Credits come to easy? Small ships redundant?

[stummies]

No not really, I've been playing a few months now and still need a lot more credits to do what I want. Plenty of folks say credits aren't progression, and if that is true then instead of nerfing income add content to spend the money on. I actually think it should be increased for professions that don't start with a T.

I will agree there is a bit of redundancy with the ships, but to be quite honest I don't think they need to all be unique from the others. For example the DBS and the Viper are close functional wise, some differences here and there but for the most part the end result is close to the same (costs are a more different than function). I prefer the DBS though for the cockpit view and handling.

 

[Lord Vakko]

The starting quests yield way too much. I just started a few weeks ago and I was in the eagle after a couple hours of play and in the Viper comfortably by the end of my next session. Then I was in an asp within a few days. I have since stepped back to a Vulture but also have a T7 (both loaded) so I can farm high RES or trade until I get my python.

 

[noldunar]

The current balance issues between large/small ships is a big one for me. I've always thought they need to do a balancing pass between ship types as well as weapons, not just for combat roles but for other roles as well.

For instance; a logical combat model is one in which a small ship is fragile (similar to the current model), and a large ship is tough (similar to the current model, except with subsystems protected by armor and the upcoming PP change). With that being the case, the advantage a small ship should have is the ability to avoid being hit. That's already the case with fixed weaponry, but with gimbals and turrets it still needs to be tweaked some. The solution I'd take here is to make each increase of weapon size decrease the precision (not accuracy) of the weapon. This means that using a Class 3 Beam Turret is great, but it will have difficulty hitting smaller ships. This purpose-builds weapon classes for a different purpose, by making larger weapon classes more effective on larger ships, and smaller weapon classes more effective on smaller ships.

The next step here is to make it so attaching a smaller weapon to a larger hardpoint increases the ammunition of that weapon by 50% for each hardpoint increase. So putting a class 1 Multicannon on a Medium hardpoint gives you 3150 ammunition for it. This gives the advantage to larger ships in longevity and ammunition storage if they choose to downsize weapons to give themselves more effectiveness against smaller attackers.

The goal wouldn't be to make a small ship equal to a large ship, but it should be set up in such a way that small ships are able to harass a larger one that doesn't have escorts or fit itself entirely to fight larger vessels. Balance to me would be that three Eagles are roughly equal to a single Anaconda if the Anaconda: A. Stays and fights, B. Isn't set up to deal with small ships by downsizing gimbals/turrets, and C. Doesn't have any wingmates to help out.

As far as non-combat operations go, I think a smuggling fix would help here some. If smuggling was made to be more profitable per ton than regular trading (between commodity and rare trading), and detection rates increased for larger ships, then small ships would become a viable smuggling platform. After all, a standard Sidewinder would raise less suspicion than a Type-9, I'd think.

Great post and great concepts. This is exactly how it should be and this is how it is in a lot of sci-fi franchises, especially Star Wars. The Imperial Star Destroyer is an intimidating war machine which can reduce a planet to slag, however, it still carries 72 TIE fighters to protect itself against fighters because it's turbolasers are to big to hit them. Some capital ships carry extra point-defense weapons which are of a small scale with less firepower to function as an anti-fighter screen at close range. In the battle of Yavin the imperials had to destroy the rebels "ship to ship" since the turbolaser batteries were not effective.

If this concept could be applied somehow to ED, it would be great. Big ships are good against big ships, they can be good against small ships if they sacrifice big firepower for small scale "anti-fighter" weaponry. Fighter can be good against big ships in numbers, however, should they ever get hit by a big gun, they would be toast. If you would then increase the wing size to say 6 you could have wings consisting of 2 big ships and 4 fighter escorts etc. and everybody could feel useful.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

It's not entirely fly by. If you grind game and just look for min/maximizing, yes, creds flow way too easy. However if you play as you go casually, it's perfect now.

So they tuned game towards more casual approach, allowing those looking for oportunities gain richies faster - which is totally fine by me if you ask.

