Mode switching for missions and Smeaton Orbital [200mill/hour]

[Iron Duke]

I'd been reading through the thread for a couple of days and then today in a moment of madness tried this out. I simply couldn't take it after two runs. If people want to spend their time board hopping and then spending 40 minutes watching a counter clock down, then good luck to them! I was trying to stick forks in my eyes by the end of the second run, but fortunately I had a VR headset on. Please FD, bring back Robigo with the Psycho NPC's - at least that was enjoyable!

 

[Razar]

Nah, you're wrong there.

By not taking advantage of mode-switching, you're always going to be at a disadvantage to somebody who has.

You're going to be at a disadvantage in obvious ways such as in PvP, you're going to be at a disadvantage when it comes to participating in various specialised pursuits such as mining, trading or exploring and you're going to be at a disadvantage when it comes to participating on competitive events such as CGs and BGS related stuff.

If you don't care about being at a disadvantage, that's cool and good luck to you. [up]
It doesn't mean that disadvantage isn't there though.

I don't see any difference between someone who does that, and someone else who has spent hundreds of hours grinding the long way to get it, because they wanted to. I don't have my ships setup with any weapons, except for 1. That is my T-10. And I don't fly it for a few reasons. One, I don't have enough credits to rebuy it. Two, I didn't have enough money to fully upgrade it. And three, I am just not into fighting that much. I have played other MMOs, and made it into the top PVPers. Honestly, I am bored with PVP.

But, I am at no more a disadvantage to someone that used board hopping, than someone that took time to grind it. Someone interdicted me the other week after I got my Python. Dropped me from supercruise, just to slaughter me. Didn't matter how he got the ship, and weapons it would have been the same result.

If I did want to do PVP, I would do it like I did in other games. I would research everything I can about it in this game, and not even start till I have the best setup. I never go into anything like that without at least doing some prep work.

Mining, I will not start till I have enough of the stuff needed to do it. So, if they start before me, they just get more credits from mining faster. But, after I save up enough credits to do mining, and have equipment that is just as good, then where is the disadvantage. I honestly don't see how someone board hopping to do passenger missions so that they can start mining before me is much of a disadvantage. Its not like they are the first to do it. There are ones that spent a lot of time grinding to get the stuff before they even started playing.

If I was participating in those events, they wouldn't put me at any more of a disadvantage than someone else who grinded out the credits for the more expensive equipment to do it.

If you are talking about board hopping during such events, then again they will need to compete with more experienced players. I know someone that board hops. I have no problem with him. He explained what it was to me. But, I am disabled, and cannot work. So I am able to spend far more time than he is in the game. Doing the same missions, I am still able to do more than he is.

But from my experience in MMOs, especially with PVP, I know that even ones that use things like this to their advantage are at a disadvantage to someone else. Might be to someone else that does the same, or someone that doesn't. But anyone that takes the shortcut to do things like this will miss out on the experience. That experience make one a better pilot in everything they do with their ships.

I don't mean to come across as a D-bag if I did. I am only trying to explain my view on it. I may be wrong. But at this point (keep in mind I only have a little less than 200 hours in the game) I am not seeing any big issue, even if I were to do the events. I will not do them for the reward, but because it adds something different to the game than what I am now doing. I love to do roleplay. So using the rescue of dying people is not something I play as a competition. (Again, that is just my play style.)

Razar.

 

[Flatkat]

The system I pick my passengers up from (not for the system in this thread) has five stations/planetary bases within 9 ls of each other.

Care to give me a hint?

 

[Morbad]

You're going to be at a disadvantage in obvious ways such as in PvP

My refusal to mode switch or abuse other cases of instancing impersistence is precisely why I can only manage dozens or hundreds of rolls on certain items when other can manage hundreds or thousands. I just did my final set of DD5 rolls, a ritual I've been doing for over a year trying to get decent drives for my FDL...still no luck.

[video=youtube;LoHsE7ewxCY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoHsE7ewxCY[/video]

Best roll I got in that set falls well short of the best roll I have in storage, which in turn falls well short of the rolls I regularly see fielded by several top-self combat pilots...some of whom simply got lucky, but also some who were able to roll an order of magnitude more than myself with less effort.

This is a garbage argument; it's akin to saying someone who has more hours a week to play the game, puts me at a disadvantage because I may have less.

And that would also be true.

