Why keep making credits?

Greetings,

It is pretty easy to do in the current 2019 game version. Many often post on the Forum wanting something to purchase. Might I suggest mega-ships allowing docking of player ships. Frontier actually offered this about two years ago but haven't heard from them since. Probably a balance thing between Solo, Group and Open modes.

But if Frontier works it out what will they cost? A maxed out combat Cutter can cost 1.5 billion. Maybe 3 billion for a stock mega-ship and another two billion to make it invincible. It will need to be invincible versus a massive rebuy loss with all those expensive engineered ships in the hangar. Only mega-ships versus other player owned mega-ships can defeat each other. Like current mega-ships the best PvE or even PvP ships in a group are only flies on the wind screen. They never destroy the mega-ship but can destroy the piloted ships leaving the hangar. Another balance issue.

Add in if Frontier ever lets us setup personal stations on a planet costing billions.Maybe none of this will ever happen but who knows the future of the game. Meanwhile I'll keep making credits just in case. If it ever happens I won't be posting on the Forum how it is too expensive.

Then again I'm still awaiting awesome looking atmospheric planets to land on. Frontier isn't talking about that either. I have to play FE2 or FFE to get my fix on a dedicated DOS computer just for Elite games no less.

Regards
 
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My wealth accumulation has been relatively slow-paced. I'm on the same game-save since Gamma (late 2014) and "only" have 672 million (and only one ship, deliberately).

Some nights I loose money, most nights I make several thousand, and occasionally I make one or two million.

I guess I'm more focussed on my direction and enjoyment in the game than making the most credits possible. I've never even attempted to calculate my "credits per hour". It doesn't matter to me as long as I slowly make money and always have enough for my insurance excess (rebuy), as well as operational costs. This way credits still mean something to me without becoming the main objective of playing.

I would hate to have so many credits that they become totally meaningless.
 

Deleted member 182079

D
Having a crazy amount of credits is a double edged sword. On one hand it ensures the freedom to do whatever you feel like without worrying about cashflow, on the other hand it removes the sense of progression (currently sitting on 830m in cash, and a fleet of 20-odd ships including all the big ones, mostly A-rated and engineered). Even going for a Void Opals mining run and making 50m doesn't have the "OMG so much money!" impact it used to have - it'd just bump up the number to 880m. Same difference.

I did however move on to materials becoming the new primary currency, for which you can participate in mission running, prospecting, farming ships etc. so there's that. A huge credit sink a la megaships or whatever else would be much appreciated though as I honestly don't know anymore what to do with my credits, other than buy a second Cutter, Vette or whatever else just because.

I thought of resetting my account several times, but can't see myself seeing it through as I really don't want to do the engineer grind again, like, ever. What I may do some day though is suicidewinder my entire fleet, until I have no credits left. I'll make enough stacks back, in little time I'm sure, but until then my gameplay might become more focused again. More often than not now I boot up the game, look at my fleet, and think "now what?".
 
I always assumed these megaships would have to be purchased, like cosmetics or dlc, unless LEP owner, and then they would require credits for upgrades and utilities. Or maybe missions or some other game activity like that. Then they could be used by squadrons and wings, and not shown in nav panel without some sort of affiliation. Nav panel, in Sol for example, would look really messy with 50 megaships orbiting Earth, but there is plenty of space for millions of them in every system, if they were invisible otherwise.

I won't ever be grinding billions of credits for that, because I never have, there are plenty of activities in this game and I'm way too busy just flying a spaceship around. It's a good thing they didn't release these squadron bases yet, they need to finish the current series of upgrades, and figure out what kind of game they want this to be. "Planet Elite Dangerous"? The game itself needs some polishing and a purpose before they can make it a positive addition on the top of it, otherwise it would look like it was made instead of developing the base game. I'd probably buy the thing for no purpose anyway though.
 
Even if FDev allowed individual players to buy mega-ships it wouldn't solve anything.
All that'd happen is that every player would aspire to own one, whine about the expense and then, eventually, FDev would capitulate and provide something that made it viable, thus rendering every other expense in the game completely trivial.

What's really needed is routine expenses which actually force players to make hard decisions, without unduly penalising anybody.

For starters, you can't have any kind of storage costs because that would penalise people who don't play for long periods and would actively deter players if they came back and found that the credits they'd spent months earning had been wiped out.

The expenses have to be something that gets incurred during play.

I've never understood how, for example, GGC armor for a Krait costs ~Cr40m and yet if it gets badly damaged it only costs a few thousand credits to repair.
Why not make the expense of repairing damage proportional to the purchase-price of each module?
If a module costs Cr1m and sustains 50% damage, it should cost at least Cr500k to repair it.

If it was up to me, I'd also make fines and bounties proportional to, perhaps, the value of the ship a player was flying when they committed an offence.
I'd like to see fines/bounties proportional to a player's entire gross assets but I suspect that might be a little too harsh.
 
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Deleted member 182079

D
Even if FDev allowed individual players to but mega-ships it wouldn't solve anything.
All that'd happen is that every player would aspire to own one, whine about the expense and then, eventually, FDev would capitulate and provide something that made it viable, thus rendering every other expense in the game completely trivial.

