Good job giving the 1% another toy to play with while T-9 grinding

How will you make those jumps with anything but trading?
of what use is a combat vessel for 100/20million to the guy who has been doing nothing but combat in his spare free time and is now sitting at 18million? The last 17.7million without any decent combat ship?

Without any decent combat ship. Seriously. I bet you haven't even tried to kit out a cobra. Especially with the new hull and shield boosters. The cobra is a GREAT. Yes GREAT combat ship. Invest some of that cash into you combat ship and I think you will like it very much. There isn't a single ship in the game that can't get ripped apart by a Cobra or even a Viper when properly equipped and good pilot. Your just complaining to here yourself complain. Keep spitting in the wind.
 
I get that there should be ships in every price range, but what i dont get is that a game like this in its infancy doesnt require such expensive ships immediatelly. If you take any other online game, you usually start in lower tiers or brackets or whatever, but this game is the only one where you have few lower end ships but then a new update gives you expensive ships.... It doesnt make sense at all. And before anyone bashes me, i bought FDL and i love the ship but it is not worth 130 million.
 
How will you get to those ships with anything but trading?
of what use is a combat vessel for 100/20million to the guy who has been doing nothing but combat in his spare free time and is now sitting at 18million? The last 17.7million without any decent combat ship?

How is a miner supposed to get any of those?
Or a smuggler
or an Explorer?
or a Bounty Hunter?
Those who don't want to trade grind (mind you killing NPCs at Res is just as much grinding, but I need to do a lot more of it than the guy in his T.7) their free time away to buy bling bling ships should get a fair share of ships, not 7 that you can get through within a week and then nothing for months and months to come.

Well FD knows this. And they don't like it anymore than you. They have stated repeatedly that they would like it to be balanced. Every patch they tweak combat rolls more than any other. We don't need to convince FD. And those who argue against are denying what has been publicly stated by devs over and over (but sadly, not since release)
 
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Without any decent combat ship. Seriously. I bet you haven't even tried to kit out a cobra. Especially with the new hull and shield boosters. The cobra is a GREAT. Yes GREAT combat ship. Invest some of that cash into you combat ship and I think you will like it very much. There isn't a single ship in the game that can't get ripped apart by a Cobra or even a Viper when properly equipped and good pilot. Your just complaining to here yourself complain. Keep spitting in the wind.

I've made the comparison between ships and cakes before, so I'll just say - yer wrong. Players like shiny ships and bigger toys for mucking about in the sandbox with. You cannot stop them from feeling this, no matter how much you try to convince them to stick with small, cheap ships. Nor should you try - wanting bigger, more awesome stuff is a powerful motivator for any game, and there is nothing - nothing - wrong with a player experiencing that.
 
Trading was a massive generator of cash in alpha beta and since released. It got recently nerfed but still out weights anything else. The only thing getting close is Combat but that hits a bottleneck once you cannot kill more than what spawns. Compared to trading, you can get bigger and bigger ships to trade better than before. And with this release it has not really proven that they want to give the other branches a good chance of ever reaching the new ships. The other confirmed ships to come don't show this either. Anything besides Combat and Trading is completely lost time/cr wise.

I would not have a problem with this if they also scaled the branch specific ships to the amount of money you can make with said branch. Putting a Bounty Hunter ship into 100million is just saying **** you go trading instead so you can buy what you actually want to do ingame after months of grinding. Vulture is nice but where's the variety, anywhere? we don't even have any proper affordable Explorer past the ASP..
 
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Your first statement is disingenuous. I wish defenders of the status quo on here wouldn't keep using the phrase "instant gratification"; it doesn't just miss the point, it sounds like the actual real world 1%'s standard propaganda spiel. Though on that note you have to hand it to FD - creating a game system that has resulted in an actual quasi-replication of the 1% in a sci-fi game environment is damned impressive, for a given value of "impressive" :rolleyes:

But what else is it? Before I started (still in my A Viper) I map everything up on excel using edshipyard what I can do (by this time some was already Elite traders, sharing tips etc.). I realized that my Clipper is nowhere near unreachable as I previously thought with a bit of trading. En route I grew to like trading as I don't need a joystick for it so I can do it during breaks, when I am at a hotel when on assignment to another city etc.
 
