The only problem with 5 billion credits is..

[Florenus]

Yeah i got a couple of thousand hours too, but sadly most of time was spent finding stuff in the bubble. If only i logged on and only did something that paid credits, cant imagine how wealthy id be then.

So, you prefer some certain playstyle, but now you want a Fleet Carrier, even if you might not really need one.

Obviously Fleet Carreiers will not be for everyone to buy on the spot and that's perfectly fine.
For a long time I felt that there's nothing more for me to work for and I could just burn the credits earned.

 

[Dragsham]

I only play elite now. Perhaps too much. I'm new so I'm on the curve. Once I'm done I'll be considering one of these. The upkeep seems daunting so I'll wait till it pans out.
Meantime I've bought a type 9 I'll bling it (already changed cargo bins to 256 a pair lol and used old modded weps in storage.) And go out mining qtr of a bill per load. Won't take me long.

 

[myothershipisacobraiv]

I can earn usually around 40M an hr on a non-open-capable ship outside of EDDB.

that'd be about 20 days of Elite at 6 hours of just trading a day.

a month and a half of 3 hours of just trading.

these are "first 200~ hrs" sessions.

I often see people chastise against grind but I believe those people have simply moved away from grind entirely as they are no longer willing to do it. So they just don't do it. But I think it's less about choice or a "more intelligent way of playing Elite" as it is simply a state that's been developed through having already done the other thing. Others will quit instead.

I don't see myself trading for 6 hours a day for 20 days or even 3 hours a day for 40.

I like FC, I think it's nice, I have no immediate plans for them.

 

[Darkfyre99]

Well the novelty of a changing gold rush works fine, the problem is whatever design allowed them to do it by inflating the new one instead of nerfing the prior one. They have to take responsibility for their own game at some point, it makes no sense to white knight the blame on players.

I miss bubble exploration the most though. Look at what everyone is doing. Read the system map. Find similar examples in the galaxy map not the same as everyone else. Repeat. Was just the right balance of work for reward.. or more like high work for high reward.

I'm not sure where you got the "white knight the blame on players" from. I put the blame on the currently ludicrious credit reward inflation firmly on Frontier's shoulders.

• Frontier was to blame for taking a chainsaw to their economic sim, including ship upkeep costs, in response to the Veruca Salts of the Community.
• Frontier was to blame for not taking action immediate action whenever a new addition to the game resulted in anomalously high rewards.
• Frontier was to blame for turning those rewards into the new normal, thus perpetuating the cycle of ever increasing income.

What I most wanted from Elite: Dangerous, from the day I joined the Kickstarter, was to be a poor explorer out beyond the edge of nowhere, having to make interesting decisions about how to balance risk, reward, convenience, and utility. Frontier's decisions has me playing an absurdly wealthy dilettante, who thinks nothing of throwing away a year's salary for a normal person if it means shaving fifteen seconds off of my travel time. While it's certainly fun in its own way, working my way up to my Asp Explorer was a lot more satisfying than obtaining the remaining billion credits of my current net worth.

 

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

While it's certainly fun in its own way, working my way up to my Asp Explorer was a lot more satisfying than obtaining the remaining billion credits of my current net worth.

My space fantasy doesn't exclude making an empire for myself (see name) but just as far as gameplay goes.. what gets me was, i think im a human being with a joystick the same as a new player today. The.. 40.. maybe 60 hours it took for me to get an asp were so satisfying it seems just stupid that frontier didn't make that work for everyone rather than just handing over the lollies. Its beyond easy way out that's actual defeatism given elite is their "baby" and all that.

I often see people chastise against grind but I believe those people have simply moved away from grind entirely as they are no longer willing to do it.

Maybe. Looks like i have a good lead anyway, and also i like your perspective that it might not be that bad in the end. You have to get over 10 million an hour though to consider yourself making real progress on it, and that's not guaranteed without focus (or cant be random sandboxing).

 

[ellay]

There's only 2 rational ways to earn that total at present. Mining and robigo (robigo is the old new "painite" option).

I have never been to Robigo and never mined anything other than the minimum needed for engineering; also never used any of the other previous “exploits” but still have more than 11 billion in assets. There are other ways to make decent money, you just haven’t found them yet.

 

[Dragsham]

The games progress, indeed all games progressing, is via a tedious grind.
Grinding is taking advantage of the games natural way to play. Namely steadily doing lots of everything. Grinding to elite combat means you'll only get interdicted by big ships with elite pilots. Imagine this...
Playing the game as it's intended. All reps weps ships mods etc all going upwards as per design. Not us singling out one aspect maxing it and so on till were done.
BUT that's how it is.
Shame cos I'd love to play a game that can't be grinded only played as it should be.
Rant over

 

[CmdMarty]

5 billion just gets in the door what are the upgrade costs? Going by other ships the upgrades are like 4-5X more cost than the base ship. A major balance needs to happen with credit earning not just over rewarding newer stuff so its gets used time and again that lead to this inflation. Time and credit sinks aren't good replacements for years of content drought.

 

[Dragsham]

Yeah inflation at its worse. But Fc is new content so wait n see. And save !! Mine!!! Mine your posteria off play non stop don't work don't see kids don that headset and enslave yourself like crazy wow players who starve at their workstations. Jeez

 

[Cageman]

There's only 2 rational ways to earn that total at present. Mining and robigo (robigo is the old new "painite" option).

I need to earn up 3 billion credits, fine challenge, but it seems like a waste of experience for the system builder / min max you think with for elite to basically shut down every other option.

