Credits come to easy? Small ships redundant?

[Faybs]

When I went through and originally laid out the idea, one of the other parts of it was to increase wing sizes to 6, and make each ship take up a certain amount of "space" in a group, be that through individual point values or values based on ship size, so you could have a 6 ship wing of Eagles, but if you bring along an Anaconda it uses as much space in the wing as three Eagles (Large Ship VS Small), so your maximum wing size is now 4. Some crossover ships would be upgraded or downgraded in point costs, for instance, the Vulture would be considered a medium ship because it's significantly more powerful than other small ships, or a Python might be considered a Large ship for the same reason.

The biggest hurdle there would be how to handle it if you are in a wing and want to swap from Eagle to Anaconda, does it kick you from the wing?

That's a weird idea... what limited resource is there that is used up by larger ships? Also, it would prevent people who have been here longest from playing together - "Sorry Harry, between my conda and Tom's we already take up all six wing slots so you can't wing up with us today."

 

[veryinky]

Like I said earlier, I want more small ships to give variety to the NPCs seen.

Krait? Moray Starboat? Sure, bring them on.

But thinking about it, I fly an Anaconda which supposedly has two hangars that can fit Sidewinder sized ships. I can't land on outposts due to my ship's size. So I reason, I need a small ship that can move cargo from my anaconda to outposts.

Bring back the Lifter.


Nothing more than a cockpit, engines and a big cargo box. I'd fly it out of my anaconda all the time if they don't add hireable NPC pilots to the game by then.

 

[Aussiedroid]

Compared to 1.0, sure its easier, but I am far from rolling in credits - far from it. I still struggle earning good credits even after 500 hrs of play and still don't have an upgraded Python yet.

I say roll it back to where it started, up the prices and make it all harder at any rate.

 

[tengri]

I bought the game last weekend during the sale and was playing a couple of hours each day since.
The first step to an adder was really tuff because I had no clue what I was doing... took me quite some time. Regular trading/BBS missions.

Then I read about rares trading and off I went... couple of round trips and I had a Cobra. Couple more bigger loops and I had a fully A-rated Cobra.
Went to look for some trouble, got my ass handed to me several times. Figured not worth my time, went back flying couple more rare loops.
Now I am sitting in an Asp (almost fully A rated, be there soon)... soon ready to go out for some serious exploring.

Was it easy/fast?
Maybe. But only because I read on here about the rares trade routes; I did not do any combat at all (well, except for few almost fatal attempts, did not claim a single bounty so far) and I highly doubt I would have gotten all the cash as easy doing only normal trading.
Normal trading/non-combat BBS (during early game) is balanced enough to progress rather slowly but not as slow one would loose interest completely.
Rares trading on the other hand... mixed feelings about that. Dont get me wrong... of course moarrr and fast cash is always good. But maybe it's a little too fast - especially if one puts some muscle and dedication behind it.

On thing I know for sure... small ships are useless for me now. Never going back to anything smaller than the Asp, that's a given.

Can not comment on combat as source of income.

 

[gudlbua]

On the other hand, you can't give every player the ability to quickly buy the biggest and baddest ships. I think that what is missing is more varied missions that would engage the players more with more depth. If you're having fun doing such and such, you won't see getting to a Fer-de-Lance as a grind.

Exactly what I was saying. A grind means doing repetitive boring things. Not repetitive fun things.
The way of making boring things fun, is to add more of those "things" you can do to a game.

And now comes the BUT

...but this game offers just 3 or 4 repititive "things". The content for having 100 hours of fun is just not there. It's actually maybe 5-10 hours of fun right now for average players. But it still forces you to play for 100 hours to get to those really good ships. Noone would complain if it took 100 (or 300, or 900!) hours if you had fun during that time and wouldn't have to repeat things over and over and over and over. There have been games that managed to do exactly that. But FD did not bother looking at them, instead they recreated their ancient games (with less features like planetary landings!) with new graphics and sounds. Then they slapped some net code on it so you could grief other players. Game done.

Super-cruise is the best example of boring gameplay: It's laughably easy, it's always the same, and it takes 3 to 10 minutes to get to the "instance" you want to go to and doesn't reward you with anything but a bland instance that looks like 500 others you have already seen...
You spend so much time looking at things flying by you with NOTHING to do.
I know why they left it in like it's now (and yes it would be EASY to make it go by faster):
It stretches the time in between the things you do. They need it, because the things you can actually do take up about 5 hours, then you have seen it ALL and it's only repetition. It's filler, nothing more.

 

[Gédéon_Lecanard]

A few days ago I met a few nice chaps, the guild kind, in Empire territory. They were talkative and quite a good bunch, so we had a friendly chat. There were playing since late 1.2, and were already flying decently kitted anacondas.