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But what else is it? Before I started (still in my A Viper) I map everything up on excel using edshipyard what I can do (by this time some was already Elite traders, sharing tips etc.). I realized that my Clipper is nowhere near unreachable as I previously thought with a bit of trading. En route I grew to like trading as I don't need a joystick for it so I can do it during breaks, when I am at a hotel when on assignment to another city etc.
Do you even know how much harder it is to get money if you don't trade? Seriously try mining yourself 500k/hour and see the world from a new perspective.
 
But what else is it? Before I started (still in my A Viper) I map everything up on excel using edshipyard what I can do (by this time some was already Elite traders, sharing tips etc.). I realized that my Clipper is nowhere near unreachable as I previously thought with a bit of trading. En route I grew to like trading as I don't need a joystick for it so I can do it during breaks, when I am hotel when on assignment to another city etc.

That's all well and good, and props to you for running with it. I trade myself in a T7, which amuses and terrifies me every time it overheats jumping into Frameshift. But what non-traders are asking for and I swear I'll lose a year off my life if I keep having to say this is not instant gratification, it's not cheap ships, it's not snortable Anaconda's in powdered form new luxury good right there, it's for FD to adjust the earnings so every path taken, every trail blazed, allows a player to progress with rough parity. To not feel like they're wasting their time having badwrong fun. To enjoy the game they paid money for and still get to see the shiny things in it without having to be forced shrieking into the grey tube of soul-crushing boredom that is the trade grind.

...might have waxed excessive there, but hopefully you get the general gist of things. Sadly, if Elite had advertised itself first and foremost as a trading game I suspect we wouldn't be having most of these issues, but it didn't. It roped players in with promises of exciting activites like smuggling and bounty hunting and seeking out strange, new worlds, new life, etc., then promptly hid most of the fun parts of those activities behind a very, very long trade grind. This latest wheeze - releasing two ships perfect for combat players at prices only traders can afford - has put just a wee bit of a dent in my confidence that FD is steering their design paradigms in a good direction, let me tell you x.o

But, yus. Trading to the max. For some like yourself, that's okay - for others it's not so enjoyable, hence all the efforts to try and convince FD to get things up to sorta-equal speed across the Elite board.

So much editing. I need sleep x.x
 
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But what else is it? Before I started (still in my A Viper) I map everything up on excel using edshipyard what I can do (by this time some was already Elite traders, sharing tips etc.). I realized that my Clipper is nowhere near unreachable as I previously thought with a bit of trading. En route I grew to like trading as I don't need a joystick for it so I can do it during breaks, when I am at a hotel when on assignment to another city etc.

And people have the audacity to call us carebears, or wanting instant gratification, or asking for an easy button, when all we ask for is a more balanced combat career. This guy (the parent) trades on his breaks, stating that he doesn't even need a flight stick! (Sorry parent, I mean no offence to you. I hear of a lot of traders watching Netflix etc. when trading, and it irks me when people tell us we are whiners who want everything easy, and don't want to "work")
 
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This latest wheeze - releasing two ships perfect for combat players at prices only traders can afford - has put just a wee bit of a dent in my confidence that FD is steering their design paradigms in a good direction, let me tell you x.o
The biggest problem from my point of view is that we're getting stuff in bits and pieces. And not all of the pieces fit together. Take the Vulture and the Fer De Lance: They're indeed on the pricey side, but they're supposed to be powerful combat ships.

However, the same patch which delivered those combat ships also _didn't_ deliver the means to achieve those ships through combat.

Or take the Wings feature. May be nice for people already (or maybe: still?) having friends in their list to play with. The rest is either left out due to there being no reliable way at all to find people to group with or, when playing in solo, they now have to contend with NPC wings. While not being able to hire NPCs on their own.

Then there's the problem that we don't know where the game is going - is there some kind of reliable priority list? Something like: "Those are the big features we're currently working on. Those are the big features, ordered by their importance, which will come next. These medium and small features we're working on as well." And so on and so forth.