I'm as competitive as I am, despite my unwillingness to use shortcuts I don't think were intended to be there, and which certainly should not be there, because I can afford to mostly make up for it in raw time played.

I don't see any difference between someone who does that, and someone else who has spent hundreds of hours grinding the long way to get it, because they wanted to.

That's the same as saying you don't see the difference between playing or not playing the game.

If I did want to do PVP, I would do it like I did in other games. I would research everything I can about it in this game, and not even start till I have the best setup.

Sounds pretty backwards to me. "Best" setup is highly subjective, and not experiencing a wide variety of ships, equipment, and degrees of engineering will leave one with major gaps in practical knowledge.

But from my experience in MMOs, especially with PVP, I know that even ones that use things like this to their advantage are at a disadvantage to someone else. Might be to someone else that does the same, or someone that doesn't. But anyone that takes the shortcut to do things like this will miss out on the experience. That experience make one a better pilot in everything they do with their ships.

The short cut in this case allows one to have better equipment, and more experience because less time needs to be spent getting the equipment, leaving more time to use it.

 

[GJ51]

I recently did 28 G5 FSD rolls and never got over 50%

So it goes

 

[Nilt]

Care to give me a hint?

Me too, me too!

 

[kofeyh]

And that would also be true.

I'm as competitive as I am, despite my unwillingness to use shortcuts I don't think were intended to be there, and which certainly should not be there, because I can afford to mostly make up for it in raw time played

Perhaps, to be fair, it's not as unintended as people would like to believe. Whenever there is more than one way to do a thing, people will self-organise into groups to lament at least one of those options, out of personal opinion. There is a bias that basically says the more someone doesn't accept or like a thing, the less they believe it should exist.

The thing is; this is as much a credit sink game, as it is time sink. How people arrive at any particular destination, isn't actually really overly relevant in a part-sandbox game like Elite. There's this notion, that's perpetuated, that there are "correct" ways to engage with the game.

This is demonstrably irrelevant at this point. Not even the developer agrees with that (for the most part). The resulting choices commanders have, belies that they (Frontier) do not specifically have a chosen/ expected approach. A game that offers choice, automatically creates contention in perspectives. That's not a bad thing, unless it's unduly acted upon. The thing is, you can ostensibly do your thing, I can do mine, and we're not extensively impacting each other in doing so.

The problems start, when people believe they are being impacted, when they aren't, and then agitate for changes, based on that flawed notion. The game is certainly very broken for all manner of reasons; but folks having choice to elect how they engage, isn't something to be resolved. Sandy has, for all the right reasons decided to review engineering; but he has fallen into the same "correct way to play" mentality that's become all consuming for a lot more commanders than it should.

We're going to see some really really good changes bookended by truly barbaric levels of enforced 'progression' and grind, because of that flawed notion that the solution to engineering is to make progressing through grades 1-5, a virtually endless war of attrition. And we think the level of repetition is bad now..

At the end of the day, the developer is going to make decisions that may not be personally agreeable; but if this none-the-less improves the value proposition of the game, then that's something to support. I struggle with supporting the notion that you have to make everything a war of attrition though. That's never going to provide the outcome people believe it will. It never has.

Effectively, the developer has struggled to add 'challenges', and so a percentage of the player base have co-opted 'progression' as the defacto challenge, instead. The thing is; they're two different sides of the same coin. Both are required. And, arguably, there are precious few challenges within elite. Perhaps if there were more challenges, then the need for progression to be the challenge, would diminish.

But I digress. One can argue that mode switching perhaps wasn't intended to be used; however the developer has had ample chances to invalidate the value of doing so, and has in every case, reverted changes to missions, on variously vague grounds. Which suggests to me, that the developer has potentially realised that people endlessly mode switching actually solves the issue of availability better than they can.

Because there's preciously little other reason for the developer to be so hell bent on maintaining the status-quo.

 

[Razar]

That's the same as saying you don't see the difference between playing or not playing the game.

That's not the same at all. If someone else takes a shortcut, it doesn't keep you from playing the game. Just like it isn't like they are not playing the game just because they take a shortcut. You are both reaching for a goal you each want. They just get it faster. Personally, I don't have a problem with it. Even when I played PVP in other games, I didn't have a problem with others doing it.

