saying, but I think pointing at carriers and going "these are the problem" ignores that they are just a tool, like anything else.

Frontier have funneled people into a narrow range of tasks that reward merits, which imho is actually the problem; if everything more or less gave the same relative amount of merits, for roughly the equivalent effort there'd be a ton of different ways people could engage with powerplay and get meaningful progress.

But that is not what Frontier did. Instead some merit sources are orders less than others; rather than just forever nerf things, bring things up more in line to make everything a bit more rewarding.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Or Frontier could have not put the modules on the top of a massive hill? The issue isn't carriers. It's the mechanics.

Frontier does this all the time. Add new mechanics then put a massive, massive grind between the player and the end goal.

Rather than punish players for trying to wade thought an interminable massive wall of grind, maybe ask why is the massive wall is there in the first place. All frontier has done, is tried to buy time and slow commanders down, and if there is one thing I know, players will always route around Frontier.

Once people have unlocked modules, the only people engaging with powerplay will be those into it to at least some degree.

Thing is, for Powerplay, its basically a contest of effort vs effort. That effort can come in different ways in PP2. Bounty hunting, trade, etc. If they take down the "wall" as you put it, then merits go crazy, and tiny actions have a huge impact on PP.

I agree FD probably didn't really think through the effect of FCs on PP trading tasks, and they have to take that into consideration for balancing reasons. Taking down the "wall" isn't a solution though, nor is making FCs useless for PP. FCs need to have their uses, their advantages to owning. The question should be how should FD balance it.

Perhaps diminishing returns could be a solution. Remember, FCs have jump time, just like ships have travel time, so compare something like a Cutter with > 500t of cargo and perhaps a 10 mins travel time between locations (depending on number of jumps and distance between stations) and a FC with a minimum of 15 minutes (often longer), plus the time of ferrying cargo back and forth from the FC, which also adds minutes per trip, (depending how close you can park your FC to the stations at both ends).

We might consider that a FC can shift the same amount of cargo as a Cutter in the same time (as an example, not saying this is 100% accurate!) when it hits about 3000t (6 runs, again, using 500t Cutter as an example, yes, i know, they can get much more cargo, easily over 700, its just an example).

But FCs should have a benefit, so let's imagine the amount transferred via FC starts to suffer a malus beyond 3000t. A bit like trading huge volumes (and why doesn't the bulk trade effect also not affect merits and rares? Or does it already?). Beyond 3000 you get less merits per unit.

That could balance things, if there was a reasonable cut off point.

 

[kofeyh]

Thing is, for Powerplay, its basically a contest of effort vs effort. That effort can come in different ways in PP2. Bounty hunting, trade, etc. If they take down the "wall" as you put it, then merits go crazy, and tiny actions have a huge impact on PP.

The simplest may have been being more focused on ensuring there were a wide range of ways to earn merits, and having effort rewarded with progress. Commanders will always find the optimum way to do things, so if the optimum wasn't that much different to anything else, it'd be far less of a distortion.

The issue is that Frontier has made merit returns vary (sometimes wildly) based on what is done. Chasing symptoms doesn't do anything meaningful, and just encourages people to opt out/ leave. Instead, if almost anything we did, more or less gave the same outcome for similar amounts of time invested, it'd at least seem a little more fair.

But I think sometimes people just want a scapegoat, because that's easier than critical thinking or asking the developer to explain their reasoning for such a disconnect between merit sources and effort. Surely they have a reason?

--

For some context, I try very hard to not police what other players are doing in the game; that is the responsibility of Frontier and the game systems. If they are doing a poor job of it, heaping punishment on other players just trying to do their thing, just does not strike me as constructive.

It's also worth noting that there will be a burst of activity as players chase modules, and then (like one might expect) it'll calm down a lot and powerplay 2.0 may well die out just as much as PP 1 did. Frontier are just trying to make it go for as long as possible.

 

[Jmanis]

I do love when balance issues that have been extant for years, only become an issue when it affects the FOTM activity.

"Nonono Jmanis, expecting the game to be balanced is totally wrong... some things are just better than others!"

I mean, i agree with the OP, but it's little wonder when the demand is constantly for new features before fixing the current ones. Things like average- price rigging in FCs have been an issue forever.

 

[Bard Voronwe]

For low-income trading a slightly better option might be to declare any commodity sold by a Fleet Carrier to have its galactic average price. You'd still be able to use them to build stockpiles for a rapid unloading run - which I think gives an interesting strategic option - but the price exploit wouldn't be there.

Again: this new Powerplay is clearly not designed on snipes. Yes, we all had fun with those, but right now snipes would favour the tracking part of the game only, making it unfairly unbalanced on combat oriented players (and combat oriented activities too).

Rares I think are trickier because FCs do break the primary assumption that you can only pick up N at once and then you have to travel and sell them before getting the next batch. On the other hand, a bunch of people loading up a Cutter full of cargo racks and collectors parked just outside the station also breaks that assumption and is probably not much less time-efficient as a FC. Rares may just need to be balanced around the assumption that people will do that sort of thing, and be relatively useless to solo pilots.

But you see in that case you see a complex and cooperative way to play the game, and very time spending too, and to be honest you'd need LOTS of players to make the process even slightly efficient. Because what you describe moves far less commodities to the final target, because there's many people involved. More effective? Yes. As much as Fleet Carriers? Not at all.

Carriers are just a symptom, not a cause. I get what you are saying, but I think pointing at carriers and going "these are the problem" ignores that they are just a tool, like anything else.

I dissent. You forget that carriers can do their jumps even when the player is offline. Basically you can split the cycle in two parts: one dedicated to fill the carrier with rares, the other one to dropping all the good stuff where they are needed. And the trip wil lbe done offline, you are basically saving hundreds of hours of game time, moving commodities without any danger where thy are needed. And again: this is CLEARLY not how rares have been designed in the first time.

