News Collect Wing Mission Balancing

[EAF51-SIGGY]

My 2 cents....i understand that maybe 50 mil for 1000 tons of commodities are too much, but on the other side 7 mil for 1500 t of commodities are ridicolous...sorry for my english...
I spent so much time on Elite, and i'd like it but EVERYTHING is too much expensive...Engineriing? So many raw and data and manufactured, fxxxiìng hard to find the most part of them.
Buying and fitting ships? The same, so much money and materials...
Try to FIND A REAL BALANCE ON EVERYTHING , i want to have fun with a game , and this not mean GRINDING FOR WEEKS EVERYTIME! I think that the Fdev don't play with the game like the players...I think that Fdev don't play the game at all...

 

[Tigir]

Or better yet, as I suggested when Multi-crew first came out.. allow the owner of the mission to decide the participants payouts but still have it pull from the total amount awarded, not just pay each person the full amount.

That would work also, but would most likely require too much of a rewrite of the mission code.
Perhaps they will consider such a thing for 3.3 update.

 

[sgurr]

ive got to press the hard question here and ask for a detailed explanation about this so-called balanced in-game economy. From what I can tell over the past four years any given pilot’s credit balance has as much effect on game play as their Federal Admiral title or their status as an Imperial King, which is to say none at all.

Im pretty certain the #1 pastime in Frontierland is smoke-blowing, and my a.. ahh... you know where isn’t buying it. Just call a nerf a nerf already and stop dressing it up in fanciful sounding rhetoric. Titles are meaningless save for the ships they unlock. Credits are likewise meaningless, save for their utility in purchasing ships, modules and covering rebuy costs. Neither have any actual impact on any sort of balance that has never existed.

FD have really been keeping a tight hold on credit earning this year. Before this year they left credit exploits in for months (or longer) before fixing.

My guess is that they are trying to pre-empt the pre-emptive hoarding of credits for squadron carriers etc.

 

[Bacalao]

I think the problem is that the way Elite Dangerous has developed makes trade very hard to develop further. It's just not a focus of ED - or, really, of any of the previous games - in the same way that X is "about" the economy.


1) The X economy requires significant travel times - NPC freighters can take several hours to go to the supplier and bring the goods back. When almost any station can be resupplied from almost any other station in ten minutes, how do you get the temporary imbalances of supply and demand the economy needs to be interesting.

I can't imagine that massively cutting jump ranges so that it's a 20-jump trip to the nearest High-Tech system will be popular. Would any players be willing to risk the trip on the chance that the prices won't change substantially in the meantime?


2) In X developing the economy so that it can produce the high-end outfitting you want within a reasonable timescale is more-or-less the point of the game.

I don't know if it would work for Elite Dangerous for the answer to "where do I get a 7A power plant" going from "Shinrarta/look it up on EDDB" to "well, you need to find a suitable power plant factory and then make sure it's well supplied with all the goods it needs and then hang around online at it for hours while it builds the plant to make sure no-one just shows up and buys it out from under you" ...

... so what could Elite Dangerous use as a reward/punishment for economic performance instead? And would it survive multiplayer interaction given that even the relatively mild Lockdown state has been the subject of massive "griefers!" threads - do many Elite Dangerous players actually want the level of consequences of full-scale economic warfare?


3) Both X and Elite Dangerous of necessity have most of the economic effort carried out by NPCs - after all, the player is rarely at any particular station themselves, and there are plenty of stations in ED which don't get any players visiting them for weeks.

So how much do you actually gain in practice by making an X-style economy rather than just having the abstractions based on traffic levels and BGS states that ED uses? (And is it even possible to de-abstract the NPC traffic when instancing and modes mean any particular NPC freighter might both get through and fail to get through?)


I'd certainly like to see a more interesting economy, but I don't see how that's done without making major changes that go against both the development so far and popular requests in other areas, as well as making trading practically compulsory.

Remove the commodity market, the econmy in elite should be run as in the real world. Orders (missions) for needed goods are put out and contracted to be fulfilled. Rate the payout based on risk, effort and time alloted (a rush job always costs more).

The mission board would need a few more filters and far more missions but it would make a lot more sense than this day-trading style commodity market we have where prices and quantities aren’t broadcast galaxy wide for some inexplicable reason and industry just blindly produces “x” amount of goods and hopes for someone to come along trying to make a profit buy buying and selling it. Silliness.

 

[sgurr]

Let us look at the huge maths problem with wing missions, shall we?



Here we have two missions for survival equipment. The standard mission has a payout of roughly 13101 credits/ton, the wing mission has a payout of roughly 1383 credits/ton.

If wing mission payouts were corrected the wing mission payout would be roughly 75 million credits, which would be reasonable and expected in any working economy.

You're missing something there though. A 120t mission can be done in a single trip by a variety of ships, doing the wing mission solo in a type 9 would be about 8 trips vs 1 trip for the solo mission for about 5 times the payout.

Yes it's off, but not by as much as you suggest.

