Balance, Balance, Balance
- Thread starter encrypted
- Start date
They're still small enough to be piloted by 1 person. If we could own Farraguts or Interdictors, then we'd have an issue on our hands. Again, who gets to decide and how long should it take?
Last edited:
Which is a laughable statement, in the current state of the game.
Trade, as is, consists of some missions with arbitrarily high rewards for no discernible reason, and moving commodities that have been rendered irrelevantly inexpensive by massively inflated income.
Yep.
Storage and handling/transfer fees.
As it is, fuel for ships is about half the price of the hydrogen fuel commodity.
This is itself a symptom of the problem.
A good start would be making everything...ships, modules, and commodities ten times as expensive while keeping rewards static.
I don't think that's insane at all. Up armoring real vehicles can easily cost much more than the base vehicle.
I think it took me about 1500 hours to be able to afford an Anaconda...that felt subjectively alright, and would certainly keep their prevalence to plausible levels.
Logical market forces, influenced by the desired demographic make up of ships in common use.
It's not about rules or my wishes for others to play the game. You can't deny the fact that except few ships and few modules there are no expenses in ED almost at all. It just should make more sense, that's all.
Yes, but that was way before mission/RES/bounty/etc increases. Back in the day money making in ED was kinda tough and Anaconda seemed like a few months work - which in most it took.
But during those days you actually feared rebuys and was much more calmer/reasonable with what you do within a game.
Rafe Zetter
Banned
These two go hand in hand - I don't often agree with iFred - (at all usually) but he's right - veteran players SHOULD be at an advantage, skill is a commodity just like anything else (footballers for example) and overlooking that in favor of a system that is just as accessible to new players as veterans will mean there's little incentive to prolong playtime past a certain point.
There SHOULD be gateways - and although there are a few, IMHO there's not enough. Permit system locks has largely been negated as just one example.
However I do agree that the BGS needs to be far more fleshed out - not necessarily totally in favor of veterans, but throughout; including enough activites to justify that big ship once you've got it other than to make the game a faceroll fest.
Rafe Zetter
Banned
part of this comes down to the lack of roles FDev has been willign to assign - in the "balancing of what a player can do in what ship - or lack thereof" they have broken everything else.
Sideys shoudl be "training wheels ships" and NOTHING MORE, something to get OUT OF at your earliest possible opportunity. Jump range limited to "the bottom of my garden" - I'm not familiar with the starting systems jump ranges but within that small locale.
And scale up from that with additions and reductions accordingly - with the big three not necessarily being able to match the JR of the so called "explorations ships".
Same for cargo capacities and everything else.
I know people don't want ED to become EO with cockpits, but as you add more ships you MUST set them a role with the stats to prove it - or see some of them forever ignored - and there must NEVER be a ship that is so close to "perfect at everything when engineered" that to fly anything else only comes down to a player WANTING to have limitations.
ED has reached a point where this has become a real issue going by the regularity I see threads about "I reset my save / I'm deliberately only flying a Viper / I tried my DBX without mods and didn't like it"
etc etc blah blah - it's all been said before, lets hope now FDev are in a frame of mind to address "core stuff" some of that might spill over into other areas. We can hope.
Why do so many Billionares and Trillionares want to nerf money gain? Have tons of money doesn't effect other people in the game so why does it matter? Rebuy cost means nothing so why punish newer players.
The main issue with the 'old way' fuel was priced was that it varied based on the ship size... not the amount of fuel used. So, today, A DBX with a 32 ton tank costs the same to fill as a Anaconda with a 32 ton tank. Then, the Anaconda would cost 10's or 100's of times as much... for the same amount of fuel... just because it was a large ship. It was to the level that it was not economical to ship any cargo without a fuel scoop. You would burn all your profits on fuel... even with high value cargo runs.
Other than that, I've been informed in the past that there is some variety to what a commander pays based on their reputation, rank, and affiliation. It remains transparent to the commander, however. I would appreciate being able to see a base cost, then a discount or surcharge/tax added based on factors that the commander has control over. Things such as legal status with the controlling faction should have an impact (Allied, discount, clean, no penalty. Unfriendly, upcharge. Actively wanted/hostile, significant upcharge), though the new C&P slaps a fixed binary gate on that (Yes you can access / No you cannot).
I agree variety in costs based on the system itself (main sequence star or not), the factions, states, population, economy, etc. could all have an impact on things. Perhaps they do, and it is 1) transparent to us, and 2) not very significant.
Global changes on server tic? Not a fan of that idea, provisionally. Instead, if it were by super-power, or power-play faction (based on their current state of affairs), I could see it working better. Regions under stress (Invasion, War, Famine, etc.) should be more volatile than regions unaffected and so on.
Now, the big stickler. HOW does one go about programming that in and making equitable and balanced, and fun?
