The Crisis in the Combat Job Market

[Ananym]

I've been playing on-and-off since launch but I haven't progressed super far. However, I'm sure it's not just me that feels like combat payouts are abysmal right now.

Combat zone payouts are tiny, mission target counts are unrealistically enormous, and half the time your kills don't count towards the mission anyway. Your hour to hour income rate is strongly affected by how much the enemy cares to target you en masse.

Assassination missions are the best I've found but there's still a lot of risk involved for the comically small rewards. You just never know when you're going to get an elite corvette generated for you to take on in your poorly engineered vulture -- I guess it's too much to ask for mission givers to even mention the kinds of ships these "notorious pirate lords" have been flying. Whether or not you can take these missions in the first place relies on BGS luck and a healthy amount of boardswap nonsense.

Wing missions are a joke. Incredibly dangerous, and yet somehow pay even worse than vanilla assassination missions. Is anybody taking these?

Hazrez leaves your income entirely up to the spacegods' decisions on what ships to spawn in. In my vulture I can barely pull 3m an hour, and I'm no hopeless case when it comes to combat flight. In addition to the low pay and rebuy risk, ridding a solar system of powerful pirates nets you precisely zero naval rank progression, so I always feel bad spending time here.

This is compared to passenger missions, which -

• Require almost nothing in terms of ship assets
• Pay several times more than any combat activity
• Are literally always available with lots of choice due to the dedicated board
• Have zero risk of any kind
• Involve no skill of any kind
• Aren't any fun unless you really have a thing for your loading-screen:gameplay ratio.

And I get it, everyone's going to flock to tell me that I should ignore credits and play what I find fun. I do stop into combat from time to time, because vulture flight IS fun. However, I play games to appreciate the game design as a whole, and activity incentives are absolutely a part of that. When my preferred activity is utterly unrewarding compared to something lucrative but utterly unengaging, I end up just playing something else.

Worst of all, I can't think of any reason for it. If you were asking any layperson to design a game, the risky and high-effort activity would represent more potential reward than something that involves little more than alt-tabbing in to hit jump every 30 seconds - so why does the latter earn 4x as much?

So this thread -
Are there any tips out there for carving a satisfactory salary out of combat activities?
Is there anything we can do to get through to Frontier to ask for comment on this state of affairs? I realize everyone's focused on the next big update, but I would have so much faith restored by "we're looking into it".

 

[Cheese Helmet]

A simple adjustment of massacre missions would at least make it a little better. Rather than 90 ships how about 15 or 20. A simple valie adjustment that would do wonders.

 

[Trollymctrollerson]

Totally agree with cheese helmet. If a mission paid 5 million to kill 15 ships. I'd take it. Currently it's like 2 million for 90 ships or something similarly absurd. Your eyes would bleed before that mission was done.

 

[rrobes]

The wing missions are doable in a highly engineered ship. In one of the big 3, finishing these missions isn't all that dangerous.

The issue seems to be scalability, leading to a disadvantage if you're using something less than a large combat ship or if you aren't an ace pilot (which I'm not).

Work towards acquiring that battle wagon, that will guarantee success.

 

[sidereal6]

Here's some data I gathered this morning. This is for a faction that I'm allied with. My combat rank is "Deadly"

 

[Hossi]

A simple adjustment of massacre missions would at least make it a little better. Rather than 90 ships how about 15 or 20. A simple valie adjustment that would do wonders.

You know whats funny? Before 3.0 that were exactly the numbers I was getting. Kill 24 pirates, get 5 MCr.
Know its more like: kill 45 pirates get 900kCr. From a faction I'm allied with. As tripple elite. Or how abou 81 pirates for 2MCr. I probably couldnt even kill that much before the mission runs out.

Now that I thinks about it, its actually not funny at all.

 

[Trollymctrollerson]

Is that data from massacre war (CZ) or massacre pirates? Or both?

 

[sidereal6]

Is that data from massacre war (CZ) or massacre pirates? Or both?

From a war CZ.

I suspect the algorithm works like this:

(1) pick a random number X from 1 to 5.
(2) calculate a base number of ships as X*20
(3) calculate a base per-ship reward as (4+(2*X))*10000

This gives the following base mission reward values:

A random modifier is then applied to both the ship count and the final mission reward. They add or subtract a couple of ships or a add/subtract a few thousand credits. Just to prevent missions from looking like duplicates. Of course, the alternate rewards may also factor into the algorithm (a mission that gives a better alternate may give a lower pure-cash reward).