It isn't like they are combat logging. That is a cheat. Here, they are just getting better equipment faster. And the problem with the engineers is the same problem with any gamble system. And I use the term gamble system because that is what it is. You are taking something that has value (even if only in the game), and paying it for a chance roll. When that is put into any game, there are always going to be people willing to do things to get more rolls with less time invested. If it isn't board hopping, it will be something else. If there is a way, they will find it.

Sounds pretty backwards to me. "Best" setup is highly subjective, and not experiencing a wide variety of ships, equipment, and degrees of engineering will leave one with major gaps in practical knowledge.

I meant the best setup for my play style. You don't need to use everything in the game to know what will work best together. Just like you don't need to use a module that has the letter D to know that it is lighter. You don't need to use a weapon to know what its fire rate, and damage output is. The only thing that you will need to actually use to get a feel for is the ship itself. Everything else can be figured out by simple research. But ship handling is the only thing that needs to be experienced with.

And, the best setup for me would also depend on if I am going to be hunting Thargoid, NPC, or other players. NPC and players act differently. The NPC are easy to take down 1-on-1. Another player will be different, because they are not scripted. The Thargoid are just DPS sponges.

I have never played a game where I couldn't research the weapons, and gear/equipment, and create the best build for me. I have even been able to create builds in games that let me do things that others said couldn't be done.

The short cut in this case allows one to have better equipment, and more experience because less time needs to be spent getting the equipment, leaving more time to use it.

I was talking about the experience from getting the things they need. Honestly, if it is PVP, and someone uses a shortcut to get the best ship and gear faster, they are only going to be pointing and shooting faster. During combat it is harder to get better at the precision needed to be better. Also, if they are getting quicker kills because they are using gear that the ones they are competing against don't have yet, then they will not be able to do as good when those players get the same level equipment. (This is generally speaking. There are some who are exceptionally good at PVP. These people will be that good no matter if the did or didn't have that experience.)

Personally, I say, "It's a game, and the missions and events are meant to be fun. I don't play the game for rewards as much as I play it just to have fun." I was getting killed multiple times at one station by a griefer (bully). I was laughing about it each time. I made it a mini-game for me. See if I could squeeze past them without getting killed. If I take the "game" seriously, then I would have had a problem with it. But, these are just my own opinions. As I said before, I may be wrong, but this is just the way I personally see it.

I do understand that others do take the games they play seriously, and I have no problem with that. But in the end, it all boils down to what the developers decide to do. And if they leave it to a vote for the players to choose, I wouldn't even cast a vote, because I don't let it affect me at all.

Razar.

 

[Red Fox Four]

I went there, in my courier, as it's fast, just to see what you meant. It's like getting to Hutton, takes forever lol

From you enter the system it takes almost exactly 40 minutes to fly there in supercruise. I landed a tad after the 40 minute mark when I timed it, but that also included an interdiction by a Viper Mk4 which I submitted to and destroyed.

Not a short flight, but easily done while having something to eat and watching Netflix or Youtube on 2nd monitor

 

[Red Fox Four]

This would require logic, which OP clearly has an issue with. Otherwise they'd see that one thing being highly profitable doesn't somehow make every other activity automatically pointless. If it does for them, they probably need some therapy ...

I have no issues with logic.

You can make billions without ever using an Anaconda for this.

Anaconda is just an example ship to get since it has no rank requirement and most new players aim for the Anaconda first as their initial 'big ship'.

Furthermore you can use an Anaconda to earn enough money for a second Anaconda, or a Cutter, or Corvette, or Type 10 or a multitude of other ships.

Not sure why you are getting hung up on "using anaconda to get anaconda" and deliberately sidestepping the entire discussion. Is it just to create a premise for insulting me?

And no, just because I prefer to use one of the most lucrative method to earn profits when my goal is to earn credits and thus value the methods that generate more than 10 times less profit per hour as pointless, it does not mean I need therapy.

Not sure why you would think I need therapy because of this. Do you think everyone who prefers to do things in the most efficient way needs therapy? If that is the case you have seriously odd way of viewing the world.

 

[Red Fox Four]

If it does nothing, then why do you do it?

I do it to earn money, just like everyone else.

At some point I will bother with unlocking the navy requirements for the larger ships, and with the new Krait and Chieftain coming in 2018, as well as possible fleet carriers (which no doubt will come at an exorbiant price) then I want to build up some money so I can afford them (or share the cost if possible in the case of fleet carriers, but we don't know how those will work just yet).

