Rare Goods Trade is probably still a little overpowered

[DemiserofD]

Right now, Li Yong Rui players are able to get about 144,000 merits per hour hauling rare goods. This IS contingent on a particular BGS state in the source station, but the thing is, that's just ONE system, whereas other methods of rapid merit acquisition typically rely on having optimal BGS states in every single system you want to work on, and even then, don't really rival these rates. Only mapped platinum mining and selling with boom, expansion,and civil liberty and sufficient demand can really compare, and that's a very rare and limited option, especially for fortification. LYR can match that basically EVERYWHERE.

What I'd really like to see is diminishing returns on rare goods of a single type, to reduce the value of having a single type of rare good available en-masse, like is currently happening, with Soontil Relics offering 400 tons. And this should be on the market's 10 minute cooldown too, to avoid 1-tonning it.

If you can get 4-5 different rare goods sources into boom and civil liberty, fair enough. But just hauling an infinite supply of soontil relics isn't right.

 

[GroG79]

144000 merit per hour?

Plz explain

 

[DemiserofD]

144000 merit per hour?

Plz expl

At 400 tons of rare Goods, you get 16,000 merits every 10 minutes, which is 96,000 merits per hour. Lyr gets a 50% bonus on top of that. It's pretty crazy.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

At 400 tons of rare Goods, you get 16,000 merits every 10 minutes, which is 96,000 merits per hour. Lyr gets a 50% bonus on top of that. It's pretty crazy.

This is assuming you can do a full round trip every ten minutes, which feels a bit optimistic given the number of jumps involved (unless Frontier have quietly made carrier-stored rares give merits again?)
Still, the ethos bonus and near-ideal distance from Ngurii mean that they're going to be getting a lot from it. I get about 30,000 an hour for systems at a bad distance in a non-optimal ship and no ethos bonus.

 

[Cmdr. Numa]

It's not so much rares in general than this particular one. Soontill Relics are an outlier since they are both high price and high allocation volume. And yes, I fastracked rank 100 that way.

 

[St0rmFury]

Wow, I've never seen that much soontil relics supply before.

Before Fdev disabled rares for months, the most I've seen is only 80.

 

[Cmdr. Numa]

Wow, I've never seen that much soontil relics supply before.

Before Fdev disabled rares for months, the most I've seen is only 80.

80 is the default. Boom + Civil Liberty set that x5, normal BGS behaviour.

 

[Rubbernuke]

A bit?

Completely lopsided.

 

[DemiserofD]

This is assuming you can do a full round trip every ten minutes, which feels a bit optimistic given the number of jumps involved (unless Frontier have quietly made carrier-stored rares give merits again?)
Still, the ethos bonus and near-ideal distance from Ngurii mean that they're going to be getting a lot from it. I get about 30,000 an hour for systems at a bad distance in a non-optimal ship and no ethos bonus.

I myself can do a run about every 12 minutes, and that's with just a cutter, and I know for a fact that a rare Goods hauling Anaconda can get approximately 50% more jump range.

But honestly, that wouldn't be a huge deal if it weren't for the fact that it's based on the source system rather than the destination, and the states needed to achieve it aren't particularly rare or difficult to maintain. Having a gold rush for 2 days every month is one thing, having a constant Gold Rush, though?

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Of course a possible viewpoint is that it might be that everything except Soontill Relics in particular states - including all the rest of the rare goods trade! - is way underpowered.

Colonising an entirely new system is ~22000t of cargo, which the Panther Clipper will allow to be done in about 19 trips, or 4 hours if it's not massively slower than the T-9/Cutter in a way that hasn't been shown so far in the previews. Well within the capabilities of a single player to do fairly quickly even without optimal play.

144k merits per hour is 36k control points per hour is also enough to acquire a new system in the most favourable possible circumstances in about 4 hours, or reinforce it to Fortified from a new acquisition to allow further claims in about 10 hours. Given that I don't get either ethos or sufficient distance-from-Ngurii bonuses, even using this (and it's certainly still the best available option, comparing with the other available methods) it's going to take me well over 10 hours to acquire my current system with it, and well over 30 hours to reinforce it, even if I just spend all that time going round in an extremely boring loop (if I do anything even slightly less optimal, I can probably look at multiplying those times by four at least, if not ten)

Bringing most other activities up to that sort of standard seems necessary, just so that "effort per outcome" for Powerplay lines up at all with any of the other major features in the game.

