I'm rich- plz nerf everything!

[Boomer Kay]

The even spread of the bubble is a bit of a shame in this respect. If there were emptier wastelands between bubbles of civilisation then those borderlands could be full of pirating nasty for people to have to run past for the lucrative trades, or they can stay in the safe little local bubble, but it would give a lot more character and a home for those who want to fight. Learning to plot around/past them would just be another skill to learn

That is exactly how the game works actually.
I have a quite profitable trading route between 2 Empire systems with 1 anarchy in between. You can guess (3 Attempts given) where the NPC interdictions happen (even without running Missions).
I could trade between 2 other systems with exclusively power-held systems in between and never be interdicted.

And in a T7, those interdictions are actually quite fun. It *is* a "death trap", while the T6 is a nimble goat and the T9 the mountain that flies.
"This game has to be harder"
"Fly a T7"
"Why would I do that?"
"You want the game to be harder..."
".. yes, and challenging"
"... T7 is the answer"
"but it's not an endgame ship that I grinded decades for to make the game harder"
"ehhh... better ships make the game easier?"

Spoiler

 

[Majinvash]

Robigo in essence isn't an issue.

Its FD's failure to adapt or learn from its player base.

IF you couldn't mode hope to refresh million credit missions. It would be in-line with other careers.

( Totally avoiding the subject of the selling of slaves back to the own station )

Smuggling could be a 4-10 million an hour activity with all the fun and challenge*

I have stacked 65 million over about 14 missions ( Several to the same station ) and finished them with a low weight shield-less Asp with A boosters and turrets to stop the scans ( In Open ) in a little over an hour, start to finish. Didn't need the money but just wanted to see how easy it was to do. Was kinda fun to jump into a system and be told the same message by 14 different NPC's and have a swarm following me in SC.

Back in the good old days, my Asp running and stealing rares. Would take days to make that sort of money

Majinvash
The Voice of Open

 

[Zeta Legion]

There are a few people I fly with that will not agree with you there. Their CMDR's morals do not allow them to partake in smuggling activities and don't have a big enough ship for large turnover trading (or just don't like it) which means increased running costs will seriously hinder their activities. The main argument for nerfing Robigo has always been that its not in line with the other professions money wise

The profitability of shadow deliveries plateau's very quickly. Every other profession from bounty hunting to bulk trading has a much wider gap between the haves and have-nots, and most still don't approach the level of income afforded by shadow deliveries at their apex. Missions in particular are an utter joke.

I don't think it's a good idea to nerf shadow deliveries into the ground though. At worst, the low-level income ought to be curbed, and have the most profitable missions require larger cargo holds than they do currently.

It also goes without saying that other professions need their reward structure completely reworked. Elite-rank missions paying out 12k is flat-out insulting.

 

[sewerratuk]

I can't say as I bother to mode switch very often now unless the BB is devoid of decent missions. I take all missions 3-20T in a 56T Asp and rarely fill it but I can get about 30mil for just over an hour. Which gives me 10 re-buys on my FAS - or currently about 30mins at a CG on my own

The downside of this is that NPC presence is very low and therefore it starts to turn into just a trade mission. I would happily stop stacking 12-15 missions if I had the same interaction with 3-4 (not the sell your mission spammers though)

- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -

I don't think it's a good idea to nerf shadow deliveries into the ground though. At worst, the low-level income ought to be curbed, and have the most profitable missions require larger cargo holds than they do currently.

It also goes without saying that other professions need their reward structure completely reworked. Elite-rank missions paying out 12k is flat-out insulting.

I agree, personally I don't think they should nerf Shadow missions at all, an Elite trader will get a 5-6mil mission for anything between 3-20T. Seems reasonable to me

 

[frostypaw]

That is exactly how the game works actually.
I have a quite profitable trading route between 2 Empire systems with 1 anarchy in between. You can guess (3 Attempts given) where the NPC interdictions happen (even without running Missions).
I could trade between 2 other systems with exclusively power-held systems in between and never be interdicted.

Tis true I've had similar experiences, but it's been too much of a microcosm. It was one or two systems here and there despite some quite random all the way cross-bubble routes.

 

[tarragon]

In other words: If you insist on playing the game in an un-fun way don't be surprised when you look around and realize you're not having any fun.

That's a mentality of a victim. Consider more understandable example of your (and ops) thinking: My partner is treating me badly.

a)I love my partner, it is my fault, i need to change, then it will get better.
b) To hell with the partner, i am off to find a better one.

 

[Boomer Kay]

Tis true I've had similar experiences, but it's been too much of a microcosm. It was one or two systems here and there despite some quite random all the way cross-bubble routes.

