As all the exploits when they are fixed.That's going to be popular...
But a serious company should address the broken things in their game even if it would discontent some players.
General Fleet Carriers are becoming a big issue in Powerplay balancement.
- Thread starter Bard Voronwe
- Start date
But a serious company should address the broken things in their game even if it would discontent some players.
Then let them, really.
What it needs to do is push people into doing a variety of things or if drastic measures are required kill everything in sight.
moar kill is moar better?
If you keep the personal merits exploit people would not doing the rest anyway.
Everything should be balanced well considering these three factors:
- time spent
- difficulty
- risk for the player
- preparation to do such actions most effectively
And no, fleet carriers are not part of the fourth point, because they break all the hauling part, nullifying the risk.
It should certainly be the most effective, given that things like murder suffer a triple penalty and that if sec scan you, you become wanted after a PP kill.
If rares have a falloff in value based on amount handed in then I think in total thats fair.
The problem is that cargo running, data and anything non combat is frankly too powerful.
The data stuff was somehow nerfed, at least they decided that data from before Powerplay being released were not good for Powerplay. Which actually makes sense if you want to start a competition from a decided point.
But rares shouldn't be nerfed by themself, because, and I will repeat again, if you elaborate the perfect route and you keep the right amount of time to gather far away rares and come back to the system you want to reinforce I only find it legit, to be honest more legit than regular trading.
Right now the one big problem with rare trading is fleet carriers nullifying the allotment variable, which is the main factor in rare goods balancement.
It's not that hard, the solution is right there, and it's pretty easy. Rares not stackable in Fleet Carriers.
Then we could even think about doing what you are talking about, making the same rare increasingly less effective in a system, but actually it's already going that way, with some rares being more effective credit and merits wise. But what you are talking about is, at some point, closing the markets for some rares and it wouldn't solve the issue, because you could simply move to any other system and push that one. It would only slow down the issue, without solving that.
Even if it's unpopular, rare commodities being stacked in flet carriers will kill Powerplay as a mechanic. The sooner FDev realise this, the better.
PS Btw I'm quite livid about how they really didn't test this thing through. Fleet Carriers are the main problem currently but there's others, many many many others.
As mentioned, a flag for items that have been stored in a FC to make them useless would be the easiest solution. If that's too heavy handed, maybe do something like Ian said and use galactic average price for regular commodities and for rares maybe distance of pickup location (FC, scooped up, etc.) instead of distance to original source system.
So combat should be buffed.
Trust me filling a carrier 30 items at a time is one if not the most painfull grinds iv attempted in elite I'd much rather be doing bounty hunting ect
This might be a solution of course. But I think mined objects should be excluded from this flag, because they are being worked with the right amount of time expended, just delievered in a second time.
Like exploration and exobio data, to make an example.
I'm not against the outcome, but what I dislike is rules based on what my inner voices say adds arbitrary conditions. FCs are big, and to me should be able to transport large amounts of things. But at the same time the problem that needs solving is the rare itself, and where I feel the more consistent answer lies. Its why I accepted with gritted teeth PP1s limitation.
What I'd prefer to see is fleet carriers having issues when they carry PP or valuable cargo- being surrounded by hard core pirate / PP NPCs, and that if you flood a market with rares they become less valuable because they are no longer rare.
Or frontier can rebalance merits so there is rewarding and meaningful paths for commanders to take. This thread is just "I don't like carriers" with more words. Fair enough. Don't agree though.
Carriers aren't the issue, any more than rare goods are the issue, any more than commanders just trying to play the darned game is an issue. Frontier made choices; it's fine to not like those choices but deciding the solution is "make the game less tolerable for other people I don't agree with" is not really a solution.
Rare goods have a natural refresh rate; carriers can move whilst a commander is not present, however lead times for jumps have been spiking to over an hour during busy periods because the game has had a big player uptick, and they do not magically transfer cargo - so the entire argument whilst well meaning, is maybe not considering the full context.
In that same period, can trade rares, shoot rival NPCs, raid outposts, massacre missions, or a bunch of other things over that same hour while the carrier is just sitting there, doing absolutely nothing. All of those things, earning merits.
In all this talk, no consideration has been put into the running cost of a carrier, the weekly upkeep, the fuel. The scheduling of jumps (that can blow out to half an hour to upwards of an hour +). All of that is being ignored in this discussion. Are they helpful? You bet. They should be for how much they cost..
Context is everything.
My hope is Frontier focus on improving PowerPlay, so there are more ways to earn merits, and that effort (regardless of what is done) is rewarded. That has the best chance of offering things for people to enjoy and maybe, maybe that's where Frontier's time has the most value.
Carriers aren't the issue, any more than rare goods are the issue, any more than commanders just trying to play the darned game is an issue. Frontier made choices; it's fine to not like those choices but deciding the solution is "make the game less tolerable for other people I don't agree with" is not really a solution.
Rare goods have a natural refresh rate; carriers can move whilst a commander is not present, however lead times for jumps have been spiking to over an hour during busy periods because the game has had a big player uptick, and they do not magically transfer cargo - so the entire argument whilst well meaning, is maybe not considering the full context.
In that same period, can trade rares, shoot rival NPCs, raid outposts, massacre missions, or a bunch of other things over that same hour while the carrier is just sitting there, doing absolutely nothing. All of those things, earning merits.
In all this talk, no consideration has been put into the running cost of a carrier, the weekly upkeep, the fuel. The scheduling of jumps (that can blow out to half an hour to upwards of an hour +). All of that is being ignored in this discussion. Are they helpful? You bet. They should be for how much they cost..
Context is everything.
My hope is Frontier focus on improving PowerPlay, so there are more ways to earn merits, and that effort (regardless of what is done) is rewarded. That has the best chance of offering things for people to enjoy and maybe, maybe that's where Frontier's time has the most value.
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As I said in another thread, the entire system should have been mission based. When the basic unit of PP is one successful mission. It doesn't matter how many of whatever you stack whereever. The mission checkpoint only passes when you get the item at the expected place, not from a carrier, not from another player, not from whatever. 
I had similar thinking to this as well, because it prices in reward v danger- you take on a valuable cargo you will face x PP NPCs for example.As I said in another thread, the entire system should have been mission based. When the basic unit of PP is one successful mission. It doesn't matter how many of whatever you stack whereever. The mission checkpoint only passes when you get the item at the expected place, not from a carrier, not from another player, not from whatever.
Or scenarios.As I said in another thread, the entire system should have been mission based. When the basic unit of PP is one successful mission. It doesn't matter how many of whatever you stack whereever. The mission checkpoint only passes when you get the item at the expected place, not from a carrier, not from another player, not from whatever.
Remember when they added scenarios?
Which make me thinks... We already have Powerplay missions. It's basically the weekly assignments. The structure was already there.
That was just a mock-up. This time we literally have those in game already.
That's where balancing comes in, which I did mention.