Just because I question how extremely simple it is, even for a new player (as long as they have knowledge of these methods), to earn inexhaustible amounts of money doesn't mean I'm 'holier than thou' and don't use them myself. What I do know is that thanks to these methods I can afford all the biggest ships in the game with minimal effort, and promptly waste them as much as I want since the insurance cost for a loss is a drop in the bucket compared to how fast you can earn the money back. Insurance, even though it's between 15-50 million (depending on ship and fittings) is completely insignificant.

Is this a good thing? A question which is even more to the point in Open Play and PvP where zero risk means killing your enemy has no impact at all. They'll simply return in the exact same ship with the exact same modules and do it all over again.

I question if it's good design to have these inexhaustible wells of infinite money. I'm not passing judgement on those who use them. If any judgement is to be passed it is towards the game design; "Hate the game, not the player.".

 

[kofeyh]

Anaconda is just an example ship to get since it has no rank requirement and most new players aim for the Anaconda first as their initial 'big ship'.

People are always going to gravitate to a highly effective generalist ship, when the game ostensibly heavily rewards doing so.

Furthermore you can use an Anaconda to earn enough money for a second Anaconda, or a Cutter, or Corvette, or Type 10 or a multitude of other ships.

You can use anything else to achieve the same thing too. I think that's less to do with what ship is used, but the usual defacto response that is "use anaconda" because frontier just love that ship so much, they will literally compromise every ship and every mechanic to protect it.

When even the developer is a bit myopic over the mighty 'conda, you sort of have to take a step back and wonder if it's overly sane to endlessly argue the point.

To be fair, the OP reads essentially as though choice is irrelevant, that there's some correct way to play, and ignores that the developer has repeatedly wound back changes that actually pretty much invalidate mode switching. As soon as mission counts increase and availability more or less makes changing instances irrelevant, the complaints start about people running too many missions at once, aka stacking. And if it's not stacking, then it's the credits-per-hour boondoggle.

I have no idea if that was the intent? But it sure reads like it. At a certain point, it's potentially helpful to take a step back, and realise that not everyone has the same goals, that choices exist and aren't something to be removed and that an offline mode isn't ever going going to happen. Also credits are essentially meaningless whilst they can't be traded. Which they can't be.

One can get super very angry that other players don't have the same goals or interests. And then massively agitate for that to "go away" because it's not considered relevant. Or one can understand what the developer has tried to do, and maybe encourage them to spend more time on improving the experience, rather than gating someone else's.

Honestly, I'd rather the developer just leave the mission system alone at this point; clearly they aren't going to fix it without it being wound back again, so perhaps if they could move to other areas of the game and improve those, it'd be a better use of their time.

 

[Stealthie]

Perhaps, to be fair, it's not as unintended as people would like to believe. Whenever there is more than one way to do a thing, people will self-organise into groups to lament at least one of those options, out of personal opinion. There is a bias that basically says the more someone doesn't accept or like a thing, the less they believe it should exist.

You're either missing the point or inferring things based on your own opinion.

The point, as far as I'm concerned, is that we currently have one facet of the gameplay which is vastly more rewarding than others.

I see no reason why, for example, shipping cargo or doing recovery/collection missions with destinations a long way from the jump-in point shouldn't reward the player similarly to passenger missions.
Or why combat missions that involve similar amounts of travel shouldn't pay considerably more, given the elevated risk.

Why should a player who wants to "blaize their own trail" in a trading, mining or bounty-hunting career be limited to making Cr3m per hour while only a player willing to carry out passenger missions can earn Cr100m or more per hour?

This makes no sense in either gameplay terms or in lore terms.

So, what should the dev's do?
Should they increase the payouts for all missions to match the payouts from passenger missions?
If they do that, they're going to completely decimate all sense of progression through the game.
Half a dozen hours doing anything would mean you're pretty-much set for life.

Seems like the only reasonable course of action should be to balance the payouts from passenger missions and other similar missions so they're equal and at a level which requires a significant effort to obtain all the nice things.

It's a little ironic that the people defending the current state of passenger missions often complain that "people want everybody to play the way they want to" when, in fact, it's the game which currently compels players to play in a certain way instead of allowing people to "blaize their own trail" in a variety of equally rewarding ways.

