It's obvious Mining has caused any qualitative sense of value to go out the window these days, and the only ways to play and earn reasonable money which people suggest are just a case of "git gud"rely on exploits, edge cases and unbalanced mechanics.
So if not how the game currently is, what should earning 100m an hour look like? Here's my 40c on the different topics, let's also hear yours.
Combat
A multi-destination "Bust the cartel" style scenario. First destination, you get a wave of 8 sidewinders, something simple... but your task is to just kill seven, and leave the eighth to flee.
Scanning the wake updates the mission to the destination system.
Get there, a small wing of standard ships, maybe a python plus two eagles. Crack them, and you get another mission update as one of the ships "sends out a distress call" or something.
You're able to trace that to a third destination where there's a wing of four engineered vipers and an unregistered comms beacon. Comms beacon has a security interlink with the vipers which you need to destroy before you can datalink scan the comms beacon.
Next system is a wing-assassination equivalent with an Engineered Corvette + Two engineered Vultures. For added risk, take out the vultures and the corvette might try to flee; you're likely not able to take it out in time without some serious firepower, so you scan it's wake, following it to wherever it goes, where you'll need to interdict it and finish it off.
Mining
100m an hour in the bubble simply shouldn't be a thing. Maybe you need to go a minimum of 1,000 Ly out from any habited system... maybe you need to go inter-regional to some sort of nebula. When you're mining, the conditions should be like this. If you're at a reasonable distance to an asteroid detonating, it should cause repariable damage to random systems. If you're too close, or you overcharge the asteroid, your canopy could pop. Easily mitigated with enough raw to synthesise atmo til you get to a station for repair.
Source/Delivery
Large-volume deliveries into hazardous environments such as damaged stations, carrying cargo with properties which force you to fly shieldless, and are damaged by seismic hull activity; if you lose more than 20% hull integrity (i.e hull < 80%) the equipment is damaged beyond repair (kinda like how VIP passenger missions who are damage averse currently works). Other cargo properties (such as Thargoid corrosive effects) can and should weigh in.
Salvage, Research and Theft (Specialist activities)
Recovery of alien biopsies for specific missions, collection of "Cargo Sets" such as a full set of Thargoid items (Probe/Link/Sensor, Resin, Bio samples, Tissue samples from each Thargoid variety and a heart). Collection of salvage from complex scenarios like I've described previously here. Hijacking from heavily-armed meagaships or convoys (Remember Federal Couriers? I think they're still a thing.... don't hear much about them). Target cargo should also have dangerous properties, like with source/delivery missions.
Exploration
Y'know what? It's kinda ok how it is, once you throw long-range visitor tourism into the mix. But that's more tourism, and not really exploration. So realistically, collecting codex entries should be worth a bunch more than the paltry 50k for a new find, 2.5k for a find you've made elsewhere already.
Tip Offs
These should be worth at least 20-30m, considering the effort needed to get one in the first place.
Then of course... there's a bunch of speculative activities you could put in the game based on the assets FD have at their disposal; manning checkpoints, committed repair and support activities at megaships where a scenario is a "Repair our ship, recover the escape pods, now fend off these fighters" a-la the palin stuff.
So what sort of activity do you think 100m/h is worth, that isn't "insert activity, do 20 times in that hour"?
So if not how the game currently is, what should earning 100m an hour look like? Here's my 40c on the different topics, let's also hear yours.
Combat
A multi-destination "Bust the cartel" style scenario. First destination, you get a wave of 8 sidewinders, something simple... but your task is to just kill seven, and leave the eighth to flee.
Scanning the wake updates the mission to the destination system.
Get there, a small wing of standard ships, maybe a python plus two eagles. Crack them, and you get another mission update as one of the ships "sends out a distress call" or something.
You're able to trace that to a third destination where there's a wing of four engineered vipers and an unregistered comms beacon. Comms beacon has a security interlink with the vipers which you need to destroy before you can datalink scan the comms beacon.
Next system is a wing-assassination equivalent with an Engineered Corvette + Two engineered Vultures. For added risk, take out the vultures and the corvette might try to flee; you're likely not able to take it out in time without some serious firepower, so you scan it's wake, following it to wherever it goes, where you'll need to interdict it and finish it off.
Mining
100m an hour in the bubble simply shouldn't be a thing. Maybe you need to go a minimum of 1,000 Ly out from any habited system... maybe you need to go inter-regional to some sort of nebula. When you're mining, the conditions should be like this. If you're at a reasonable distance to an asteroid detonating, it should cause repariable damage to random systems. If you're too close, or you overcharge the asteroid, your canopy could pop. Easily mitigated with enough raw to synthesise atmo til you get to a station for repair.
Source/Delivery
Large-volume deliveries into hazardous environments such as damaged stations, carrying cargo with properties which force you to fly shieldless, and are damaged by seismic hull activity; if you lose more than 20% hull integrity (i.e hull < 80%) the equipment is damaged beyond repair (kinda like how VIP passenger missions who are damage averse currently works). Other cargo properties (such as Thargoid corrosive effects) can and should weigh in.
Salvage, Research and Theft (Specialist activities)
Recovery of alien biopsies for specific missions, collection of "Cargo Sets" such as a full set of Thargoid items (Probe/Link/Sensor, Resin, Bio samples, Tissue samples from each Thargoid variety and a heart). Collection of salvage from complex scenarios like I've described previously here. Hijacking from heavily-armed meagaships or convoys (Remember Federal Couriers? I think they're still a thing.... don't hear much about them). Target cargo should also have dangerous properties, like with source/delivery missions.
Exploration
Y'know what? It's kinda ok how it is, once you throw long-range visitor tourism into the mix. But that's more tourism, and not really exploration. So realistically, collecting codex entries should be worth a bunch more than the paltry 50k for a new find, 2.5k for a find you've made elsewhere already.
Tip Offs
These should be worth at least 20-30m, considering the effort needed to get one in the first place.
Then of course... there's a bunch of speculative activities you could put in the game based on the assets FD have at their disposal; manning checkpoints, committed repair and support activities at megaships where a scenario is a "Repair our ship, recover the escape pods, now fend off these fighters" a-la the palin stuff.
So what sort of activity do you think 100m/h is worth, that isn't "insert activity, do 20 times in that hour"?
