Bring back the double neutron supercharge! A brilliant (and also completely unintentional) exploration mechanic with a great balance of risk vs reward.
verminstar
Banned
Biggest risk Im facing right now is staying awake...
RtR (Road to Riches) is just a highly optimized way of using "exploration" for profit with the use off out of game tools.
I don't know why it has become the standard for exploration payout.
I always cringe when I see people use it as a standard earning for exploration and compare it with the average earnings of Trade or Combat.
I'm pretty sure if you use a highly optimized trade route (with the help of offline tools) or Combat Mission (e.g. Skimmer missions) you earn like 5 times the amount of RtR.
I have seen Yamiks bring it up several times now at it makes no sense.
That said, I agree with the OP that general combat earnings (e.g. CZ, HazRez, figthing Thargoids!!!) need a reward buff.
I don't know why it has become the standard for exploration payout.
I always cringe when I see people use it as a standard earning for exploration and compare it with the average earnings of Trade or Combat.
I'm pretty sure if you use a highly optimized trade route (with the help of offline tools) or Combat Mission (e.g. Skimmer missions) you earn like 5 times the amount of RtR.
I have seen Yamiks bring it up several times now at it makes no sense.
That said, I agree with the OP that general combat earnings (e.g. CZ, HazRez, figthing Thargoids!!!) need a reward buff.
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Trading should have a higher payout than combat, after all trading is the basis of wealth creation in any economy. The real question is why is exploration so well paid, though this may have more to do with the Lore of the game.
Trade is the source of wealth (money is a function of trade) thus a pirate would only be able to realise a fraction of the profit from any cargo he stole that a legit trader could due to need to use a fence (black market) who also requires a share.
If the trader hired an escort he would only be able to pay him/her a percentage of the profit he made from trading.
Bounties are most likely posted by the Insurance firms and thus be based on the difference between outfitting and rebuy costs that an attacker was inflicting on the insurers. Of course if combat pilots are willing to track each other down and scatter their atoms to the void for 5 credits then bounties will be set at 5 credits.
Likewise exploration data should be sold as a percentage of the revenue that UC could realise from selling it. As such what would the actual value of a rock on the far side of the galaxy actually be? Thus distance from an inhabited system should be a factor, unless someone was manipulating the price for particular reasons.
Trade is the source of wealth (money is a function of trade) thus a pirate would only be able to realise a fraction of the profit from any cargo he stole that a legit trader could due to need to use a fence (black market) who also requires a share.
If the trader hired an escort he would only be able to pay him/her a percentage of the profit he made from trading.
Bounties are most likely posted by the Insurance firms and thus be based on the difference between outfitting and rebuy costs that an attacker was inflicting on the insurers. Of course if combat pilots are willing to track each other down and scatter their atoms to the void for 5 credits then bounties will be set at 5 credits.
Likewise exploration data should be sold as a percentage of the revenue that UC could realise from selling it. As such what would the actual value of a rock on the far side of the galaxy actually be? Thus distance from an inhabited system should be a factor, unless someone was manipulating the price for particular reasons.
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The problem I see isn't that combat is high risk while other activities are lower risk, it's that everything is low risk.
All the high-profit vs. time activities should carry significant risk of failure, or better yet, significant risk of winding up worse off then when you started. The only way for this to happen is to make things less formulaic and more unpredictable.
As it stands, explorers have to do something really stupid or really fun to risk coming back in an escape pod rather than a ship. Traders face even less risk from the NPC pirates and even CMDR hostiles have about half a snowball's chance in the fifth layer of hell of downing an experienced hauler who is disinclined to stick around. Combat against NPCs isn't exactly risk filled either; I just came back from a four month break and took a bunch of Elite-rank wing assassination missions to relearn my control bindings.
To sum things up, risks are entirely optional, irrespective of "role", but rewards are a given and I feel this is much more of a problem than any imbalance in the earning potential of the various roles.
All the high-profit vs. time activities should carry significant risk of failure, or better yet, significant risk of winding up worse off then when you started. The only way for this to happen is to make things less formulaic and more unpredictable.
As it stands, explorers have to do something really stupid or really fun to risk coming back in an escape pod rather than a ship. Traders face even less risk from the NPC pirates and even CMDR hostiles have about half a snowball's chance in the fifth layer of hell of downing an experienced hauler who is disinclined to stick around. Combat against NPCs isn't exactly risk filled either; I just came back from a four month break and took a bunch of Elite-rank wing assassination missions to relearn my control bindings.
To sum things up, risks are entirely optional, irrespective of "role", but rewards are a given and I feel this is much more of a problem than any imbalance in the earning potential of the various roles.
