Credits come to easy? Small ships redundant?

[Ben Ryder]

Hi Chaps,

I've been playing since Alpha and I'm wondering if any one else thinks that it is too easy to make credits now?

This is where I'm coming from.

I spent a very very long time in small craft and got to experience each of them for days and days and weeks of solid gaming.

Now it seems that players an quickly hop from a sidewinder to a cobra in a handfull or two sessions, Making small craft redundant. It seems that it's now a game of cobra's and clippers with a brief spell in a trade ship before moving on to a python or Annaconda.

For instance, I havent seen a single thread in ages relating to the humble but amazing Hauler.

So that's I mean about credits coming to easy.

1 million credits per hour for combat used to be unheard of and now it seems pretty low end.
1 million credits per hour for trading used to be a bit of an eye opener. Now it seems no issue.

So are all the little ships just a relatively meaningless quick stop on the way to a a clipper, python, Annaconda?

People who have been playing for a few months are probably best suited to answer this as they may have observed the same thing.

How many hours play does it take to get from a side winder to a Cobra these days?

What really got me thinking was the Clippers on sale to every Surf and how many I see flying around these days.

Just pondering while I have a cuppa.

 

[bamber]

Tend to agree - I did a clear save at 1.3 and I can just make money easily. I have 2 clippers one set for mining one for trading/fighting both worth well over 30MCr, (I want to fit Dual 19mCR beams to each) a short range diamond back explorer and a imperial clipper as a transport ship as my trade area and mining area are separate locations

New missions - loads of early money making opportunities
Trade about the same really
Bounty hunting about the same may be less
Mining - Cash cow (well it is for me)

Oh my clippers are genuine as I have Baron rank
.
Missed the sidewinder to cobra question - basically not much more than an evening instead of a week by use of missions (a 90k smuggling mission from a outpost to an outpost in a sidewinder is crazy simple

 

[D Junglist]

I joined i think after 1.3 started and i found my experience in going up in ships more of an enjoyable one because once i earned enough to get the ships, i had to earn enough to get the parts for it. Towards the end, achieving my anaconda as my final goal it started to feel like a proper grind and i slowly felt i was losing enjoyment for it.

When you have to consider that there is no quests to read, you are practically grinding from the start. It's not like mmo's where you have also got enjoyment reading quests inbetween the grinds. There is nothing to take a break when in Elite Dangerous.

Can't remember how long it took to enjoy my cobra, i remember it wasn't a disheartening feeling, that's all i remember.

 

[ArkSeaJumper]

I purchased a Clipper thanks to the Serf sale, (basking, basking). Then I purchases paint jobs from Fronter. Then I realized the cunning plan to get more money from Me. Not disappointed though.

 

[shabbyj]

Hey Ben

From memory it took me ages to get my Cobra from a Sidey. I felt a real sense of achievement when I first got one, I loved it and was well chuffed.
I still use the smaller ships though. I have a Asp kitted out for exploring, but I mainly use my Cobra & Vulture. The same Cobra as I got back in beta.
I have no desire to have any of the big ships. I have all I need now.

 

[noldunar]

Greetings Commander,

great topic for discussion.

I think you have to differentiate between PVE and PVP players.

In PVP, as I have read on this forum, it is all about shield strength in MJ and how many shield cell banks you can fit. In this case, small ships might be redundant if the size difference is too big, since whoever has the most shield cells wins.
This is mitigated somewhat by skill of course, so a pro player in a Viper can still be a threat to a novice player in a Python who has no combat experience or PVP experience and only did trade runs. But if players with equal skill fight each other I think the winner is mostly the guy who can stack more boosters and cells, therefore who has the bigger ship.

In PVE it is something else entirely. I am a pure PVE or Private Group and a very casual player (maybe 3 to 4 hours a week) and I am very much enjoying the small ships. I love the Viper and Cobra. I have a C rated Vulture with A rated power distributor for conflict zones, which cost me "just" 8 mio. and I never use shield cells (I hate that mechanic, potion spamming has no place in ED) and with this ship I find conflict zones all to easy. In my experience, an A rated Viper which is about 3.5 mio. is all you need for fun and effective combat in PVE.

So yes, small ships for me are viable and fun and also liberating. They are cheap to buy, cheap to outfit, have a low rebuy and the Viper and Cobra just have style!

Regarding the rate at which credits are gained: I think it is fine the way it is. Sure, you can make millions in an hour but the outfitting of the big ships is so ridiculously expensive and everybody is already complaining how much of a "grind" ED is, that lowering the income would only make it worse.

For me personally I go by "Grind less, play more" and do whatever I feel like doing and I don't have the feeling I am missing out on anything without an Anaconda or Python.

