Thargoid Material CGs: Why the easymode options?!?!

Jmanis

Jmanis
Ever since UAs came in the game I've craved a CG to ship the highly corrosive unknown materials. I've even submitted two CGs; first got rejected for being "too close to" an upcoming CG (which was the Meta Alloy CG that gave us CRCRs... personally I think that's wildly different but w/e), and the other after all the materials at US were found just didn't get a response.

People talk about the challenge of long-range hauling, but in my opinion it has nothing on the challenge of long-range hauling dangerous cargo. Without CRCRs, any more than 20 units in the hold can deliver a killing blow to your canopy, putting you on the clock. You can dock and repair sure, but all that introduces more time for your cargo to hit the hatch and jet into space, and also decreases the efficiency of your run. My record is around 50 with no CRCRs at the moment. It's really fun stuff.

So my heart lit up when I saw today:

ENGINEER APPEAL FOR THARGOID MATERIALS!

Hooray, I thought, my hopes and dreams have arrived. I read on...

"Aegis has placed an open order for a range of Thargoid materials for use in the programme. Aegis Core has pledged to reward pilots who deliver unknown technology samples, unknown biological matter,"... YES
"...ancient relics"... hmmm.. ok, i can see that....

"...and explosives"... whaaaaaaaaaaaaat ??

I read on to find the second CG has a similar inclusion, being Computer Components and Resonating Separators.

This is a pretty dumb selection of goods for both CGs

What matters in a general CG to a player is one of two things:
- Seeing the CG succeed at the highest tier; and/or
- Getting the biggest reward.

Both of these are contingent on one thing: Shipping the largest volume of goods. When I was shipping around large volumes of US materials, it took me roughly an hour to get 50 tonnes shipped somewhere. It's a painstaking process getting in the SRV and shipping 2t at a time to your ship, and it also took one logoff, and that was targeting *everything* in the site. And well,, I've been doing this for a while, so I know how to mitigate damage, and 50t is very risky. There's a good chance a lot of people would try to ship that many and fail.

Meanwhile, it'll take me 15 minutes to get a cutter, fly off to some station and get 650t of one of these market commodities. Over an hour that's 2600t, or over 50 times more effective a contribution to the CG. Even in a smaller ship for a newb who happens to know what he's doing, the time commitment to collect the materials means that in a cobra you can be 4 times as effective in terms of contribution.

So the problem is that shipping the unknown materials:
- Is way less effective for finishing the CG compared to hauling traditional materials. Pretty weird for a CG focused on collecting alien materials... Hope AEGIS get some good alien tech researching a billion tonnes of human explosives...
- Paired with above, it's also a poor way to get recognised by the CG^ in terms of contribution rank.
- Hauling the market mats is way less risky than hauling unknown materials.

So how to fix it?

Pretty easy.

Option 1: Make each unit of Thargoid materials delivered count for 20 units in the CG contribution. That's a generous compromise, considering the aggregate of effects should actually result in each unit counting for 100, but with this, 50t of a material would count for 1000t to the contribution and take an equivalent effort to get.

Option 2: Make the CGs separate. Make one be for all the traditional goods, and the other *only* for the Thargoid materials. Sure it spanners the reasons these CGs are being run, but hey, I don't write the lore. Tweak the target numbers down for the fact you estimate 50t an hour per commander who is good at it, rather than 2600t/h for the market commodity CG, and it's balanced.

If you don't believe me...

Go look on the CG forum at the moment... everybody is shipping market commodities because it's overwhelmingly easier
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/377760-Engineers-Appeal-for-Thargoid-Material-Liz-Ryder
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...-Appeal-for-Thargoid-Material-Professor-Palin

The stakes are high on the outcomes of these CGs, with anti-thargoid weaponry and sensors on the plate of rewards. Why would you waste time harvesting thargoid materials for a thargoid material CG, when traditional materials are so much more effective to ship.

^ You can form an argument that the "reward" comes from the hauling of the materials. 50t will get you 6m in the hold. But I can do that any day of the week. In a CG, it's really all about participating in the CG.
 
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M. Volgrand

M. Volgrand
Easy answer: Because while unimaginative noobs make 300LY runs to the bubble to carry few hundred tonnes of whatever is needed, I´m doing my runs to the wreckages and selling at the same times Unknown Biological samples for 577.000 each.

I will not get into the top 5%, but I assure you I will get about 100 millions by the end of this CG.

Ah, the magic of finances!
 

Jmanis

Jmanis
M. Volgrand said:
Easy answer: Because while unimaginative noobs make 300LY runs to the bubble to carry few hundred tonnes of whatever is needed, I´m doing my runs to the wreckages and selling at the same times Unknown Biological samples for 577.000 each.

I will not get into the top 5%, but I assure you I will get about 100 millions by the end of this CG.

Ah, the magic of finances!
Click to expand...

