Welcome to E
Welcome to life. Finally a game that doesn't just give out ships like candy. You actually have to work for them.
FD just Nuked loads of trade routes!
- Thread starter tim74uk
- Start date
Welcome to life. Finally a game that doesn't just give out ships like candy. You actually have to work for them.
Boom times come, boom times go. There will be more chances like the recent Seeking Perf Enhancers episode when ED misjudge a patch / tuning / bug, noise about them will hit the forums and be ready to make the most (providing you're not out on the rim with a couple of weeks travel time ahead of you).
I'm heading back into my Asp tonight I think prepping for a trip out of human space for a while once 1.1 hits with the improved route planning. There is no end game, there is no rush to get the "best" ship, chill enjoy the journey not the destination.
I am totally baffled at the people who seem to think that amassing a huge pile of wealth is the objective of the game.
Have they perhaps forgotten that the wealth is imaginary? Are they like some of the wealthy in today's world who don't appear to understand that once you've got a certain amount of money ... then what do you do with it? "Oh I have a warehouse full of anacondas!" what, do you need one more? Actually, you don't "need" anything...
I'm starting to feel like this game is a great social experiment to measure the degree to which people completely lose their minds if they haven't got an explicit set of goals they can attach their self-worth to.
I am in total agreement with you. I like the fact that I can do WHATEVER the heck I want to in this game. I don't want some kind of stepladder system when I have to hit certain marks before I can do the "NEXT" thing...whatever that may be.
Old Tech... been done.... need trade info in-game without the need for pen or paper... Pen and paper now dead because of price flux...
If NPC's are shipping all the nonprofit stuff, then how are they making cr$... or maybe slaves fly ships?... We need price caps off... trade supply and demand should cause the toilet to back up and cost more to get rid of than Palladium that is wanted nowhere, but still has a high price to purchase...
Supply and Demand it's not, until supply is known by the shipper, the buyer and the seller...
Trade data by pigeon should do... or create a trade computer the same as the docking computer...
Space Time
People forget the "npc " that does the trading doesn't get in their npc ship kiss their npc wife goodbye and fly from station to station. It is a number decremented from one variable and may or may no be incremented in another. The npc does not need to profit.
Do you people REALLY want modern economics and tech into the game?
THINK about that.
You will end up as real space truckers, making a few credits a run for a corporation, and even as an independent you will just got a choice of what to ship for a set payment.
The inefficiencies in the system are what make it interesting.
THINK about that.
You will end up as real space truckers, making a few credits a run for a corporation, and even as an independent you will just got a choice of what to ship for a set payment.
The inefficiencies in the system are what make it interesting.
I don't have a problem with them fixing infinite supply/demand, or even nuking prices (though it does make me very sad because it'll take me much longer to do things)
but please please for the love of god give us the ability to better find/plan routes than what is currently there (or not there...)
but please please for the love of god give us the ability to better find/plan routes than what is currently there (or not there...)
I can't even tell how sick i am of this real-life-comparisons.
ED is a game, i (and i think that applies for most of us here) play games to relax after work and have fun in my spare time.
If i would like to spend years to pay off my rig, then i would somehow finance a truck and get out on the road, and i wouldn't play a game.
In a game, i (and that's just my personal opinion) want to have a certain amount of progress within a certain time as a reward. The rat-drug-experiment from some pages ago kicks in here again.
I only can play on weekends, i don't have access to my gaming rig on weekdays. That means that a) i don't know how bad it really is now and whether my trade route is affected or not, and b) that i'm more of a casual player due to my limited time. I started playing ED just two weeks ago (first week was a vacation-week where i played like crazy), at the moment i have a T6 for trading (i found that route by myself by reading guides and forums about how to do it) and a slightly upgraded (mostly D-C components, also some stock E's) Viper for dogfighting. I'm totaly fine with the fact that i will never be able to keep up with most other players in regards of cash, and to be honest, i don't care about competition or whether i can keep up with somebody or not. But i would still like to progress somehow. For example i would like to have an Asp for exploration. Sure, i can do that with a much cheaper Cobra, and i already did a little bit, and i'm sure with a proper fitting you can explore almost as good as with an Asp, but at some point it will get old. So what i want to say, i want that Asp in a reasonable amount of time, not because i really need it, but because i want it as a "reward". It would be my cookie that i would get because i keep logging in every weekend and play the game.
If it now takes me ages to get to an Asp, that could probably kill my motivation.
But i guess i will have to wait until friday and check out myself how things are now...
A good trader would find a circuit they could run day in and day out, and never say a word. Harder for others to spot, sustainable and most of all, not a lot of wasted travel time going to spot to spot. When they add in the bigger freighters, this is pretty much going to be mandatory because they have very short jump ranges.
