This basically covers with my experience, too.
Averaging around 50mil/h. Only allied with one faction yet.
However it catapulted me to Elite trader quite fast.
PS: Before anybody draws any false conclusions, I play this game since gamma.
Mode switching for missions and Smeaton Orbital [200mill/hour]
- Thread starter Red Fox Four
- Start date
This basically covers with my experience, too.
Averaging around 50mil/h. Only allied with one faction yet.
However it catapulted me to Elite trader quite fast.
PS: Before anybody draws any false conclusions, I play this game since gamma.
IF you had coordinates and planets the sites were situated at...
If you avoided cheats/spoilers it took (literally) weeks...
If you avoided cheats/spoilers it took (literally) weeks...
We are talking about the same missions here right? The missions where you had to go collect just three pieces of Thargoid Resin / Material...? This stuff was easily collectible from many different places, most of them very close to mission giver system. This mission wasn't at all involved of complex, it was just a case of flying from A to B to pick up item X.
Problem is the Thargoid scout is so close that you save a lot of time if you fill your ship with 30 artifacts (ideally 10 of each, 10 in resistant cargo racks, the other 20 in normal cargo racks), then fly back to Obsidian Orbital and just dock and undock , accepting and completing the mission until you are out of artifacts.
It was a joke. Easy 100+ mil per hour.
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That's a fair point. However once you found the site once / the first time - after that you would be able to return to the site as often as you like. Meaning you could easily do 3 mission per hour without any guides etc.
Meaning that once someone has solved the "puzzle" once, they could then go and earn 45 million per hour in this hand-crafted mission that has a manually set reward (i.e. Frontier intended people to earn that amount from this mission).
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Yes, that is true - however it was still possible to make 45 million per hour, by playing in the way that Frontier intended. My point being that it seems Frontier are not opposed to that level of earning.
I understand your point about the 3/hour...but if you factor in time taken to find a crash site or installation etc...then that cr/hr would come way down....potentially to zero if you're not successful in your search...
There's more people working on ED than ever so it takes longer to shut these down.
You could use that reasoning with anything in this game though. Obviously that estimate is based on you knowing where to go.
A couple of points from my perspective....
1) FDev expect players to use external tools (forum, sound analysers, excel, api's etc) to play their game and have said as much on several occasions. Looking up the location of something on a website is considered normal game play and I doubt any of the mysteries would have been solved without this. This is also how it works in the real world. 'Someone finds something and tells other people who go look.'
2) It is possible to make ~100mil/hr doing the Smeaton run without board flipping. I personally tried this to see if it was possible as I'm not big on exploiting the game mechanics. If you travel around the adjacent systems for an hour "picking up passengers" then you can usually find sufficient travellers without needing to exploit the boards. This makes it a legitimate (if boring) method of making credits based on the rules of the passenger system (+distance = credit increase).
1) FDev expect players to use external tools (forum, sound analysers, excel, api's etc) to play their game and have said as much on several occasions. Looking up the location of something on a website is considered normal game play and I doubt any of the mysteries would have been solved without this. This is also how it works in the real world. 'Someone finds something and tells other people who go look.'
2) It is possible to make ~100mil/hr doing the Smeaton run without board flipping. I personally tried this to see if it was possible as I'm not big on exploiting the game mechanics. If you travel around the adjacent systems for an hour "picking up passengers" then you can usually find sufficient travellers without needing to exploit the boards. This makes it a legitimate (if boring) method of making credits based on the rules of the passenger system (+distance = credit increase).
Because no thought was put into the design of the game at the beginning. It's ridiculous that you have to Engineer mods that are "unique" and yet your insurance company has an unlimited supply of them. That you can telepresence in an instant across the galaxy but somehow, prices between you and the next system are impossible.
ED uses way too many "reasons" and we are left with a nonsensical universe to work with. AI that can out lightyear jump you when you have an Asp and they have a viper. emergency Life support systems that give the same amount of air and yet can weigh 100 tons difference. AI that magically spawn in front of you... I mean the list is almost endless where minimal effort has been put in and you're left with "reasons" - no great game ever suffered from "reasons".
Most of the big "trade" payouts can be identified using the galaxy map and searching system states....orbital distances etc...the thargoid sites were simple planetary searches...which is just legwork...
45 m/h is what you can get in post nerf Rhea
About Upsilon Aquarii it is true that while you get Allied with those factions you don't get many missions and it is very hard to get sometimes full "big 3" ship of passangers before timer on issions start to get very short , but as i said before just get Python and go to nearby LTT (some numbers ) with 2 outposts in it ~1800 ls from star .
Only cordial status required , if you are Elite in trading it takes 15 minutes (sometimes 20 if you are not lucky) to get full Python of passengers and get 120-140 mil out of it
About Upsilon Aquarii it is true that while you get Allied with those factions you don't get many missions and it is very hard to get sometimes full "big 3" ship of passangers before timer on issions start to get very short , but as i said before just get Python and go to nearby LTT (some numbers ) with 2 outposts in it ~1800 ls from star .