What's really needed is routine expenses which actually force players to make hard decisions, without unduly penalising anybody.

For starters, you can't have any kind of storage costs because that would penalise people who don't play for long periods and would actively deter players if they came back and found that the credits they'd spent months earning had been wiped out.

The expenses have to be something that gets incurred during play.

I've never understood how, for example, GGC armor for a Krait costs ~Cr40m and yet if it gets badly damaged it only costs a few thousand credits to repair.
Why not make the expense of repairing damage proportional to the purchase-price of each module?
If a module costs Cr1m and sustains 50% damage, it should cost at least Cr500k to repair it.

If it was up to me, I'd also make fines and bounties proportional to, perhaps, the value of the ship a player was flying when they committed an offence.
I'd like to see fines/bounties proportional to a player's entire gross assets but I suspect that might be a little too harsh.
Yeah you can already test this scenario by taking a big ship into a Thargoid fight. If we take the standard Cyclops as an example, that pays 2m credits a pop, if you're not very skilled (like myself) then you lose about 50% hull and suffer extensive module damage. That can cover most of the payout so the activity might then not be deemed worthwhile (from a credits perspective anyways), meaning payouts would likely have to increase, leaving us right at the same problem.

It's a tricky one, I'm certainly struggling to come up with a good idea of a good credit sink that will also yield rewarding/fun gameplay.

Base building is nice for some people, but again unless there's actual gameplay involved other than space-legging it from one room to the next, I don't see the point as that gets boring rather quickly (not that I'm a fan of the concept anyways - I remember Fallout 4 introducing it, I was quite hyped about it but when I actually played it first hand I largely ignored it thereafter).
 
Yeah you can already test this scenario by taking a big ship into a Thargoid fight. If we take the standard Cyclops as an example, that pays 2m credits a pop, if you're not very skilled (like myself) then you lose about 50% hull and suffer extensive module damage. That can cover most of the payout so the activity might then not be deemed worthwhile (from a credits perspective anyways), meaning payouts would likely have to increase, leaving us right at the same problem.

That is precicely why you don't increase the payouts for stuff like that; in order to force players to make hard decisions about whether it's worth doing a given thing.

If a player feels morally obliged to defend humanity against the Thargoid threat, they're going to have to accept the cost of repairs in order to keep fighting the good fight.
If, OTOH, they're only doing it to gain combat rank or for the lulz, they'd have to ask if it was a good idea to continue.
Course, in order to really make this a tough decision, the game would really need to provide some compelling reasons for bothering fight the 'goids at all.
Right now it's just, basically, "Here's some especially tough opponents for pew-pew if you think everything else is too easy".

Also, combat isn't really the best metric to be judging risk vs reward in ED to begin with.
I mean, you can either be a miner or a bus-driver in a cheap ship and earn a fortune or you can spend a fortune building a combat ship and then risk life and limb fighting for some cause and get paid peanuts.
Hmmm, I wonder which career I should pursue? :unsure:
 
I found a lovely video from early 2016. And the fellow was in a T6 and trading it in at Hamilton Gateway for a DBX on the 20% discount. Because he couldn’t afford an Asp.

A month ago, I decided to sort out my trade rank and did the whole of Tycoon in like 3 play sessions mining Void Opals.

Not sure what to do with the billion in cash.

A mega ship would have to be like a hundred million to put out of reach of plebs like me.
 
I don't see stationary world bases that we're tethered to in gameplay terms as necessarily being a good thing nor making that much sense for us as Commanders in the game.

But either way, I haven't really played the game to make credits for a few years now. After getting a kitted out rum running Cobra in early 2015, I was pretty well set on my way.
 
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I found a lovely video from early 2016. And the fellow was in a T6 and trading it in at Hamilton Gateway for a DBX on the 20% discount. Because he couldn’t afford an Asp.

I'm sure a lot of people just want ED to be a game where they can do whatever they want without hindrance but that's exactly the sort of "dilemma" I'd like to see re-introduced into the game.

These days, I can just rock-up at Jameson Memorial and throw any modules at any ship without even noticing a change to my bank-balance.
Years ago, deciding whether to spend credits on an ADS or fit a new weapon to my AspX was a BIG decision.
The game was, I'm afraid, more enjoyable back then.

The problem is, these days almost everybody who wants one has a Cutter/Corvette/Annie parked in the garage.
Even if FDev did completely revise the economy, all that'd happen would be that all the people who already own big ships would be able to crush everybody else like insects.

Coincidentally, I've just spent a couple of days tarting up my Vulture, for old-times sake, and the result is a ship that cost Cr30m and is reasonably tough.
It'd be nice if the ED universe was a place where you could build something like an AspX or Krait and be confident that it could defend itself against 95% of attackers - although you wouldn't necessarily want to use it belligerently due to the expense of repairs.
 
Might be a terrible idea for some, but it makes me wonder about buying Engineered kit in the game. It'd make some sense and would make sense if it were very expensive. I don't really see that happening though.
 
I'm sure a lot of people just want ED to be a game where they can do whatever they want without hindrance but that's exactly the sort of "dilemma" I'd like to see re-introduced into the game.