 

[Time Streamer]

Talking about combat roles (because is what I do) small ships became either a stepping stone or something to be flown for the challenge/style/way of living. It's pretty much how you've stated: Credits are coming easier. That being said, with RES sites full of fat targets and many of PvP Cmdrs flying big ships in wings, nobody wants to handle the handicap of nimbler fighters. The aim is either Vulture for the fighter pilot or Python/Fdl for the "assault freighter/Heavy interceptor" role. There's a small hope for small ships to be useful in CQC. Apart from all this, i still fly my Viper now and then, and my exploration vessel is an Hauler

 

[aws357]

For a dude like me (playing mostly during the weekend), earning money is neither easy nor enjoyable. But for my defense, my first goal was to get in a Python (<3) and then I went for the Anaconda...

So if the goal of the thread is to make it harder for people to earn money then...

*shake fist*

Or at the very least, make it enjoyable first.

As for the small ships problem, it does not bother me too much because that choice is left in the hand of the player.

You don't need to have the ultimate Anaconda to kick bottoms and earn dough.

Some people are very happy with the smaller ships and would not go for the bigger ones (looking at the vulture pleb).

Other are still wondering what scheme to use to get to the large ships fast.

If there was something that made it mandatory to have a small ships it would be aggravating.

Like having to use a small ship to fetch a bounty in a system that only has an outpost.

*shake fist*

 

[stridecolossus]

Initially I was going to agree, then I thought about the experience of a newbie friend that I recently introduced to the game: I wasn't around when he first started playing so he had to find his own feet, he struggled to get together enough cash to upgrade to an eagle or hauler before we could play together and I could offer him my wealth of experience So perhaps it's just about right if you take the perspective of a completely green player.

 

[Ving]

I guess it depends on your approach to the game which to some extent dictates your ship progression.

Having played MMOs/RPGs for many years I'm used to an initial grind to a point where you are self sufficient and at an end game state, for better or for worse.

So my progression was Hauler > Asp > Anaconda. I tried out a few other ships on the way, but just to the point of buying, fitting, testing and reselling.

Now I'm about 20 hours play time away from Elite trader, at which point I will start playing around with the smaller ships, but there's probably a good number that I'll never touch.

On the other hand, I'm sure there are many ppl, with less game time available and maybe a different approach to games, who are happily flying around in a sidewinder/eagle/cobra etc.

Comparing to other games though, once you reach max level in Diii, for example, you never touch 90% of skills, and most of them you will never have used for any length of time even while levelling. So ED is no different to other games in this regard.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

I think its got a little too easy to make money now. But not particularly strongly feeling it needs a nerf, perhaps just a little balancing... poor pirates.

 

[Samosa]

A Hauler with the biggest FSD strapped on makes a great throwaway ship for moving ships about, in the absence of a proper mechanism.

I don't know, Ben. The nature of the game is that one can't help but accumulate money if one keeps playing. It takes a great deal of effort to do badly.

If anything, I wish there'd been more things to accomplish other than money in order to get to certain ships. The naval ranking was a decent idea (poorly executed, but still...), but it'd be nice if there had been more things that had to happen, more RNG, something to make it harder for everyone to get the same thing.

It only took me a couple of months or so to get an Anaconda, at which point it's a guaranteed ~1.2M every eight minutes or so at a minimum.

 

[Ikari]

I don't think credit earning is too easy I think small ships could be validated more if the AI wasn't almost exclusively geared towards large ships and wings.

The point is small ships should still be valid to use even when you have 100milcr, I mean I love the Viper but it no longer holds up well enough on its own and feel forced by FD to fly something larger with a bigger shield and better equipment because the AI demands it.

 

[Evil]

Hi Chaps,

I've been playing since Alpha and I'm wondering if any one else thinks that it is too easy to make credits now?

This is where I'm coming from.

I spent a very very long time in small craft and got to experience each of them for days and days and weeks of solid gaming.

Now it seems that players an quickly hop from a sidewinder to a cobra in a handfull or two sessions, Making small craft redundant. It seems that it's now a game of cobra's and clippers with a brief spell in a trade ship before moving on to a python or Annaconda.

For instance, I havent seen a single thread in ages relating to the humble but amazing Hauler.

So that's I mean about credits coming to easy.

1 million credits per hour for combat used to be unheard of and now it seems pretty low end.
1 million credits per hour for trading used to be a bit of an eye opener. Now it seems no issue.

So are all the little ships just a relatively meaningless quick stop on the way to a a clipper, python, Annaconda?

People who have been playing for a few months are probably best suited to answer this as they may have observed the same thing.