 

[Novarek]

Bringing most other activities up to that sort of standard seems necessary, just so that "effort per outcome" for Powerplay lines up at all with any of the other major features in the game.

Canceling the softcap in bulk selling for trading would help, making mining more flexible to use for reinforcement (the possibility to mine and sell within ALL systems of a same powerplay control sphere) as well

 

[DemiserofD]

Of course a possible viewpoint is that it might be that everything except Soontill Relics in particular states - including all the rest of the rare goods trade! - is way underpowered.

Colonising an entirely new system is ~22000t of cargo, which the Panther Clipper will allow to be done in about 19 trips, or 4 hours if it's not massively slower than the T-9/Cutter in a way that hasn't been shown so far in the previews. Well within the capabilities of a single player to do fairly quickly even without optimal play.

144k merits per hour is 36k control points per hour is also enough to acquire a new system in the most favourable possible circumstances in about 4 hours, or reinforce it to Fortified from a new acquisition to allow further claims in about 10 hours. Given that I don't get either ethos or sufficient distance-from-Ngurii bonuses, even using this (and it's certainly still the best available option, comparing with the other available methods) it's going to take me well over 10 hours to acquire my current system with it, and well over 30 hours to reinforce it, even if I just spend all that time going round in an extremely boring loop (if I do anything even slightly less optimal, I can probably look at multiplying those times by four at least, if not ten)

Bringing most other activities up to that sort of standard seems necessary, just so that "effort per outcome" for Powerplay lines up at all with any of the other major features in the game.

I'm not ostensibly AGAINST that idea...but I do think it should be somewhat more conditional, nonetheless. Having a single system state allowing for the colonization of the entire galaxy is...not very logical at the very least. Where the heck are all those soontil relics COMING from?

At the very least, it should take a run of multiple rare goods sites in positive states.

That said, the current merits for other activities are definitely pretty messy, as well. Trade, for example, is basically COMPLETELY reliant on Infrastructure Failure states. Otherwise you need to get the DESTINATION into Investment for Polymers trade or Civil Liberty for Agronomic Treatment, which takes an enormous amount of effort, and with little in the way of real benefits in exchange; with a profit of around ~20000 merits per hour, it's really barely even worth bothering.

Combat likewise is thoroughly uninspiring. Even in Boom, with Installation missions going constantly, getting ~20k merits per hour per player requires a coordinated team.

I still believe there should be a way to split profits from a good system to other systems, to allow players to daisy-chain local benefits into the area. For example, what if bounty hunting allowed you to get a second chunk of merits when you turn them in? That way, you could have one good bounty hunting system and use it on nearby systems to boost them up as well by dropping the bounties at the power contact there.

 

[Jack Winter]

One positive side effect of the relics gold rush is that there is a lot going on in open. Like a mini CG and it's not that it'll last forever. A reason to blockade and to run the blockade avoiding legitimate pp commanders, gankers, and station griefers. Livens up the otherwise quite boring pp grind.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

I'm not ostensibly AGAINST that idea...but I do think it should be somewhat more conditional, nonetheless. Having a single system state allowing for the colonization of the entire galaxy is...not very logical at the very least. Where the heck are all those soontil relics COMING from?

I quite like the system state dependency because it in theory sets up some interesting incentives:
- the Powers near the rares system don't benefit from it, or at least nowhere near as much, so have incentives to generate decrease states on their local rares system
- the Powers far away have an incentive to generate increase states, but obviously have to avoid doing direct things in and around their own space while they set it up

Obviously Ngurii being such an outlier in terms of rares generation is bad - certainly rares needs balancing internally to be better than that - but having a strong state dependency so that which rares systems work well at any time is both dynamic and possible for players to influence adds interest. Moving the really excessive bonuses to key off Public Holiday and other event states would limit the timescale and frequency of rushes while still allowing them to happen.


(It does amuse me of course that Ngurii, which allows even a single player with lots of spare time, an ethos bonus, and infinite boredom tolerance to generate maybe a million control points a week of Acquisition or Reinforcement to most of the bubble, is the sort of thing which gets an obscure thread like this here and there wondering if it's a bit overpowered and most Powers openly celebrating their new Acquisitions ... whereas the ability for a million CP/week/player of Undermining would generate instant megathreads and back-channel complaints to Frontier that this exploit needed to be shut down yesterday and everyone using it banned)

I still believe there should be a way to split profits from a good system to other systems, to allow players to daisy-chain local benefits into the area. For example, what if bounty hunting allowed you to get a second chunk of merits when you turn them in? That way, you could have one good bounty hunting system and use it on nearby systems to boost them up as well by dropping the bounties at the power contact there.

