All these mining updates and patches. So combat updates when?

[Jmanis]

should be the same with rank as well as reward though, you can spend 40 minutes battling tooth and nail in a sidewinder vs an Elite Python for 0.0000000001% rank increase and 40,000CR

or...

you can get a 1900 DPS death machine with 8k shields and pop a python every second.

the rewards and rank system in the game tell us its better to not be skilled at combat, and take as little risk as possible.

should be the same with rank as well as reward though, you can spend 40 minutes battling tooth and nail in a sidewinder vs an Elite Python for 0.0000000001% rank increase and 40,000CR

or...

you can get a 1900 DPS death machine with 8k shields and pop a python every second.

the rewards and rank system in the game tell us its better to not be skilled at combat, and take as little risk as possible.

What? No?

That python kill should be the same payout regardless of what you fly[1]; the ability to do the same thing with a bigger, more powerful ship, faster, that's what progression is, and coincidentally, what mining and many other activities in Elite get totally wrong.

A proper risk/reward balance rewards a challenge at a level commensurate to your ability/capability, tuned for over- and underperformance.

Let's take CZs as an example. Intuitively, the difficulty of ships should increase as the site difficulty increases, and in parallel, the rewards should increase.

The typical way to tune this sort of setup is, if you go on with an excessively powerful ship (overtuned), you wipe the targets way faster than they can spawn, meaning you just spend lots of time idling for targets. Conversely, undertuning means you take too long killing a single target, and it's more efficient, in terms of reward, to go to an easier site and eliminate those targets, until you progress to a bigger more powerful ship, when it becomes more worthwhile to step up to the bigger challenge.

This is a really common construct used by many games worth their salt. Why it's somehow perceived as an impossibility bewilders me, when so many other games do it well.

[1] unless the size of the ship used is enforced by the game mechanics, in which case that consideration features in the reward for an activity.

 

[Kenneth McGrew]

What? No?

That python kill should be the same payout regardless of what you fly[1]; the ability to do the same thing with a bigger, more powerful ship, faster, that's what progression is, and coincidentally, what mining and many other activities in Elite get totally wrong.

A proper risk/reward balance rewards a challenge at a level commensurate to your ability/capability, tuned for over- and underperformance.

Let's take CZs as an example. Intuitively, the difficulty of ships should increase as the site difficulty increases, and in parallel, the rewards should increase.

The typical way to tune this sort of setup is, if you go on with an excessively powerful ship (overtuned), you wipe the targets way faster than they can spawn, meaning you just spend lots of time idling for targets. Conversely, undertuning means you take too long killing a single target, and it's more efficient, in terms of reward, to go to an easier site and eliminate those targets, until you progress to a bigger more powerful ship, when it becomes more worthwhile to step up to the bigger challenge.

This is a really common construct used by many games worth their salt. Why it's somehow perceived as an impossibility bewilders me, when so many other games do it well.

[1] unless the size of the ship used is enforced by the game mechanics, in which case that consideration features in the reward for an activity.

payout should be the same yes, rank reward not so as you would require more skill in the 1st example, the latter is unskilled combat, and therefore deserves 0 rank

 

[[PS4] Filthymick420]

payout should be the same yes, rank reward not so as you would require more skill in the 1st example, the latter is unskilled combat, and therefore deserves 0 rank

Working your way up to the better ship gives you the training that enhances your skill. An unskilled pilot wouldnt be as effective in a large ship as a skilled one. Your line of reasoning would suggest a newb in a vette could shatter you in a viper. This simply isnt the case. Because even if you have the godvette you need to be good enough of a combat pilot to use it in a god like manner

 

[Jmanis]

payout should be the same yes, rank reward not so as you would require more skill in the 1st example, the latter is unskilled combat, and therefore deserves 0 rank

No, that's silly.

That's precisely why a well designed risk-reward metric is needed. What you're suggesting in a trade context is that a Cobra hauling 10t should be rewarded the same as a T9 hauling 180t. That's crazy, and defies all sense of progression, which any well-designed game should have.

Alternately, in D&D, it doesn't matter whether a 1/2 CR Orc is hard-fought by a level 1 character or a instagibbed by a level 19 character; it gives you 100 XP.

The difference is that 100XP matters to that level 1 character because it's 1/3rd of their progress from level 1 to level 2, but for that level 19 character, it's a blip on their progress requirement of 50,000 XP to go from level 19-20; their time would be better spent fighting an adult bronze dragon for 13,000 XP.

 

[zimms]

Frontier can't for the lives of them find any balance anywhere in this game. Engineers were to ships what that egg was to credits, and they are still there and won't go anywhere.

Combat and outfitting was way better before Engineers in my opinion. By a huge margin.

