In the light of the recent events and discussions - what in your opinion is a fair reasonable and objective amount of Cr per hour that players should earn in Elite?
That's hard to answer because the equation should be relative to what you are doing, and where you are up to in the game.
A novice player earning 5 Million credits an hour doing anything doesn't seem entirely appropriate. I am happy for them, but it doesn't make a huge amount of sense.
Combat rewards:
An experienced player risking a high rebuy taking against wings in has res / conflict zones should be properly rewarded - 1 or 2 hours of high risk combat should equate to nearly 3 million /hr.
I only ever pull away with about 1 or 2 million at the moment, and I'm pretty sure that's more than an hour too.
Similarly the massacre missions sometimes pay out okay credit-wise, but very often taking out 24+ pirates for a massacre mission means dealing with a horribly low spawn rate where you can spend half a day just waiting for 1 mission target to appear anywhere in the system / nav beacon haz res etc.
Follow-on / Chain Missions
This is where FDEV have really failed to provide players with a reason to even look at the follow-on missions. All I ever get is planetary scan missions following on from data missions. Pay out is low, interest is low. Personally I don't care for this and how the mechanics just do the same thing. If it paid out well, I'd probably jump on them.
Similarly, why do I get mission offers to deliver something for someone (I assume someone that I've helped before), for 20K credits as I'm blowing up a conda in a has res?
These missions are of no interest (more-so if they are linked to something I've done previously), and if they are such pathetic pay for crap work.
Point being follow-on missions should be a great per hour earner. You have rep/influence in the system, you've done basic jobs prior, then eventually you get the gold rush of 1-3 million per hour because you're allied, and a good little worker bee.
Rank grind contract missions
You should get a whack tonne of money for any rank-up contract mission with the feds or the limps. Not just a same same but different mission for poor pay. Doesn't really fall into per hour credits, but it's in a similar context.
Passenger Missions
I don't care for this activity personally, but I figure these pay out okay for taxi-work. For wanted passengers, or if the interdiction threat really existed, payout should be higher based on allied with system faction mission-giver, distance to travel etc.
Guardians / Thargoids
Anything to do with Guardians and Thargoids should be 1-3 million per hour. Not just whacking-off Ram Tah for days on end in and out, up and down, round in circles for a lump sum after having your eyes pop out of your head.
Community Goals
All of these should be proper gold rushes. FDEV could do nothing about increasing/balancing mission rewards in general (which is my expectation), and just at least make community goals worthwhile. Proper rewards 3 million per hour. Not 700K-20 million per week. Oh I just had a flash back to trying to find black boxes the other week. Gawd that was tedious.
And...TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE!
An extra caveat here for the mission system. If it comes down to credits per hour, why are so many missions giving you 12-24hours to complete? If it's worth millions, you should have to do it with real urgency, real quickly. This would resolve the missions stacking situation somewhat, because there's not going to be any point loading up 20 missions that pay out 3 million each when you have to complete them super-quick.
end rant. fly safe cmdrs o7