I'm here since premium beta, and I own "only" a fully kitted Cobra (my baby), a well kitted Asp for exploration, a fully kitted Vulture (except for the overpriced and heavy bulkheads), and a factory fresh Clipper rigged for the sole purpose of trading. So when I see relatively fresh new CMDRs in such machines as anacondas I'm left with questions about the whats, whys, hows and whens, and I'm not sure I want to know the answers

IMHO it is not that much a question about how easy or hard it is to make money, but how dedicated you are and how loooooooong are your game sessions. My job wins, unfortunately.

 

[CMDR Kantos Kan]

Exactly what I was saying. A grind means doing repetitive boring things. Not repetitive fun things.
The way of making boring things fun, is to add more of those "things" you can do to a game.

And now comes the BUT

...but this game offers just 3 or 4 repititive "things". The content for having 100 hours of fun is just not there. It's actually maybe 5-10 hours of fun right now for average players. But it still forces you to play for 100 hours to get to those really good ships. Noone would complain if it took 100 (or 300, or 900!) hours if you had fun during that time and wouldn't have to repeat things over and over and over and over. There have been games that managed to do exactly that. But FD did not bother looking at them, instead they recreated their ancient games (with less features like planetary landings!) with new graphics and sounds. Then they slapped some net code on it so you could grief other players. Game done.

Super-cruise is the best example of boring gameplay: It's laughably easy, it's always the same, and it takes 3 to 10 minutes to get to the "instance" you want to go to and doesn't reward you with anything but a bland instance that looks like 500 others you have already seen...
You spend so much time looking at things flying by you with NOTHING to do.
I know why they left it in like it's now (and yes it would be EASY to make it go by faster):
It stretches the time in between the things you do. They need it, because the things you can actually do take up about 5 hours, then you have seen it ALL and it's only repetition. It's filler, nothing more.

I'm really thinking that now, the thing I miss the most from FDEV is some kind of status of what they are doing. I've been doing software development for over 20 years, so I know a thing or two about software project management (even though I don't do that part). I think it could be very informative to see what's going on behind the scene at FDEV. I think that, should we have an idea on what they're working, how many people are working on it, and so on, we might be little more patient. I'm thinking that the dev team is literally swamped with a million things to do, specially with a project of the scale of ED. I think that explains why many people feel that the universe is quite shallow. Planets more or less look the same, the missions are more or less the same, etc. Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, it's maybe not the amount of programmers that is the problem but the number of artists and content generators. As a programmer, given a set of rules, you have a bucket that has that many template missions. The more templates in the bucket, the more varied missions you would get. Same for planets. Given more artists to design more different planets, when you're a programmer, that means that given a set of rules that define what the planet is like, you have more options to choose a style that makes it different from other, similar ones.

So, I don't think it's the development that is lacking, it's the content department that should hire more.

 

[Darrett]

That's a weird idea... what limited resource is there that is used up by larger ships? Also, it would prevent people who have been here longest from playing together - "Sorry Harry, between my conda and Tom's we already take up all six wing slots so you can't wing up with us today."

It's really no different than the 4 person wing limitation, it's entirely a construct of game balance.

Though it would be rough for those who currently wing with more than 2 large ships, given that it would provide a bit more balance to wing vs wing combat, it might be worthwhile. Honestly it's the least necessary part of a rebalance of large/small ships, but if wing vs wing battles become more commonplace, they're going to have to look at options that give a reason to something other than 4 Anacondas all the time, or 3 Anacondas and a Clipper for pursuit.

 

[Dhan]

It's really no different than the 4 person wing limitation, it's entirely a construct of game balance.

Though it would be rough for those who currently wing with more than 2 large ships, given that it would provide a bit more balance to wing vs wing combat, it might be worthwhile. Honestly it's the least necessary part of a rebalance of large/small ships, but if wing vs wing battles become more commonplace, they're going to have to look at options that give a reason to something other than 4 Anacondas all the time, or 3 Anacondas and a Clipper for pursuit.

The 4 wing limitation probably has more to do with the fact that there are relatively small instances and I'm guessing they felt that any more than 4 people in a wing would result in complete domination of an instance.

 

[Morbad]

Instances are limited to 30 CMDRs and most seem to have issues well below this number.

Significantly larger wing sizes would make it correspondingly easier to fill an instance with only allied CMDRs, giving an insurmountable advantage over others, or simply excluding them entirely.

 

[Faybs]

Exactly. Also, using ship sizes doesn't work at all for game balance - a wing of six vultures would completely obliterate two anacondas (not to mention two type 7s or 9's).

 

[Darrett]

Exactly. Also, using ship sizes doesn't work at all for game balance - a wing of six vultures would completely obliterate two anacondas (not to mention two type 7s or 9's).

