I love bounty hunting, so I am doomed not to progress.

[Matnik]

I've got a rough progression path for my character. I'd grind up money and when it was comfortable to do so, move to the next stage. It was;

Sidey > Learn game > Eagle > trade and missions > Viper > bounty hunting and piracy > Type 6 > learn advanced trading and do some smuggling > Asp > exploration, missions, advanced bounty hunting > python > heavy combat, missions, influence changing, piracy. No intention of trading/selling my ships in between those stages, and also collecting various ships to kit out for specialised roles. Money will come as it comes. Set smaller goals and advancements then let the dice roll. More fun that way ;-)

 

[SE-Apocalypse]

How exactly is the system promoting griefing?

You can get paid for the destruction of other player ships via the bounty system, it exploitable. At the same time you are paying huge opportunity costs for actually not blowing your targets up and really getting them to drop you a little cargo. So for griefing the system is giving you least a small reward, while for being a proper pirate you get punished by the system. The only plus would be authority ships scanning your ship with the stolen cargo ... but if you want to exploit fines with a second account than there are again much easier ways to exploit the broken bounty and fine system. For legitimate pirates those authority ships are indeed a problem, not because they are challenging or relevant in combat, but because they will create large fines when they see you with stolen cargo. Just blowing up all evidence, including the other players ship is much cheaper. And you get nearly the same experience out of it than piracy would give you - minus all the extra punishments. That is designing to encouraging what is normally considered as grief play or ganking.

 

[thorn-]

If money is your only goal, you won't even be happy when you get the anaconda.

I like bounty money a lot, but increasing my rating and rank is even more satisfying.

 

[Vingtetun]

What's "progression"?

A mildly serious point. If it's rank with your chosen faction, then bounty hunter rig is just fine. If it's the need for a bigger ship, then maybe not.

For me, I don't care that I'm still in a Cobra. Back in testing, I went all the way to the top with the ships and got it out of my system. Now - I'm enjoying tooling around the galaxy seeing things, shooting things, delivering things and taking the odd screenshot.

 

[RyanBurnsRed]

You are 4 weeks into a game that is supposed to last 400 weeks

I've been playing since Beta 3. It wasn't until Gamma that I started bounty hunting seriously. I've died a few times since then, and have had to start from "square one" only once.
Anyway 4 weeks into the game and there are people with over 100 million credits from trading and I'm sitting at a meager 4.2 million from bounty hunting exclusively.

Needless to say I think something is wrong with this picture.

 

[Morbad]

This took about 80 minutes, without a KWS, and I dawdled a bit. With a KWS, a good RES can turn into a 1.5 million credit per hour show.

 

[Derath]

This took about 80 minutes, without a KWS, and I dawdled a bit. With a KWS, a good RES can turn into a 1.5 million credit per hour show.

Your not wrong but those instances can take quite a while to find, I mean i just streamed an hour of logging on/off to get one >< . I also suspect that the earnings of someone significantly skilled is going to be much higher, I mean that took you 80 minutes what's it gonna take an average player? probably 2x that at least I'd think. Nothing wrong with skill giving higher earnings thats the way It should be but I suspect a majority are complaining about the average not the exception.

Personally I think the random nature of the instances needs to be made in-instance random rather than you got a cobra instance or a sidewinder instance. It'd be nice if you could have a variety of ships to target so that you could find something that fit your parameters for a hunt if you want to get 1mil/h atm you need to be able to take down chain anacondas without falling into any of the multitude of pitfalls on the way. As it is i suspect thats a combination of being too rare and/or too hard.

 

[CloneWarrior85]

You guys are amasing really.

Op has a valid point, bounty hunting doesn't pay enough to move to a bigger ship or to actually support it.

It's enough to kit a viper and a cobra, but more than that you need luck on the RNG.

Actually, bounty hunting is a giant massive RNG, unlike trading and mining, which have a close-to-static profit line.

Bounty hunting you need that several condas with 150k bounties spawn one after another, or that the missions appear at a decent rate, all of which are tagged to a RNG.

Numbers need to be more static on bounty hunting, or otherwise it will never be a profitable option.

 

[Gomorragh]

find a small cargo hold, buy 2 rares for 1k or so, fly 160ly away, and sit in the sector USS hopping, any pirates in there will attack you on sight, if you have k-warrent scanner, you will make loads, even completely clean npc's sometiimes decide to go pirate for 2 cargo slots of rares

 

[Ixnatifual]

This took about 80 minutes, without a KWS, and I dawdled a bit. With a KWS, a good RES can turn into a 1.5 million credit per hour show.

There are traders saying they do 8 million per hour, though. But maybe they're just more skilled at the game.

 

[McDosy]

I've been playing since Beta 3. It wasn't until Gamma that I started bounty hunting seriously. I've died a few times since then, and have had to start from "square one" only once.
Anyway 4 weeks into the game and there are people with over 100 million credits from trading and I'm sitting at a meager 4.2 million from bounty hunting exclusively.

