ANNOUNCEMENT Game Balancing

+1 for increasing AX combat rewards.
This is some of the hardest combat in the game. It takes a long time to kill an interceptor compared to NPC ships and there is a real risk of rebuys that is not present in most PvE combat.

I would increase scout payouts by quite a lot, maybe 100,000 for a marauder and higher for the other scout versions.

All interceptor kills should be increased by several million.

Make thargoid hearts sell for a few million, scaled by type. Give us a reason to collect them.

Make thargoid tissue samples worth a million. It's very risky getting a biopsy from a hydra, make it worth the risk.

Have missions to collect hearts and tissue samples at stations in the Pleiades, WHS and Coalsack Nebula.

Have combat missions available to kill interceptors and scouts as well.

These are just a few ideas, I'm sure there's more things that could be done.
 

Bruce G

Senior Community Manager
@Bruce Garrido In my opinion that are great News.

Even if it’s hard at first for some Miners out there, the Game will benefit from a more balanced Credit earning in the long term.

Really glad you are doing this.
Thanks - we appreciate your comment. Ultimately, we have to just start making some changes to see what happens - estimates and predictions can only go so far. The long term is the most important thing.
 

Bruce G

Senior Community Manager
I have been proposing on reddit for the past six years to allow players to set bounties coming from their own credit balances on other players, which someone can take to see their location along with a notification of them logging in, perhaps a sighting, to go and kill them to redeem said bounty. No credits are "created" as it would be a direct 1:1 credit transfer from bounty giver to the bounty hunter. Perhaps if someone has achieved notoriety in a recent amount of time they would not be able to set bounties.
I saw another comment on this earlier in the thread. I'd be concerned about continual bounties placed on players maliciously for reasons outside of the game. What do you think?
 
Definitely something for us to consider! Only concern is any system that generates rewards from interaction between players is open to be gamed.
raise it. the payout is not ok. IM elite in cqc with 3w 5 h and 7m when i hit elite. i made 21 million in 500 hours. that in NOT OK not matter how you slice it. there are so many things in cqc that are supposed to work but dont. either fix them or stop acting like cqc is still on your guys radar
 
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It's certainly open for consideration. Let us know how you think AX combat payouts should be adjusted.
This is a great point. AX is currently probably the highest-risk activity, yet pays peanuts.

  • Scout kills should pay more - currently, fighting scouts barely recoups your rearm and repair costs. It is dangerous and requires special equipment, and should be more lucrative than regular bounty hunting.
  • Cyclops kills pay 2m, but this is a significant challenge for a solo pilot requiring special equipment. 10m (in-line with the highest-paying solo missions) would be more appropriate.
  • Basilisk, Medusa and Hydra payouts - these are the stiffest challenges the game offers, and have a very high skill requirement as well as needing specialised equipment. It should pay more per hour than any other activity the game offers.
 
Are you serious?!?!?!
OOPP I can get behind, but BGS is totally different thing.
They're both similar in the fact that your efforts can be undermined in both but with the ability to do those things by hiding, you may not be able to do anything about it.

I personally also think that both should be made open-only. If you're brave enough to oppose my power/faction, you better damn be ready for consequences. :ROFLMAO:
 
I'm pro Open-only Powerplay and BGS personally. I understand this is a long standing debate and know a few of the reasons it hasn't happened before. Maybe we'll be ready to have that conversation again sometime in the near future.
In my opinion powerplay and BGS was doomed from the start to be simply a hauling grind as it's just too easy to hide in solo from players who want to mount a trade blockade in open play instances. It just doesn't make sense that a player versus player gameplay allows players to skirt past the PVP aspect of it.
 
The same does not apply to anything that generates rewards. You're not "gaming" a PvE system simply by playing it, and it's much easier to balance.

I was speaking more of unforeseen/unintended outcomes, which seem to happen regularly with PvE elements.

Mining is pretty low risk, but conversely pays the highest rewards. Anti-xeno is the highest risk activity in the PVE game, but mining pays more? Crazy.

Those rocks are a greater threat than the relatively passive Thargoids!

