Elite Dangerous - Powerplay 2.0 Merit Changes

[sacred aardvark]

claim: selling for 1t at a time is used as an exploit to maximize profits
you: thats not true according to my tests ( i did not test selling 1t at a time)
me: improve your testing before making claims
as a matter of a fact, selling 1t at a time gives times more merits that selling bulk.

if you being inaccurate offends you then dont bother posting inaccurate claims.

For someone complaining about inaccuracies... That is not accurate.

Here, let me help with the bit you missed:

"Based on the (very limited) testing I've been doing, big batch or small batch doesn't seem to actually matter (granted, I haven't tested down to 1t at a time for the whole cargo load). Big batch you get all the merits you can, small batch you seem to get "moar merits", but run into a brick wall and start getting 0 merits for your sales."

I did try selling things 1t at a time, I got 120 merits. At the same time I was getting 2394 merits per 20t. What's 120 * 20 again?
Yes, technically that would mean I'd get 6 merits more for selling them one at a time vs 20 at a time, so you would be correct in that selling them one by one would be more profitable over the full span... but the difference is negligible and it could just be a display rounding error sine 2394/20 is 119.7; I don't know how accurately the game keeps track behind the scenes.

 

[Shadowsnog]

For someone complaining about inaccuracies... That is not accurate.

Here, let me help with the bit you missed:

"Based on the (very limited) testing I've been doing, big batch or small batch doesn't seem to actually matter (granted, I haven't tested down to 1t at a time for the whole cargo load). Big batch you get all the merits you can, small batch you seem to get "moar merits", but run into a brick wall and start getting 0 merits for your sales."

I did try selling things 1t at a time, I got 120 merits. At the same time I was getting 2394 merits per 20t. What's 120 * 20 again?
Yes, technically that would mean I'd get 6 merits more for selling them one at a time vs 20 at a time, so you would be correct in that selling them one by one would be more profitable over the full span... but the difference is negligible and it could just be a display rounding error sine 2394/20 is 119.7; I don't know how accurately the game keeps track behind the scenes.

i stand corrected. thank you.
though this doesnt match my experience.
for my full load i was getting about 1/8th of merits as opposed to selling it 1t at a time. and while selling in smaller batches was somewhat closer to the full sell, it still didnt match.

 

[sacred aardvark]

i stand corrected. thank you.
though this doesnt match my experience.
for my full load i was getting about 1/8th of merits as opposed to selling it 1t at a time. and while selling in smaller batches was somewhat closer to the full sell, it still didnt match.

o7

Yeah, something odd seems to be going on.
I recently dumped a full load of plat, because I just ran into a statistical fluke of a string of pure plat roids... Sold the whole lot at the same time since I just couldn't be bothered, and the 96t load was very close to what I was getting as total from the multiple 20t sales (which again were basically same as multiple 1t sales).

Granted, I am doing relatively small 100t runs. What size cargo have you been hauling? Maybe the difference becomes more apparent when you have multiple hundreds of cargo space to sell?

 

[Cosmo]

 

[mtfatboy3006]

i stand corrected. thank you.
though this doesnt match my experience.
for my full load i was getting about 1/8th of merits as opposed to selling it 1t at a time. and while selling in smaller batches was somewhat closer to the full sell, it still didnt match.

o7

Yeah, something odd seems to be going on.
I recently dumped a full load of plat, because I just ran into a statistical fluke of a string of pure plat roids... Sold the whole lot at the same time since I just couldn't be bothered, and the 96t load was very close to what I was getting as total from the multiple 20t sales (which again were basically same as multiple 1t sales).

Granted, I am doing relatively small 100t runs. What size cargo have you been hauling? Maybe the difference becomes more apparent when you have multiple hundreds of cargo space to sell?

I'm pretty sure trade profit and mining profit are awarded differently. The 1T complaint seems to apply chiefly to traded commodities, and seems not to apply to mined commodities. I'm taking my information from various posts; I'm too far from the bubble to test it myself.

 

[Shadowsnog]

What size cargo have you been hauling?

~170

 

[Ian Doncaster]

I'm pretty sure trade profit and mining profit are awarded differently. The 1T complaint seems to apply chiefly to traded commodities, and seems not to apply to mined commodities. I'm taking my information from various posts; I'm too far from the bubble to test it myself.

Yes - and specifically then to the "high profit" trading action.

"Flood with bulk goods" is entirely linear where (rounding of small batches aside, which will generally hurt the small batches) 1x100t = 100x1t
Rares was also linear, when it gave merits at all.
Mining is certainly linear in my experience.
(And while even further from trade as such, Powerplay-specific cargo is also linear)

 

[Darkfyre99]

I don't care that they earn that rate of personal merit gain really.

