Do nothing vampiric ninja SLF pilots stealing credits from CG turn in

[Alex Brentnall]

I don't really see what's wrong with it.

You know, when you hire the NPC, that they're going to take a percentage of your income - in all it's forms.

I guess it might be nice if things like bounties and CBs "absorbed" by your NPC were factored into the results of a CG independantly, so if you'd earned, say, Cr30m at a CG and were in the top 10% then your NPC might be considered to have earned Cr4m and that might get them into the top 50%.
At the end of the CG, you'd get a payout based on a top 10% result and your NPC would get a payout based on a top 50% result.

Which, of course, wouldn't matter to you cos' you wouldn't get any of that reward (it is, after all, the reward earned BY the NPC, on the basis of what they've earned from assisting you) but it would, at least, demonstrate that the bounties/CBs taken by the NPC aren't just "vanishing".

This affects bounty hunting, CZ and Exploration CGs too I'd note before I go into my actual point which is logic:


I, a pilot have a job from a customer. He says deliver me bounty vouchers and he pays depending on your position vs other pilots. I deliver him vouchers, I get my rewards and split it with the crew as agreed.

What is happening here is the customer is splitting the reward between the crew. That's silly and doesn't fit any form of logic. Yes you could have both the fighter pilot and pilot get paid from CG rewards but lets face it thats a silly level of effort for FD to go to. Just have the rewards count for CGs first before being distributed to the crew.

 

[znôrt]

I don't really see what's wrong with it.

You know, when you hire the NPC, that they're going to take a percentage of your income - in all it's forms.

his point is that your contribution to the cg is not the same as your income.

your fuel, ammo, module and ship costs aren't deducted from your contribution either. they are deducted from your income (you just pay them upfront).

i guess this is only relevant re cg objectives and ranking, that exciting game mechanic ...

 

[amadeus1171]

May we have an official response on this?

Sammarco?

 

[Kaa Mchorror]

Some people don't seem to get what this thread is about. It's not about the exorbitant free the npc soaks up while being afk. Sure I'm miffed about that. I think a lot of people are. But this thread is about the community goal turn in is calculated after the npc takes their cut. It's not right. Your entire bounty kill turned in should count, not just what you were paid.

Why should your participation (with a npc pilot) count as much as a commander who chooses not to use one?

 

[Alex Brentnall]

Why should your participation (with a npc pilot) count as much as a commander who chooses not to use one?

Lets flip this. Why should it not it be equal?

Pilots take a take of the ship profits, that's how it works. When you cash in the Cg for say 10mil you don't get 10mil because that is the payment for the crewmember also, reduced profits from bonds handed in for the CG. The crewmember shouldn't make it harder to get said 10mil in the first place..

Currently we are suffering twice.

 

[Bryan K]

May we have an official response on this?

Sammarco?

Ha! Good look with that one.

 

[Stealthie]

What is happening here is the customer is splitting the reward between the crew. That's silly and doesn't fit any form of logic. Yes you could have both the fighter pilot and pilot get paid from CG rewards but lets face it thats a silly level of effort for FD to go to. Just have the rewards count for CGs first before being distributed to the crew.

But you do get that sort of thing happening in real-life.

A truck driver will, for example, fill up with fuel and it'll be paid for by their company but the driver, himself, will get to keep the Nectar points and be able to trade them for stuff.

What happens to CBs and bounties in ED is a similar thing and is consistent with everything else that happens to all forms of income when you employ an NPC - they get reduced by whatever percentage your NPC gets.

The only mechanic "missing" is that your NPC doesn't get to cash-in some of their rewards as they really should.
Presumably (I haven't checked), if you earn Cr10m in CBs and your NPC takes, say, Cr1.2m of those bonds, when you cash the CBs in your NPCs earnings will increase by Cr1.2m but they won't get ranking in a CG as a result of that income.

My own NPC has probably "earned" around Cr5m in this weeks CG so that'd probably be enough to get her into the top 75% and also earn her another payment from the CG, itself, but I doubt that's going to happen.
I'd be impressed if it did, mind you.

 

[Karamon]

How to make monies using SLF in combat?

Always take massacre missions , CZ or BH it does not matter .
Now use your SLF to chase those pesky little buggers in eagles and cobras and condors so you don't have to bother with those and can focus on bigger , easier to hit and worth more money targets.

In CZ fighter don't last long , but if you use him just to tag enemies that are further than your gun range and/or small ships then whoever gets kill still give you money and +1 to massacre mission counter
In RES Gu-87 with fixed beams is perfectly capable of murdering anything smaller than Vulture , so you don't bother with those tiny ships but still get+1 to massacre mission

And best tip for RES ? Get Fixed largest beams you can get, you fly in SLF and let your pilot use his uber skill in shooting fixed weapons at enemies to devastate everything he look at .