Needless to say I think something is wrong with this picture.

I don't think so. You fix that picture and you have a lot of traders (quite rightly) saying that they're risking all this capital for nothing when a flyboy in hotrod can pull in just as much by getting into trouble.

When it comes to my lifestyle choice, I'm perfectly comfortable with it being lower earning. It makes complete and total sense to me. I don't hear traders complaining about their combat rating not going up. Those schmucks will be Harmless for life.

 

[Morbad]

It'd be nice if you could have a variety of ships to target so that you could find something that fit your parameters for a hunt

The instance I was in had all sorts of WANTED ships. I think I bagged six Sidewinder (1.2k average), ten Cobra (15k average), and ten Anaconda (maybe 80k average) before I felt it wise to cash in my winnings.

Massive police presence actually made it quite a bit more efficient than it otherwise would have been, and I was often able to tag one Anaconda, jet through the police on the way to the second find a second Anaconda, tag it, drag it to the furball, then finish off the first before turning on the second.

if you want to get 1mil/h atm you need to be able to take down chain anacondas without falling into any of the multitude of pitfalls on the way. As it is i suspect thats a combination of being too rare and/or too hard.

Possibly.

It's enough to kit a viper and a cobra, but more than that you need luck on the RNG.

The Anaconda assassination missions can be completed at a rate of ~4 an hour without overt difficulty, and an hour spent fetching them will give you enough missions for two days.

 

[Starbuckz]

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.

I achieved everything there is to achieve in this game (money wise), that's not my point. The professions are not balanced but they are supposed to. That's all. There is no room for discussion or opinions on this, it's a balancing issue.

 

[Jex =TE=]

While this was fun for the first or second time it gets just as boring. Unfortunately AI is not up to the challenge, not even these so called 'pirate lords'.
I finished countless of those missions and it just is like hunting the next sidy at a resource extraction site.... know what we need? Proper tools to hunt players!

There are too little hints about the wanted cmdrs whereabouts in the news. This wouldn't increase the income by much but at least it would be more fun, I guess.

You can try hunting players all you like except it requires 1) they are on at the same time as you and 2) manage to be in the same instance as you

 

[SE-Apocalypse]

I've been playing since Beta 3. It wasn't until Gamma that I started bounty hunting seriously. I've died a few times since then, and have had to start from "square one" only once.
Anyway 4 weeks into the game and there are people with over 100 million credits from trading and I'm sitting at a meager 4.2 million from bounty hunting exclusively.

Needless to say I think something is wrong with this picture.

You you are doing it wrong. That is wrong in the picture. I had just a few evenings of hunting and I am sitting on enough to comfortable buy an asp. I could have over 100 million credits since release too, just with bounty hunting and assassination missions. But what would be the point of pointless grinding, right?

 

[Starbuckz]

You can try hunting players all you like except it requires 1) they are on at the same time as you and 2) manage to be in the same instance as you

Did you even read what I was saying? Yes, that was my point, hunting players is not possible right now.

 

[Windscreen Smudge]

Another issue I have with trader income is that solo mode and private groups skew the risk vs. reward ratio way, WAY too far into their favor. The income of a trader is supposed to be balanced by the fact that when they are hauling a load of expensive cargo, that cargo is at risk, but with solo and private groups there is no risk. This needs to be brought back into balance, along with a proper bounty system against players, and then everything will be running smoothly.

 

[Ian Skippy]

And why wouldn't Python or Clipper make sense as a bounty hunting ship? Pirates use them.

NPC pirates, yes, but real cmdrs? It would be silly. Just interdicting a T7 with your python results in a massive repair bills. And you'll either get a few tons (not covering the costs), nothing at all (no income at all, even if you shoot the trader) or a 100 ton in loot. The last case would have you spend 20 minutes scooping them all up, plenty of time for retaliation by the victim. As a pirate you want to be fast, cheap, with reasonable firepower and some cargo space. A cobra is much, much more suited at that role compared with a Python. A bounty hunter in a Viper should have no problem there. As for the Clipper, I'm afraid I dont know enough about it, sorry.

 

[SE-Apocalypse]

I achieved everything there is to achieve in this game (money wise), that's not my point. The professions are not balanced but they are supposed to. That's all. There is no room for discussion or opinions on this, it's a balancing issue.

You are making here a claim without backing it up and contracting irrc even a dev posts that stats that the proffesion are not meant to be balanced against each other. They are not supposed to be equal in income and that is a reasonable design decision too imho. You just are not agreeing with that decisions for 'reasons'.

 

[Quineloe]

I'll repeat what I wrote in the other thread.

99% of all reasonable trade routes are not broken. What is broken are 1500+cr/t trade routes with the most expensive commodities that never, ever run dry as long as it's only a few people shipping them.

Sorry, traders, but the demand for Resonating Separators should not be 700 credits above Galaxy Average for thousands of tons.