On this point... power plants in E|D are small fusion reactors using hydrogen as fuel. Hydrogen is abundant in the interstellar medium. Fuel scoops show us just how abundant (and free) hydrogen is - it isn't some high-octane whatever that needs several engineering processes to make it available. The percentage markup at stations is just a convenience fee.
Oh, they really are, if you know what you're doing besides simple A-B or loop routes. I can make more on medical supplies and certain items in systems in a state of war than I could make shipping Imperial Slaves about.
Last edited:
The OP seems to think we should spend hours grinding for our money to A rate ships, but i ask the OP what good will that do? Rank missions all ready boring and broken to the point people are mad. I dont care is money is easy to come by i want to be able to buy all the ships and try all the builds cause this game is a sandbox not a grind simulator.
Exactly. It suited me more.
You're complaining about a few hours to make all the bits and bobbles on your ship as good as they can be? Seriously?
Come play Warframe for a bit, pal. A.K.A. Grindframe.
Or pick just about any other game in existence that involves long-term progression.
A few hours is a drop in the bucket compared to what's the "norm" with most games.
Elite Dangerous is not a custom Minecraft with godmode enabled, you *are* going to have to earn your way and make a name for yourself here.
That said I would love to see rank-grind improvements and the mission system has as much room for improvement as ever.
Whilst I agree that balancing these things would be good, none of them are going to improve my enjoyment of the game in the short term. IMO that would be wasted Dev effort. Much more important to fix things like powerplay and build space legs...
I'm skeptic of your view here. Balancing ought to involve dedicated math, formulas, and the correct use of them & accounting for necessary variables...sounds like something a programmer ought to know quite well, surely?
Sorry for the self-promotion, but a couple of days I wrote a post precisely about balancing trade profits against other lucrative activities that I believe might be relevant to this discussion too.
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...mazing-Improvement-but-Please-Balance-Profits
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...mazing-Improvement-but-Please-Balance-Profits
I´m playing Elite since 1.0. I wish we could get the rewards fom 1.x again so you could feel the progress in game again. But there is a big BUT. It makes no sense if we get a few thousands as rewards but the running costs and rebuys is tenth of millions. The rewards HAVE to increase (massivly) when we progress to a bigger ship. Dont know how, perhaps goldrush times or reward beeing connected to the navy rank or whatever.
Thing is, for most roles the big ships aren't that close to "perfect at everything".
Want to land on a planet? Sidewinder, Cobra, anything with a small footprint is best.
Combat? The agility of the FAS and FDL makes them just as dangerous as the big 3, more so in PvP.
Exploration? Other than jump range, the Sidewinder makes as much money as an Asp.
Trade? Rares trading the Asp's jump range and outpost ability will beat the big-3. Trade missions you get more flexibility of destination in a Python. It's only really bulk trading where the biggest ships are absolutely the best.
Mining? Internal count is pretty important here, so the Anaconda probably is the best.
Frontier have sort of done the opposite where most ships can do most tasks pretty well, so more or less you can fly the ship that suits your style rather than the ship that's the optimal one for the task you want. But at that point, it's not clear why the bigger ships are so much more expensive, way out of proportion to their actual capabilities. Why does a Cutter cost about 10,000 times as much as a similarly-equipped Sidewinder when in the best case (bulk trade) it only makes about 70 times the profit?
You may want to check your "advanced maintenance" tab the next time you're in a starport, as your ship is likely to have 30% less hull strength than it says it does.
(The integrity repair I think is something that the game would actually be better off without, as it's mainly a trap for the unwary and doesn't actually provide any significant penalties for operating without support - and nowadays explorers would complain bitterly if it did, though the pre-release explorers were really looking forward to it - but it is nevertheless a service/maintenance expense for flying ships)
It didn't make any logical sense, but it probably was actually the better balance ... or rather, it would have been had the earning capability of the big ships scaled in the same way as their fuel costs scaled. Obviously it was easier for Frontier to bring the fuel costs in line with everything else rather than to bring everything else in line with fuel costs.
(Repairs used to cost a lot more too, until it was pointed out that repairs costing >5% of ship cost mean it's cheaper to self-destruct. Possibly the new C&P with its sliding scale of rebuy percentages will let them bring that back a bit, but with a "repair all" always capped a few credits below whatever your current rebuy is.)
That's really not how game balance works. For the minor stuff, sure, if the price of Copper is too high, someone can go in and tweak it lower in the databases. That isn't the financial problem in Elite Dangerous. The financial problem in Elite Dangerous is that none of the professions scale in earning potential in the same way, and they're all hideously out of step with the relative prices of the ships in various directions. Fixing that would need complete redesigns of how trade, combat and exploration fundamentally worked ... and that would most certainly need a programmer. Maybe two.
The problem here is a very simple at the core:
Balance here is seen only on credit rewards,
since reputation and contacts don't matter a thing.
It would be far more beneficial to the game,
if there was balance overall on a broader spectrum:
Credits for trading and mining
Reputation and exploits for criminals, navy, explorers and bounty hunters.