How many hours play does it take to get from a side winder to a Cobra these days?

What really got me thinking was the Clippers on sale to every Surf and how many I see flying around these days.

Just pondering while I have a cuppa.

I see where you're coming from, and in the current game you're right.

I actually hate that ED has simulated progression based on CR and rank, pilot skill has taken a back seat, the problem is really a redundancy of ship dynamics and mechanics to make those ships viable, if ships had unique qualities that were requisites for doing certain things we wouldn't have this situation.

But yeah it's nice to fly ships, just for the piloting experience.

 

[CMDR Zadian Lichtfrost]

The problem isn't that money is to easily earned, it's that the ship balance isn't very good. The game favors big ships. More cargo space results in more profit, bigger ship allows more SCBs and bigger weapons and shields result in better survivability better chances to win in combat. In addition to that profit is the only thing that matters in this game from a game mechanics standpoint.

The game forces players to move up as quickly as they can. With other players being around much longer this creates an entry barrier for new players.

It would be nice if FD balances the ships, adds missions and additional station types to make using different ships interesting and all ships useful for specific tasks.

Maybe a small pad only outpost that offers very good profits for food and other "normal" stuff. Missions that require the CMDR to fly a long way to reach the mission target (not just combat). Smuggling missions that only work, or work better, with a unsuspicious Sidewinder.

 

[Ben Ryder]

For a dude like me (playing mostly during the weekend), earning money is neither easy nor enjoyable. But for my defense, my first goal was to get in a Python (<3) and then I went for the Anaconda...

So if the goal of the thread is to make it harder for people to earn money then...

*shake fist*

Or at the very least, make it enjoyable first.

As for the small ships problem, it does not bother me too much because that choice is left in the hand of the player.

You don't need to have the ultimate Anaconda to kick bottoms and earn dough.

Some people are very happy with the smaller ships and would not go for the bigger ones (looking at the vulture pleb).

Other are still wondering what scheme to use to get to the large ships fast.

If there was something that made it mandatory to have a small ships it would be aggravating.

Like having to use a small ship to fetch a bounty in a system that only has an outpost.

*shake fist*

No way would I want to make people grind any harder at all. I guess I'm just wondering how progression has changed and how it has effected potential game play.

 

[Samosa]

The problem isn't that money is to easily earned, it's that the ship balance isn't very good.

Good point. Small ships need to have their own advantage, whatever that may be. I'd absolutely take more time out from the huge trading ship if I could make similar profits by doing something quite different in a smaller ship.

 

[Slippery Jim DiGriz]

I think it varies with how far along the progression a player is. Early on it's quite hard to make much money, getting that first million can take a long time.

But now I've got 4 ships (Asp, Vulture, Python & Anaconda), over 500m in cash and the money just rolls in and I'm not sure if there is any way in which this could be rectified that wouldn't alienate a lot of players.

After a while the money is just another way to keep score, I can afford pretty much anything I want to buy in the game so the money is really an irrelevance, I certainly don't worry about credits/hour.

"Small ships need to have their own advantage"
Well apart from smuggling I can't see what is could be, the performance and functionality of a ship should reflect its value, if a small cheap ship could outperform a costlier vessel then what would be the point of the more expensive ship.

Analogy:
You could smuggle small stuff like gems with a jet-ski but it wouldn't stand much chance against a destroyer.

 

[askavir]

THere are more than enough small ships (and by small ships I mean everything up to the ASP) in the game currently, with ine more oj he way (imp eagle)... Players go through all the small ships very fast, making most of them mere stepping stones in which players spend very little time. No need for mora small ships, the current number and variety is fine.

Elite needs more mid-range ships, in the T7, Dropship, Clipper range.

There is a big gap between Vulture/Asp and T7/Dropship/Clipper, and then another big gap between these and Python, FDL, Orca and T9.

Better if those gaps were starting to be filled, instead of more ships that will mostly rot in the ship dealerships.

Also, the Anaconda needs competition.

 

[Tarman]

Good point. Small ships need to have their own advantage, whatever that may be. I'd absolutely take more time out from the huge trading ship if I could make similar profits by doing something quite different in a smaller ship.

It'd be nice if there were more missions and roles that were geared specifically for the small stuff. Keep them relevant far past the rookie stage, beyond merely keeping around as the cars you store in a big barn and drive only on the weekends for fun.

There are supposed to be smuggling benefits to the smaller ships as far as the cops' scanning priorities and such, but the grey and black areas of criminal gameplay are woefully underdeveloped overall, making that angle kind of pointless. FD maybe should hire some professional black marketeers to give them a rundown on crime.