One issue too is thinking about this in terms of "progression". Right now at any rate, progression is a sort of meaningless term in the game outside of spending exponentially more on the next ship. I recently did the T7 thing but I still have an eagle to bounty hunt in. Its not even close to the best ship for the job, but its a fun one.
I love bounty hunting, so I am doomed not to progress.
- Thread starter mike68
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Here is how I solved that very same problem. Smuggling. I found a few Outposts that have Black Markets. Gold mine, to me anyway. I take the 'go find me some space junk' missions. While I am dropping into U.S.S.'s I look for Bounties. Combining these activities has gotten me into a near A class Cobra, and Viper. I'm not swimming in Cr's, but I'm happy with my progress. Look into it, I've been having a great time at it.
You are right but as of now money is the only real hard indicator for 'progress'. So yea, trading for 'progress', the rest for fun.
I think its silly a trader can spend all their easy made cash on a python or anaconda and melt my face in PVP.
That really is the low point for me.
Already tried attacking an imp clipper with my fully upgraded viper, his shields started going down but after 3 mins of flying circles around him, he gets one glance at me and my shields are down to his higher tier weapons.
Great.
That really is the low point for me.
Already tried attacking an imp clipper with my fully upgraded viper, his shields started going down but after 3 mins of flying circles around him, he gets one glance at me and my shields are down to his higher tier weapons.
Great.
Try RES. I have seen millions floting around in cannisters while bountyhunting.. Palladium, Gold, ....all there....
Whenever I get a RES that has downtimes between spawns. I look what's around, pick the most valuable ones. And ram them and laugh maniacally while 5-15k go pooof...
The problem with bounty hunting right now for me, it's not really bounty "hunting". It's bounty duck shoot
Isinona's latest video is a great illustration of how bounty hunting should be. Using a bunch of tools/skills/risks with a potentially high pay-out at the end. It should be rewarding for the patient. To some degree he's role playing though as one could get a similar bounty pay-out at a nav-beacon, but this could be more routine game-play eventually.
Frontier had some good mechanics that let you track ship registration codes through hyperspace clouds.
I suspect that, as with every career path, the first release's base mechanics are at 1.0. The announcement yesterday that 1.1 would have "more ways" for players to 'collaborate' and the upcoming Fer-De-Lance (traditionally a bounty hunter leaning ship) might mean this career is up for some love soon.
I agree, it does need to be more of a challenge. Frontier had a good mechanic but you also have to remember that they gave you a date/time that the target would be leaving or entering certain places. This meant you had to go wait at those locations and use time compression. That's not possible in Dangerous. I'm sure there is an acceptable alternative, we just haven't seen it yet. Cloud scanner, etc. seems to be geared more for PvP which is fine by me but since players are given the option to play solo or groups they are useless.
Then there are the BB missions with potentially high pay out. I have succeeded in a few of those but there were a couple that really handed my butt to me. These seem to be the closest things to true bounty hunting in the game.
True. I make about 300k an hour hunting at my preferred Nav beacon. But lets put this in perspective. A kitted bounty hunting ship is going to cost about 5mil. A kitted trader is going to cost upwards of 250mil, plus fuel and maintenance costs.
Imho it would be enough if we just buff piracy.
Having NPCs with decent cargo would be a start, having a cargo scanner in super-cruise would be nice too, having a mechanic to actually loot the cargo in a reasonable way. Why the have the hatch breaker limpet controlled actually connecting your cargo hold with your targets one with a harpoon like system to automatically scoop up the cargo as long as you are within 500m or 1km range? Why not making the drive a repairable system, so that killing the drive, looting the ship and leaving the trader alive becomes a valid way to do business? Why than not fix the bounty system and increase the bounty for killing people make actually a big deal.
Instead the system promotes grieving. Your not making anyway much by piracy, so why bother and not just kill your targets in the name of piracy instead? You getting even paid for that instead of having to face meaningful consequences, it is ridiculous.
I'm also bounty hunting in a Viper. Have been for the longest now. The rebuy cost for my Viper is a little over 90K with mostly A rated modules minus the shields among other things.
It's fun, but doesn't bring in that much money. I'm saving up for an Asp while still being able to keep my trusty Viper, but currently sitting at 4.2 million credits it feels like I've been saving up for forever. Even with the 2.2 million trade in value of my Viper, I'd still be short 4 million credits for an Asp, and that's not counting the rebuy and repair costs that comes with it.
If I ever do get an Asp before I either die of old age or the servers are brought down then I'd need a good steady source of income to fall back on in case anything happens. I'm seriously considering trading because bounty hunting at the moment is nothing but a grind. People are raking in millions just from buying and selling goods and I'm barely scraping 100K killing bad guys...
The assassination missions are a god send once they actually show up. But even after awhile they become boring because most of the time it's just flying around a system in super cruise going from USS to USS hoping to bump into the target.
It's fun, but doesn't bring in that much money. I'm saving up for an Asp while still being able to keep my trusty Viper, but currently sitting at 4.2 million credits it feels like I've been saving up for forever. Even with the 2.2 million trade in value of my Viper, I'd still be short 4 million credits for an Asp, and that's not counting the rebuy and repair costs that comes with it.
