To start with, I currently have about 200 mil credits in cash, 200 mil in ships/modules. So that sums 400 million credits in total assets.
Please do note that I pose absolutely zero intentions of bragging about my possessions, since I know there are truck- erm, Type-9 loads of CMDRs who have billions and billions of credits in their disposal.
The thing is, once you get past the Type-7/iClipper/Python milestone so that you can finally establish a steady and meaningful inflow of credits through commodity trading, it becomes trivially easy to gain an awful lot of credits in a relatively short period of time.
For me, I'm making average 20-30 million credits per evening which involves 3-4 hours of loop trading in my 'Conda which I don't even pay full attention to while I'm at it.
And to speak of risk, with a bit of cunning, you can avoid(not flee from) AI interdictions altogether so risk involved in trading is comparable to crushing an ant with your thumb. PvP interdictions should be a notch harder to evade but I have yet to encounter a single player pirate in more than three months of sporadic trading in my 'Conda. At least none in non-CG related systems.
So earning credits is fairly easy and safe. But let's put that aside for a moment now.
Because I'm not writing this post to cry 'Elite is too easy' or 'Nerf trading' like many others that were before me.
What I believe is that credits feel like they are pointless not because they are too easy to make, but because there just aren't enough activities in the game that you can spend your credits with.
Basically, the only purpose credits serve now is to buy ships/modules with them and nothing else. That means once you have bought your desired 'end game' ship and modules, credits have effectively outlived their usefulness at that very moment. For me, once I fully kit my Anaconda with the best jack-of-all-trades loadout, I wouldn't know where i could spend credits on any further. Probably I'd going to need some few extra millions for rebuys in case I blow up my Conda accidentally but that is more or less it.
Credits should serve more purpose, IMO. For instance, I think synthesis materials, engineers components, rare manufactured commodities, so on and so on, that in fact almost all stuff that exists in-game, should be allowed to be purchased with credits. Probably not from all stores galaxy wide, probably some rarer goods should only be available in certain select locations, or black markets for illegal goods(so that we can actually benefit from black markets), but generally I don't see why we can buy gold, silver and palladium but not vanadium or yttrium from markets. Or why we can sell painite to the market but not buy them from markets anywhere. It just doesn't feel fair. Of course, this change will make parts modding through engineers very, very trivial, so additional tweaks should be made on this side as well to keep the level of challenge unaffected.
More options to spend money on could be the power play. When you have like 2 billion credits in your pocket, wouldn't it be a more logical move to flat out go talk to the celebrity, and toss him some dozen million credits as donation and demand a higher position in their hierarchy? Rather than go hop in your T9, trucking materials yourself for many tedious hours?
The whole point is, once FDev has realized that they have made earning cash too easy, they chose the easier path to just avert away from the problem, rather than tackle it outright. So instead of rebalancing the credits earning/spending, they just chose to make credits irrelevant by adding things after things that you need but can't buy with credits. Naval rank was one, then Powerplay ratings, after that synthesis, now engineer favors/reputation/materials shenanigan.
Please, show some love for the credits. It is purely arbitrary and ridiculous that you can buy some stuff from the market but not others without any proper explanation. It's like going to a grocery store, and the clerk tells you that you can buy all the onions you wish, but for apples you're out of luck - the only way for you to get one is to plant an apple tree in your backyard yourself and pray it bears fruit in the coming fall.
Please do note that I pose absolutely zero intentions of bragging about my possessions, since I know there are truck- erm, Type-9 loads of CMDRs who have billions and billions of credits in their disposal.
The thing is, once you get past the Type-7/iClipper/Python milestone so that you can finally establish a steady and meaningful inflow of credits through commodity trading, it becomes trivially easy to gain an awful lot of credits in a relatively short period of time.
For me, I'm making average 20-30 million credits per evening which involves 3-4 hours of loop trading in my 'Conda which I don't even pay full attention to while I'm at it.
And to speak of risk, with a bit of cunning, you can avoid(not flee from) AI interdictions altogether so risk involved in trading is comparable to crushing an ant with your thumb. PvP interdictions should be a notch harder to evade but I have yet to encounter a single player pirate in more than three months of sporadic trading in my 'Conda. At least none in non-CG related systems.
So earning credits is fairly easy and safe. But let's put that aside for a moment now.
Because I'm not writing this post to cry 'Elite is too easy' or 'Nerf trading' like many others that were before me.
What I believe is that credits feel like they are pointless not because they are too easy to make, but because there just aren't enough activities in the game that you can spend your credits with.
Basically, the only purpose credits serve now is to buy ships/modules with them and nothing else. That means once you have bought your desired 'end game' ship and modules, credits have effectively outlived their usefulness at that very moment. For me, once I fully kit my Anaconda with the best jack-of-all-trades loadout, I wouldn't know where i could spend credits on any further. Probably I'd going to need some few extra millions for rebuys in case I blow up my Conda accidentally but that is more or less it.
Credits should serve more purpose, IMO. For instance, I think synthesis materials, engineers components, rare manufactured commodities, so on and so on, that in fact almost all stuff that exists in-game, should be allowed to be purchased with credits. Probably not from all stores galaxy wide, probably some rarer goods should only be available in certain select locations, or black markets for illegal goods(so that we can actually benefit from black markets), but generally I don't see why we can buy gold, silver and palladium but not vanadium or yttrium from markets. Or why we can sell painite to the market but not buy them from markets anywhere. It just doesn't feel fair. Of course, this change will make parts modding through engineers very, very trivial, so additional tweaks should be made on this side as well to keep the level of challenge unaffected.
More options to spend money on could be the power play. When you have like 2 billion credits in your pocket, wouldn't it be a more logical move to flat out go talk to the celebrity, and toss him some dozen million credits as donation and demand a higher position in their hierarchy? Rather than go hop in your T9, trucking materials yourself for many tedious hours?
The whole point is, once FDev has realized that they have made earning cash too easy, they chose the easier path to just avert away from the problem, rather than tackle it outright. So instead of rebalancing the credits earning/spending, they just chose to make credits irrelevant by adding things after things that you need but can't buy with credits. Naval rank was one, then Powerplay ratings, after that synthesis, now engineer favors/reputation/materials shenanigan.
Please, show some love for the credits. It is purely arbitrary and ridiculous that you can buy some stuff from the market but not others without any proper explanation. It's like going to a grocery store, and the clerk tells you that you can buy all the onions you wish, but for apples you're out of luck - the only way for you to get one is to plant an apple tree in your backyard yourself and pray it bears fruit in the coming fall.
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