 

[Mephane]

Adder, Hauler, Eagle - those are obsolete now. FD should not release another ship below 200k ever again.

They have always been obsolete (excluding possible Alpha and Beta stages of the game). Just because players might have had to spend more time in a crap ship in the past doesn't mean these ships were any less obsolete. Stepping stone, "noob gear", "entry level" ship - these all mean that the only purpose of these ships is to delay the point where you can care about a ship that you like AND know you can remain viable in the long run; a ship that you can own and make your home, and not one that is a liability. This point starts, not surprisingly, with the Cobra. And that is precisely only because of its superior speed. If it hadn't that advantage, it would immediately be completely overshadowed by lost of the bigger ships, most importantly the Asp.

This is why I have been saying, the small ships need a significant speed bump, or other unique advantage for them to remain a viable choice beyond the point where you could afford something bigger (being less often scanned for contraband doesn't cut it at all, it just makes smuggling a bit easier; if you're experienced, you can hot-land an FDL, of all ships, right past the eyes of the cops). This goes even doubly so for combat, because unlike, say, exploration, where you are not in immediate competition with anyone, in combat your success or demise depends directly (not only, but still massively) on the flight and combat characteristics of the enemy ship compared to yours. Since you can't just give the small ships big shields and guns, it makes perfect sense to give them speed and agility.

 

[Daffan]

small ships are useless because they have no roles

EVE online had the exact same problem - until they made every ship class and type have some niche

ELite is literally

Cobra level 1

FDL level 20

 

[Snarfbuckle]

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

This.

Even if a ship is listed with Maneuverability: 2 (Anaconda) it handles far better than stated on paper.

At the same time we should not expect an Eagle having a snowballs chance in hell against an A-kitted Anaconda unless the Eagle pilot is having godlike piloting skills.

Something that should add some balance would be to limit module targeting to FIXED weapons so that smaller ships are less likely to go BOOM by a few turrets and add a little more focus on fixed weapons.

 

[CATPAIN KIRK]

Having accumulated a decent amount of cash without using trade tools or grinding (except two three day grinding stints), I've actually downgraded to an imperial courier recently.

Kept my old ships of course, but already owning an Anaconda, Python and FDL with enough cash in the bank to buy another Anaconda, I don't really feel the need to make more money.

Once that need was gone, I had less of an issue running missions in my missile fitted courier. Sure - it's incredibly inefficient, but also more challenging and fun.

I would love to see less small redundant ships in the future though. Seriously - did the game really need the Diamondbacks or the courier when there are tremendous gaps in the 6 million + bracket?

Unfortunately, FD seem to see things differently.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Credits .... don’t come easy ... to me
How can I find a way,
to make you see, the way I play
Credits don’t come easy

 

[Vasious]

It is certainly a different experience now

I remeber back in the PB getting the money together for the second pulse laser on the Sidewinder was the first milestone and the step up in ships was a real step up.

My most recent save reset was with 1.3 and it took 3 or 4 missions and one bounty to have 100,000 or so putting the Eagle, Adder and Hauler all in the "I can buy and fit out" range for very little effort.

And whilst you could say, hey you know how to play the game by now, these were just Bulletin Board missions I could complete off the bat, Haul thing, bring us this, deliver this message, wanted this good, and one bounty from a Harmless Adder with no shield that interdicted me, which if you can complete the training missions you could defeat. No need for rare goods running or camping RES or

After that and a few trade ranks it didn't take long to to pick up 100k smuggling missions, two or three to the same destination if you are luck and there is you Type 6

Just seems like progression is so quick, even more so with people complaining when RES or Trading don't generate millions per hour or not bothering with missions as they don't compare to the profit levels.

I am not saying the larger ships should take forever to get, more that the speed to pass the small ships is so small, Ben is right, they don't seem to matter.