I don’t usually agree with his videos, but he’s right about this one. An Elite-level assassination mission has a pathetic payout given the risk involved. By all means, make it even more difficult, but surely there should be some elite level assassination missions that pay decent sums. And the number of ships needed to be hunted down in other missions (for low payouts given the time involved) is just too high for it to be much fun.
Seems to me the answer to "Risk vs Reward" is rather simple, for whatever mode or style.
FD can simply add a risk calculation equation taking variables into consideration to affect payouts for combat kills.
This increases combat rewards for actual kills, not just a flat bonus to a particular mode or style. Variables can be added accordingly for combat rank, difference in proportions (ship capability, weapon grades, etc.) and even whether or not the adversary is a player or NPC. If done globally, it affects combat payouts for PvP and PvE activity (including missions) alike.
Equally- it could also be applied for trading and monetary risk situations as a modifier. The more valuable the cargo you're hauling, the more it pays out when you turn in a mission or sell it.
No more "risk vs reward" arguments required.
FD can simply add a risk calculation equation taking variables into consideration to affect payouts for combat kills.
This increases combat rewards for actual kills, not just a flat bonus to a particular mode or style. Variables can be added accordingly for combat rank, difference in proportions (ship capability, weapon grades, etc.) and even whether or not the adversary is a player or NPC. If done globally, it affects combat payouts for PvP and PvE activity (including missions) alike.
Equally- it could also be applied for trading and monetary risk situations as a modifier. The more valuable the cargo you're hauling, the more it pays out when you turn in a mission or sell it.
No more "risk vs reward" arguments required.
It kind of seems the game overall just isn't hard enough. I don't even care that the payouts are low, the problem as I see it is the game is too easy so the calculus comes down to credits per hour. A rebuy is such a remote chance that its likelihood is barely considered. Time is what we are worried about, not death. If there were trade missions that paid 20 million per run but were so hard you had a 1/3 or 1/2 chance of dying, that would be appropriate. Then you could choose between low pay/low risk or high pay/high risk.
Far too metagamy for my tastes.
High risk missions should command high pay because that's the only way to attract the talent necessary to succeed. Paying someone more just because they deliberately under-prepared sounds like some sadistic game show or stunt on the Red Bull channel.
You tend to compare the maximums and R2R is maximum, so is haz-rez bounty hunting or CZ mission thing .
You compare the best possible results obviously as average is different for each person!
Not sure what you mean. What I propose would simply reward each person for what they actually bring to the table according to what they face as "risk". It's calculated based on ACTUAL risk and not "supposed" risk.
I'm all "eyes" if you have a better solution that doesn't alienate an entire portion of the playerbase simply because of subjective opinion or pure hyperbole. I haven't seen one yet that actually addresses the problem, just a lot that want to penalize others based on their own playstyles rather than accept the fact that FD made this game for a lot of different demographics.
So you can either keep "wishing" things would change, or attempt to address it now. Which would you prefer?
Yamiks, you need to add a 5th criteria, fun.
Plus, you only need to look at the reward options for missions to see what FD use in their balancing equation. Reward options where you take the materials, reputation or influence take a huge hit in credits. But when you RES-farm you are drowned in materials. You also get plenty of reputation and have a huge effect on the influence in a system.
edit - I don't agree with FD's logic here, just pointing it out.
Plus, you only need to look at the reward options for missions to see what FD use in their balancing equation. Reward options where you take the materials, reputation or influence take a huge hit in credits. But when you RES-farm you are drowned in materials. You also get plenty of reputation and have a huge effect on the influence in a system.
edit - I don't agree with FD's logic here, just pointing it out.
There was a time when it was. But then people complained combat payouts were too low.
It depends on how much you cathegorized each role. "Combat" is a very broad role in ED that covers things like PvP, Haz-rez hunting, piracy, etc. Exploration also has many subtypes, some like instant cash (R2R), some just wander around, some look for neutron stars, etc.
I mean it's silly to pay someone to turn a crank if that crank doesn't do anything.
And that's the problem I have with it; what you propose is about as backwards as can be if trying to depict a plausible setting. Rewarding someone for their subjective effort rather than the objective accomplishment is asinine. The same job should pay the same no matter how hard or easy it is for the one doing it. Most missions should be "get x done", not "suffer n difficulty in the pursuit of x".
I feel the status quo, as flawed as it is, is better than subjective payouts.
So in other words, you're satisfied with the current implementation the way it is.
I'm curious though- every time someone mentions "risk and reward" credits are almost always used to determine the justification (Yamiks video being a good example of this, Thanks Yamiks!)- yet when confronted with this, it's always then played down as "the credits aren't important"... OK, what IS important then? What "reward" are you seeking and why use credits as the determining factor when arguing risk vs reward to begin with?