Currently, every patch and every new feature rather feels like they pulled cards out of a hat. I don't see the grand vision of how this is all supposed to come together.
 
Then there's the problem that we don't know where the game is going - is there some kind of reliable priority list? Something like: "Those are the big features we're currently working on. Those are the big features, ordered by their importance, which will come next. These medium and small features we're working on as well." And so on and so forth.

the best we can do is this:

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=102649
 
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I don't see the problem, i purely bounty hunt, and since the update went live today 8 hours ago i've probably played 4 hours maybe. In that time i've made enough to buy a cobra (380k). and i've still got another 300k in bounties to hand in. That's 700k in 4 hours in a viper which isn't kitted out amazingly. I'm fairly happy with this rate tbh i can get a vulture in a couple of days if i want one, or keep going for a fur de lance. in a couple of weeks. It's a good rate even for casual players (I have played more today than i usually would)

EDIT -> I should point out that to do this I do kill my fair share of condas, but any standard pilot in a viper or cobra can do that
 
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I don't see the problem, i purely bounty hunt, and since the update went live today 8 hours ago i've probably played 4 hours maybe. In that time i've made enough to buy a cobra (380k). and i've still got another 300k in bounties to hand in. That's 700k in 4 hours in a viper which isn't kitted out amazingly. I'm fairly happy with this rate tbh i can get a vulture in a couple of days if i want one, or keep going for a fur de lance. in a couple of weeks. It's a good rate even for casual players (I have played more today than i usually would)
700K in 4 hours? A kitted vulture needs about 40 million creds, so you're looking at roundabout 230 hours. At 4 hours per day, we're talking about roughly two months. But, yeah, a "couple of days".

Barebone Vulture only needs one month, by the way.
 
700K in 4 hours? A kitted vulture needs about 40 million creds, so you're looking at roundabout 230 hours. At 4 hours per day, we're talking about roughly two months. But, yeah, a "couple of days".

It's usually a higher rate, but less time played. Been having fps problems in supercruise today, and been playing with a friend who is in a sidey so having to jump in and save his ass way to often.
 
It's usually a higher rate, but less time played. Been having fps problems in supercruise today, and been playing with a friend who is in a sidey so having to jump in and save his ass way to often.
Even with double the rate (which I highly doubt) you're still looking at 2 weeks to one months for the Vulture.

The Fer de Lance would be in your reach at about Christmas.
 
Perhaps if many of you who do nothing but bounty hunt/pirate got out of your "box" instead of not willing to take part in the rest of the game you would have the funds to buy the new ships. In the right panel there are 2 other rank trees called exploration and trading, you might want to look into the second one...

Don't blame ED for pricing you out of these ships when you're not willing to take part in the areas of the game that would net you that kind of cash.
 
Perhaps if many of you who do nothing but bounty hunt/pirate got out of your "box" instead of not willing to take part in the rest of the game you would have the funds to buy the new ships. In the right panel there are 2 other rank trees called exploration and trading, you might want to look into the second one...

Don't blame ED for pricing you out of these ships when you're not willing to take part in the areas of the game that would net you that kind of cash.

Good grief. Epxloration is probably even paying _worse_ than bounty hunting.

And trading? Good god, that stuff is suicide-inducing for several of us. Because the Supercruise trucking incorporates the worst of two worlds: It needs attention while providing nothing interesting to warrant that attention.
 
Good grief. Epxloration is probably even paying _worse_ than bounty hunting.

And trading? Good god, that stuff is suicide-inducing for several of us. Because the Supercruise trucking incorporates the worst of two worlds: It needs attention while providing nothing interesting to warrant that attention.

Trading IS tedious I completely agree, however, that didn't stop me from biting the bullet and spending a few weeks to build up 50m or so. It was horrible... but necessary. Seriously, just take the plunge and do it for a few weeks. You'll look back and realise that it was well worth it. I'm now back to enjoying combat in my pimped out Vulture, while you're sat there wondering how you'll ever afford one.

Trust me... it's worth the hassle!
 
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