If I ever do get an Asp before I either die of old age or the servers are brought down then I'd need a good steady source of income to fall back on in case anything happens. I'm seriously considering trading because bounty hunting at the moment is nothing but a grind. People are raking in millions just from buying and selling goods and I'm barely scraping 100K killing bad guys...
The assassination missions are a god send once they actually show up. But even after awhile they become boring because most of the time it's just flying around a system in super cruise going from USS to USS hoping to bump into the target.
Bounty hunted since game release - became friendly today with 1 fed group - not the whole faction itself, but with 1 small group within the fed faction. Ive run some small missions as well, but not many. Was surprised as i all of a sudden were "competent" and also all of a sudden saw some green blips on my radar. 
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I havent played obsessively. If i did that it would have happened earlier, but yes, it takes much longer time for sure. I traded for a few hours and made 2 million bucks plus raised 3 levels in rank. The rate of all aspects going much faster with trading.
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I havent played obsessively. If i did that it would have happened earlier, but yes, it takes much longer time for sure. I traded for a few hours and made 2 million bucks plus raised 3 levels in rank. The rate of all aspects going much faster with trading.
And why wouldn't Python or Clipper make sense as a bounty hunting ship? Pirates use them. Bounty hunters will use them too, because.. how do you kill a competent python pilot (human pilot) when all you have is a viper/cobra? You can't. It's like bringing a knife to a gun fight. So, one has to trade if he wants to be able to claim ultimate bounties. Sure, you can bounty hunt small fish for another couple of months and then buy a python. Maybe. Or you can buy it next Friday if you start trading today.
Yea but traders don't need that much. a t6 costs 1mil and you may wanna add some more cargo space and upgrade your fsd. that's all and still less than a fully equipped viper. plus they don't have maintenance costs as long as they are playing in solo mode. We can turn this any way we want, professions are not balanced, that's a fact. They sure will be some time, just needs some updates.
Agree with this.
I exclusively bounty hunt. Fully kitted Cobra 1,000,000 in the bank. All from bounty hunting. Most of the time I can only play on a Saturday.
Find a good system you can easily tuen over the money you need.
If you want to bounty hunt what else do you need? Asp? Python? Considering the risky proffesion BH is.Those ships are expensive to fix, and insurance is very high.especially when kitted.
BTW Im about to buy another eagle and fully kit out for fun, great to fly and bounty hunt in.
How exactly is the system promoting griefing?
Bounty hunting has some upsides that can make it profitable, but if anything gets changed I'd like to see it made harder for players to pay off bounties based upon the severity of the crime.
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Caught Smuggling stolen clothes? Great, pay your fine and be about your business. Caught Smuggling Onionhead? You're going to have to bribe some officials, do a few favors and THEN pay off the fine.
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Accidentally shoot someone at the nav beacon? No harm no foul, just pay the slap on the wrist and be on your way. Murder them in cold blood for the lulz? Eye for an Eye, son.
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Etc... So on... There needs to be more depth in the crime and punishment mechanics.
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Caught Smuggling stolen clothes? Great, pay your fine and be about your business. Caught Smuggling Onionhead? You're going to have to bribe some officials, do a few favors and THEN pay off the fine.
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Accidentally shoot someone at the nav beacon? No harm no foul, just pay the slap on the wrist and be on your way. Murder them in cold blood for the lulz? Eye for an Eye, son.
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Etc... So on... There needs to be more depth in the crime and punishment mechanics.
How are you being punished? It's the poor schlubbs who sold out to the dollar sign who are dragging their sorry carcasses back and forth in endless, soul crushing purgatory, while you and I blast around the cosmos in spaceship musclecars living off our trigger fingers.
Trading earns the most money because it's for people who are made happy by money. I don't know what the next ship up for me is, but I know it's definitely NOT a Type 6!
What's the rush? Upgrading my Viper piece by piece, feeling it gradually come alive, re-evaluating what I can and can't tackle in it - this is the fun part. I wouldn't ever want to replace it with a few days of tedium.
I don't care about money. I like fighting. If you care more about money than fighting, you should be happy being a trader.
Trading earns the most money because it's for people who are made happy by money. I don't know what the next ship up for me is, but I know it's definitely NOT a Type 6!
What's the rush? Upgrading my Viper piece by piece, feeling it gradually come alive, re-evaluating what I can and can't tackle in it - this is the fun part. I wouldn't ever want to replace it with a few days of tedium.
I don't care about money. I like fighting. If you care more about money than fighting, you should be happy being a trader.
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THis is where the disconnect between the two Elite camps is. Those who feel compelled to demonstrate hard progress, and those who don't. For me, I don't really feel the need to show progress in that way. I do what I want, and what is fun for me. It is me against the galaxy, and while there are other people in the galaxy, I feel no need to compare and contrast. The only question that matters to me is "Am I having fun?"
It all comes down to this, combat is more fun than trading. It is for me at least and that's all I really care about. Not really into progression. The Cobra is fun to fly, decent in a fight and can be outfitted to do anything. I'm not really looking to move up to the next best thing. I had an Asp for a couple of days but I ended up trading it back in for the Cobra. Maybe I'm just easily amused