Joking aside, I'd prefer it if Thargoids were more...proactive.
 
Definitely something for us to consider! Only concern is any system that generates rewards from interaction between players is open to be gamed.
A simple solution, which would go for any PVP activity, not just CQC is to scale the payout for unique player kills. So the first time you kill someone you get, say, 10x, the second time 5x, the third 3x, then 2x and finally 1x. A very effective method of rewarding unique player kills rather than the same player repeatedly. Completely eliminates friend to friend gaming (unless you have a large pool of friends, but that would be a fringe case I think)
 
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sounds nice,

regarding missions should be nice to have different tabs for each type of missions:

a tab with "exploration" missions
a tab with "combat" missions
a tab with "bring comms" missions
a tab with "delivery" missions
.
.
.

and so on with all type of missions.

giving every tab a minimun number of missions avaliable.

so there would be variety.

a lot of times, at the moment, missions generated are of the same kind or a kind some may dont like and so force you to wait nother x minutes.

regards
 
The same does not apply to anything that generates rewards. You're not "gaming" a PvE system simply by playing it, and it's much easier to balance.

Zero sum PvP is an interesting take and definitely cancels any risk of manipulation but is a huge disincentive for the activity overall.
I don't think that's quite right. Bounties as they are right now never even come close to the rebuy-cost that the destroyed player is paying so it would actually be a boost to PvP if it became closer to a zero sum game.
 
Feedback of the changes announced

I really like these changes (at least theorically, we we'll see next week if they are good or bad). Doing some maths, the prices are quite good (600K x 128 Cargo in a Python are 76.8 millions of credits, it's pretty reasonable), and the fact that the other more complex mining techniques are more rewarding was something the game needed hardly. I also love the fact that you are increasing the margins of more commodities, it makes trade more fun (being honest, trading the same commodity in a loop everytime because all the others are worthless is boring as).

Feedback of future changes

I'm hyped to see what you are going to do with combat, but it is a fact that it needs a buff. I think the main strenght of Elite is that you can do what you want to do, and all the careers shouldn't give the player the sensation of being a lot less efficient doing what he wants to do to earn it's wage. I also think that AX combat should be more rewarding, scouts meaning only 10K bounty is almost nothing.

I also want to point out that in my opinion some changes to cargo delivery missions and passenger missions should be considered. In my point of view, having a bigger ship should mean something, but nowadays it's quite hard to stack passenger missions or cargo delivery missions (unless you go to Robigo or Taygeta, but I think the player should be capable of being a commodities or passenger transporter without having to go to only one station in one system and making just that loop, which is boring).

Keep up with the good work guys! o7
 
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It would be good to look at piracy as part of your balance pass.

Piracy at present in Elite, PvE or PvP, is great fun and has a moderate skill requirement, as well as being high-risk. It pays very poorly indeed - in part because of the penalty that black markets apply to stolen goods.

If piracy were more lucrative, it would make PvE piracy more appealing as a career (which is good, because it's fun) and PvP piracy more meaningful.
 
I saw another comment on this earlier in the thread. I'd be concerned about continual bounties placed on players maliciously for reasons outside of the game. What do you think?
I'll be honest it's something that's bound to happen which I can assure you already happens without a bounty board. As an active member of the PVP community I can assure you that bounty boards would not affect this to a noticeable degree. I see it as a net positive drawing people into PVP as it's very starved of players because of engineering barrier to entry.
 
I'm pro Open-only Powerplay and BGS personally. I understand this is a long standing debate and know a few of the reasons it hasn't happened before. Maybe we'll be ready to have that conversation again sometime in the near future.
First of all: thank you for that, you gave me something to repost in the forums while discussing the whole open/pvt/solo mess. :p

Getting back on topic: I'm not a miner but I can say I'm happy to see you guys trying to balance incomes with factors like time spent and most importantly risks.

About risks: I believe that CMDRs hauling precious materials should be attacked by npcs more often, not to kill them but to try and steal some of that precious cargo, especially in low security systems.

Oh and by the way: I believe that painite can still be mined by the old mining laser mechanic: wouldn't make sense to get rid of that old mechanic and just keep the new mining instead?

