Net update going to help us hunters out?

[Gameassassin1020]

When you see traders(making millions) and look at yourself flying a viper or cobra(making thousands) you have to wonder if this game was even made for you. I mean, I just killed 3-4 ships in a nave beacon. The last ship's ai(Which by the way the ai is super hit or miss...) decided he was going for no apparent reason stop his aircraft so I rammed him. Sure, I admit partial pilots error, although he was at 20% hull so he shouldnt have stopped but instead have keep running. But I digress, the point it when I died I had just enough bounty money to rebuy my ship. How ever for some unknown reason death doesn't let you keep your bounty. As if it never even happened.(Luckily I had loan money) But just to tease my the game even took into account how much cargo I had so it could replace that too if i'd like.(I had none btw) So tell me, why can you replace cargo? This makes no sense when you think about it. Take this scenario for example:

You're flying your cargo ship and stumble upon some pirates. They murder you, the end. You had lets say, 50,000 dollars worth of cargo in your bays.

How could insurance cover this exactly? In reality it should be "Fly back 70 ly to that sector you died in to pick up your stuff, or buy it again." instead it's "Here's that cargo you had on you!" And lucky you since you just spawned back at the station! You can cash in a fly away now with all your riches. Not us bounty hunters though. Our hard work doesn't transfer to the underworld like cargo does.

So to end this rant(?), should bounty hunters get paid more since we take more risk? And just to note, im not hating on traders. They also put in a lot of work, but lets be truthful, not as much work as those constantly in combat barely making it back to station.

 

[Quineloe]

You're flying your cargo ship and stumble upon some pirates. They murder you, the end. You had lets say, 50,000 dollars worth of cargo in your bays.

please be consistent throughout your argument. A trader with 50k in his hold is not making millions. They're making hundreds.

he was going for no apparent reason stop his aircraft so I rammed him.

You mean besides the reason that it killed you?

 

[changtau2005]

The nature of risk that traders and bounty hunters take are different. For argument's sakes let's say you buy a shipment of palladium at 12k per unit and you sell at 1.2k profit. Your risk to profit ratio is 1000%. You lose one shipment (pirate, bug, crash etc.) and you're gonna need 10 shipments to just cover your loss. And that's just the cargo and not the ship. If I lose my ship right now, I have to pay 16.5 million in insurance. I've been trading for a while and I play in open.

Bounty hunters don't earn as much per hour, but neither do they put that much money on the line. The amount a bounty hunter stands to lose at any given time is his ship's insurance (Up to ~2 million for a top-of-the-line Asp I suppose, often much less), and whatever cargo he might be carrying, plus the bounties he hasn't turned in.

I do agree that bounty hunting needs to scale a bit more though, to make the bigger ships viable for that profession.

 

[kb_Nomad]

Everything in the game has a cost and/or risk.
As a trader - death has a huge cost, much more than a Viper or Eagle insurance cost.
Death is way to cheap for some - I will not go naming roles.
IF you think traders have it so well, why are you not a trader?
KB

 

[CMDR Hagglebeard]

Traders absolutely should make more, they have the most boring job in the game! (Apart from mining). Also, they give pirates an oppurtunity to exist, as long as they don't play in care-bear mode. If you're a trader incarebear mode, why are you even playing Elite? To fly the big boy ships?

 

[RealNC]

The problem is that trading is not dangerous enough. If you pass through an anarchy system... nothing happens. If you get interdicted... nothing happens; you submit, boost, engage FSD (by the time the NPC stops with his "drop your cargo" threats, you're already halfway through your FSD charge-up, and it's usually just a Sidewinder equipped with peashooters.)

The only real danger comes from player pirates. However, meeting players in the game is rare, and there's also solo-mode, which for some incomprehensible reason can be played on the same savegame as open mode :-/ (AVGN voice: "What were they thinking!?")

Trading should be more dangerous than that. This might even encourage more multiplayer cooperation, where you need someone to help you do the transporting through dangerous territory. Well, if there actually was any way to do this in a practical way, that is... In multiplayer games, teamwork and cooperation is what should lead to success (in this case, making tons of credits.) Solo play should only get you so far.

 

[MadMarchHare]

I started out life as a pirate, with the intent to basically stick to that role. What I learned rapidly is that if you want to make serious cash you need to diversify your activities (if you don't want to simply trade your way to glory). I made a couple million credits in a couple of days by smuggling/piracy/bounty hunting/scavenging and keeping a close eye on the BB for easy cash in missions. Do I think bounties should be higher? Not really standard fare is fine plus you sometimes come across a nice fat payday, not to mention that npc ships are ridiculously easy to defeat. For me I would just like the bounty system to actually work at this stage as it seems to have stopped paying out for them, don't know about anyone else.

 

[ste]

Ive never died but I'm pretty sure you lose all your cargo if you die.