That is the political, economical and power shape of the galaxy, as FD imagines it to be in 3320. It's not like the Risk Boardgame with borders, chokepoints and a limited number of high value systems. 500 billion star systems that are all less than a whole real (ingame as well) day or two of travel away do not create a scarecty economy, fixed borders or chokepoints.

High value systems should be held by a band of ragtag Pirates, while the entire might of the Empire, Federation and Alliance combined just watched in awe? Just to create some "conflict" gameplay? Yea. Nope.
If you stop looking at games like EvE and their asinine ideas of how "stuff works", you might discover the depth of thought put into the ED universe.

 

[Vorxian]

That's a mentality of a victim. Consider more understandable example of your (and ops) thinking: My partner is treating me badly.

a)I love my partner, it is my fault, i need to change, then it will get better.
b) To hell with the partner, i am off to find a better one.

...interesting way to put it!

You're not wrong either! BUT, you could argue that marriage in the 1900s worked because a) divorce was taboo, but also because people worked at their relationship, it's a two way thing!
These days, we're in a 'disposable' culture. Phone breaks, throw away get a new. GF pees you off, get with that flirty a few doors up instead.. food breaks the sell-by-date, straight in the bin..

It's the difference I think between older and newer generation mentalities.

On topic:

me? I have a wife, daughter, 2 mortgages, and about 2 hours every 3 nights to play ED.. I have to primetime play this thing! I can do 2 hours finding some non spawning dude in xyz system for 100k credits, or I can grab me 60m credits in Robigo. My time is probably fuller doing Robigo, and feel I got something at the end of it. Will I be a sad panda if Robigo gets taken away? hells yeah. So now, instead I'm grinding my a-hole for imp rep, so I can get it on with a cutter. Am I space rich? depends on what rich means.. I can't buy a Cutter in any case with that rep-wall blocking me!

 

[frostypaw]

That is the political, economical and power shape of the galaxy, as FD imagines it to be in 3320. It's not like the Risk Boardgame with borders, chokepoints and a limited number of high value systems. 500 billion star systems that are all less than a whole real (ingame as well) day or two of travel away do not create a scarecty economy, fixed borders or chokepoints.

High value systems should be held by a band of ragtag Pirates, while the entire might of the Empire, Federation and Alliance combined just watched in awe? Just to create some "conflict" gameplay? Yea. Nope.
If you stop looking at games like EvE and their asinine ideas of how "stuff works", you might discover the depth of thought put into the ED universe.

Good lord man have you read any of my posts?!? You've pretty much spoken as if I've been arguing from an entirely different angle from day 1.... I hate Eve. I've never suggested any pirates should hold high value systems, i've never suggested they 'watch in awe' I just dunno where to start to reply rationally to much of that post :/

There's a swathe of badlands through the bubble, that's where i got pirated and I figured it made sense they'd be scratching out their living in such areas but it turned out to be much more random that's all I'm saying. Please, don't project eve-hate onto me, we probably entirely agree

 

[Cliffson]

Frak me..... it must be a blue moon, as I am fully in agreement with everything you say!. (apart from the pop you have at the PvEers , but I guess I cant expect the blue moon on a stick as well!)


CMDR Mad Mike
PvEer and proud... and still want a tough game!.

In terms of game design ideas Maj (and his compatriats) usually have good ideas, i find.

In terms of trading i can't imagine it'd be a hard idea to make work. Quickly off my head:

Give each system a price standard deviation based on the security level. Say 1% for high sec 2% for med 4%low 8% anarchy. Imports go up exports down etc.

Give each system a bonus to the specific imports and exports. ANDMAKE IT MATCH THE SYSTEM MAP INFO. Ahem.

Set security and pirate spawns appropriately. So no pirates in high se and near instant security wings, wings of pirates in anarchy and no police.

So trading a 10000 credit in demand good between highsec gives about 300 profit. Between anarchy 3200.

There's the motivation.

Apply higher variance to low value goods so newbs arnt stuffed.

 

[EdzUp]

I agree with the OP playing in a way to get the next ship just ends with you not having any ships once you hit the corvette.

For me I'm having a blast doing the triple Elite in a Side yeah its a long process but I'm not chasing the next big ship

 

[Karla]

I'm thinking that the problem with pirating not being viable is that trading itself isn't particularly time effective unless you do it in bulk. A pirate can't threaten others if they themselves are flying a transporter, and the cargo capacity of attack ships limits how profitable piracy can be. This also means that pirates need to constantly fly back to a station to sell a few cheap cannisters. Pirating on the high seas was different because a pirate could rob someone blind and carry everything away with them.