Last but not least: shouldn't traders hauling core mining commodities spawn in systems with the best sell price? Pirates need to have fun too, you know... ;)
 
I also wholeheartedly agree with all the comments re anti xeno payouts. Given the difficulty level plus the requirement for anyone doing it at anything but the most basic level to have a well equipped ship (often with modules buried behind guardian unlocks etc) and potentially an expensive ship, the payouts and risk/investment/reward ratio is, I feel, not quite right at the moment.

One thing that would be interesting to see would be the potential for highest difficulty level of NPC pirates and enemies (not war combatants) to be increased and payouts upped to go with that risk. The same goes for mission targets who are for a high end player relatively trivial.
 
If I am not completely mistaken, as a former miner and current AX pilot, the changes to mining prices would mean laser mining would end up in the region of 100-150M/hour or so. For AX combat to be even comparable, I would personally suggest the following bond values:
Cyclops 2M (it is fine now)
Basilisk 20M
Medusa 60M
Hydra 150M

Cyclopses can still be insta-gibbed by a single commander and raising the bond significantly higher than it currently is would promote avoiding the heart mechanics (ideally the gibbing mechanic should be patched out to avoid credit exploits such as wings gibbing Hydras).
Top AX pilots can take out a Basilisk in a matter of minutes, but this is only accounting for the fight itself. The Basilisk still has to be found and most likely the commander will have to go back to a station for restock and repair afterwards. Most commanders certainly could not take out four Basilisks per hour solo.
Top AX pilots can take out a Medusa solo in about 15-20 minutes. This requires repairs between runs as well as some synthesis. A more reasonable time for a reasonably skilled commander is a fight time of around 30-40 minutes. Add the time for gathering materials for synthesis and repairs and 60M per Medusa is still not on par with post-correction mining.
A Hydra solo is a significant investment of time in terms of the fight itself and requires a large amount of synthesis - and many commanders will also need to use premium ammo synthesis to stand a reasonable chance of success. It is a very high-risk endeavour and should pay accordingly.

All of the bonds I quoted above are on the low side for a solo commander and will not reach the same level as mining even with the proposed changes to mining. However, I understand that one also needs to account for the fact that wing kills can be significantly faster. If at all possible, I would correct this by adding an additional part to the bond that is not awarded equally to all commanders participating in the kill, but instead split between the commanders. Solo kills require both more skill and is a higher risk endeavour than wing kills as a wing can continue the fight while a commander that blows up rejoins it and if a solo commander blows up the fight with any progress in it is irrevocably lost. Reasonable payouts in that case could be in the form of a base bond + a bond depending on how many commanders have damaged the Interceptor before its destruction.

Off the top of my head, I would then go with something like the following:
Cyclops: 500k base bond + 1.5M split bond
Basilisk: 10M base + 20M split
Medusa: 20M base + 70M split
Hydra: 50M base + 250M split

I would consider myself a fairly proficient AX pilot and taking out a Hydra takes me an hour with premium ammunition (+ an hour and a half or so of grinding materials for that ammo). Using basic ammo, it took me 1h20mins yesterday, which does not require as much synthesis materials, but definitely higher skill.

I believe that the bonds could go even higher than this if one truly wants to award skill and risk, but the bond levels quoted would at least put AX combat on a similar level to (corrected) mining.


These are good figures to go with.

My only thought here is that I personally feel the Cyclops payment is too low. Whilst some players can one shot the Cyclops, other players struggle with it. For some people the Cyclops is their end game. So I'd like to see the payment for this increased, even if only by a little.
 

Bruce G

Senior Community Manager
A simple solution, which would go for any PVP activity, not just CQC is to scale the payout for unique player kills. So the first time you kill someone you get, say, 10x, the second time 5x, the third 3x, then 2x and finally 1x. A very effective method of rewarding unique player kills rather than the same player repeatedly. Completely eliminates friend to friend gaming (unless you have a large pool of friends, but that would be a finge case I think)
Diminishing returns could certainly help with this - good thinking!
 
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