Frontier's Nerf Valhalla

"Hello commanders,


As some of you are aware, Passenger Bulk missions are currently generating extremely high credit rewards that we feel are excessive of what we would consider reasonable and balanced.


After a detailed investigation, we can confirm that this is due to an element in our mission generation algorithm that rewards credits based on the distance of the destination system from the star.


Due to this, we will be disabling (until further notice) the aforementioned element of Passenger Bulk missions to reduce the amount of credits offered as a reward. Commanders will still be able to select and complete Passenger Bulk missions, but will see less excessive credit rewards.


In the meantime, we will be reviewing the Passenger Bulk missions and correct the previously mentioned element – hopefully in time for you to test in the Beyond Chapter One beta.


Thanks to all the players who reported the issue."


-Will Flanagan
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...on-Orbital-200mill-hour?p=6326366#post6326366



200 mil was excessive, I made it to trade elite in 8 days from the noobwinder on an alt account and thankfully Indiana Jones'd my way under this stealth patch to 1.1 bil , but frontier.....


Why is it that you feel the need to nerf everything too far? 500k for 13 passengers moving 1.8 million ls??? Let's take a trip down memory lane
Black market commodity trading (namely slaves)? Nerf'd to oblivion
Normal slave trading? Nerf'd to oblivion
Commodities trading? Beer money
Combat missions? Nerf'd to oblivion
Planetary assault missions? Nerf'd to oblivion
Quince passenger missions? Nerf'd to oblivion
Davs hope? Nerf'd to oblivion
Any effective/timely way to earn crack for a decent roll? Nerf'd to oblivion

One of the biggest gripes was that the passenger missions was the only way of making a decent amount of cash. Correct me if wrong, but doesn't this nerf make thargoid samples and exploration the highest earners now?

It'd be nice if Frontier would go back and BALANCE things that were previously excessive, but the pattern has been to leave it nerf'd in the toy box with everything else, never being revisited.

I'm calling it now. The changes in BEYOND to trading will not be enough. We'll still be seeing only 4-6k profit/ton max.


And whats the deal deal with the risk/reward for combat?
The most expensive outfitting in the game is required to be effective in combat and yet it is the least paying thing for max effort. You have to grind using some other means to be able to do combat.

Then there's the payouts for community goals.... or lack of payout I should say. 20 mil for a weeks worth of effort. Great, now a noob can afford an A rated cutter in 45 weeks. You really gave that guy a sense of progression following around those CGs for 45 weeks! Wouldn't want him to make too much, now would we?



Lastly, and off topic, there's the C+P changes that's going to kill pvp and the blatant ignoring of feedback on the engineer changes. Is frontier trying to torpedo their own game?
 
Is this real? If so this is wonderful news. The passenger missions in their current state hugely unbalance the game.

It's true, but if the screenies from the other thread are anything to go by, they went too far and now it costs more to repair the ship integrity after than one could get paid.
 
I'm calling it now. The changes in BEYOND to trading will not be enough. We'll still be seeing only 4-6k profit/ton max.

Commodity prices need to go up for commodity trading to make sense.

The most expensive outfitting in the game is required to be effective in combat and yet it is the least paying thing for max effort. You have to grind using some other means to be able to do combat.

This isn't remotely true.

Combat pays plenty, and outfitting (outside of engineering, of course) a solid medium combat vessel can be done with a few days worth of combat earnings.
 
It's true, but if the screenies from the other thread are anything to go by, they went too far and now it costs more to repair the ship integrity after than one could get paid.

I looked at those screenshots. TBH, welcome to how everyone else who doesn't grind a single outlier of mission generation gets paid. Also, if you're getting damaged doing passenger missions, you're doing them wrong.
 
I looked at those screenshots. TBH, welcome to how everyone else who doesn't grind a single outlier of mission generation gets paid. Also, if you're getting damaged doing passenger missions, you're doing them wrong.

Obviously you have never done a long range supercruise run if you believe that. It's not hull or module damage, it's the integrity (in advanced section). As do me doing it wrong, well that's possible as I'm not one of those that's made billions on this. I don't have the patience for constant relogging myself. However, when a mission payout doesn't cover wear and tear, as shown in a screenshot in this very thread, then it's no longer viable.
 
Also, if you're getting damaged doing passenger missions, you're doing them wrong.
Ship integrity goes down from supercruising and is one of the most expensive repair jobs, especially if you're running big ships. Not that you need to touch it when all you're doing is mindless repetitions of cattle runs.

General mood: <cat meme "Good.">
 
I looked at those screenshots. TBH, welcome to how everyone else who doesn't grind a single outlier of mission generation gets paid. Also, if you're getting damaged doing passenger missions, you're doing them wrong.

I have a feeling you don't know the difference between ship integrity and hull integrity...
 
I have a feeling you don't know the difference between ship integrity and hull integrity...

Oh i know the difference. Low ship integrity means damage you take hurts your hull more than normal.

But if that's the only consequence (happy to be corrected), i maintain: if you're taking damage, you're doing it wrong. Ship integrity only matters if you're taking hits.
 