Btw in current CG i earned ~20 mil in bonds , i will get ~20 mil from CG and got ~60 mil (could be 80-100 mil if i didn't take g5 materials as reward) out of massacre missions + huge amount of g4 mats and some g5 .So yeah my SLF pilot stays where he is

 

[Stealthie]

Btw in current CG i earned ~20 mil in bonds , i will get ~20 mil from CG and got ~60 mil (could be 80-100 mil if i didn't take g5 materials as reward) out of massacre missions + huge amount of g4 mats and some g5 .So yeah my SLF pilot stays where he is

I should really have taken some massacre missions to go with this week's CG but I keep thinking "If I do that, something will happen and I won't get chance to finish them" so I keep ignoring them. [sad]

 

[amadeus1171]

Ha! Good look with that one.

He has responded in the past, so don't say "Ha" too quick or you'll have pie in the face.

 

[amadeus1171]

Why should your participation (with a npc pilot) count as much as a commander who chooses not to use one?

That makes no sense. The pilot "without an NPC" can still hire a temporary NPC and fire them before turn in. How is that fair?

 

[Karamon]

I should really have taken some massacre missions to go with this week's CG but I keep thinking "If I do that, something will happen and I won't get chance to finish them" so I keep ignoring them. [sad]

I think after 3.0 they changed it for better.
Previously you got low paying missions with small amount ships to destroy , but when you got better reputation payment was rising but amount of ships was rising too so you could get decent money but geting missions that were requiring less than 70-80- ships was hard.

Now as i noticed when you have low reputation you get quite a lot of missions with high number of ships to destroy but as rep rise there is much more missions requiring you to destroy 30-40 ships and decent payment , still those requiring 80-100 are paying most per ship kill but you are not forced to take those anymore.

 

[sb413197]

Hire and fire the expert.

And yes it is silly. I wish I could have an elite crewman but they die and eat profits...no thanks.

 

[Kaa Mchorror]

That makes no sense. The pilot "without an NPC" can still hire a temporary NPC and fire them before turn in. How is that fair?

I can't hire and fire an elite npc.

 

[Schmack]

Think of it like a large crab fishing boat: You have 10 of them competing to see who can make the largest haul for the crabbing season (yeah I watch Deadliest Catch too much). One boat turns in their catch and it's weighed at 20 tons. The dock pays out the captain for the 20 tons and the captain pays out the crew based on whatever deal they have.

The competition wouldn't care how many deckhands the captain had. They only care how many tons of crab the ship brought in. The same should be true for CGs. If the NPC pilot is going to have his cut deducted from the total, then he should be part of the CG and get a bonus as well, meaning the CG goals would be hit faster and it's at least possible that an NPC would be in the top 10%.

I know that cannot work that way, but that's how it plays out when you deduct the competition total from the ship total due to NPC payout mechanics.

 

[Rafe Zetter]

I think the devs did it on purpose that SLF gets a percentage of overall profits to help balance the game.

I do find that the SLF pilots ranked above expert to be more useful and worth the investment in combat based gameplay.

An SLF is cheaper than insurance as it gives you some defense and extra attack.

Its all just balance.

It is annoying when they are inactive and still get a percentage so I do agree about the retainer idea.

The devs or persons doing the coding probably couldn't be bothered to include that in as it seems anything that gets added to the game has either fans or critics.

Balance the game for what exactly? - how does an SLF pilot getting a percentage of your earned PROFITS balance anything at all? It doesn't affect how people without them can earn stupid amounts of credits in a short space of time for certain activities - and it has no effect on how many credits you have overall - all it does, which has been mentioned repeatedly is adversley affect certain activites that people do, often for reasons other than "profit", which are quite often around CG's, so it's a double hit.

If FDev wants SLF upkeep to be meaningful and punative to offset the gain having one gives you - instead of the SLF getting a CUT OFF THE TOP BEFORE YOU DO - how about they just require a flat fee? With the same sliding scale - make the amounts larger if you have to, but remove the link between SLF pay and "how much profits did I make?" which is the base argument here.

Hands up how many of you get paid purely on a profitshare system where you work? - Even you guys at FDev.

Nobody?

Because that's how the real world works. The closest reality has to FDev's SLF pay system is actors and the film industry - who VERY OCCASIONALLY agree to get paid in "profits" not a flat fee; although the amount of times this happens in the film industry is small - less than 1% because the profits of films are so variable - yet for some reason, according to FDev's usual "logic", an SLF pilot who is risking his virtual life in a fighter is willing to take a percentage of profits with no clue if it's going to be *millions* or *fk all* per trip.

The OP's point is that the profit sharing system is and ALWAYS HAS BEEN detrimental to the CG's reward system - because as usual FDev created only one "money transaction" system, and then tapped into it for the SLF pilot's pay, because that was the quickest way to do it

I'm no programmer but I doubt the code is more than one line at most - $SLFpay = $%"Player_earned" *$"SLF_Rating".

Edit - damn ninja'd by Sleut

 

[GraXXoR]

It was the easiest possible way to implement the programming of the crew Which required the least effort to realise.