Some suggestions i could see to help:

• Restore the shorter range of destination targets to enable stacking again. The value would be what it was prior when stacking was permitted. This would open up transport and passenger missions all throughout the bubble like it was before (fixing the bubble....). Im guessing the bug fixes to mission mechanics that have happen since will prevent the server damage that may have prompted turning off stacking in the bubble in the past. The current homogenization of "same same at every station" template would also mute any issues. There probably would still be gems in all this which is 1/2 the point.. at least we would have to find them etc.
• Buff sandbox trading to between 7-12 million a hop for cutter/type9 in the top extremes.
• <Someone passionate about combat please insert the sweet spot for that>.

It would be nice to have a credit grind (ie, a basic progression target) but with many options. Being able to move around the bubble while doing this counts, for some anyway.

Thanks for considering.

EDIT: The brave thing they could do delete everyones credits for a free decal, rebalance credits to before right before passengers and set the price of carriers to 500 million. Restoring sanity to the galaxy. Dreaming sure

Check out Father Bill on Twitch... he's made over 20Bil in credits, mainly by beeing a very smart trader. Sure, he did SOME mining here and there, but his playstyle is mostly trading.

 

[Drelthar]

It would be nice if assassination missions didn't pay peanuts, considering you're a highly trained illegal murderer - but getting paid less than a truck driver travelling across a couple of systems.

 

[Lakon Spaceway]

It's a new item. It will still be available to buy in a year or two's time. You don't have to be an early adopter. Especially, if you're currently struggling to get the money together.

 

[Lakon Spaceway]

It's like cars. You lose 2 billion off the value the moment you drive it out the mail slot.

I presume that you can only buy these things either from planetary bases. Or , if you can buy it from starports, that you have to drive out of the maillot in your own ship and go Dock at your fleet carrier that is parked some distance away from the star port such that gravitational attraction doesn't adversely affect the orbit.

 

[Vedmo]

I would think Frontier has some idea of how many players have 5 billion, and maybe I'm wrong here, but perhaps part of the 5 billion pricing was because they new that was an amount most players would have to work towards. They are letting us know the amount months in advance, and once they are out we will have half a year (at least) before New Era. For those so inclined and not already multi-billionaires, this would give them a longer term goal to work towards in the waning months of Beyond.

I would expect that an obviously "end game" item would not be instantly attainable upon release in any game really, which is why I'm hoping it is more than just slapping down 5 billion credits, and those that currently have the credits will have some game play to go through before they can purchase one.

 

[wrmiller]

There's only 2 rational ways to earn that total at present. Mining and robigo (robigo is the old new "painite" option).

Interesting. I don't do either of those things (despise mining), and am currently over the 5b threshold. Took a few years and my wasting a lot of credits on silly stuff though. As someone else said, it sounds like you're looking for yet another get rich scheme. Best of luck

 

[operant]

I guess FCs are not for those who think elite is an arcade game played for fun and not a second job.
Don't know enough about the games industry to understand why FD have spent resources making content for only a select portion of their player-base.
Guess we will have to see what the real purpose of carriers are when they finally emerge.

 

[Lakon Spaceway]

5 billion seems reasonable to me - just from an actual build cost perspective. These things can carry 16 ships. It can carry 8 large ships and the rest being small and medium. That's probably not counting ships in storage in it for people who've docked and then logged out. Now, 8 fully kitted cutters would cost the best part of 5 billion. I get the feeilng you won't be able to modify FCs a lot, so the stock build will be as well outfitted as its possible to get. Size for size, I'd say 5 billion is a reasonable figure for a ship manufacturer to build these things and sell them for a profitable income.

Especially, given the smaller customer base for such a high end item.

 

[Lakon Spaceway]

I find it outrageously unfair that in order to get an FC I would have to pay t billion, and then pay to maintain it. I am trying to earn it by running passenger missions. Wealthy tourists who can afford a sightseeing trip, but can't afford to own a luxury cruise liner,. The majority of people in the galaxy, who don't own their own interstellar spacecraft (because, they can't afford so much as a sidewinder and a pilot's training), and sometimes have to visit other systems on public transport for work. Refugees, who are dispossessed and have just about scraped together the money to pay me to people traffic them. I sometimes trick them and sell them into slavery for a quick buck; because, it's so outrageously unfair that I can't afford to be one of the first people to buy a fleet carrier.

 

[Hamakua]

The funny thing is, I've never void opal mined (I don't like mining in ED for some reason), never did Robigo, never chased the credit exploit get rich quick scheme flavor of the month, and I've still got over a billion in assets, and an estimated two billion credits in exploration data on board. And I did this being lucky to get three hours a week in this game, and spending much of that time enjoying myself at the expense of grinding credits.

I think the price is just right for a fleet carrier, it's about the cost of five A-rated iCutters, and if it were up to me, Frontier would take your advice further and reset everyone back to the sidewinder with 1000 credits, after restoring the economic sim to its Alpha 1 Alpha four state, and restoring ship operating costs as well.

edited to correct which alpha introduced the economic sim

That wouldn't happen, although I'd be entertained for weeks over the veritable blow-up on the forums if you reset everyone.
I'm pretty sure FD couldn't anyway as I'm sure at least for Console owners Sony and MS would put a legal hammer down.

PC players don't have any "Collective bargaining" big stick carrying corp on our side but the Console players do.

I don't know if I'd play again or not - but as long as my discovery name stayed on the system I made the effort on I wouldn't be too bent out of shape. ( mean, I discovered hundreds, but there is one specific that I consider "my" world)

I am triple elite with just short of 9bn in assets. 6.2 liquid. Used to have the canoncial fastest ship in the galaxy too. I've lived my adventure.

 

[Cmdr. Numa]

Oh well, mining is the best money. Did Robigo runs yesterday, made 80 mil/h. Went mining today, made 200 mil/h.