CG improvement

[JosiahD]

I reckon trade CGs should require a certain volume of each of the required commodities/materials to be delivered before each tier can be completed. I'm as guilty of it as anyone but I expect most simply deliver the most profitable of the required items to maximise their ROI, right? And who can blame them? It's human nature.

But if all the items are essential to the manufacture of some structure or widget, then we should be delivering quantities of all those items regardless of profit, right? I think the completion of the trade CGs needs to be more nuanced.

 

[BlueStar001]

I sort of like this idea, obviously they need all the materials not just the one that's the most profitable to us
I have a feeling this might cause trouble though
At the same time might also prevent supplies from running out for the most profitable commodity

 

[metatheurgist]

Nothing was more amusing to me than one of the first CGs where we had to deliver mined Palladium to build Cannon's base. I wondered, was this structure to be made from pure Palladium? Would it gleam like a star? I couldn't wait to get on the ground in my SRV to see this marvel. Sadly no.

But yeah, according to many, 10 year old CG mechanics are fine.

 

[g0oglyeyes]

Simply unreasonable when considered from a gameplay point of view. It would essentially turn the CG into a gold rush for the most profitable commodities being delivered first, only for those who log on at an inopportune time to find that they're left to pick through the dregs. It also benefits those with means (read: fleet carriers) to hollow out supply systems and makes for a "right way" to play the CG meta as opposed to allowing for the sandbox nature of Elite to truly shine. What this means is that basically that all commodity delivery CGs fail or reach only the bottom rungs of the tierlist. Unless, of course, FDev flattens the commodity prices using some hamfisted method. I won't say it's perfect as is, but I would not call your suggestion an "improvement".

 

[SteveWW57]

The introduction of carriers into the game changed the commodity CGs in a generally positive way imo. It used to be the case that if you could not log in to participate until the weekend due to other commitments, that all of the nearby L pad sources would be bare of the most profitable required commodity, and even the M pad sources would be under pressure. With the carrier you can park at the other side of the bubble to the CG location at an good L pad source and load up and jump close to the CG location to offload. Having a group effort to load and unload is so satisfying. And profitable. You could also pay to have the carrier loaded and unloaded. It is fascinating at how quick a carrier can be unloaded if the price is set right.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Something like the current CG where the tier bonus is so substantial, this isn't necessarily true.

CMM Composite is by far the most valuable trade good per tonne - but it's low-supply and only available from surface bases, so filling up a cargo hold with it is slow on the bigger ships. Copper and Water Purifiers and similar are available in extremely high quantities which means a shorter and single-point round trip and a much higher delivered tonnage.

If we say the CG reaches Tier 7 and tier rewards go up linearly rather than exponentially, then the tier rewards work out something like this:

Rank	Reward (estimated)	Minimum delivery (estimated)	Max profit per tonne from tier reward
100%	210,000,000	1	210M / tonne
75%	400,000,000	1,000	400,000 / tonne
25%	750,000,000	15,000	50,000 / tonne
Top 10	1,100,000,000	200,000	5,000 / tonne

It barely matters at this point how much profit you're making from the goods themselves - CMM Composite is the best at about 20k/tonne but hard to find stations with even 100t in supply at once ... anything you can get in bulk the profit is more like 2-6k per tonne, which is a rounding error compared with the tier reward

(If you're going for top 10, then at that point the tier reward does only become comparable with your profit per tonne. But if you're going for top 10 you absolutely need to be delivering the most efficient cargoes to pick up regardless of their credit profit. Picking Surface Stabilisers because you don't need to scroll down the market page as far to buy and sell them might be the time-saver you need if it's close...)



Anyway, I expect from the wording of this CG that colonisation - setting up thousands of mini trade CGs across the galaxy - will have specific "100t of this, 300t of that" requirements.

 

[SlickPBW]

Yes and no. I am not really taking part in this CG, but I did contribute 1 Cutter’s worth of goods just for the heck of it. However for the normal trade CG, the tiers and rewards are usually (always?) based on total tonnage delivered. So while most people are doing double work to load & unload the most profitable commodities to/from FC’s or do multiple jumps each way, I am happy to just rack up thousands of tons of the el cheapo goods that are usually a single jump away for quite a while. If you play this game a lot, you’ll soon have more credits than you could possibly ever spend so there’s no real reason to maximize profits, maximizing gross tonnage per hour is what gets you to the high tiers of the CG.

I realize that the OP is recommending a change to require, or at least encourage, hauling all the different goods. While I’m neither for nor against this proposal as written because it doesn’t really add depth, I would welcome any changes to make these trade CG’s more involved than a simple hauling grindfest.

 

[aRJay]

I reckon trade CGs should require a certain volume of each of the required commodities/materials to be delivered before each tier can be completed. I'm as guilty of it as anyone but I expect most simply deliver the most profitable of the required items to maximise their ROI, right? And who can blame them? It's human nature.

But if all the items are essential to the manufacture of some structure or widget, then we should be delivering quantities of all those items regardless of profit, right? I think the completion of the trade CGs needs to be more nuanced.

It might be human nature for some to do the CG on a profit per tonne basis but some, maybe many, do them on a tier achieved/CG completion basis in which case the goods to be delivered would be the ones in high volume at convenient locations. Back in the day before I could afford anything beyond an AspX I did some CGs where to get the tonnage up I was selling at a loss.

The station repair mechanic used to work on the lines you are suggesting though the quantities weren’t minimum but the target needed for completion.

I have always assumed that NPCs were making up the slack on the items we couldn’t be bothered to haul.

 

[Greasetrap42]

Similar to any low value commodties... who transports them and why? How do stations get low value stuff like socks & underwear?

Similar with mining. Who collects the super low value stuff when there is always something more worthwhile to collect? Regardless of whether they are Cmdrs or NPCs it just isn't worth it.

But I suppose a similar question of why there are so many low-level NPC pirates, when hauling a couple tons of stuff is lower risk and far more profitable than trying to pirate the stuff.

 

[Screemonster]

Anyway, I expect from the wording of this CG that colonisation - setting up thousands of mini trade CGs across the galaxy - will have specific "100t of this, 300t of that" requirements.

The damaged station repairs following the first thargoid incursions had a similar thing going on too. A lot of those stations were left damaged for ages due to still needing one or two awkward commodities that couldn't be easily sourced locally - until carriers were released and groups like operation IDA knocked them all out.

 

[KRISXR]

I understand the OP's point, and i also understand the points players have made about the side effect of that. I would like some type of addition to the trade CG's mechanics, but have no ideas how or what. I was thinking similar things when hauling goods into Minerva. As far as the variety of hauling goods, I wanted to pretend a bit so I started hauling multiple CG goods per trip. 250t's each of a few different goods. Mazu has a station there that is selling water purifiers, computer components, and power generators, at decent prices and have large supplies. Unless a cloud of type 9's swooped in since, lol. I think it is only 17lyrs out of Minerva, maybe closer. There is another system real close to there that had a cple of the other goods, but cant remember the name, I ended up there because you know, paying fines for hauling illegal goods, lol.

Want to add that an elite NPC pirate interdicted my a few times just outside of the station, no cops ever showed up, and really made a dangerous job of hauling into there. Forced me to put a class 5 reinforced engineered prismatic shield on the type 9. Very cool how the game was trying to prevent all those goods from being delivered. I hope the deliver goods CG is able to achieve it's goal.

 

[BlueStar001]

Maybe it doesn't have to be a "requirement" maybe you get bonuses for multiple commodities and or delivering them all
Because yeah there's usually at least 1 "rare" / difficult commodity
Everyone does these for their own reasons but at this point for me it's just contributing to the goal of the event