 

[Bacalao]

And that may bring us to a "real world" understanding failure.
When you contract to have a large amount shipped; the payment is large, and that payment is used to pay participating haulers.
Since Elite has a hardlock of 50 million per mission, the following example shall use that.

Example:
A contract to ship 5772 tons with payout of 50 million credits; upon completion the payout should be divided among the participating entities, such that two commanders participating would receive 25 million apiece, or a full wing of four would receive 12.5 million apiece.

This is how you have a truly balanced wing mission mechanic.

Yeah that makes perfect sense. Simple, clear, logical.

 

[rentaspoon]

And how did you do that exactly? Just curious.

 

[Alecz]

You're missing something there though. A 120t mission can be done in a single trip by a variety of ships, doing the wing mission solo in a type 9 would be about 8 trips vs 1 trip for the solo mission for about 5 times the payout.

Yes it's off, but not by as much as you suggest.

How can you even compare a 120t trip with 8x 720 trips? It's not even the same scale. You could run 6 missions with 120t with capacity of 720t. For the same cargo, you need to do about 50 trips for 5 times the payout

 

[sgurr]

How can you even compare a 120t trip with 8x 720 trips? It's not even the same scale. You could run 6 missions with 120t with capacity of 720t. For the same cargo, you need to do about 50 trips for 5 times the payout

They're not the same scale, that's my point. You don't choose to take on a wing mission for that much cargo with a 120t cargo ship. I'd only consider a wing cargo mission (whether I'm winged or not) in something like a t9, it pays OK then.
IMHO it's a small delivery van vs a cargo truck, if I don't have the ship then I wouldn't go near it. It's just another point to consider.

 

[Auronio]

Was a nerf applied with the patch?
Not sure...

 

[Alecz]

I agree that it makes less sense to approach Wing Cargo missions with smaller ships, but then again, Wing Cargo Delivery missions represent about 50% of all the missions (rest being wing assassinations and dome solo missions). Do we really expect commanders to always fly big ships?

There are way too many Wing Cargo missions compared to everything else (same for Massacre missions)

 

[Commander_Brucitor]

Greetings Commanders,

Following the 3.1 update, we have noticed that the credit rewards for Collect Wing Missions were higher than intended. This has had a negative impact on the balance of the in-game economy. As a result of this we will be adjusting the payouts for this mission type to reduce them and bring them in line with the intended rewards.

Thanks for your continued feedback and for your understanding. We will continue to look at missions to ensure they are balanced and offer the best experience for the game.

In game economy? The prices of ships and modules are fixed, and commodities don't fluctuate that much. Credits in no way that I'm aware of affect engineering or the background SIM, or powerplay (at least not directly), it doesn't affect anything thargoid related. The only thing that's affected is the average players ability to buy new ships and modules which in no way affects other players positively or negatively. FD already successfully gated the true higher tier ships via engineering. It'd be nice if they spent their time developing content and not trying to trap players in mediocre rewards for vast amounts of time wasted doing the same repetitive tasks.

 

[sgurr]

I agree that it makes less sense to approach Wing Cargo missions with smaller ships, but then again, Wing Cargo Delivery missions represent about 50% of all the missions (rest being wing assassinations and dome solo missions). Do we really expect commanders to always fly big ships?

They shouldn't be expected to no, but with the way missions are designed if you were to set one up for a solo cmdr with a 120t ship that they could do in 5-6 trips and then an appropriate payout then someone will come along and take it in a T9/Cutter and get that same payout for a single trip. The way it is now the 120t cmdr can keep picking up single trip 120t missions, and the T9/Cutter cmdr can pick up 5 of these missions with (probably unless they stack) a different destination for each, ie. effectively 5 trips and so the effort is similar.
I haven't got a better idea than the way FD have chosen to balance it.

There are way too many Wing Cargo missions compared to everything else (same for Massacre missions)

Completely agree, they do like to stuff the mission boards with the latest mission, be nice if there was a little more variety and for the solo cmdr.

 

[Arguendo]

Same mission board. Different factions, both in Boom. Distance for the first two is 19LY, the last 9LY.
Do the math, and feel free to explain the logic [where is it]

 

[Arguendo]

Thats not where the problem is at all in this economy thing, rewards from missions should not be shared depending on effort made to complete the mission from each commander because wing missions are missions that require best the full support of the wing to be completed for the reward to be "profitable"...

That's how they are supposed to work. Look at my example above, and you will find that they don't (anymore).
Wing missions aren't nearly as profitable as just having the wing do solo missions now.

So, my point stands. Thinking and good programming; not gonna happen!

 

[Ebel]

Was a nerf applied with the patch?
Not sure...

They like to loudly proclaim it if they do. Sad that.