Note I mentioned the Vulture would be considered Medium. 3 Vultures vs 2 Anacondas.

 

[Faybs]

Then it's not size but some "damage potential" metric. Where does an imperial courier fit? it's got shields about as good as a vulture and if you fit it with three medium rails it can do about as much damage. Is python still considered medium if it's stock and only fitted with two small pulse lasers?

 

[Max Magic]

Absolutely agree !!! And the reason for me are the RES and CZ's...


Honestly, i am rather new to the game and enjoyed it VERY much, making credits with some easy missions, taking afew tons of cargo here and there, getting some cash for scanning new planes to me...

...and all of this fun stopped when i found out how ridicoulesly easy it is to make money in an RES, even with a Sidewinder ((

From this point, the game stopped to be fun, feeling just being a big grind with staying as long as you can in an RES...flying to the nearest base...cash in absordeus amounts of money...trade it for better equipment and ships...back to RES...rinse and repeat... ((


Honestly, why should anyone actuially PLAY the whole game, when this bull credit farming instances called RES are existing ??? Who came out out in the first place with this utter stupid idea to implement those ???

- taking on assasination missions and search for the criminals ?? waste of time, in the same tiome you made 10times as much in an RES without really playing the game
- looking for signal sources ?? why do this, just find a nice spawn in an RES

This bull took away all fun from the game for me and since i fully understood the mechanic behind those, i am on the brink of deinstalling the game


One sidenote:
In the initial Elite...and even so in Frontier...there were no such "FARMING" instances...and that was good !!

 

[Psycho Romeo]

If we think progression, any player can drop into a RES with a loaned sidewinder and make enough for a basic fit cobra in a few minutes by KSing authority. I agree, this is pretty bad.
.
I don't think it makes the eagle, hauler, etc useless though. The hauler is a great budget explorer and the eagle is awesome for when I want to do something really stupid. Though with an eagle priced very similar to the viper, I can see very few situations where I'd not rather be in a viper.
.
However I don't believe smaller craft are redundant. I think smaller craft will really shine when brought together with larger one. I'd definitely not choose to target an eagle over its wingmate python, though I'd imagine that the two would end up doing similar damage all things considered. I'd not be counter maneuvering against the eagle if my attention was on the python.

 

[Dphin]

Actually, fighting an NPC python/eagle wing, I'd tend to take out the eagle as fast as possible so I only have one bad guy to worry about.

I think these games always seem to have some players who will grind to the most expensive ship, but I wouldn't want to see it made harder for everyone. I like a lot of the earlier suggestions for giving reasons to stay with smaller ships, and about the problem of bounty farming. I think it should be balanced more on how much damage you do vs. NPC police, so you can't just hit them with a couple of shots and leave the police to do the rest. Real bounty hunting should be more about flying round anarchic systems and interdicting than sitting in a RES, which would mean the KWS would have to work in supercruise. I haven't done much SC bounty hunting, but the credits gained seem to be much lower so far than RES farming.

How about if larger ships were easier to detect at larger ranges by sensors - and I mean all sensors: the radar, KWS, gimballed weapons, etc.?

 

[tanthil]

I will risk a statement that there is no obsolete ships, that impression that most players fly certain type of ship or has goal to obtain ceratin 'end game' ship is on the edge of fail.

I have no plans to go beyond Asp, so in general dont care about python FDL or Conda.

People tend to fly that ship that suit them most it is sandbox not linear progression

 

[conrad1878]

i own 4 ships so far got a eagle explorer type 6 and a pyhthon

 

[Vasious]

I will risk a statement that there is no obsolete ships, that impression that most players fly certain type of ship or has goal to obtain ceratin 'end game' ship is on the edge of fail.

I have no plans to go beyond Asp, so in general dont care about python FDL or Conda.

People tend to fly that ship that suit them most it is sandbox not linear progression

Whilst this is certainly valid

If people skip the early ships due to gaining CR so quickly relative to their cost, the miss out of experiencing those ships and deciding they are the one for them.

 

[Synther]

I've had some friends recently enter the game, and it what it seems to boil down to is if you know what you're doing and how well you know of your interests. What's partly at fault is Community Goals, but those are the things that motivate us to play for money since it feels like a grand mission every time. I remember the Lugh one doubling my funds at the time (from 15 to 30). One of the bounty hunting ones recently gave my friend an 8m boost, which nearly doubled his assets to get a vulture from a viper. If PP actually payed money and not circus tickets, we wouldn't be relying on CGs so much. I'd be stuck doing the military strikes all day if that were the case. In terms of trading, I've found a 4m/hr route, but that's because I'm in a Python with 272 cargo. Probably going back to FDL once I can afford to have both the trade Python and that.

edit: Any modification to the general ~1m/hr wage that good players know how to get would hurt those with long hour jobs.