 

[kb_Nomad]

The problem is that trading is not dangerous enough. If you pass through an anarchy system... nothing happens. If you get interdicted... nothing happens; you submit, boost, engage FSD (by the time the NPC stops with his "drop your cargo" threats, you're already halfway through your FSD charge-up, and it's usually just a Sidewinder equipped with peashooters.)

The only real danger comes from player pirates. However, meeting players in the game is rare, and there's also solo-mode, which for some incomprehensible reason can be played on the same savegame as open mode :-/ (AVGN voice: "What were they thinking!?")

Trading should be more dangerous than that. This might even encourage more multiplayer cooperation, where you need someone to help you do the transporting through dangerous territory. Well, if there actually was any way to do this in a practical way, that is... In multiplayer games, teamwork and cooperation is what should lead to success (in this case, making tons of credits.) Solo play should only get you so far.

Elite is a seminal space trading video game, written and developed by David Braben and Ian Bell and originally published by Acornsoft for the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron computers in 1984.

What part of Elite is so different??? Elite started out as a space trading game - That is ELITE.
KB

 

[GodlessGeek]

... You had lets say, 50,000 dollars worth of cargo in your bays.

How could insurance cover this exactly? In reality it should be "Fly back 70 ly to that sector you died in to pick up your stuff, or buy it again." instead it's "Here's that cargo you had on you!" And lucky you since you just spawned back at the station! You can cash in a fly away now with all your riches.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. I mostly bounty hunt but I do some trading / hauling, too. I've died with cargo in my hold. I've *never* been given the option to purchase it back. It was gone forever and any hauling mission I was on was considered "failed" and had to be abandoned by me.

 

[Cavendish101]

Traders absolutely should make more, they have the most boring job in the game! (Apart from mining). Also, they give pirates an oppurtunity to exist, as long as they don't play in care-bear mode. If you're a trader incarebear mode, why are you even playing Elite? To fly the big boy ships?

Miners should make more then traders, on that we agree. Regarding your question as to why people play traders in solo mode it is probl. because they want to avoid cheap-scate pirates in 50k ships taking out ships that costs millions in Insurance alone never mind the millions in cargo. As long as there is no Point in putting yourself in danger to increase profits there is simply no reason for a trader to play targets for other players.

 

[RealNC]

Elite is a seminal space trading video game, written and developed by David Braben and Ian Bell and originally published by Acornsoft for the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron computers in 1984.

What part of Elite is so different??? Elite started out as a space trading game - That is ELITE.
KB

Try high-value trading through Anarchy space in the previous Elite games, and then come back and tell us how it went.

It's ridiculously easy in ED. There is no risk. "Anarchy Space" meant a constant stream of sweat running down your eyebrows, which was of course rewarded with a feeling of accomplishment for being able to survive it; there's none of that in ED.

I suspect that FD envisioned the danger coming from player pirates (seeing how they scrapped the single-player component and focused 100% on multiplayer,) but the game doesn't seem to sell as well as they hoped and thus is quite empty when it comes to meeting actual people who want to kill or you or rob you. There's simply not enough people playing it.

So trading in ED, at least compared to previous Elite games, is a very boring experience at the moment. The only thing it has going for it, is the profits you make compared to the other activities in the game.

 

[Balsbigbrother]

Mm

Traders absolutely should make more, they have the most boring job in the game! (Apart from mining). Also, they give pirates an oppurtunity to exist, as long as they don't play in care-bear mode. If you're a trader incarebear mode, why are you even playing Elite? To fly the big boy ships?

To answer your question: because I find it fun and enjoyable and I don't need or want other people getting in the way of that.

Pirates need traders in open but as a trader it offers me nothing that I can't already have in solo. Elite was always a single player game and I see no reason to change that now

 

[OldSalt]

Bounty hunting is an unpredictable and dangerous trade. Some days it's pennies from heaven and others you don't need a ship to fly through space. It makes it what it is, traders could tell a very different but similar story (as could miners) I am sure.

 

[RealNC]

[h=3]From https://www.elitedangerous.com:

"Take control of your own starship in a cut-throat galaxy."[/h]
I'm still looking for the "cut-throat" part :-/

 

[Davidtq]

Try high-value trading through Anarchy space in the previous Elite games, and then come back and tell us how it went.

It's ridiculously easy in ED. There is no risk. "Anarchy Space" meant a constant stream of sweat running down your eyebrows, which was of course rewarded with a feeling of accomplishment for being able to survive it; there's none of that in ED.

I suspect that FD envisioned the danger coming from player pirates (seeing how they scrapped the single-player component and focused 100% on multiplayer,) but the game doesn't seem to sell as well as they hoped and thus is quite empty when it comes to meeting actual people who want to kill or you or rob you. There's simply not enough people playing it.