These days, I can just rock-up at Jameson Memorial and throw any modules at any ship without even noticing a change to my bank-balance.
Years ago, deciding whether to spend credits on an ADS or fit a new weapon to my AspX was a BIG decision.
The game was, I'm afraid, more enjoyable back then.
You can do that for yourself - buy a Cutter, stick expensive modules on it, self destruct, repeat until poor. I do similar every so often, because - as you say - I think it's more fun to have to plan.

But a lot of people would disagree, so it's never going to be the game making you do that. All those people 'grinding' the game will just ignore any part of the game that is not the 'meta', and then declare the game ded / boring.

Might be a terrible idea for some, but it makes me wonder about buying Engineered kit in the game. It'd make some sense and would make sense if it were very expensive. I don't really see that happening though.

One of the reasons, I think, that engineering is not CR based is to widen the meta. People have to try some different areas of the game to do engineering. If it was CR based they would all just mine Void Opals (or whatever the meta is) all day, while complaining that the game is all about mining...
 
Never have enough credits. :( Get nearly 3bn in assets now, but only 500m liquid and I don't want to sell anything. I lost my will to grind some time ago. The only grinding I do these days is for HGEs and mission mats.
 
The expenses have to be something that gets incurred during play.

I've never understood how, for example, GGC armor for a Krait costs ~Cr40m and yet if it gets badly damaged it only costs a few thousand credits to repair.
Why not make the expense of repairing damage proportional to the purchase-price of each module?
If a module costs Cr1m and sustains 50% damage, it should cost at least Cr500k to repair it.

One problem I can see here is that after a skirmish you may end up having to pay more for repairs than a rebuy, so it would make more sense financially to self destruct and start afresh. Perhaps scale the repair costs to the rebuy costs so that if you crawl in with 1% hull remaining you have to pay 80% of a rebuy cost for repairs?

To me there should be station access costs for each docking, scaled to the size of the ship and multiplied by the affluence of the system. And you should pay double if using a DC ;-).
Transaction taxes could be added, with massive tariffs for certain items (thinking void opals here).
Bring in speeding fines and have the proportional to your account balance - say 0.1% of it for first instance, doubling it for repeat offenders. (nasty, I know.....)
 
Personally, I wouldn't mind if there wasn't an insurance rebuy at all anyway, but I know that wouldn't go over too well with some others.
 
Even if FDev allowed individual players to but mega-ships it wouldn't solve anything.
All that'd happen is that every player would aspire to own one, whine about the expense and then, eventually, FDev would capitulate and provide something that made it viable, thus rendering every other expense in the game completely trivial.

What's really needed is routine expenses which actually force players to make hard decisions, without unduly penalising anybody.

For starters, you can't have any kind of storage costs because that would penalise people who don't play for long periods and would actively deter players if they came back and found that the credits they'd spent months earning had been wiped out.

The expenses have to be something that gets incurred during play.

I've never understood how, for example, GGC armor for a Krait costs ~Cr40m and yet if it gets badly damaged it only costs a few thousand credits to repair.
Why not make the expense of repairing damage proportional to the purchase-price of each module?
If a module costs Cr1m and sustains 50% damage, it should cost at least Cr500k to repair it.

If it was up to me, I'd also make fines and bounties proportional to, perhaps, the value of the ship a player was flying when they committed an offence.
I'd like to see fines/bounties proportional to a player's entire gross assets but I suspect that might be a little too harsh.
The problem with boosting repair costs is that the cost of repairing a badly damaged ship, including integrity, needs to be less than the rebuy cost of the ship, otherwise we’ll get a repeat of Commanders self destructing as opposed to repairing ships.

We’ve seen something similar happen with C&P as well. Fines and bounties only matter to those who don’t plan ahead for ther criminal activities.

It’s a pity that this isn’t a single player game, where we could rent station facilities to speed up things like cargo loading and unloading, repair and refit, and keeping an ear to the ground for juicy missions. I’m already roleplaying something like that (which I really should sit down and codify), but I would pay good credits to hire a factor at key stations to collect my preferred missions for me.
 
It'd be nice if the ED universe was a place where you could build something like an AspX or Krait and be confident that it could defend itself against 95% of attackers - although you wouldn't necessarily want to use it belligerently due to the expense of repairs.
All I have is a Krait Phantom (well engineered) and she's all the ship I need :)
 
To me there should be station access costs for each docking, scaled to the size of the ship and multiplied by the affluence of the system. And you should pay double if using a DC ;-).
I agree about docking costs, but you got the last bit wrong - it should be doubled for those not using a DC as they are landing outside of the control of the station DC and can cause traffic management issues should they ignore speed/queuing bylaws...
 
The problem is probably game design. Having so many player owned persistant things is outside the scope of the procedural engine idea. However, I would like a small place to truly call home. A little base, just somewhere on a planet, or a tiny docking pad and habitat somewhere. Obviously for the wealthy larger habitats could be possible, up to station size, but I'd love a place I can build and name and be forever a place of mine. I don't mind it being able to be damaged as long as I can put onto it sufficient firepower to defend itself.
 
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