Your diversified approach is not really useful when it needs to be applied to one system to combat a method that is generating at that rate there. So if someone is using a farming method, your opposition must be as fast as theirs or you can't overcome it. In some systems that's not horribly hard to do but in others the options for undermining/fortifying may be completely unbalanced and there is simply no reasonable counter to one or the other. That rate of return has not been my experiance to date in doing all the other assorted play. I'm in the top 10% so I'm not exactly bad at it but I'm not pulling 10K an hour at all.

I'm also very sceptical that the bombs are anything other than what the bombers are chuckling about, specifically that they are using the 1T method. When you see 20-30K control points per hour for 5 hours. I'm doubting very hard that this is just diversified play at settlements and pulling power ships and easy going trade. The specifics of how they achieve it or exactly how many are involved are opaque to me but the system traffic is something like 13 in the last 24 hours. So it's not some vast army of randoms just playing the game dumping 170K in 6 hours. So seems as though a wing or two are just PG hauling from external carriers to the station. That's control points too because that's all we can see from the outside.

First: I took a moment to test the one ton method, and it looks like the reports of its demise are premature. Apparently, reports of its demise were due to merits generated by mining, as opposed to high-margin trading.

Second: As a method of generating merits... it isn't that effective except in very unique circumstances. Under normal conditions, the average player will come out ahead simply by playing the game, and being a bit smart about how they go about it. And there are even better ways of generating merits via buying commodities. I'm generating about 8-10 kilo merits (personal) an hour by playing what I consider "normal." Or around 2000-2500 control credits/hour.

And that's just me messing around, emphasizing fun over effectiveness. I'm pretty sure that if I wanted to suck all the joy of out of this game, and grind away to "win," I could reliably generate about 8000 (personal) merits every ten minutes for a single system. Or about 12k control points every hour. Any outgoing merit generation would be icing on the cake.

And that's as a baseline, without using a carrier, and without using 3rd party sites. Just in my little corner of the Empire, where I've set up shop to test a few theories about fortification. I can very easily see how, under certain conditions, a player can generate that kind of output you're reporting without using the one ton method. Why anyone would want to do that to themselves is anyone's guess, but I know from experience such players are out there.

 

[sacred aardvark]

And I don't think chronic oversupply would explain why it would drop to zero after x sales, yet bounce back up all the way to basically full when you come back half an hour to an hour later.

Okay it's not the demand. Just had 7t of gold, sold one for 40 merits, sold 5 for 40 merits, sold 1 for 0 merits. Demand for Gold is >20k.

Also demand for plat was 0, but price is still ~280% the galactic average according to ingame, or ~200% gal avg according to inara.


And for the record, all of my tests have been with mined goods, zero trading. I apologize for any confusion this might have caused in others, or especially myself, from the two on the surface seemingly matching activities (selling goods to a station) apparently working very differently internally.

 

[Chaines]

Sold 1t cobalt for 32 merits, sold the full 639 cargo for 840 merits so yeah, 1t is way better but I won't bother with that.
I did try and sold a full cargo haul 3t at a time, and got 12.800 merits for my full 640t haul, took me half an hour while watching a movie. I won't do that again.

 

[Joe Cool]

Type 8 finally gets released from the ARGHS prison after one month overtime on Thursday (didn't help with selling any more of them, still sitting at the bottom on Inara, quite unlike the Mandalay). With some luck that will go along with a patch as well. And there's the new FU stream on Wednesday, although I don't get my hopes up much that they'll actually talk about the problems in that.

& body kits on special right now - https://www.elitedangerous.com/store/catalog/all/list?extra_type=203&ship_model=556

 

[sacred aardvark]

Second: As a method of generating merits... it isn't that effective except in very unique circumstances. Under normal conditions, the average player will come out ahead simply by playing the game, and being a bit smart about how they go about it. And there are even better ways of generating merits via buying commodities. I'm generating about 8-10 kilo merits (personal) an hour by playing what I consider "normal." Or around 2000-2500 control credits/hour.

Yeah, I'm doing some... idk, beginner+ (?) ...level laser mining in an asp-x, pulling 8-13k/hour depending on rng on rock compositions and how much I waste time zoned out lasering depleted rocks or general faffing about.
I'd expect someone with some more experience, less rust*, and a better equipped ship would probably go well above my merit gains for the pitiful mining efforts.

It's also close to what I was getting while doing my rare trading loop in my slapped together cargo clipper, before the rare goods merits got disabled. Bit less on merits, bit more on credits, IIRC.