So trading in ED, at least compared to previous Elite games, is a very boring experience at the moment. The only thing it has going for it, is the profits you make compared to the other activities in the game.

In the original elite game if you paid for cargo after the first few runs you were a mug... I tended to find a nice place with anarchy's a short distance apart and hop between them filling my hold by the time I reached the station. 4 or 5 pirates at a time were no hassle to me, but then Ive reached elite a fair few times. I found the original elite not too challenging once I got a little older. Im almost certain that in 8 bit elite I must have reached elite without every being out gunned at least once and certainly having never fired a missile most of the times. Ive died a couple of times in combat here, although most of my deaths have been boosting out of stations . In the original game you could play it safe and run diso to leesti your entire life and probably never see a pirate or you could run to riedquat for fun. Here its the same you can Play it safe or you can seek out danger, but you do need to learn where to find it just like the original.

If I want to seek out danger I know where to go, I have a ship for that. To be fair the "danger level" of AI is greater than many of my PvP fights where AI would have been more challenging. out of maybe 30 (complete guess) player fights only two have given a good challenge, one ran off when I got him to 20% hull (a pirate who interdicted me and I gladly submitted) and the second much the same except he caught me after I had taken on a drop ship, I died there using a ramming manouvre thinking my shields and his lack of them and lower hull condition would finish him off, apparantly not .

For clarity although I love the unknown factor of player PvP, Im a bounty hunter not a pirate, which slows the killing down a little. I did feel bad the other day taking out a player for a 120 credit bounty.

As a trader in a T6 I get interdicted a fair bit by npc Pirates, but can usually evade the interdiction. I trade in open but see no need to add to the risks of losing millions in cargo etc, so I stick to more out of the way places when trading. If you want PvP get yourself a bounty and head to Eravate and hang around the nav bouy. You can pick up regular player fights out there no problem at all. For me its got the same choice as the original, play it safe and die of boredom or head out and find some fun.

 

[Sams]

As you progress the risks get bigger.

If I die once in the game now I will lose...

6.5 million in cargo
4 million insurance

If I even get a scratch on the paint it's a few thousand. 1% hull damage is several thousand and I recently had to repair 50% hull damage and it cost 1.5 million.

Those numbers will currently take me an entire evening to recoup for just one death.

The risks are there for traders and they get bigger as the ships get bigger

 

[RealNC]

As you progress the risks get bigger.

If I die once in the game now I will lose...

6.5 million in cargo
4 million insurance

If I even get a scratch on the paint it's a few thousand. 1% hull damage is several thousand and I recently had to repair 50% hull damage and it cost 1.5 million.

Those numbers will currently take me an entire evening to recoup for just one death.

The risks are there for traders and they get bigger as the ships get bigger

The problem is, why would you get a 50mil ship and spend another 100mil to fully upgrade it? There's no reason to. No incentive.

Spending 150mil for a ship so that you can hunt those 70k bounties that you can also do perfectly fine in a Viper or Cobra makes no sense. The game doesn't scale at all. If you get a hugely expensive ship, you feel like buying a Ferrari to go collecting empty bottles to make 50 cents an hour...

In most other games, everything scales, including in which money ballpark you're playing in when you reach the top-tiers of equipment. Here, nothing scales.

Most people in the game "dream of an Anaconda." Guess what? If you get one, nothing will change. It doesn't open any new possibilities of gameplay for you.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that there's absolutely nothing to work towards to in the game at the moment. There's no progression system and you can't do anything that actually matters :-/ The multiplayer aspect is reduced to some DayZ-alike but with empty servers.

The game still feels like it's in "early access" and with all the interesting gameplay features missing.

 

[crushdepth]

Why not go trading to get the cash for your fighting machine? Trading is not an end in itself. It's how you get the cash to buy the toys.

 

[Drathmar]

The problem is, why would you get a 50mil ship and spend another 100mil to fully upgrade it? There's no reason to. No incentive.

Spending 150mil for a ship so that you can hunt those 70k bounties that you can also do perfectly fine in a Viper or Cobra makes no sense. The game doesn't scale at all. If you get a hugely expensive ship, you feel like buying a Ferrari to go collecting empty bottles to make 50 cents an hour...

In most other games, everything scales, including in which money ballpark you're playing in when you reach the top-tiers of equipment. Here, nothing scales.

Most people in the game "dream of an Anaconda." Guess what? If you get one, nothing will change. It doesn't open any new possibilities of gameplay for you.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that there's absolutely nothing to work towards to in the game at the moment. There's no progression system and you can't do anything that actually matters :-/ The multiplayer aspect is reduced to some DayZ-alike but with empty servers.

The game still feels like it's in "early access" and with all the interesting gameplay features missing.

My problem is how much the parts cost compared to the ship itself. It's like buying a car, then having to pay 5x the cost of the car itself to get it to do what you want.