Pirates could use Anacondas, but the cost of repair is really high and it requires a lot of money to buy in the first place. An Asp or a Cobra would be the ideal pirating ship given that they can have quite a bit of cargo space, are quite nimble and can carry weapons. Their use would give transporters a chance to fight back. But they aren't a threat to the trader because it's easier for a transporter to just high wake it out without bothering to fight.

I'm thinking that there needs to be the ability to either transfer credits to another ship, or if FD don't like this then to write a cheque with an expiration date. The pirates would lose the cheque if they die before cashing it in. And the money could perhaps only be transferred when the trader reaches another station without dying. This motivates the pirate not to kill them and possibly even to escort them on safely. Obviously the cheques wouldn't be physical, but they could be a contract signed with a digital signature downloaded onto their ship's computer and which can be cashed in next time the pirate reaches a station.

The game of Elite is very much about time management and how many credits you earn per hour, so constantly having to go back to the station to sell a few cannisters costing a thousand credits each at the very most is not good use of your time. This way a pirate would be able to hang out in space for longer collecting cheques making it a far more viable occupation.

This would allow for trader and pirate to start negotiating rather than the trader to be immediately blown up. Traders would know this and therefore would be less scared of being pirated. They might then start returning to Open mode which would also help make piracy more viable.

This would have interesting consequences. Ships wouldn't even need to carry cargo in order to be pirated. Pirating would become more like a protection racket. This would encourage people to make more use of cheaper ships because if enough pirates demand too much money it would be cheaper to blow yourself up and pay the re-buy cost than to dock. It might also encourage people to dock more frequently in case they get pirated and don't want to return to the very start of their journey. Griefers would be working against the pirates' interest and so makes it an even more dangerous choice.

 

[Boomer Kay]

Please, don't project eve-hate onto me, we probably entirely agree

Sorry, that was not directed at "you".
Maybe I should have written "one" or "people that think stuff should work like in Risk the Boardgame". The points of gameplay are not "EvE exclusive" .. merely different game mechanics implemented.

And yes, ED makes it incredibely easy to have an easy game, if one chooses to do so. But there's people even more casual than me playing the game maybe 20 hours a month or less. They might want to have their Anaconda at one point in time, too .. even if it's slow and takes them three years. If you balance hourly income on those playing thousands of hours a year .. err .. those will get bored and leave anyway. The ones that are somewhere in between and can be kept playing are those a developer has to worry about.

I'm thinking that there needs to be the ability to either transfer credits to another ship ...

Or instead of flying a wing of 4 FDLs for "pirating", the "pirates" could fly 3 FDL and one T9.
The solo pirate has the uberest pirating vessels in the game with the Python and the Conda.

(and just to be my usual pedantic self .. I don't remember seeing anywhere that player piracy is supposed to be a financially viable career path .. see the respective piracy discussion)

 

[Derath]

Nobody pirates in a FDL they just pretend to do so at the very best its piracy-lite lol

and i'm fairly sure it was intended to be a viable career path it just isn't, having been consistently neglected

 

[excalibus]

High Security Systems should be safer that is a given, the issue you have is how lacklustre the actual trading dynamics in Elite Dangerous are.

There needs to be a reason to risk going into lower security and anarchy systems. Safe trade in safe space, lower reward.

The obvious solutions would be to buff the pay rates on all goods in these systems but to my knowledge that hasn't even been mentioned as an option with the next patch.
You would also need to heavily rank up the danger and skill of NPC's in these systems to stop everyone dropping into solo in Shieldless Cutters and making billions over a weekend.
The moment you make NPC's to hard, most of the PVE players scream they are OP.

They tried to sort of do this with Robigo smuggling and boom you have an weekend billionaires due to usual FD lack of testing or understanding of its player base.

Majinvash
The Voice of Open

Indeed there needs to be not only an economic benefit to flying into the lesser secure areas but more tangible risk involved in doing so requiring piloting / combat skill to successfully make a high profit in such areas.

Personally I feel the whole risk / rewards and crime system is a bit of a let down... when I am in my home system, I do a lot of assassinations and kill X type ships (clean and wanted, authority, traders, pirates, bounty hunters, nomads, celebrities, military leaders, politicians, makes no difference to me, if my minor facton wants them dead, they are killed... I can do this and kill say 100 authority ships, 50 traders, 30 bounty hunters for a few million credits, all the while without a noticable ramping up response from that target systems authority vessels, heck I can be openly hostile in a system to every faction and rarely get interdicted for that matter...

If I go on a mass murder spree then I should expect the authories to try and hunt me down with better ships or more of them and even sending bounty hunters after me who should then be able to follow me back to my home system when I jump out, but alas they do not...

Killing the BBS refresh on modeswitching would be a step in the right direction for equalising a lot of the 'exploitation' of missions such as those in Robigo...