It's true, but if the screenies from the other thread are anything to go by, they went too far and now it costs more to repair the ship integrity after than one could get paid.

They haven't re-balanced the rewards yet, they've simply turned off the distance-based reward scaling as a (hopefully very) temporary solution.
 
If the devs were looking to fix something maybe they should look at the commodities market...262 credits for a ton of explosives, 486 credits for a ton of survival equipment, 9,400 credits for a ton of GOLD! 211 credits for a ton of synthetic fabric, 2,108 credits for a ton of reactive armor...the galactic average is laughably broken. The risk vs reward for combat is horrid, 2 mil payout for killing a thargoid vs a 32 mil rebuy. I see ship-scan and ram is still a thing. O and why is there only 2 fire button options button 1 or button 2.... where are 3,4, and 5.
 
Keep finding them, keep posting them, Frontier will keep nerfing them.

The bottom line is they don't want 100's of millions of credits per hour. We might, but they don't and it's their game.
 
Commodity prices need to go up for commodity trading to make sense.



This isn't remotely true.

Combat pays plenty, and outfitting (outside of engineering, of course) a solid medium combat vessel can be done with a few days worth of combat earnings.

Disagree. Conflict zone pay pennies and you have to rely on RNG in Haz Rez zones. Only eagles and adders spawned for an hour. And if you have a decent ship and get blown to bits then you lose the time in the HazRez/ Your Rebuy and any potential bounties.
 
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The alternative would have been UA bombing Allen Hub plus some of the planetary ports. The Smeaton run had to come to an end, one way or another. Your limitless profits had a devastating effect on BGS, and in that aspect, the mechanism was utterly broken. Glad FD heard and finally fixed it.

O7,
[noob]
 
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It's true, but if the screenies from the other thread are anything to go by, they went too far and now it costs more to repair the ship integrity after than one could get paid.

Hopefully they will go back up to a resonable level in the beta, worth checking out. At the moment a major contributor to the value of a mission has been removed from the bulk passenger missions. The idea I think is to get it put back in for beta for testing to see if there is any odd results. I think it is worth spending time to see if the longer ls missions are worth while again in the beta and feeding it back so they can tweak the variables before release. Seems to me the only way to get sensible values for missions in line with other activities.

Simon
 
Good to hear that FD has found and squashed (or is in the process of squashing) another bug (or unintended consequence.. what ever..)
The Dev's do good work and no system is ever perfect or complete.

Ever since Beta there has always been a way to generate ridiculous funds doing something.
You could mode switch and find empty sectors with gold floating in them...
You could run Sothis/Ceos...
You could run bulk passenger missions...

This has all happened before, it will happen again.

I've been here since beta 3. I'm sitting on maybe 400 million in total assets and haven't engineered a single component on my ship.
Play your way, find your fun, ignore the rest.... or don't... (Don't let me tell you what to do :D )
 
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Oh i know the difference. Low ship integrity means damage you take hurts your hull more than normal.

But if that's the only consequence (happy to be corrected), i maintain: if you're taking damage, you're doing it wrong. Ship integrity only matters if you're taking hits.

Some of us use the same ship for more than one purpose. My powerplay hauling cutter has essentially the same build as a passenger transport cutter other than swapping cargo racks for passenger cabins. So it might not matter if my ship drops to 0 integrity for the purpose of passenger transport, but I am still going to need to repair that damage once I try and use that ship for something else.
 
Wow. That was one hell of a nurf.

I stumbled on the Smeaton Orbital run a few weeks back. It took about 45 minute (of actual time) in supercuise to get to that station once you it the system but the refugees/protesters/rebels paid about half a million each for the trip. It was brutally boring and I don't really want to play space bus driver. I just check the mission board in Allen Hub:

22 Rebels to Smeaton Orbital now pay 638,880 Cr. Smeaton Orbial is 1,871,509.62LS (that's over a million light-seconds) from the arrival point.

On the other hand, 11 Protesters wanted to go to Bose Settlement (280.27 LS from arrival in Batz) and were willing to pay 319,440 CR.

So now, for about the same earnings, I can spend 45 minutes on auto-pilot with all that time risking interdiction by slavers and getting random (but totally not worth it) passenger requests, or I can spend about a minute in-system before dropping off my passengers and earn the same amount of money.

Let's look at this the way a real world long haul truck would (they get paid by the mile/kilometer):

22 rebels to SO @ 638,880CR = 29,040 Cr/person
11 protesters to @ 319,440 = 29,040 Cr/person

So, it's a fixed rate that complete ignores distance. Which means ...

SO run pays 0.016 Cr per LS per passenger. Assming 1 Cr is approximately equal to 1$, that's about one and a half cents per person per LS. Wow, gas costs more than that.

run pays 103.71 Cr per LS per passenger.

If this was the real world, Smeaton Orbital would be in starvation by next week and a completely dead station in a month.

Is there a way to put stations on your ban list so you won't see missions that involve ever going to them?
 
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