LTD mining is overpowered and it kills all other activities

[norlin]

Hey FDevs,

The LTD mining is way too overpowered and it renders all other activities to be mostly useless from the in-game perspective.

Right now there are two different issues with mining:

1. Respawn bugs on re-login and even when flying away (~25km) on a launched fighter (while the ship is near the asteroid!).
That one I guess should not be explained and definitely need to be fixed.

2.1. Overall resources hotspot mechanic. It can be slightly changed to avoid imbalanced things such as Borann triple-spot and the new COL system triple spot.
The only thing need to add is to deplet the hotspot in general if there are a lot of resources extracted (by all the players). After it's depleted, a new spot can be spawned in some time, on another random place.

I guess the hotspots places are bound to the random seed and so they have fixed positions, but I believe it should be near to trivial to use time/date-based random for the hotspot spawning positions, separate for each hotspot.

2.2 Another spawn related issue is that for each instance the asteroids have own resource pool. It can be improved that the asteroids are exactly the same for all the players, and if one asteroid is depleted by a player, it should be marked as such for all the players, so can't be mined by relogging or using different accounts. That will also fix the "mapped mining" thing.

2.3 Another way is to make all the asteroid moving in space, in addition to rotation. Can be difficult to make since it will create a lot of chaos and probably will require a lot of performance if done naively, but I believe it can be implemented via semi-random trajectories based on time, so each client can calculate the asteroid's position at any moment.

3. Implement supply/demand mechanic - stop stations to buy the resources over their demand, or reduce prices dynamically based on how much items are sold or purchased by players. E.g. if players sell A LOT of LTDs, then stations should stop to buy them or reduce the price significantly, not just for a single station, rather for a whole region, at least.

4. COMPLETELY different approach: to make other activities to be more useful, such as missions, bounties, etc. Though it will require to huge rebalance for all the prices…

Hope for any feedback from FDevs on the mining issues…

 

[norlin]

One more shout into the ED economy refactoring: https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/hedaad Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/hedaad/fdev_please_fix_the_ingame_economics/


The whole point of this topic is not about nerfing LTDs, rather about making every in-game activity matter.

 

[Maggie_Oz]

Other game activities do matter though. It's not all about maximising credits per hour.

 

[norlin]

Other game activities do matter though. It's not all about maximising credits per hour.

Ok, what's the point of missions? or bounty-hunting?

 

[Maggie_Oz]

Advancement of rep mainly, also getting materials or improving influence for by a activities.
Same with bounty hunting.

 

[Ethaidan]

Ok, what's the point of missions? or bounty-hunting?

I can't even remember the last time I did something purely for credits. In fact, aside from CZ massacre missions, I can't remember the last time I selected the credit option from any mission - it's always Inf or mats. There are other aspects to ED beyond credits.

Edit: I'm not saying mining doesn't need balancing, but 'credits' are really not what make things matter to loads of players (explorers, thargoid huhters, PPers, BGS squadrons, etc.)

 

[norlin]

Advancement of rep mainly, also getting materials or improving influence for by a activities.

Yeah but both purposes are not even close to the speed of credits gaining with LTDs.

Even Imperial ranks with courier missions take 2-3 days while for the same time you can mine credits for 1-2 fleet carriers
As for materials, missions are completely useless (in exeption with some materials which can only be found in mission rewards).

As for the bounty hunting, completely disagree - the whole purpose of which is the, well, bounty hunting Rep/influence is (should be) just a small addition.

Also it does not make sense from the risk/reward point of view - LTDs mining is (almost) completely safe, while still generating profit significantly lagrer than risky combat activities.

 

[norlin]

I can't even remember the last time I did something purely for credits. In fact, aside from CZ massacre missions, I can't remember the last time I selected the credit option from any mission - it's always Inf or mats. There are other aspects to ED beyond credits.

The meta-game is great, but I'm talking exactly about in-game economy.

 

[Maggie_Oz]

Yeah but both purposes are not even close to the speed of credits gaining with LTDs.

It's not all about maximising credits per hour.

 

[Maggie_Oz]

missions are completely useless (in exeption with some materials which can only be found in mission rewards).

So not completely useless then

 

[norlin]

So not completely useless then

Would you do missions if you need to gain credits?

 

[Maggie_Oz]

Would you do missions if you need to gain credits?

Yes I often do, usually the source and return and delivery missions but more often I go for pure trading.

 

[norlin]

Yes I often do, usually the source and return and delivery missions but more often I go for pure trading.

Doesn't it bother you that with the same time you can earn x10-x20 credits? For me it's game-breaker and limits my choice.
Sure, for RP or fun we can do whatever we want to, but that's another case.

 

[Maggie_Oz]

Doesn't it bother you that with the same time you can earn x10-x20 credits?

Not in the slightest. The game isn't a race to accumulate the maximum credits in the shortest timeframe.

 

[Ethaidan]

The meta-game is great, but I'm talking exactly about in-game economy.

The 'meta-game'... to loads of Cmdrs, the BGS is the game, and the economy is just one aspect of that game. Bounty hunting isn't about credits per hour, it's about maintaining system security to combat insurrections, pirate attacks, invading BGS groups. As a counter, constant piracy in a single system can be used to wreck system security. Taking Rep rewards from missions isn't about unlocking ships, it's about gaining Rep with the right factions to open up better mission options to facilitate attacking a specific faction. Exploration has its own esoteric rewards for Explorers, and the credits earned are really just a nice bonus (which can be dumped in target systems to support a faction). Your singular focus on credits per hour seems to be blinding you to the other rewards offered by other activities.

The LTD mining is way too overpowered and it renders all other activities to be mostly useless from the in-game perspective.

Well, not from my perspective.

 

[norlin]

Not in the slightest. The game isn't a race to accumulate the maximum credits in the shortest timeframe.

then you did not got the point, I'm not talking about fun/RP/etc, oonly about in-game economy

 

[Maggie_Oz]

then you did not got the point, I'm not talking about fun/RP/etc, oonly about in-game economy

what you said was :

The LTD mining is way too overpowered and it renders all other activities to be mostly useless from the in-game perspective.

 

[Maggie_Oz]

I think you take the term 'sandbox' to an extreme. Can I see your sand toys please?

I can't even guess what you mean by that.

 

[norlin]

what you said was :

exactly, what you've missed is the "in-game perspective" part

 

[Ethaidan]

While I do agree in general, but money is the main driving force of economies in real life. And here it should be nothing but a Mickey Mouse currency? In a game that wants to be taken at least half-way seriously and where some former lead designer never ceased to babble about verisimilitude?

Yes, the economy is a bit of a mess, and I look forward to the whinge-fest when/if they downgrade mining profits.