With the hard rewards in cash enabling everything the normal way,
reputation would allow a significantly more specialized but better access to
items and contacts tailored to the specific role.
It's quite possible to have both balance and progression, you just have to ensure that there's balance along the progression as well as balance between different options at each point in the progression.
For example, taking trading as the general benchmark, it's overall pretty balanced as far as going along the progression goes. You start in your little Sidey shifting a few tonnes at a time, move up into a hauler, then a T6, then T7, then possibly Python before reaching the T9, Anaconda and Finally cutter. Each step offers significant improvements towards mission capability and general earning potential, with a few ships having their own little extra niches (such as the Anaconda having good jump range and the Python having medium pad capability). It's very much better ship -> better trading. Obviously, player ability should factor into all this, players should be rewarded for understanding the markets and being able to take advantage of them, but among equally skilled players the ones with the best trader ships will have the greatest earnings and influence.
Balance between options means insuring that at each point in the progression for a given player ability there should be equal profit capability between different tasks. So a player exploring in a Hauler should have similar earning potential to a player bounty hunting in an Eagle as well as a player trading in the Hauler. Similarly, a player mission running in a Python should have similar earning potential to a player picking out mission bounties in a FDL. A player mining in a Clipper should have similar earning potential to a player doing bulk trade runs in a T7.
The issues with balance to me seem to be a combination of the above two points. Trading scales well with ship, but pretty much every single other activity doesn't scale nearly as well. Exploring basically maxes out at the Hauler (scoop + twin scanners is literally all you need to maximise profits), combat barely scales past a Vulture with a 'Vette barely having greater earnings than a FDL, mining is limited more by the asteroids you find and by the terrible limpet scalings making a Cutter only a tiny increase over a Python or even a Cobra. These issues in turn basically make different earning methods only worth it at certain points in the game because of these different scalings.
There's also the issue surrounding the various goldmine borderline exploits. These need shutting down ASAP so that we can actually have a meaningful discussion rather than players comparing 99% of activities to the completely broken 1% of activities. We want multiple options for doing things, not for players to be flocking to broken mechanics like a herd of sheep every patch and assuming that such errors are the norm.
It would also help if FD were to give other roles a bit more love from engineers. They have made some progress for giving explorers some attention, but they could still do with some work (enhanced SuperCruise FSD blueprints please), as well as mining and trading have had pretty much zero attention. That being said, hopefully this is something they will be looking into for later in Beyond though as they have stated incoming improvements to mining and exploration.
For example, taking trading as the general benchmark, it's overall pretty balanced as far as going along the progression goes. You start in your little Sidey shifting a few tonnes at a time, move up into a hauler, then a T6, then T7, then possibly Python before reaching the T9, Anaconda and Finally cutter. Each step offers significant improvements towards mission capability and general earning potential, with a few ships having their own little extra niches (such as the Anaconda having good jump range and the Python having medium pad capability). It's very much better ship -> better trading. Obviously, player ability should factor into all this, players should be rewarded for understanding the markets and being able to take advantage of them, but among equally skilled players the ones with the best trader ships will have the greatest earnings and influence.
Balance between options means insuring that at each point in the progression for a given player ability there should be equal profit capability between different tasks. So a player exploring in a Hauler should have similar earning potential to a player bounty hunting in an Eagle as well as a player trading in the Hauler. Similarly, a player mission running in a Python should have similar earning potential to a player picking out mission bounties in a FDL. A player mining in a Clipper should have similar earning potential to a player doing bulk trade runs in a T7.
The issues with balance to me seem to be a combination of the above two points. Trading scales well with ship, but pretty much every single other activity doesn't scale nearly as well. Exploring basically maxes out at the Hauler (scoop + twin scanners is literally all you need to maximise profits), combat barely scales past a Vulture with a 'Vette barely having greater earnings than a FDL, mining is limited more by the asteroids you find and by the terrible limpet scalings making a Cutter only a tiny increase over a Python or even a Cobra. These issues in turn basically make different earning methods only worth it at certain points in the game because of these different scalings.
There's also the issue surrounding the various goldmine borderline exploits. These need shutting down ASAP so that we can actually have a meaningful discussion rather than players comparing 99% of activities to the completely broken 1% of activities. We want multiple options for doing things, not for players to be flocking to broken mechanics like a herd of sheep every patch and assuming that such errors are the norm.
It would also help if FD were to give other roles a bit more love from engineers. They have made some progress for giving explorers some attention, but they could still do with some work (enhanced SuperCruise FSD blueprints please), as well as mining and trading have had pretty much zero attention. That being said, hopefully this is something they will be looking into for later in Beyond though as they have stated incoming improvements to mining and exploration.
I want I want...wah wah wah....
You can't see how having access to ALL the ships and ALL the builds (relatively) easily is a SURE SIGN the game is broken?