A more dynamic commodity market seems like a good thing to me. It does make the use of 3rd party tools more difficult (you will have to be attuned to how old the data is and how much risk that represents) but it won't totally kill them. In game tools are poor but players should accumulate knowledge and skill to the extent where you can look at a commodity market, know what is cheap and what you need to look for in a system where you can sell that at a profit. You still acquire those skills even using third party tools unless you are oblivious to the context (system/station economy types).
There do still seem to be good routes out there that are profitable and with high enough supply/demand that it would take a lot of trade to decimate them. I was making 2500cr/T round trip last night in a type 7 with supply and demand in the hundreds of thousands. If it does dry up it will simply force me to move about a bit more - which is no bad thing.
The downside might be that there are fewer trade generated emergent behaviours that result in many traders converging on route or station. I liked the fact that the two main rares clusters were drawing in traders and pirates and then bounty hunters. I missed the luxuries thing unfortunately but I imagine it would have had some of that camaraderie that adds much to the game. Hopefully the managed event stuff will do a similar thing but that will be contrived rather than emerging genuinely from the game mechanics.
There do still seem to be good routes out there that are profitable and with high enough supply/demand that it would take a lot of trade to decimate them. I was making 2500cr/T round trip last night in a type 7 with supply and demand in the hundreds of thousands. If it does dry up it will simply force me to move about a bit more - which is no bad thing.
The downside might be that there are fewer trade generated emergent behaviours that result in many traders converging on route or station. I liked the fact that the two main rares clusters were drawing in traders and pirates and then bounty hunters. I missed the luxuries thing unfortunately but I imagine it would have had some of that camaraderie that adds much to the game. Hopefully the managed event stuff will do a similar thing but that will be contrived rather than emerging genuinely from the game mechanics.
It sounds to me that the folks who use 3rd party tools are finding that they no longer know how to trade, whilst the people who eschewed the tools and did it all through in game methods are still doing a thriving business.
Sounds like FD hit the balance just right on this hot button issue.
Sounds like FD hit the balance just right on this hot button issue.
Ok so 29 pages so far and I'll readily admit that I haven't read each post but here's my 2cr. I'm happy that they have the background sim working and that the economy is starting to function. They still need to do some serious work though as the NPC traders are the biggest source of competition for player traders and they (NPCs) don't share in the risks. I think a few in game tools would go a long way to help traders and they would fit in very well with the idea of the "space-trucker". Things like an agent at target stations who could give you trading data (perhaps for a percentage of the cargo profit). When I drove truck (irl) I always knew where my load was going, who was buying it and how much I was going to get for that load. That allowed me to plan routes to save fuel or toll costs or to combine loads for the highest profit margins.
Anyway, just my thoughts on the situation for what they're worth.
Anyway, just my thoughts on the situation for what they're worth.
Yep.
8 chars.
that sums it up nicely, +1 for telling it like it is
/me returns to his still viable 2k per tonne, 2 market round trip trade route.
This will make those random "Station opened fire on me for no reason and I lost my 3 million credit ship" all the more aggravating. Times like these I'm glad I haven't been able to play for 6 weeks because of the Nehalem processor BSOD/crash issue. It forces me to sit out of the game for a while while FD makes (and then undos) all these questionable, buggy design decisions.
InMemoriamSirocco
Banned
As long as you have the cash for it. If you want to go exploring in an Imperial Clipper like me, you're gonna have a bad time grinding credits to reach your goal. I'm back to trading rares now until the crybabies from the forums get that nerfed, too... and there will be no way to make money in any reasonable amount of time so you can get the ships you want to fly.
After that, I don't know what I'll be doing. Lie down and cry, maybe.
I wonder how many people posting "My route's fine, go find a better one!" will be so happy once their route deteriorates into nothing. Right now, a single player in a large ship is able to have too-large an impact on the markets (IMO). My route is still profitable, for now, but I can already see it's drying up quite fast, and I'm only able to play maybe an hour a day or so.
I think the idea behind this change was good, but I think they over did it a bit. Time will tell if it is what they intended. As it was, with my limited play schedule, assuming I did nothing but grind my trade route (which isn't realistic, I spend time hunting and exploring as well): It would take me almost 3 months of solid grinding to reach "Elite" in trade status (which is a goal of mine). I suspect if this change 'sticks', that goal may be more along the lines of a year or more. It took me many, many hours of exploring to find the route I am working, and I'd hoped to be able to use it for a while.
I think the idea behind this change was good, but I think they over did it a bit. Time will tell if it is what they intended. As it was, with my limited play schedule, assuming I did nothing but grind my trade route (which isn't realistic, I spend time hunting and exploring as well): It would take me almost 3 months of solid grinding to reach "Elite" in trade status (which is a goal of mine). I suspect if this change 'sticks', that goal may be more along the lines of a year or more. It took me many, many hours of exploring to find the route I am working, and I'd hoped to be able to use it for a while.