 

[Muetdhiver]

I get your point. What we have had since launch in term of payouts is the following :

Gross imbalance, with a credit farm whack-a-mole play by FD : Rares, Seeking goods, Sothis runs, Combat mission stacking, Obsidian Orb missions, High ls passenger transport, etc...

In the ideal world, all the activities should pay similarly. I must say the situation is better than at launch, where it was pretty much go trade or go home, unless one engaged in the seeking goods stuff.
However, ED has those money farms that give 10x the credits per / h compared to anything else. Is it bad ? good ?

Here is my take : ED progression works well till you get ~100-200M. After that, things become really, really grindy. And by grindy I mean : repeating the same low skill activity over and over again.
It's not effort, and does not bring joy to most players (I feel). In that regard, I'm relieved that we got those money trains, as they allow to free players from the grind and let them choose what to do
based on interest and fun (intrinsic reward) instead of what pay most (extrinsic reward). Don't get me wrong, progression is fun, so long as things are paced in a reasonnable fashion. Past 200M, I think
that the pacing is off, and progression as access to stuff is mostly over.

What I would like to see : Instead of highly rewarding low skill repetitive tasks, reward high skill ponctual tasks. Have mission that pays 50M for an assassination contract, but have it as hard as a thargoid basilisk.
Have rare goods delivery runs that works as a race (ala buckyball) between players taking it : register the best times. New record ? Big payout. Top percentile of times ? Good payout. Bottom 20 % ? Thanks for participating.

FD, please, Reward skill, not time spent. And please, keep high paying activities in the game, just have them for all paths.

 

[kofeyh]

You're either missing the point or inferring things based on your own opinion.

Possibly? I'm human.

The point, as far as I'm concerned, is that we currently have one facet of the gameplay which is vastly more rewarding than others.

This is going to happen, on and off, across really any mechanic. Forever. Something is going to pay more credits, than something else. If you want to call that rewarding, be my guest. I'll just call it Monday, because of all the things to be concerned about, as far as longevity is concerned; credits are the least relevant.

Why? Because if people play, and never stop, they will eventually accrue billions. One's credit balance is no less a cumulative stat than anything else. It doesn't fundamentally matter how long it takes, if that is the eventual outcome. If people continue to play, they will eventually amass a fortune. It's as simple as that.

It's no different to ranks; eventually, if you play long enough, you will hit elite in something. Because it's accumulating over time. Again, how fast that happens, is meaningless if will happen eventually.

That frontier cannot balance anything to save their lives, should be the least explosive and confrontational comment to make, in the history of ever. We already know that. This became SOP when engineering dropped. Pretending that half of what we have, isn't intentional, is frankly delusional.

You're arguing, essentially, that the tide shouldn't come in as fast as it might be, today, in one area. This is despite the fact that it's going to come in regardless, and the tide will always move faster somewhere, than somewhere else.

Just like the accumulation of rank, that will eventually everyone will be elite in something, if they keep playing. That they will accrue wealth, if they keep playing; how that happens, may change from update to update; but it's going to happen.

Because that's how the developer has decided to meter success. Accumulation. Everything is essentially a cumulative total. Everything. I can understand you aren't happy. But this is the way it is, m8. That's just how the developer is going to do things.

So you can either recognise this, for your own sanity, or continue to believe there is some ideal, that surely the developer means; when cleary they don't. I hate being blunt, but I am sort of sensing you're getting very angry over something that frankly isn't worth your time or effort to get angry about.

They aren't worth it, Stealthie. Frontier aren't going to change. I agreed with a lot of what you said, a long time ago. And then I realised sh*t just was not going to change. It's not going to change. So I could either stop playing, or get over it and make the best of it I can.

I chose the latter. No-one said the game was going to do everything everyone wants. It's just not possible. But this steadfast belief the developer surely intends something else, when the copious proof is that they aren't, isn't healthy.

 

[Red Fox Four]

People are always going to gravitate to a highly effective generalist ship, when the game ostensibly heavily rewards doing so.



You can use anything else to achieve the same thing too. I think that's less to do with what ship is used, but the usual defacto response that is "use anaconda" because frontier just love that ship so much, they will literally compromise every ship and every mechanic to protect it.

When even the developer is a bit myopic over the mighty 'conda, you sort of have to take a step back and wonder if it's overly sane to endlessly argue the point.