Thing is, for Powerplay, its basically a contest of effort vs effort. That effort can come in different ways in PP2. Bounty hunting, trade, etc. If they take down the "wall" as you put it, then merits go crazy, and tiny actions have a huge impact on PP.

Not exactly. It depends on the actions. Some actions are much more time spending and need much more ability/preparation. Hauling is by far already the most effective way to gain merits, even without a fleet carrier. Fleet carriers make this advatage skyrocket. And it's bad, because if you design a game system where you try to make as many activities as possible matter and you make one more effective than the others and then you make this activity even more effective by many times with fleet carriers... the game is simply broken. We all saw the top 10 of the different Powers. I bet all the top 10 guys from the different Powers had a fleet carrier and exploited that. Which, I will repeat again, is terrible for game balancement. And must be solved. (Easy way: no rares in fleet carriers cargo).

And I know that this is unpopular. But you cant't say that this thing is right. It's an exploit. It needs rebalancement. And the problem are not rares per se, because if you invest your ability and expertise to elaborate the perfect route to maximise the effectiveness of rares... kudos, you have been good/organised and spent the right amount of time to maximise one of th ways to get merits in the game.

Having a fleet carrier shouldn't be the discriminant for THAT. For rares. It's just broken, even if right now I guess every fleet carrier owner is probably cursing me for pointing out the obvious.

But think about it. Seriously. Putting aside your convenience to grind the 100 ranks (which were designed to be done in MONTHS, not weeks).

It's broken, guys.

 

[Bard Voronwe]

I do love when balance issues that have been extant for years, only become an issue when it affects the FOTM activity.

"Nonono Jmanis, expecting the game to be balanced is totally wrong... some things are just better than others!"

I mean, i agree with the OP, but it's little wonder when the demand is constantly for new features before fixing the current ones. Things like average- price rigging in FCs have been an issue forever.

Totally agree with you. I was wrinting about that in my discord server just today: the fact that Powerplay includes so many different activities giving them a precise value (merits), makes it even more clear how balancement in the whole game has been gone nuts since years.

On the other hand I think that things must be solved one big problem at time, and right now the big great gigantic exploit is Rare Goods being stacked into Fleet Carriers.
Not rare goods giving more merits than other stuff. That's legit considering how much time you need to invest to do so.
It's the very fact you can stack those into your Fleet Carrier that makes the whole thing broken.

 

[Rubbernuke]

Then one answer is what FD have done with data, and that is to lower the influence gain per merit but keep the personal gain the same. Or that things like rares are subject to an S curve when handed in- hand in too many and you rapidly lose value (since the rare is not rare any more )

 

[Bard Voronwe]

Then one answer is what FD have done with data, and that is to lower the influence gain per merit but keep the personal gain the same. Or that things like rares are subject to an S curve when handed in- hand in too many and you rapidly lose value (since the rare is not rare any more )

Rares not being stackable in Fleet Carriers (or losing value merits wise if stacked in fleet carriers).
And at least we solved an issue.

EDIT
The first would solve a bigger problem in the game. The second would at least solve one of the biggest issues in Powerplay.

 

[Helmut Grokenberger]

Rares not being stackable in Fleet Carriers (or losing value merits wise if stacked in fleet carriers).

That's going to be popular...

 

[Rubbernuke]

Rares not being stackable in Fleet Carriers (or losing value merits wise if stacked in fleet carriers).
And at least we solved an issue.

EDIT
The first would solve a bigger problem in the game. The second would at least solve one of the biggest issues in Powerplay.

But if you limit a rares potency per tick (so that you can only dump a few per system for maximum effect) means that you sort out the crux of the issue for Powerplay. It also means that PP guys have to do a variety of things rather than rely on one per system.

 

[Factabulous]

Don't see the point in playing whackamoles with FC. There are already other goods with similar effects (arguably they are better as you can undermine & fortify in a single loop). Just needs to be a bit more balanced.

Oh - and one for the connoisseurs

(Ys, it's a Rare)

 

[CMDR Daiyus]

Rares not being stackable in Fleet Carriers (or losing value merits wise if stacked in fleet carriers).
And at least we solved an issue.

EDIT
The first would solve a bigger problem in the game. The second would at least solve one of the biggest issues in Powerplay.

Are rares limited in how many can be taken off a carrier? If the limit that could be held in a ships cargo hold was always congruent with the source market, you'd still have to ferry them in batches from the carrier.

 

[Shadow75]

Fleet carriers have been used in this way from the start be it mining,trading,cg events,even bulk collection of on foot materials that's always been the perk of having a carrier if its that much of an advantage buy one and pay the upkeep.

 

[Bard Voronwe]

Fleet carriers have been used in this way from the start be it mining,trading,cg events,even bulk collection of on foot materials that's always been the perk of having a carrier if its that much of an advantage buy one and pay the upkeep.

This means it's a long overdue problem that needs to be solved as soon as possible.

 

[Bard Voronwe]

Are rares limited in how many can be taken off a carrier? If the limit that could be held in a ships cargo hold was always congruent with the source market, you'd still have to ferry them in batches from the carrier.

They are not. Even that way the proble would stay, because somebody could feel the carrier with different stuff and haul a full type 9 last minute. Basically the sniping issue will stay the same. Which is a big part of the issue.

 

[Bard Voronwe]

But if you limit a rares potency per tick (so that you can only dump a few per system for maximum effect) means that you sort out the crux of the issue for Powerplay. It also means that PP guys have to do a variety of things rather than rely on one per system.

This would be a half-solution, because it would barely do something for the exploit on the system side but it would not solve it for player progression.