That's kinda my point. I already did that and made my millions when the US first dropped in game, didn't need a CG to do that...

I just would've thought the delivery of Thargoid materials to a CG entitled "Engineer Appeal for Thargoid Materials" would actually be meaningful, but the design of the CG means it's not.
 

M. Volgrand

M. Volgrand
Jmanis said:
That's kinda my point. I already did that and made my millions when the US first dropped in game, didn't need a CG to do that...

I just would've thought the delivery of Thargoid materials to a CG entitled "Engineer Appeal for Thargoid Materials" would actually be meaningful, but the design of the CG means it's not.
Click to expand...

Yep I kinda agree. However my though went immediatly to the "Great, they will all be distracting getting supplies from the bubble while I make my millions!". So, to be honest, I don´t really care.
 

damon8r351

damon8r351
Well I'll give you two personal reasons why I'm just shipping Explosives to Eurybia and calling it done:

In-character: I've got a bad feeling about things and a hunch is telling me to stick close to home, yet I need cash to put down on a purpose-built explorer. Maia takes me too far away, so Eurybia is the compromise option.

Out-of-character: I'm sick of the Pleiades because I just spent practically the entire month of August systematically checking out most of the major sites involved in the Thargoid arc, missing out on the last few CGs in the process. I want something else to do in different surroundings, so Eurybia it is.

The way I see it, they've given you two options: the easy way or the hard way. Pick whichever level of commitment you want. If you want to transport only Thargoid bio-tech at great personal risk to yourself and your ship, then I salute you; I too often take the more personally taxing route because it's more satisfying. If you want to take the easy way just so you can say you participated and get your reward, then I'm not one to judge; it's called working smarter not harder. I personally see it as being up to the player which way they want to play it, FDev just supplied the options.
 
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Jmanis

Jmanis
damon8r351 said:
The way I see it, they've given you two options: the easy way or the hard way. Pick whichever level of commitment you want. If you want to transport only Thargoid bio-tech at great personal risk to yourself and your ship, then I salute you; I too often take the more personally taxing route because it's more satisfying. If you want to take the easy way just so you can say you participated and get your reward, then I'm not one to judge; it's called working smarter not harder. I personally see it as being up to the player which way they want to play it, FDev just supplied the options.
Click to expand...

But this continues to be my point... why have a CG literally titled "Engineer request for Thargoid Materials" when the design of the CG (both of which are already "successful") means the most meaningful way to contribute to the CG is via market-purchasable goods which can be brought in at ridiulously higher volumes? It's a really dumb combination of goods to have in a CG.

When I got this CG put up a while back, I thought long and hard about the types of goods being shipped, the "roleplay" story aspect and the way commanders might go about it. It's not listed on that article but the goods in question were:
Nerve Agents - Hard to find, but very high profit margins.
Battle Weapons, Personal Weapons - Relatively abundant and good profit margins, but likely to go out of stock.
Pesticides, Hydrogen Fuel - Very easy to find, but poor profit margins.

This might not sound too different, except when you think about the markets these goods were available at and how players would interact with the CG.

The high profit items are generally illegal, but I knew my faction owned lots of neighbouring systems which supplied these goods legally. Nerve agents, the highest profit item, came from surface Refineries. Pesticides also came from refineries, so if you got there and the nerve agents were all sold out, you had the backup of pesticides and hydrogen fuel.

Likewise Battle and Personal weapons came from Industrial... but if they were dry you could guaranteed always find hydrogen fuel as a "second place" item.

Either way, regardless of which item you went for, you could contribute to the CG, which is the key part at the end of it all.

These CG's are "one or the other" setups, and the fact is that it's impossible to even remotely come close to significant contributions by fetching the CG's namesake materials, which is just dumb, especially for a CG where the rewards are beyond the standard fare that happens and *actually* have impact on the story. People want to be part of that, and the best way to do it is to not ship Thargoid materials at all.
 

damon8r351

damon8r351
Jmanis said:
But this continues to be my point... why have a CG literally titled "Engineer request for Thargoid Materials" when the design of the CG (both of which are already "successful") means the most meaningful way to contribute to the CG is via market-purchasable goods which can be brought in at ridiulously higher volumes? It's a really dumb combination of goods to have in a CG.

When I got this CG put up a while back, I thought long and hard about the types of goods being shipped, the "roleplay" story aspect and the way commanders might go about it. It's not listed on that article but the goods in question were:
Nerve Agents - Hard to find, but very high profit margins.
Battle Weapons, Personal Weapons - Relatively abundant and good profit margins, but likely to go out of stock.
Pesticides, Hydrogen Fuel - Very easy to find, but poor profit margins.

This might not sound too different, except when you think about the markets these goods were available at and how players would interact with the CG.

The high profit items are generally illegal, but I knew my faction owned lots of neighbouring systems which supplied these goods legally. Nerve agents, the highest profit item, came from surface Refineries. Pesticides also came from refineries, so if you got there and the nerve agents were all sold out, you had the backup of pesticides and hydrogen fuel.