To be fair, the OP reads essentially as though choice is irrelevant, that there's some correct way to play, and ignores that the developer has repeatedly wound back changes that actually pretty much invalidate mode switching. As soon as mission counts increase and availability more or less makes changing instances irrelevant, the complaints start about people running too many missions at once, aka stacking. And if it's not stacking, then it's the credits-per-hour boondoggle.

I have no idea if that was the intent? But it sure reads like it. At a certain point, it's potentially helpful to take a step back, and realise that not everyone has the same goals, that choices exist and aren't something to be removed and that an offline mode isn't ever going going to happen. Also credits are essentially meaningless whilst they can't be traded. Which they can't be.

One can get super very angry that other players don't have the same goals or interests. And then massively agitate for that to "go away" because it's not considered relevant. Or one can understand what the developer has tried to do, and maybe encourage them to spend more time on improving the experience, rather than gating someone else's.

Honestly, I'd rather the developer just leave the mission system alone at this point; clearly they aren't going to fix it without it being wound back again, so perhaps if they could move to other areas of the game and improve those, it'd be a better use of their time.

I know the OP wasn't too well phrased. If I had known how thread was going to develop then I would have spent more time phrasing it more accurately to highlight the core points I was trying to make. Instead I wrote it somewhat quickly while I was half preoccupied doing other stuff (for full transparency, this included flying the Smeaton run itself).

It's evident to me that if I had spent more time phrasing it properly then quite a few 'conflicts' throughout the thread could have been avoided.

Sure I could go back and re-edit the whole OP to make it more clear, but I think that would just be undermining many of the points and arguments made already so I rather keep it 'as is' for clarity. I did one small edit which was removing the reference to mode-switching as being an exploit since it's clear FDEV approves of that method (which was unknown to me when I wrote the OP).

Anyways, my intent is not for it to go away, or remain.

The intent was to have a discussion about it and hear how the community felt about the fast-lane to money methods compared to the fairly unrewarding career playstyles.

Despite my poorly worded OP there has at least been a good discussion though

 

[vindicator jones]

You're either missing the point or inferring things based on your own opinion.

The point, as far as I'm concerned, is that we currently have one facet of the gameplay which is vastly more rewarding than others.

I see no reason why, for example, shipping cargo or doing recovery/collection missions with destinations a long way from the jump-in point shouldn't reward the player similarly to passenger missions.
Or why combat missions that involve similar amounts of travel shouldn't pay considerably more, given the elevated risk.

Why should a player who wants to "blaize their own trail" in a trading, mining or bounty-hunting career be limited to making Cr3m per hour while only a player willing to carry out passenger missions can earn Cr100m or more per hour?

This makes no sense in either gameplay terms or in lore terms.

So, what should the dev's do?
Should they increase the payouts for all missions to match the payouts from passenger missions?
If they do that, they're going to completely decimate all sense of progression through the game.
Half a dozen hours doing anything would mean you're pretty-much set for life.

Seems like the only reasonable course of action should be to balance the payouts from passenger missions and other similar missions so they're equal and at a level which requires a significant effort to obtain all the nice things.

It's a little ironic that the people defending the current state of passenger missions often complain that "people want everybody to play the way they want to" when, in fact, it's the game which currently compels players to play in a certain way instead of allowing people to "blaize their own trail" in a variety of equally rewarding ways.

I think most people can agree in one way or another that having one particular activity generating vast amounts of credits while other activities offer up measly credits isnt really beneficial to the game as a whole.

I think the biggest problem is being able to get into a small ship and do 40m credit missions carrying only 12-20 passengers... while big ships are basically penalized by the mission board in taking on short range, low volume missions.. Thats where the problem really is.. Not board flipping, not the passenger missions themselves.. But the entire mission delivery system..

When you access the mission board, it should look at what kind of ship you have, and offer missions that are compatible with your ship and loadout... I mean, you wouldnt have a courier parcel job offered up to a container ship now would you.. You wouldnt offer a data delivery mission to a semi trailer truck... It's silly...

The board should be able to look at your ship/loadout see if it is small/medium/large ship, and it's carrying mostly cargo racks, passenger modules, a mix of both, or a combat build, and offer missions that are tailored to your needs.

People wanting to rank up then can decide.. well, I will just bring a DBS or courier and get access to lots and lots of data delivery missions, and can load up more effectively.. Those wanting to do long range haul missions can show up in a cargo rack filled annie, corvette or cutter, the board then can offer missions carrying 300-500 tons of cargo 100-300ly away... so on and so forth...