 

[Riverside]

I too have played since launch & combat pay has increased significantly, other roles have increased too of course. I agree the massacre mission balance seems off atm, but when I started any CZ kill was worth 300Cr and a Pirate Lord Conda might be worth 200kCr at best for the bounty & maybe 150kCr for the mission itself. The way to earn money was through trade, combat was for increasing your rank.

Nowadays I apply a similar approach. If I want to make a lot of cash I'm going to have to trade (wing fetch missions atm, or passenger hauling), and I fight for BGS influence.

Pick an NPC faction & work for it, doing whatever work they need. You'll vary your game & combat will become a part of that rather than an aim for its own sake. The money will come.

Hopefully the missions will be re-balanced more appropriately eventually. In the mean time perhaps you can find a reason to fight that's more than just the cash

 

[lecorsobreton]

If you include surface combat, skimmer missions are what is most decent now. At least for me. I took 2 missions yesterday (20 skimmers in total) for 12 millions. That was done quick. A nice touch: the base was protected by a SLF. Shooting it down didn't incur a murder bounty. Maybe I've spent too much time at guardian ruins, but I thought skimmers were on crack. They seem much faster than before. But maybe it's just been a long time since I last took such a mission.

But combat-wise, I stick to assassination missions. They range from 900k to 2m, which is enough for me.

 

[sidereal6]

Pick an NPC faction & work for it, doing whatever work they need. You'll vary your game & combat will become a part of that rather than an aim for its own sake.

I agree that this is the best way to have fun in the game. You definitely have to make up your own story.

 

[Ananym]

Pick an NPC faction & work for it, doing whatever work they need.

I don't want to be too obnoxious, but - why? The game doesn't give me any reason to care about the specifics of the BGS. All my goals involve bigger and better ships, so credit and naval rank per hour constitutes the total sum of things I care about in-game at this moment. I doubt that I'm at all alone in this. If you're trying to convince me that the obscure returns of BGS influence are worth the 75%+ pay cut I take by trying to participate in combat, I'm not sure I buy it.

I realize that some people find their fun through roleplay. I can appreciate that, but I don't see why it ought to be mutually exclusive with sensible game design. Imagine being able to enjoy roleplaying pursuits without being crippled by massive opportunity cost.

 

[sidereal6]

skimmer missions are what is most decent now

You can actually stack them too IF (and only if) you take them from different factions. So what I mean is, you find a mission from faction A to attack faction C. Then you find a mission from faction B that also tells you to attack faction C. If you do that, then any skimmer of faction C you kill counts towards both missions.

Plus, you can kill them with rockets from the air, if you can find them.

One thing I miss are the goliath missions. Remember those? Haven't seen one in a long time. They were fun.

 

[sidereal6]

The game doesn't give me any reason to care

The game provides you with a canvas on which you apply your own reason to care. It's like any other toy. If you hand a kid a toy truck, does he say "I don't have a reason to care" or does he, you know, play with it. You're a big kid, and this is your toy. Make up a story. Use your imagination. Pretend.

Because seriously, having a score in a game or a credit balance, or a "ship" is really not in any way intrinsically a better use of your time. I promise you, you are not going to get to the end of your life and reminisce fondly about the 200 billion credits you had in that one game decades ago. However, if you're a tiny bit creative, you might remember the character you made up and the space truck you played with.

 

[CMDR Corlas]

You work missions for a select few factions to build rep with them. Better rep means better missions and better pay.

The game kind of does already tell you what kind of ship your assassination target will be in - it does this via the rank of the mission. If you take on an Elite-level assassination mission, expect a very dangerous target. If you prefer easier marks, don't take high-ranked missions.

I agree though that the kill counts in the massacre missions need to be reduced though. And there appears to be bug right now where in them where not all ships that should be "Mission Targets" are flagged as them if you have multiple missions (I don't mean a single kill counting for multiple missions, that shouldn't happen and correctly doesn't).

 

[askavir]

Agree the average number of ships to destroy in massacre missions is completely bonkers.

