Belugas are popular among NPC's because even they recognize their superiority.
Mission payouts are only going to continue to decrease until they all pay 1 credit and we're capped at 1 mission at a time, because people go out of their way to find ways of gaming the play instead of playing the game.
Human nature I'm afraid. 'Gaming the play' is always going to happen...
Option A: Spend 10 hours running missions that pay a pittance to earn 1 million credits...
Option B: Spend 1 hour performing some legitimate game mechanic that FDev have included (call it an exploit if you wish but it really isn't - its permissible game play that FDev have included in their game either by design or by failed implimentation) that will pay out 10 million credits...
You can call it the 'Capitalist Curse' if you like, it doesn't matter. The end result is that games are designed around needing X number of credits to purchase item Y. While that mechanic drives much of the games functionality, with the exception of ranking. Gaming the Play is inevitably going to happen (and even then, players 'Game the Play' to rank up quickly). Its no good lamenting and blaming the players... You need to rethink the game design from scratch. What would a socialist game design look like for example?
Designing a mission system that pays 'Well Enough" not to need to 'Game the Play' will reduce its prevalence but I don't think you can ever stamp the practice out until you rethink game design from the ground up.
And its no good saying, players should be more patient and be prepared to work for 10 hours to achieve a given objective? Why should they if its obtainable in a tenth of the time via another game mechanic?
Much of the Engineers and collection of Materials and Data is an attempt to reduce the amount of Gaming that is happening. But there are obviously limits to that that can be achieved. Beyond a given point, players just get hacked off with the grind. Why do you think FDev included places like Dave's Hope into the game? As a Safety Valve mechanic...
TBH, I don't think FDev have a clear definitive model of how they want their game to function. Its not transparent to me anyway. The BGS, Financial model, Reward model and C&P model are all seriously flawed imo. At the very least, it often seems to be at odds with human nature anyway, if not out-right broken like the Penniless missions plague at the moment. Its just another 'bug' in the system no doubt...
As for the plethora of Belugas - thanks for the joke but its more than a little OTT [haha]
EDIT: While I appreciate that FDev wanted to show off their shiny new ship when it was released... It has now got rather tired and tedious seeing so many of them... Please Master of Minions ... can you re balance this for us now that the Beluga is established in game and we don't need to see them every 2 minutes like some FDev advert that they included something new in the game?
and I wasn't attempting to imply that 10 million credits per hour was a reasonable income rate. It obviously depends upon many factors and is outside the scope of this thread...