 

[Stealthie]

If FDev wants SLF upkeep to be meaningful and punative to offset the gain having one gives you - instead of the SLF getting a CUT OFF THE TOP BEFORE YOU DO - how about they just require a flat fee? With the same sliding scale - make the amounts larger if you have to, but remove the link between SLF pay and "how much profits did I make?" which is the base argument here.

The biggest problem with any kind of "standing charges" is that a player might, theoretically, put the game down for an extended period, come back and find they're bankrupt as a result of standing charges incurred over the period they've been away.

In the case of NPCs, though, surely it wouldn't be that hard to keep a tally of the time an SLF pilot is set active and then pay them a wage based on that?

Hell, they could even make it a feature of the game whereby when you first hire an NPC you have to haggle with them to set an hourly rate (with the ones who look human being able to command higher wages) and if you don't give them enough work each month they'll become unhappy and eventually quit.
Given how much FDev like their RNG, this might be a relatively harmless opportunity for them to put it to work.

Seems like FDev probably think we should be making somewhere around Cr20m per hour at best with an average somewhere between Cr5m and Cr10m?
A bottom-tier SLF pilot currently gets 2% of our "profits".
Perhaps they should be paid between Cr100k/hr and Cr200k/hr?
If you hire a harmless SLF pilot their pay-rate would increase slowly, like it currently does.
Maybe each time they rank-up the RNG could help decide their new pay-rate?
Alternatively, you could hire any rank of SLF pilot for up to, say, Cr2m/hr for an Elite SLF pilot, with a minimum payment of 1 hour.

 

[Rafe Zetter]

Why should your participation (with a npc pilot) count as much as (you mean "the same as") a commander who chooses not to use one?

I'm sorry - WHAT?

Another who isn't grasping what's going on here.

My mate gets a job digging holes to fit fence posts and asks me to help.

He brings a postholer he already owns (it's a large auger with a small petrol motor).

Rather than just stand and watch, I dig more holes using a spade.

He does 4 holes for every 1 that I dig in the same time period, even though I'm contributing three times more physical exertion than he is.

Between us we finish the job early, fit the fence and get paid.

The customer pays us and because it's cash, splits the pay 50/50 - an even share (she didn't see us working).

Afterwards he asks me to give him some of my money - I refuse - he says he did more work than me - I say "you did more work because you had extra help from the postholer" - he says "I had to pay for that postholer" - I say "not my problem".

He's not happy, uses some choice language to display that and tells me he's not going to ask for my help again.

Now, Kaa, can you possibly think why?

Commanders using SLF's hand in MORE CG BOUNTIES (presumably) than those that do not - yet their contribution reward percentage is less despite all the added costs, because the SLF gets paid seperately.

The monetary transactions that occur between YOU AND YOUR CREW are NONE OF THE CLIENTS DAMN BUSINESS; The current CG pay system is one where the customer PAYS YOUR SLF CREW SEPERATELY, even though, and just to make sure I'm being clear here; IT'S YOUR CREW, YOUR EMPLOYEES.

Here's another version explanation of whats going on just to see if you can grasp it:

Do you pay for a car by saying "right, I'm going to give 5% to you mr car dealer, and I'll also need the bank details of the 50 honda employees who worked on it, the details of the company that service the robots, the bank details of the companies that supplied the steel, and the paint, and the leather, and the rubber tyres, and the stereo system, and the transportation for the steel, and the foundry workers who made the steel, and the rubber, and the paint, and the car designers, and the testers, and, and ,and, and, and, and, and, and, and ,and, and, and, and, and, and, and ,and, and, and, and, and, and, and ,and, and, and, and, and.

Or do you just pay the car dealership and let them deal with how the money gets distributed for it's manufacture?

And you think that the above system FDev put in place makes sense?

FDev is treating the SLF and the commander as two seperate entities.

Why FDev thought that seperating the reward allocation for the SLF and the commander that's paying for the SLF's upkeep is beyond my comprehension - the SLF's contribution WOULD NOT EVEN EXIST WITHOUT THE COMMANDER, and his credits that pay for it, so reducing his contribution allocation by the percentage of the SLF's reward is a slap in the face.

 

[Stealthie]

Why FDev thought that seperating the reward allocation for the SLF and the commander that's paying for the SLF's upkeep is beyond my comprehension - the SLF's contribution WOULD NOT EVEN EXIST WITHOUT THE COMMANDER, and his credits that pay for it, so reducing his contribution allocation by the percentage of the SLF's reward is a slap in the face.

I think you already answered your own question, there.

The entire system probably consists of a single line of code which says something like "If playerSLF=1 then missionreward=missionreward - (missionreward x (SLFrankfactor1+SLFrankfactor2+SLFrankfactor3))"

I could just about accept this (not like it but accept it) if the rewards SLF pilots received had some other purpose in the universe; if your SLF pilot got their own rank in a CG, for example, and got their own rewards at the end of it.

As it is, employing an SLF pilot (or more than one) just means a percentage of your income, bounties, experience and CBs just disappears into a black hole.