Make FCs hackable unless you have secure storage and then FCs become a strategic issue for the owner, and that people won't pop them out like a washing line full of flapping pants in main systems.
FDev: Credit rebalancing incoming, "more reward for higher risk" activities
- Thread starter StuartGT
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Make FCs hackable unless you have secure storage and then FCs become a strategic issue for the owner, and that people won't pop them out like a washing line full of flapping pants in main systems.
If the risk of destruction of a carrier is unpalatable, don't get a carrier or be very vigilant at keeping it out of harm's way. Also, if the carrier is able to jump 500 LY away (could be a fast emergency jump mode doing damage to the carrier and being somewhat random), the chance of attackers following may be small. Also, destructible carriers would obviously also need good defenses to discourage attackers. Attackers would also be even more careful if they could lose their precious engineered stuff.
There is always a defense. Destroy them first comes to mind.
S
Thank you, I appreciate it. Sounds like risky business is in dire need of an upgrade. No reason to be an outlaw when crime doesn't pay!
Best analogy for carriers yet!
Dillon's given you a good breakdown of current earnings - to add to that with full min-maxing, exploration can get to ~30 million/hour (most of which is the LYR rank 5 Powerplay bonus) ... and certain trade and passenger mission types can pay 50-100 million/hour (again, in very specific edge cases)
In terms of the evolution of earnings overall in the last several years the general trend is strongly upwards, across all professions. It used to be that 30M/hour was a good rate for an "exploit", then 100M/hour was a good rate for an "exploit", and now 100M/hour is a good rate for a standard profession and 500M/hour is a good rate for an "exploit". It's amusing that many of the really old "nerfs" were to things with earning rates you can pretty much get just for taking off nowadays.
(Many of the complaints about nerfs have been from people who weren't aware of just how much the second-, third- and fourth- best earners paid at the time of the nerf ... and in some cases were doing the best earner so badly that they could have made more by doing the second-best one well.)
As far as per-profession earning rates have changed over the last ~6 years...
- Bulk trading: 1k/tonne used to be a good profit, with 4k/tonne absolutely amazing, at the start. Now 1k/tonne is available by default on most goods, 4k/tonne is commonplace, and 20k+/tonne is available in certain circumstances.
- Bounties/bonds: used to be absolutely tiny - five figures for a big ship, low four figures for a small one. These get slightly buffed pretty much every single release, and are at least ten times higher than originally by now.
- Mining: was always quite a bit better than people thought it was, but nevertheless has gone from 30M/hour done exceptionally well to probably around ten times that still. Obviously the collector limpets helped a bit.
- Missions: a lot of the various "earners of the month" have been mission-based over the years, but general payouts for non-silly situations were boosted considerably about four years ago to make them one of the most reliable high-but-not-the-best earners since.
- Exploration: has never paid especially well compared with anything else, but has had at least three significant increases in earning rate since the beginning
- AX combat: doesn't pay out great, but even that has crept upwards quite a bit over time due to power creep in the anti-xeno weapons available, and people getting more of a handle on the tactics needed. Plus some bug fixes which were making it unintentionally difficult before.
- Community Goals: the new series of those have about 4x the payout of the originals. Still not brilliant, and no-one really does them for the money, but it brings them a bit more into line with how everything else has increased.
- CQC: paid out terribly when it was introduced, had a bug meaning that it paid out less than it should, still unfixed, still pays terribly now. But it's not about the money, of course.
- Powerplay: the high-rank salary was high but not excessive when introduced, but hasn't been touched since so now it's peanuts.
- Rares trading: was one of the best earners for any ship Asp and smaller in the original game version. Hasn't been made significantly more profitable since, so now it's a curiosity only.
In that case the last thing we need is a rebalance!They balanced it, is what happened.
I play Iron Ar$e style: if I die, I reset and start again. If I get into a scrap, I have to decide very quickly if I am going to pursue. More painful than running away with a tail between your legs is coming in too hard during Distant Worlds and taking 70% hull damage. I could have risked continuing but at 20% of the way into the trip, I turned tail and went for repairs.A big issue is simply that we don't lose anything substantial upon destruction. We end up, for example, with the one-way power creep of never losing engineered modules. A balance of requirements for engineering could then be countered by modules losing engineered effects upon destruction - we get the stock ship back only from insurance payout.
Tie other data to the same module that exploration data ends up in: Everything since last station dock "save point" is lost upon destruction, Balance this with it being available in a "black box" USS that only the owner can see for maybe a week before it is made public and/or disappears.
Combined, the two points above would ensure that anyone destroyed in PvP would not be able to rush back in a minty fresh and fully engineered ship to continue the battle. It would also add a bit of risk to balance those sweet rewards. And it would make engineering something that a player would have to balance the reward of against the risk of losing it.
Make carriers destructible while we are at it, but make them capable of defending themselves as well as jumping away from danger without owner input (but based on set owner's preferences as well as fuel availability). Then they would also be a tremendous reward with tremendous risk, and an actual asset for the game.