Brought to you from the same country wanting to grind the tips off of kitchen knives.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

Same mission board. Different factions, both in Boom. Distance for the first two is 19LY, the last 9LY.
Do the math, and feel free to explain the logic [where is it]

i agree it may not be perfectly balanced.

but then the whole system is borked. why are they paying 2.6 mil for 180 units of non-lethal weapons? i would not make that much money if i bought the weapons myself and traded them to that same delivery base, and yet being a simple courier pays more.

disntance fom the star also makes a difference so you need to make sure you are looking at the same base to deliver too... so many times i take a mission on only to realise i have to travel 15kLS to get to the base!.

that bottom mission however, taking it on surface value, a 46 million credit payment for 5825 tons sounds pretty good to me for a courier job, again esp if not too far from the star. that would be 2 trips in a wing of 4 T9s.

I DO agree that wing missions should have their own board. (better yet ideally the mission board would have 1000 missions on it if in a system with billions of people in, and then have a robust set of filters.)
I ALSO agree the multiplier should not exist, it should pay more and split between the wing, but with lucrative time bonuses.

Sadly that is not what we have, so we make the most of it.

 

[jackofallgods]

Just nerf all reward to practically pocket change and then buff them a little bit but as often as you typically nerf them that way we know what its like to be given something instead of getting something taken away. IT doesnt help that frontier dosesnt seem to have any sort of back and forth with players anymore. If you have problems bugs its ignored for a long time but if its even slightly over rewarding then its nerfed so g quickly every single time. Its not good to look like the only sort of interaction you have with players is to tell them every other week that you made payouts less and then go silent until the next one. I kinda want a group of griefers to upload a bunch of tutorials on a fake gold rush and post reddit threads and and then frontier without even looking would end up nerfing something that already has such a low reward that after the nerf players after completing the mission would actually have to pay out that station cuz the reward is comes out as negative. If anything was gonna make frontier notice how stupid they appear with these nerfs and actual take some pro active reward balancing rather than re active then it would definitely them nerfing something to the point where we have to pay them to play the missions. Seriously give everybody 100m and take out every mission and i guarentee the amount of users playing would not change that much. or take out all money and make everything free and keep the missions. I promise those missions would never be touched andthe same amount of poeople would play this game for the most part. NOW keep making those missions give us less and less and i promise that will have a noticable user player decrease. I dont do missions anymore unless i absolutely have to for rebuys or try out new modules. Honestly i stop playing some days cuz I cant do another one of those same missions again and again. Especially when i did the same missions a few days ago for triple profit. You know how hard it is to play aty mission that has gameplay.. no sorry it doesnt have gameplay it literally has no gameplay and then for no reward? Its not hard when you feel like you are getting something out of it and i dont mind but really when all your missions include staring and waiting then turning around and going back without doing anything else. So if youre gonna keep making those pay less then that makes sense cuz they are mainly pointless and havent changed in forever so yes they shouldnt pay much but you should actually add missions with some gameplay. The only fun parts of this game have almost nothing to do with missions and youre making that harder to enjoy that by making us do your missions more. Honestly there would probably be less found gold rushes or less people would use them if they were paid fairly to begin with. Look my favorite part of this game is engineering and getting material and engineering everything trying out different stuff so I think you know that means I dont mind grinding with 150 stored fully engineered modules and 6 ships all engineered as well. And If a person can do all that grind and still like your game but the grind for money isnt worth it then ya gotta check your . Or maybe combine the two cuz getting money and grinding engineering stuff are 2 seperate worlds. Maybe make materials sellable for money. That would probably shut me up

 

[mrxtheta]

It seems that someone from Frontier works against company.

 

[Arguendo]

i agree it may not be perfectly balanced.

The missions are very, very far from balanced at all, let alone perfectly balanced.

but then the whole system is borked. why are they paying 2.6 mil for 180 units of non-lethal weapons? i would not make that much money if i bought the weapons myself and traded them to that same delivery base, and yet being a simple courier pays more.

A valid point. Couriers or transport companies in general don't make more than the person selling the item in the first place. I like to see the courier missions as express delivery of special orders, but they are still quite high compared with what the items themselves cost to buy off the regular market. That's RNG for you I reckon.

that bottom mission however, taking it on surface value, a 46 million credit payment for 5825 tons sounds pretty good to me for a courier job, again esp if not too far from the star. that would be 2 trips in a wing of 4 T9s.

On the surface I would agree with you. It's when you compare it to the solo-mission that it becomes borked. With your example each T9 can hold atleast 728 tons of cargo. With that capacity these T9s could do 4 each of the solo-missions at the same time, giving them 10+ million per trip. Instead they can take the wing mission and make 11+ million each for two trips each. Non-sensical at best

I ALSO agree the multiplier should not exist, it should pay more and split between the wing, but with lucrative time bonuses.

This would be a good addition to the wing missions. Give the whole amount as if a wing of four was involved, and then split it based on contribution to the mission. A hefty bonus for fast delivery would make it silly for cmdrs to do it solo, because they can't make it in time, but very lucrative for a complete wing to all participate. You'd probably lose the opportunity for escorts, as the time bonus should be extremely hard to make in time with anything but a full wing of transports. Atleast it would be a better system than what we have atm.