Which is a shame because they are all great little ships in their own way, the stubborn person that I am I still fly the Sidewinder when I am not trading in my Type 7 or exploring in an Adder.
I think one of the telling things is when I fly with new people in my group, they often see I am in a Sidewinder and offer to "stick with me in a RES for an hour or so to get me in a Viper or Cobra" Poor Eagle, sounds so cool and handles wonderfully but is skipped all together and the Sidewinder must be discarded all within the fire hour of the game

---

I guess in short, let people rush to the big ships if they want, but give people reasons to stick around the small ships too.
There was a thread in the ships subforum on this

 

[warlock]

Credits .... don’t come easy ... to me
How can I find a way,
to make you see, the way I play
Credits don’t come easy

Hee Hee Hee

 

[GaryII]

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.

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

Trading was always easy and overpowered way to make credits fast..

if you trade in T9/Conda you can make 5-7m/hour easy..since finding trade routes with profit >1k is easy..
They doubled Exploration and Combat profits, but they still are nowhere near high end trading...and now you can also exploit PP passive bonuses, too as i understand..

Also there were few exploits for short periods available also..

For traders Clipper are a cheap ship so no wonder that every trader has one or two

And this makes small ships absolute very fast..

 

[Jacob Marshall]

...
If this concept could be applied somehow to ED, it would be great. Big ships are good against big ships, they can be good against small ships if they sacrifice big firepower for small scale "anti-fighter" weaponry. Fighter can be good against big ships in numbers, however, should they ever get hit by a big gun, they would be toast. If you would then increase the wing size to say 6 you could have wings consisting of 2 big ships and 4 fighter escorts etc. and everybody could feel useful.

I think that's a very sexy idea, whether FD can do this or not I don't know, but it would make PvP more interesting... I really do like this idea.

It's not entirely fly by. If you grind game and just look for min/maximizing, yes, creds flow way too easy. However if you play as you go casually, it's perfect now.

So they tuned game towards more casual approach, allowing those looking for oportunities gain richies faster - which is totally fine by me if you ask.

I mostly agree. Any game can be min/maxed and if that's a player's approach there's not much by way of mechanics a Developer can do that doesn't have a disproportionate effect on other players. Play-as-go the credits don't flow as quickly but often the game does seem to want throw credits at you*.

Decreasing credits, increasing/ship costs are the same thing, they're just shifting the decimal point. Personally, I think the current 'Credit Mechanic' has been devalued to pointlessness; you're not going to make this chair sit level by trimming one of it's legs.

I go with the idea of adjusting how boats work in-game. Improve their value in the environment (DBS pilot btw), rather than devalue to price of a credit.

*I'm one of those players who, at the end of a session will complain about my lack of RNG luck and then notice I've somehow mad a fortune in currency.

 

[Tuub t Tute]

Trading was always easy and overpowered way to make credits fast..

if you trade in T9/Conda you can make 5-7m/hour easy..since finding trade routes with profit >1k is easy..
They doubled Exploration and Combat profits, but they still are nowhere near high end trading...and now you can also exploit PP passive bonuses, too as i understand..

Also there were few exploits for short periods available also..

For traders Clipper are a cheap ship so no wonder that every trader has one or two

And this makes small ships absolute very fast..

How can you trade in a T9 within a couple of play sessions starting the game in a Sidewinder? The OP was asking why nobody stopped to fly the small cheap ships any more, not why trading profits in the largest ship in the game are so lucrative.

- - - Updated - - -

Personally I think the low end game did get a buff, it is more to do with the availability of information.

A bit like in an MMO (say WoW) where everyone starts off wanting a Paladin because they are cool AD&D lore, or a Warlock because necros in EQ were the best solo class.

Then as the game develops and everything becomes discovered, min maxing occurs to a greater or lesser extent and everyone picks the path of least resistance.

For those of us who thought Marine one way and Coffee back the other on a single hop was a great trade route in our T6... those days are long gone!

 

[GaryII]

The OP was asking why nobody stopped to fly the small cheap ships any more,

Easy trading is one of the reasons why lot of people do not fly small ships, since they can easily afford big ships..so way fly small ships?!