I realise that in such busy systems there could become issues with people being able to select missions due to others taking them first etc.. so one possible solution is have the 'created' BBS list sent to each client, and allow multiple clients to select the 'same missions' if that makes any sense...

EG a BBS has a list at 9:00 am
Smuggle X to Y
Smuggle A to Y
Courier B to Y

Every player at the station while the mission is on the board could agree to run the mission once, and it would then dissappear from that clients list but no the other clients lists until they selected to do the mission

Everyone can take any of the missions and everyone gets to see the new missions posted every 5 minutes. Have the same set of missions for that station across all instances of that station at that point in time. This way mode switching would not benefit you because you would only see the missions you already can see in the current mode you are playing in. Transaction logging can still occur, it just means including a client identifier list for the 'transaction' and when the missions are completed the client ID for the completing player gets removed from the list at the end of the transaction... allowing each client that selected the mission to complete it...

How easily it can be implemented using the AWS / REDIS / MONGO system FD uses I cannot say, but it seems kind of logical to me... mission generated and stored in redis, client accepts mission, copy of transaction copied to that players 'mission inventory' and the client ID added to a list in redis linking it to the mission.

Excalibus
The Voice of the Personalities In My Head

 

[Majinvash]

Nobody pirates in a FDL they just pretend to do so at the very best its piracy-lite lol

and i'm fairly sure it was intended to be a viable career path it just isn't, having been consistently neglected

The FDL is fine as a pirate in part of a wing and if you fit it right can carry 32 tonnes but scooping with it is a pain in the butt.

Also anything that cannot at least masslock a python isn't worth considering.

Majinvash
The Voice of Open

 

[Derath]

The FDL is fine as a pirate in part of a wing and if you fit it right can carry 32 tonnes but scooping with it is a pain in the butt.

Also anything that cannot at least masslock a python isn't worth considering.

Majinvash
The Voice of Open

Pirating in a wing is one of the few things even less viable than pirating solo truly I have no respect for group piracy targets already stand no chance adding extras to share the loot with just seems pointless to me.

Edit: obviously understandable if your winging up to have fun with friends, but even then the FDL is playing a support role 32T of cargo space in a ship upwards of 100mil is stretching the limit of when something is viable, 32t is about asp or cobra levels.

 

[Majinvash]

Pirating in a wing is one of the few things even less viable than pirating solo truly I have no respect for group piracy targets already stand no chance adding extras to share the loot with just seems pointless to me.

Pure efficiency of motion.
The number of times we grabbed a Conda or T9 and got 200 + tonnes out of them made for a good day.
If not that, it helped to drop the shields and engines of a Conda before it could highwake.

My Pirate Python has about 110 tonnes of cargo space, my pirate Conda had about 200 tonnes and very little escaped The Code wings.

We had it all sewn up

Majinvash
The Voice of Open

 

[Boomer Kay]

Personally I feel the whole risk / rewards and crime system is a bit of a let down... when I am in my home system, I do a lot of assassinations and kill X type ships (clean and wanted, authority, traders, pirates, bounty hunters, nomads, celebrities, military leaders, politicians, makes no difference to me, if my minor facton wants them dead, they are killed... I can do this and kill say 100 authority ships, 50 traders, 30 bounty hunters for a few million credits, all the while without a noticable ramping up response from that target systems authority vessels, heck I can be openly hostile in a system to every faction and rarely get interdicted for that matter...

Have you checked the "bounties issued in system" in the Station Services? It's in the thousands and hundreds of thousands per day, even in low population systems - and I have no proof, but I'd suspect it also counts the NPC bounties that in turn are "farmeable" by "bounty hunters".

Your 180 aquired bounties is not even a drop in the ocean and in the current system not a reason for the cops to go all crazy.
Maybe the scale of this entire thing is too large to grasp. They might require to make things a bit more transparent. (and maybe that would depress even more players than being too rich, since then they officially get told that while they're king of Icy Body No 273842123454353 and have the right to *buy* a cutter, that's just tincups the empire hands out, because they can and have 273842123454354 more icy bodies in their domain to hand out kingdomships )

Only the ruling minor faction deploys security vessels, so by killing them, only your status with the ruling faction decreases. The rest might even like you better because of that and will gain influence. Engough to flip the system, if you keep killing enough of the ruling faction's ships.

Probably even rebalance it somewhat, without pushing the scale to the other side too much and make it unplayable.

 

[sewerratuk]

and very little escaped The Code wings.

We had it all sewn up

Majinvash
The Voice of Open

Aye, and that was probably a big part of the problem back then and its swung the other way now.
It seems that its hard getting the percentage game right. You shouldn't be able to win all of your pirating endeavours and traders shouldn't be able to escape them all