Only cordial status required , if you are Elite in trading it takes 15 minutes (sometimes 20 if you are not lucky) to get full Python of passengers and get 120-140 mil out of it
I think that The discussion was more about the ethics of logging in and out of the game to refresh the boards rather than appropriate credit/hour activity. Is mode switching to accelerate refresh good for the game as a whole? Is it an exploitable game design that should be fixed? Can it even be fixed? Did the devs indend mode switching to be a way of increasing earnings or is it just something players discovered? Can it impact BGS or other player activity? There were some pretty good examples of how a flood of lone wolf commanders could certainly create bgs abberations. I could see how a player group would be frustrated if they were working a system that became the new mode switch cash cow...This is easily the best post in this thread!
As you say, 40 hours is a very long time - even by MMO standards that is a big time investment in a single activity. I agree that in terms of "end-game" this feels just about right.
It's nice to see someone posting facts based upon information they have gathered, as opposed to just theorycrafting and posting their feelings and "concerns".
EDIT: That said you will probably earn at a slightly higher rate once you have all those factions allied.
I think "the ethics of board switching" simply reduces to the same question though...how many cr/hr do you want to make....
If an insane level of cr/hr is where you feel the reward should be pitched...then switching the game off, restarting, switching off, restarting, switching off, restarting...is a genuine FDev intended game mechanic...I think the internal logic is...logging out to desktop and logging back in (in the absence of spacelegs) accurately represents negotiating with different patrons....
If you feel that a lower level of credits per hour then obviously a quick CTRL ALT DEL mid session...DOESN'T feel like an intended in game activity...
So board flipping is moot...it's about cr/hr...as no doubt if there were some other "gamey" mechanism for increasing payouts (pressing Right Up Down Left Left Up on the arrow keys for example) would be all the rage too!
If an insane level of cr/hr is where you feel the reward should be pitched...then switching the game off, restarting, switching off, restarting, switching off, restarting...is a genuine FDev intended game mechanic...I think the internal logic is...logging out to desktop and logging back in (in the absence of spacelegs) accurately represents negotiating with different patrons....
If you feel that a lower level of credits per hour then obviously a quick CTRL ALT DEL mid session...DOESN'T feel like an intended in game activity...
So board flipping is moot...it's about cr/hr...as no doubt if there were some other "gamey" mechanism for increasing payouts (pressing Right Up Down Left Left Up on the arrow keys for example) would be all the rage too!
I have to agree - what I actually found wasn't close to 200 mill per hour.
I'm going on two years of playing once or twice a week, and very close to being Elite in both Trade and Exploration, but my best run was 25 million. Most other runs around 10-15 mill per hour.
Now I was not allied with the local factions, and I didn't hop to all the stations in the local area to grab missions, so that could have made the difference.
But, after a few fours I found I didn't enjoy the 10 minutes of work then 40 minutes of nothing... it just feels more productive to grind 7mill per 25 minutes running between Ceos and Sothis Mining when I'm exercising on the treadmill.
I do have to agree with others who state that Elite ranked players making 50 mill an hour is not excessive, especially when their ships cost ten times that.
End Game players (Elite) should be able to buy another well outfitted End Game ship every ten or so hours of gameplay imho.
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I wouldn't say this requires a player to be in the "end game" but it depends how you define end game.
You can make 100mil/hr without using the "big 3" ships. A beluga with the minimum spec required could do this run and cost less than 100mil to buy which you will then make that back on the first run. To me "end game" is having billions and buying three cutters because you like having them in different colours.
I do however agree that it is boring, at least for me. I did this to tick the box (I try to do everything at least once for the experience) and whilst I was working on something else out of the game.
It is also pretty safe if you are reasonable at avoiding the one or two interdictions that come with the missions.
I actually left the room for 20mins on one trip once I was in cruise and I had two vipers in chase. They simply can't interdict until you back off the throttle at the far end.
I get the impression that the (reward per passenger / time) is in-line with other long-range, but shorter, passenger missions. Almost as if there is an algorithm. (Probably non-linear, with further being disproportionately better.).
Agree that this one is super-boring. Except the interdictions - which I also submit.
Many of the comments here seem to be based on the payout at the end. 200 million is an edge case, I suspect. I got half that.
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If you're playing the game with the sole intention of earning credits. then you're missing out on all the other things the game has to offer.
If you're in a rush to get a titan ship and a billion credits this system is the fast way to that goal but... once you have a billion credits and a few titan ships, what do you do then?
Get involved in a player faction, make some in game friends, help with BGS, do some exploring, blow up some ships, do some pirating.
There's lots to do, earning credits is a means to an end, not a goal in and of itself.
Personally, if I'm in a combat zone, I'm not there for credits/hour; I'm there for the influence effect it has to the minor factions. (or collecting engineering materials/data)
So I have realised that the only real issue I have with this topic is that the proceeds contribute to your ranking. Elite just doesn't mean anything anymore.