 

[Dhan]

Some thoughts for improving small ship viability:

As far as combat goes, significantly more speed and maneuverability for small ships ( or less for big ships ) would definitely make them desirable, and even viable. I'm thinking in more of a speed tank way as opposed to the current shield tank meta.

As far as noncombat goes I'd imagine small ship balance to be in the smuggling, possibly exploration and maybe mining fields. It would be silly for a small ship to be able to compete with much larger ships in trade. But it would be even sillier to have large ships smuggling cargo without braking a sweat. You could make smuggling the domain of the small ship and increase profits significantly. You could also make small ships a bit more viable in exploration by increasing their jump range and lowering their fuel use. For mining, you could possibly have cave systems within asteroids that are only accessible to small ships and which yield more valuable minerals.

Just throwing a few ideas out there. I don't think that small ships should be more profitable or capable than large ships, especially not given the price difference, but I do think that small ships deserve a bigger role in the game than "stepping stone."

 

[Tuub t Tute]

Easy trading is one of the reasons why lot of people do not fly small ships, since they can easily afford big ships..so way fly small ships?!

You cannot trade enough in a 6 or 8t sidewinder to get the keys to a Conda after a week. People still need to buy "some" bigger ships to step stone the profits up to the 70-odd Mcr needed for a trading L9.

The answer would appear to be that missions available in starter system BB offer larger credit rewards than before, meaning that flying a few courier missions can get you past the 100k mark in a matter of an hour or less, if the new pilot knows what they are doing in terms of basic flight skills like docking, hyperspace, supercruise, etc.

When you have 1000cr, you cannot buy 500t of Imperial Slaves.

 

[Star Admiral]

Going from sidewinder to Cobra with an A ranked FSD drive took me two evenings of doing smuggling missions. If I didn't get the "game alt-tabs and cant' tab back in" Nvidia gfx driver issue, i'd have played a lot more. But that occurs too frequently and annoys me, so I launch something else after.

Still, I have no clue about bounty hunting or bulk trading, but running loops around a system (i went to Empire territories where there's a lot less traffic) doing smuggling missions nets me about 500k per hour I think. I have to time it over a longer period, because getting several smuggling and regular trade missions to the same system can break the meter over one hour alone.

I intend to play the game when I feel like it, and I'm in no particular rush to upgrade. I need to get the hang of bounty hunting and mining once the smuggling missions become too low end, but for now they suffice.

 

[Vasious]

Easy trading is one of the reasons why lot of people do not fly small ships, since they can easily afford big ships..so way fly small ships?!

But you cannot just start in a Type 9 so the CR/Hr they bring is not the point.
It is the speed at which the low ships can earn money so you skip most of them was the premise of the debate.

Doesn't matter if the Anaconda is 100 Million or 10 Million, if in the first hour you skip the Hauler, Eagle, Adder and possible ignore the Diamondbacks and Couriers at that
If an hour flying RES or BB missions gets you from Sidewinder to Cobra, that is the concern; not how long it takes to get the big ships, how much the big ships earn or why people fly them over the small ones.

We aren't asking of small ships are redundant by the time you have a Python, we are asking how many hours is it before the small ships are redundant, and the answer seems to be about 1 which doesn't seem right.

 

[PavelKCZ]

I definitely do not think that there are easy credits in ED.

I bought the game on Steam, so I can use the Steam "hour counter" to measure accumulated game time. I looked at my notes from past and it took me more than 260 hours in game before I was able to buy Python and MORE THAN 400 HOURS in game (vast majority of this time was hard grind trade/bounty hunting/CGs) before I was able to buy basic (practically useless) Anaconda.

More than 400 hours is something like more than 50 weeks (one year) for player who is able to play let's say 8 hours per week. One year is a loooong time.

BTW, for example Cobra is not so cheap. Of course, the hull itself is relatively cheap, but fully equiped Cobra is around 8 MCr and it is a lot for a beginning player.