 

[zaikoji]

The idea of engineering is great.
Who doesn’t want to get better, special “stuff”?
But the fact that each module has one, two or at best three “go to” options and experimentals is telling. As Rubbernuke so eloquently puts it, there’s no nuancing, and no possibility of finessing and sidegrading a specialist build. People don’t agonize over what to get because there are one or two options which are distinctly superior with only token downsides.
Combat could be amazing if there were more choices, and more hand-wringing when deciding how to pimp out your ship. Imagine a stealth build that was actually viable for something other than a light role-playing situation.
Personally I still have all my legacy modules. I rather like the uneven jankiness that a lot of them have. I loved the roulette wheel too. An indefensible position, I know
And yeah. Combat being by far the most technically difficult, demanding and potentially risky profession of the three, and then paying what it does? Pfffft. It’s just wrong.

 

[Jmanis]

Combat is the slowest of the three cores to rank to ELITE. The other two are fairly easy, especially with the mining and exploration buffs over the years

The most telling thing here is that Combat is the only rank of the three (CQC... lol...) which doesn't use credit earnings as a measure of success.... which says a lot about the intended rate of progression and involvement, versus what actually happens.

Even the fact that Trade Elite needs just 1b in earnings, while an FC costs 5b shows how meaningless and unbalanced the whole game's economy has become.

 

["Red" the Pirate]

Risk vs reward.

That. Right. There.
Payouts are almost completly out of balance within this game. Everything is either all risk, no reward (bounty hunting, czs...), or all reward, no risk (Mining ltds, exploration...).
And I'm getting sick of it.

its not just the pay though, the balance and bullet sponges have taken all the fun out of it.

See above ^^^
Although technically engineering can make npc combat trivial, I was reminded how tough combat can actually get when I started an alt account not too long ago. Even versing a 'conda in your own decently fitted 'conda (without engineering) can feel like a pyro vs pyro situation in TF2.

But it still don't pay jack.

 

[Sir Ganksalot]

If the OP had been playing ED from launch then he would have seen that every update for the first 2-3 years was mainly a pewpew update.
There were lots of threads & posts complaining at each update (mine included) that nothing other than pewpew was being developed in the game.
It took Frontier so long to eventually look into other area's that needed developing & that's why you've not noticed much TLC for pewpew in ages.

Me on the other hand, still look at an update & think.....Yeah! no pewpew

By all means, I don't want them to fully focus on one thing or the other. The fact that Frontier can only manage to focus on one thing for years at a time is beyond me. The payouts for combat are ridiculously low, especially for Elite ranked missions and NPC's. There's no reason why they could at least give a payout increase while still doing updates to the non combat activities that you enjoy.

Exploration is the only pillar of the game, all the rest is just fluff!

I kind of agree with you and in my opinion, the exploration community has been robbed of content almost as much as the PvP community.

 

[Bigmaec]

Its not unfixable, it just requires effort and a willingness to do it.

And iron will and nerves of steel for all the whining when the murderboats get nerfed.

 

[Old Duck]

payout should be the same yes, rank reward not so as you would require more skill in the 1st example, the latter is unskilled combat, and therefore deserves 0 rank

I see what you are saying and I agree. I've always said that players hiding in their G5 FDLs are using the "easy mode" setting, and their XP should rank accordingly.

 

[Bigmaec]

I see what you are saying and I agree. I've always said that players hiding in their G5 FDLs are using the "easy mode" setting, and their XP should rank accordingly.

There are better ships than a g5 Murderlance to advance combat rank.
Just saying.

 

[Sir Ganksalot]

I see what you are saying and I agree. I've always said that players hiding in their G5 FDLs are using the "easy mode" setting, and their XP should rank accordingly.

What about me, hiding in my G5 FAS?

 

[Bigmaec]

What about me, hiding in my G5 FAS?

That's so 3304.

 

[Northpin]

All these mining updates and patches. So combat updates when?

Mining just been nerfed... are you sure you want Combat to go the same path?
Especially when Combat is earning like 20-40 millions per hour and not the 250-500 mining used to get

 

[Clarion-Z]

You try buying yourself a fully A rated Corvette or a fleet carrier off of nothing but bounty hunting and then come back to me. I've played this game for 3 years and coming up on 3000 hours and have 28 ships and 6 billion in assets. Imagine if all I could earn after 3000 hours of gameplay was the measly payouts from combat. I would literally never play this game again if that was the case.

I'm pretty mediocre combat pilot and managed to rack 80mill in hour while doing combat/combat related mission. Your 3000 hours with that kind of payout would be 240 billion already. Ofcourse the outfitting and such would take away some of the profit... but as mentioned before, combat + combat missions are quite good already

 

[[PS4] Lorenzo Waringos]

And iron will and nerves of steel for all the whining when the murderboats get nerfed.

I think you might be overstating that a bit much, this latest mining nerf seems to have been received in good spirit by most.

 

[Old Duck]

What about me, hiding in my G5 FAS?

Real men fly G3 Eagles or shieldless Dolphins.

 

[Bigmaec]

I think you might be overstating that a bit much, this latest mining nerf seems to have been received in good spirit by most.

View attachment 181116

Well. You deserve those likes you'll get

 

[[DOOK] Droogie]

Bring back Robigo shadow deliveries.