Wasn't arround at the Sothis / Ceos time, but when i read 8/mil per hour and python in one sentence i can see why they did something about it. But then again i can only compare that mostly to what a T9 / Conda earned arround before Horizons (which would be at the very best the same) and all the changes afterwards. Maybe someones cares to chime in an about number of those two ships arround those time (numbers with usual trade/missions that is). Just for my personal interest if someone would be kind enough.
I started playing in Jan. 2014 and my progression looked something like this. The numbers for the smaller ships have increased substantially but for me it was a gradual progression right up until the 2.2 nerf hit.
Sidewinder - Bulletin Board missions at 25k/hr, Rebuy 10k
Viper - Bounty Hunting at 100 k/hr, Rebuy 50k
Type 6 - Bulk Trading at 500k/hr, Rebuy 150k
Asp - Trading Rares at 1 mil/hr, Rebuy 600k
Vulture - Bounty Hunting at 2 mil/hr, Rebuy 1 mil
FAS - Bounty Hunting at 4 mil/hr, Rebuy 4.5 mil
Type 9 - Bulk Trading at 6 mil/hr, Rebuy 5 mil plus 5 mil cargo loss
Python - Sothis Runs at 8 mil/hr, Rebuy 7.5 mil
Anaconda - Sothis Runs at 12 mil/hr, Rebuy 20 mil
In general I experienced a very proportional progression of ship income, ship costs and reuby so the risk/reward was always balanced. Prior to the 2.2 nerf you could make more money in smaller ships than my progression above so the income earning potential would have been much faster for someone starting with Horizons rather than when the game first launched. For example, a Sothis run in an Asp with 64 tons of cargo would make you around 2-3 mil/hr, which was about twice as lucrative as I could make running rares in my Asp, so Sothis also served a purpose to help newer players "catch up" to the experienced players with a faster income progression, which I thought was a nice balance for players who were just getting started in the game.
There were some issues where players could make dramatically more than the above progression, but those were only with very specific activities that were not obvious unless you spent time on the forums and learned about them. The biggest issue was with Robigo smuggling missions where players would mode switch and stack them with minimal risk and make upwards of 20-25 mil/hr an hour in an Asp. I don't do smuggling and wasn't on the forums in the first year so I by the time I learned about Robigo it was alraday heavily nerfed, but I wasn't interested in smuggling anyways so probably wouldn't have bothered with it despite the earning potential.
My total assets after 1200 hours of gameplay are around 1.5 billion, with around 1.2 billion in ships and 300 million of cash. If you look at where I earned it, around 200 million was from RES bounty hunting, 200 million from bulk trading, 100 million from exploration/missions/CGs and around 1 billion from Sothis runs. If you look at my Python and Anaconda, however, they cost me a total of around 550 million to purchase and equip (150 mil for the Python and 400 mil for the Anaconda), plus many hours for the Engineering mods to make them competitive in combat against Elite NPCs. This represents over half of my Sothis profits so I had to reinvest a large proportion of my Sothis earnings back into ships that I was using to do the Sothis runs, which again was quite proportional to their earning potential.
The issue here is that the risk/reward balance of earning 8 mil/hr in a Python is actually very proportional to the ship and rebuy cost and is actually quite balanced. For the ship progression I listed above there was always the approximate balance where bounty hunting or trading was doing activities that would take me around 1-2 hours to cover my reuby. This was also true of Sothis runs in my Python or Anaconda. You were making more money, but the risks of losing your ship were proportionally higher. In fact the risks overall have increased given the issues with NPCs and Engineering mods, to the point that it is no longer worthwhile to try using the dedicated traders like the T6 and T9 to make those level of bulk trading profits given the higher interdiction risks and buggy interdiction problems.
Apparently FD doesn't play their own game, because to nerf all the activities in the game so heavily but to keep passenger missions at an equivalent level that we saw for incomes prior to 2.2 is basically telling me not to play the game, because all I do in the process is risk losing money instead of earning it. If the game activities were interesting enough on their own that might still give me some motivation to play, but there's nothing particularly challenging or interesting about following cops around in a RES to farm bounties or pressing jump 20 times. At this point I have over 1 billion worth of credits invested into a range of fully-equipped and Engineered ships but with 2.2 there is really nothing worthwhile for me to do with them.