 

[Riverside]

I don't want to be too obnoxious, but - why? The game doesn't give me any reason to care about the specifics of the BGS. All my goals involve bigger and better ships, so credit and naval rank per hour constitutes the total sum of things I care about in-game at this moment. I doubt that I'm at all alone in this. If you're trying to convince me that the obscure returns of BGS influence are worth the 75%+ pay cut I take by trying to participate in combat, I'm not sure I buy it.

I realize that some people find their fun through roleplay. I can appreciate that, but I don't see why it ought to be mutually exclusive with sensible game design. Imagine being able to enjoy roleplaying pursuits without being crippled by massive opportunity cost.

You are going through the progression stage - you earn more money & get better equipment - but for what? What is your goal?

In ED you can spend quite a bit of time ranking up, getting all the gear, the targets are big & there is a lot to acquire. But then when all is said & done what do you want to do with those ships, why do you want to fight?

It is fun I'll grant you, but I find having a cause to work for makes me more invested in the game. I don't think of it as roleplay, but yes it sort of is. I care about my faction of choice, and the story of it's wins & losses is a unique one that I have tracked over a long time.

When I fight in a RES, I'm looking for specific targets (ie not my own faction's ships). When I fight in a CZ, I am invested in the win, not just the fight.

It's no more roleplay for me than gardening


If you feel you don't play enough to see your effort rewarded you could join a group or help a friend to maintain their garden. It gives you purpose & direction when you don't really know what you want to do that day.

You don't have to of course, but it works for me and I play a lot

 

[Ananym]

The game provides you with a canvas on which you apply your own reason to care.

Sure, and the reason I care is to experience the mechanical design of the game, which involves acquiring the cash to interact with the higher tier ships. You can pretend that I'm roleplaying a pilot on a power trip if it helps. In practice, I have other avenues for that kind of thing. I don't see this as the issue at hand; there's no reason that elite can't accommodate both kinds of desires at once.

Some evidence of what I'm talking about, here's my latest passenger mission moments before completion: https://pasteboard.co/HuMaJjz.png
I didn't have to boardswap for this. 9.9m running tour bus for a criminal, and it took me just over half an hour in my very cheap DbX. If I wanted to make that through combat in my engineered vulture, I would actually be here all night.
Is there any sensible reason for this disparity?

 

[sidereal6]

Sure, and the reason I care is to experience the mechanical design of the game, which involves acquiring the cash to interact with the higher tier ships.

One suggestion I've made elsewhere is that FDev needs to build a "simulator mode" where you can fly any ship with any loadout and even PvP. Other games have this. I used to play a driving game called Forza and there were cars in the "career" mode of the game that I was never going to earn the money to buy, but that didn't bother me because I could pick any car, pick any track, and take it for a spin.

ED needs that.

Is there any sensible reason for this disparity?

Are you asking this from a game design standpoint? Are you saying that a good game design is one in which every activity gives exactly the same credits/hour?

Or are you asking from a universe simulation standpoint? Are you asking how, in the galaxy that ED claims to simulate, that one activity might pay more than another? Because the answer to that question is easy: if more people do a thing, the price paid for that thing goes down. So, the "sensible reason" is that more people are willing to do combat (in the simulated galaxy) and so the minor factions can get away with paying peanuts for it.

 

[Trollymctrollerson]

I don't want to be too obnoxious, but - why? The game doesn't give me any reason to care about the specifics of the BGS. All my goals involve bigger and better ships, so credit and naval rank per hour constitutes the total sum of things I care about in-game at this moment. I doubt that I'm at all alone in this. If you're trying to convince me that the obscure returns of BGS influence are worth the 75%+ pay cut I take by trying to participate in combat, I'm not sure I buy it.

I realize that some people find their fun through roleplay. I can appreciate that, but I don't see why it ought to be mutually exclusive with sensible game design. Imagine being able to enjoy roleplaying pursuits without being crippled by massive opportunity cost.

Don't get trapped by the circular logic. You want a bigger ship to kill/trade faster to make more credits to buy a bigger ship to kill/trade faster. But then you get the biggest ship and reach the pinnacle of killing/trading power. Woo hoo, EZ mode achieved. Now that you have reached the apex of what wealth can buy, are you going to continue collecting more wealth? Some people argue the grind is necessary to keep people from realizing this fundamental issue. I don't think that's true but is is important to understand it's a game about flying around in space. All the missions, bgs, guardians and what not exist only so you have a reason to go somewhere else and maybe come back to port and do it again.