Likewise Battle and Personal weapons came from Industrial... but if they were dry you could guaranteed always find hydrogen fuel as a "second place" item.

Either way, regardless of which item you went for, you could contribute to the CG, which is the key part at the end of it all.

These CG's are "one or the other" setups, and the fact is that it's impossible to even remotely come close to significant contributions by fetching the CG's namesake materials, which is just dumb, especially for a CG where the rewards are beyond the standard fare that happens and *actually* have impact on the story. People want to be part of that, and the best way to do it is to not ship Thargoid materials at all.
Click to expand...

Personally, I really don't worry about what other people are doing with a CG, just my own contribution. If it's a matter of getting in the top 25% or top 10, then I can respect that, but I'm working with an AspX that has a 112 ton capacity on a good day, against people flying Cutters who can fit more cargo in one slot than I can in my entire ship. :p

Also, I got this weird neurotic tendency to worry that I'm making too much money too fast in whatever game I'm playing with that mechanic.
 

Jmanis

Jmanis
MadDogMurdock said:
Option 3: Fix CGs so that all the items need to be delivered in sufficient quantities for the CG to succeed.

Bonus by-product of doing this - supply chain coding for more realistic system economic models
Click to expand...

Oh yes, that too :)

I want to make it clear... having the requirement to ship things like the explosives, computer components etc. *is* fine... but with the way these CGs are set up it completely diminishes the effectiveness of delivering Thargoid materials in terms of contributions to the CG.

EDIT: In lieu of that actually being something FD can do in the game, that's why I suggested the two CGs split down the line of one CG for bulk, market-available goods, and the other for *only* thargoid materials.

I really don't worry about what other people are doing with a CG
Click to expand...

It's not really about what other people are doing; it's that the setup of the CG completely devalues the contribution of people shipping the CG's namesake materials.

Maybe we should go with Option 4: Rename CG to "Engineers request Explosives, Computer Components and Resonating Separators"... coz that's what they're getting.
 
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CapitanAceRimmer

CapitanAceRimmer
Why not have it so that it is the value of what you contribute that counts rather than the quantity. Also this system would favour miners as they would get more profit per ton delivered.

Another option is to adjust the quantities of each commodity required to specific targets. As the targets are reduced by players deliveries so the demand goes down as does the inflated price.
 
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Phazon Xenomorph

Phazon Xenomorph
I wish we would know the rewards of the CG instead of having to guess. I mean its cause we dont know the rewards that some CG's gave sup par rewards or features in areas of the game (like obsid orbital not having a shipyard). I need a reason to log in and be bothered to do anything for a CG, but without knowing the rewards what's the point.
 

kofeyh

kofeyh
Why are explosives, which are typically part of missile ordnance, stupid? How is even asking this question, right after a trailer comes out expressly showing and advanced new missile system, complete with explosions, from explosives, confusing, or easy mode?

For the love of.. I don't care if they do, or don't include purchasable goods. Arguing against an actual, logical component (versus the daft selection for other trade CGs) is just illogical, puritanical nonsense. <3
 

damon8r351

damon8r351
Is that why we have small Corrosion Proof Cargo Racks and Obsidian Orbital is subpar as a station? Because previous CGs involving them didn't hit a high enough tier? I always wondered that.
 

Phazon Xenomorph

Phazon Xenomorph
damon8r351 said:
Is that why we have small Corrosion Proof Cargo Racks and Obsidian Orbital is subpar as a station? Because previous CGs involving them didn't hit a high enough tier? I always wondered that.
Click to expand...

Yes. Not knowing the rewards or benefits of the higher tiers has caused this cause of the rewards only being ever listed as "global rewards". It's really frustrating to know what to bother with and what to ignore.
 

damon8r351

damon8r351
Oh, that's what they meant by "global rewards". I always thought those were meaningless buzzwords since whatever those were weren't readily apparent in my inventory or credit balance. Good to know now. Those two were before my time though.
 

Winterwalker

Winterwalker
Thargoid storyline is pretty new (ie. it goes mainstream next week really, not even out yet) and though the OP throws out an interesting variant for CG's, like rare goods trading, where distance would be as important as tonnage in completing the CG, maybe the OP is over thinking just a bit?

1. The CG offers a way for people new to the Thargoid storyline to begin to engage with it.
2. The alternative commodities allow people without Horizons to engage with it.
3. What's to say the Engineers won't be adapting human technologies to work against Thargoids? (explosives with a dash of unknown DNA mixed in ..ie. unknown technologes not compatable with human ships but hybrid systems are.)
4. The 2.4 beta offered a decal for people involved in the CG so there is obviously a way for |FD to search a database of participants. As part of ED development in general - or this storyline specifically - I wouldn't rule out something going on under the hood.
 
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