Is this difficult to implement? I am sure it is.. I can only imagine it would be a herculean task to implement such an intensive system into the game.. Does that negate the fact it should be in the game?? No...We need to have something like this to really make the mission board much more effective for commanders to use.

Until then, there will always be board flipping, and those chasing after easier ways to make money...

And while in some small part I agree that it is far too easy to go from sidewinder to anaconda nowa days, I think this only negatively effects their gameplay, and in the end that is their choice..

 

[Arthur Shappey]

...
The intent was to have a discussion about it and hear how the community felt about the fast-lane to money methods compared to the fairly unrewarding career playstyles.
...

And I just don't get what "fair" is about when there is no way to win this game, there is no real competition in the game. Those with the most money aren't winners. Those with the most engineered ships aren't winners. Those with the best ranking stats, aren't winners either. There never have been "winners" in any version of Elite, it's just a game you play the way you want it. You can't even die in the game!

And if you want to cheat, Elite can do that too. You're only cheating yourself. So what's the fuss? And the money still doesn't make you a good pilot, as many YouTube vids will attest, a good pilot in an Eagle or a Vulture can take down any uber-engineered goliath - no matter how much money they have.

At least, in this small regard, Elite mirrors real life. There are lots of people making money dishonestly or in unfair, disproportionate ways in real life too.

 

[kofeyh]

The intent was to have a discussion about it and hear how the community felt about the fast-lane to money methods compared to the fairly unrewarding career playstyles.

Essentially, the game is going to have variably-expedient mechanics, in some form, pretty much forever. Ostensibly, the developer has made a number of decisions, and the fact it's endlessly occuring can really only be described in two ways; the developer is incompetent, or it's actually intended but has quirks due to limitations that result in various outcomes.

I'm going to go with the latter; I don't believe they are incompetent, actually. I know that's the popular hot take, but it's a pretty garbage view and is demonstrably false at this point. But the developer is offering differing ways to interact, and they will struggle a bit to balance that. Between a bit of a disconnect between how they believe we interact, versus how it actually works, and the complexity of what they are trying to do, there will always be more efficient ways to do something or other.

It's exceedingly difficult, what they are doing. And the consequences of the choices the developer has made, means there will always be optimal credit gain avenues. It's never not going to happen. Because of key design decisions the developer has made. At the end of the day, I tend to think a bit too much focus has been placed on the notion people should interact in a specific way, rather than ensuring the various ways people can, are more consistent. And it's the latter that really does improve the overall experience.

The one thing Frontier could stand to do more of, is improve consistency. And yet, they seem to be allergic to it, which only seems to magnify the outcomes. So I don't know, really; I think we can debate this until the sun goes nova, but Frontier are just going to do things, the way they do things - regardless, in some cases. It just is. Sometimes it won't make sense.

Folks seem to not want to accept the reality, and hold out hope for something that isn't going to change; and that then gets pushed onto other commanders as their fault. Blame shifting and so forth. I get it, and I'm sure it's not entirely intentional. But it is, what it is. Perhaps folks realising this, and then trying to support better outcomes with that knowledge, may be vastly more constructive, than trying to demand changes that will likely never come.

 

[Morbad]

The board should be able to look at your ship/loadout see if it is small/medium/large ship, and it's carrying mostly cargo racks, passenger modules, a mix of both, or a combat build, and offer missions that are tailored to your needs.

Sure, if there are also some situational and location based constraints.

A war zone would have disproportionally more combat missions, and a system with a population of 56 shouldn't have 800 passengers on the board.

I think this only negatively effects their gameplay

You're only cheating yourself.

Not true, for reasons described previously. Claiming that CMDRs operate in a vacuum with regard to assets dismisses the concerns of those that notice and/or care about the more abstract elements of the game that the acquisition and use of such assets can modify. If someone wants to not notice these things, fine, but just because they ignore it doesn't mean it's not there.

At least, in this small regard, Elite mirrors real life. There are lots of people making money dishonestly or in unfair, disproportionate ways in real life too.

Real people aren't avatars of extradimensional entities that manipulate loopholes in the laws of nature for their inexplicable benefit. A CMDR trading slaves is one thing, the player behind that CMDR gaming a broken system is another.