In short, balance all these rewards we get with some actual risk.
Make every account like that and people will stop being so cavalier with their rebuys
Faceplanted in a crater is after all one of the best balanced stances anyone can take.
S
Exactly, we need a New Balance. Make them shoes!
I play Iron Ar$e style: if I die, I reset and start again. If I get into a scrap, I have to decide very quickly if I am going to pursue. More painful than running away with a tail between your legs is coming in too hard during Distant Worlds and taking 70% hull damage. I could have risked continuing but at 20% of the way into the trip, I turned tail and went for repairs.
Make every account like that and people will stop being so cavalier with their rebuys
I've liked the idea of Iron Man mode since forever. Especially if we got a Pilot Federation Memorial where deceased characters were listed, including age and ranks obtained.
S
I think when I first started playing, rare goods trading was one of the top 3 credit spinners at the time.
I never got into it (i was too busy learning to dock/outfit and understand the basics at the time) but rare goods trading is now a borderline laughable profession...
It's too bad, too. I always thought it would be cool to run a "higher for hire" like business just like that old Disney cartoon Tailspin
Yeah I play ironman too, greetings fellow nuttter...I play Iron Ar$e style: if I die, I reset and start again. If I get into a scrap, I have to decide very quickly if I am going to pursue. More painful than running away with a tail between your legs is coming in too hard during Distant Worlds and taking 70% hull damage. I could have risked continuing but at 20% of the way into the trip, I turned tail and went for repairs.
Make every account like that and people will stop being so cavalier with their rebuys
I’d rather like a hardcore/survival mode, don’t see it ever happening in ED though.
Pretty much. I would imagine many would agree smuggling and piracy should be the last resort of the desparate, or a go to for anyone who doesn't care how their credits are earned. It feels like something went a bit backwards somewhere.
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Loss of time trying to accomplish something in ED is substantial. There is games where you come back from losses stronger, in ED even getting somewhere takes inordinate amount of time.A big issue is simply that we don't lose anything substantial upon destruction. We end up, for example, with the one-way power creep of never losing engineered modules. A balance of requirements for engineering could then be countered by modules losing engineered effects upon destruction - we get the stock ship back only from insurance payout.
Tie other data to the same module that exploration data ends up in: Everything since last station dock "save point" is lost upon destruction, Balance this with it being available in a "black box" USS that only the owner can see for maybe a week before it is made public and/or disappears.
Combined, the two points above would ensure that anyone destroyed in PvP would not be able to rush back in a minty fresh and fully engineered ship to continue the battle. It would also add a bit of risk to balance those sweet rewards. And it would make engineering something that a player would have to balance the reward of against the risk of losing it.
Make carriers destructible while we are at it, but make them capable of defending themselves as well as jumping away from danger without owner input (but based on set owner's preferences as well as fuel availability). Then they would also be a tremendous reward with tremendous risk, and an actual asset for the game.
In short, balance all these rewards we get with some actual risk.
I think that because hardly anything else in the game have much value to us (as in no risk attached to it), time is the only thing we appreciate the risk of losing and hence value.
It is perfectly possible to balance a game around the risk of loss and how to avoid, remedy or mitigate that risk. It may not be easy, and it may look somewhat different from what we have at the moment. But with better and more diverse risk management strategies available to us (crap, I can't get my manager hat off, help!), we would worry less about losing time.
S
Hmmm...
When FDev said "next week", do we suppose they meant next week or "after the next server tick", which is tomorrow?
It's just that I've got a bunch of Painite on my FC (forgot I had it) and I'd rather spend time flogging it at the weekend instead of having to do it tonight.
I suppose the smart thing to do would be to sell it tonight, anyway, but y'know....
When FDev said "next week", do we suppose they meant next week or "after the next server tick", which is tomorrow?
It's just that I've got a bunch of Painite on my FC (forgot I had it) and I'd rather spend time flogging it at the weekend instead of having to do it tonight.
I suppose the smart thing to do would be to sell it tonight, anyway, but y'know....
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I play Iron Ar$e style: if I die, I reset and start again.
Make every account like that and people will stop being so cavalier with their rebuys
I just arrived from ObsidianAnt's YouTube video to say exactly that.
Buffing combat payouts does not make risk more rewarding, it makes combat even less of a risk than it already is. All you risk in combat is 5% of ship value, which is practically no risk at all. And in the long run, bigger combat rewards only make 5% of ship value more affordable, and therefore make combat even less of a risk than practically no risk at all. What a bore.
Now if insurance claim costs were 100% of ship value instead of 5%, and data and material storage and engineering upgrades were lost in a rebuy, that would be a risk... but... still not a serious risk. Meh.
But if insurance claims and rebuys were to be abolished altogether (or at least abolished in a new Iron Man Open Play mode), so that ship destruction means Commander death and the Tionisla Ship Graveyard, i.e. a Commander who loses their ship loses their Savegame and has to start again from Harmless, now that would be a real risk. Then we would have a real game, that is to say one in which you can actually lose.