*(I took a couple year break from elite after lasering my way to a tricked out DBX and doing some explo, but VR and digging my joystick out of a closet got me back)

 

[Fedifensor]

So, with all the changes that have improved other activities, what is so unbalancing about rare goods that they are locked out of merit awards (other than selling a few tons per week for a weekly)?

 

[DemiserofD]

So, with all the changes that have improved other activities, what is so unbalancing about rare goods that they are locked out of merit awards (other than selling a few tons per week for a weekly)?

The problem is how they invalidate normal trading. They need to be inferior to normal trading in at least some cases, like when there's good system states.

 

[kofeyh]

The problem is how they invalidate normal trading. They need to be inferior to normal trading in at least some cases, like when there's good system states.

Or normal trading can be brought closer to Rares, which achieves the same thing. Rare goods are limited in supply, are based on a 10 minute tick, with static allocation. Standard goods have none of those impediments (the only limit being supply and ship capacity).

Frontier has shown they can buff/ improve the balance, versus just endless nerfing. It's a far more constructive approach and I hope that continues. Blunt contextless nerfing devalues player time investment and has caused untold damage to the way Elite is perceived and how quickly it churns players as a result.

 

[sacred aardvark]

So, with all the changes that have improved other activities, what is so unbalancing about rare goods that they are locked out of merit awards (other than selling a few tons per week for a weekly)?

I think (if I've undestood at all correctly, someone will hopefully correct me if I'm in the woods) big part of the issue with rare goods was people using fleet carriers to sidestep the quantity limits. Do a loop for rares, dump them on FC; do another loop for rares (since your hold is empty now); rinse and repeat until you jump the FC to where you want to sell and get showered in merits and swing the PP around.

 

[Fedifensor]

The problem is how they invalidate normal trading. They need to be inferior to normal trading in at least some cases, like when there's good system states.

I was making less merits/hour using a full 320-ton cargo ship (Type 8) than people are making now selling a single high-value commodity. It takes a lot more stops and you don't always get the amounts you need. A larger trading ship only magnifies the discrepancy.

 

[DemiserofD]

Or normal trading can be brought closer to Rares, which achieves the same thing. Rare goods are limited in supply, are based on a 10 minute tick, with static allocation. Standard goods have none of those impediments (the only limit being supply and ship capacity).

Frontier has shown they can buff/ improve the balance, versus just endless nerfing. It's a far more constructive approach and I hope that continues. Blunt contextless nerfing devalues player time investment and has caused untold damage to the way Elite is perceived and how quickly it churns players as a result.

The point is, normal trading requires certain specific circumstances to work. With no active states on either side, trading rarely gives enough profit to even get over the 40% threshold needed to get ANY merits. That's the only place where rares trading should be worthwhile, imo.

It's annoying to me that people can't see that a targeted nerf is functionally equivalent to a broad buff. Rares trading WAS overpowered, there's no doubt about that. Now they've made many people happier but at the cost of making player merits and system merits far more inscrutable. It would have been far better to nerf the over-performers and then tweak down the rank requirements for certain unlocks.

 

[kofeyh]

The point is, normal trading requires certain specific circumstances to work. With no active states on either side, trading rarely gives enough profit to even get over the 40% threshold needed to get ANY merits. That's the only place where rares trading should be worthwhile, imo.

It's annoying to me that people can't see that a targeted nerf is functionally equivalent to a broad buff. Rares trading WAS overpowered, there's no doubt about that. Now they've made many people happier but at the cost of making player merits and system merits far more inscrutable. It would have been far better to nerf the over-performers and then tweak down the rank requirements for certain unlocks.

It might be annoying to you, but making a single number smaller, and not doing anything else, with any of the other numbers, is a net reduction. So to argue it somehow improves the value of other things, is questionable from a logic standpoint.

On the contrary, improving the returns of underperforming merit sources, as Frontier has started doing, actually goes some way to improving the valuing of player time and effort. In the same way increasing some of the engineering sources did, which also better values player time and investment.

Your approach just results in wild player swings from one merit source, to the next, in an ever smaller spiral, creating increasing friction between the community and Frontier. Instead, people now have multiple avenues with much improved merit sources.

Well, except for exploration and exobiology, which Frontier seems to have inadvertently left turned off (or it's in a broken state).

 

[sacred aardvark]

It's annoying to me that people can't see that a targeted nerf is functionally equivalent to a broad buff.

Because making one thing worse (nerf), doesn't make other things better (buff).
It might improve the relative value of the things (balance), but if the absolute value is still the same then it has obviously not been buffed by a nerf elsewhere.

Especially for the people who consider the pace of progress too slow... for those players nerfing the faster options to bring them in line with the slower otions really isn't in any way functionally equivalent to a broad buff.