One of the other options for balancing would be to revert to the Powerplay 1 model where Exploited state is automatic (and Acquisition acquires a Fortified). That cuts the scope of Powerplay from tens of thousands of systems to low thousands, so it taking a while to acquire/fortify any individual system is no big deal. Action in Exploited systems (in either direction!) could then just accrue to their supporting Fortified systems.

 

[Rebel Yell]

Obviously Ngurii being such an outlier in terms of rares generation is bad - certainly rares needs balancing internally to be better than that - but having a strong state dependency so that which rares systems work well at any time is both dynamic and possible for players to influence adds interest. Moving the really excessive bonuses to key off Public Holiday and other event states would limit the timescale and frequency of rushes while still allowing them to happen.

Ngurii is an outlier, indeed... high initial price (17k) and high quantity offered, which improves with states. On average the 400t offered quantity translates into 5-6k CPs per trip, using carriers and/or long range jump haulers for 200+ ly distances we're having roughly a 20k CPs contribution (which can be applied to both reinforcements and acquisitions) per hour (on average).

At the moment settlement data are still suspended, so this meta is hard to counter (the best counter is hauling more)... some Powers of course can benefit more than others using rares, we're not against rares (except that we'd buff prices for other ones, so others may compete with Ngurii route) but it's going to be imperative that FDEV fixes Powerplay CZs (bugged and disappearing) as well as a buff for Powerplay NPC merits/activity because all Powers with combat ethos are struggling to keep the pace of hauling/mining ones.

 

[Rubbernuke]

are struggling to keep the pace of hauling/mining ones.

...and is also why PP haulers need to be subject to NPC attacks, which FD disabled. Until that happens hauling will always be 'best', expansion the 'default' and PP2 not what FD thought it would be.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

...and is also why PP haulers need to be subject to NPC attacks, which FD disabled

In most cases a PP hauler would be operating in friendly territory, which never had particularly high volumes of attacks even in the streamer preview, as I understand it. Collecting rares you're running empty so not a "hauler" and Ngurii has only recently come under the control of a Power at all.

(Plus SCO or using a carrier to move loaded-up players around in bulk means you're not getting interdicted even if they enable that sort of thing - the game just isn't set up for experienced players to be attacked in the first place even if the enemies are nominally there to do it)

 

[PilotB]

...and is also why PP haulers need to be subject to NPC attacks, which FD disabled.

Not really this is why low risk activities should have lower rewards than high risk activities. There's no requirement to make a change that will leak out and will suck because fitting simply doesn't support this well. In the context of PP maybe it could work. In the larger framework of the game absolutely not without so many changes it should be a full expansion.

 

[Melanthes]

It needs a fundamental rebalancing. However, this isn't impossible it requires simply changing merits numbers, Fdev should have half a year of data, heck, the players have half a year of data and can very much pinpoint problems.

 

[Rubbernuke]

In most cases a PP hauler would be operating in friendly territory, which never had particularly high volumes of attacks even in the streamer preview, as I understand it. Collecting rares you're running empty so not a "hauler" and Ngurii has only recently come under the control of a Power at all.

(Plus SCO or using a carrier to move loaded-up players around in bulk means you're not getting interdicted even if they enable that sort of thing - the game just isn't set up for experienced players to be attacked in the first place even if the enemies are nominally there to do it)

This is the problem though, the assumption everywhere is 'safe'- NPCs (just as players do) undertake raids and that should be reflected in what happens to haulers. Unlike BGS traffic which is like competing companies Powerplay has inherent hostility baked in. 'High value' is really an NPC scanning you and seeing what you run is what makes your power strong and attacking you because of it, and that there is a chance you'll be tracked or be unlucky. As it stands hauling is somehow exempt and trying to balance around that is difficult.

Not really this is why low risk activities should have lower rewards than high risk activities. There's no requirement to make a change that will leak out and will suck because fitting simply doesn't support this well. In the context of PP maybe it could work. In the larger framework of the game absolutely not without so many changes it should be a full expansion.

This is the problem that PP2 has PP1 did not from a design standpoint. Because powers are fundamentally asymmetrical now the flaws of the underpinning game have become massively magnified.