What is everyones ideal credits per hour rate?

[Nadreck]

So what's everyones favourite credits per hour? Example options.

• 20 million per hour.
• 60 million per hour.
• 100-150 million per hour.
• 200-250 million per hour.
• 300-500 million per hour or more?

Of those options, I think 60 million per hour (maybe100-150 million per hour tops) is OK for a veteran player trying to grind out as many credits as possible for some specific reason.

Considerably lower for a newbie (maybe rank-lock the more lucrative missions) or as "background earnings" for a veteran focusing on other things (e.g. exploration, or taking missions for reputation / influence / materials). That could well be 20 million per hour.

 

[goemon]

Speaking of ships:

• Would you happy if you just got one of every ship and free rebuy on every save? Unlimited ships.

I think there is a good reason to make for not gating content (ships, fleetcarrier) behind a hour-wall.i personally would like to see a "virtual system", where all activities are possible, and you can fly any ship.

 

[Deleted member 182079]

exactly the same here:



to quote myself:



so, in terms of shipprices, I'd go with
-10 mio per hour maximum (optimised).

to bring forward 2 experiences:

- yesterday i tested for myself how long it takes to refinance a perfectly build bounty hunting cobra in a High RES. took me single run, 20 minutes. This can't be right.

- after FC update i reset one account. idea was to have him unlock those engineers gating the ones in colonia, before moving there. maybe get him into a cobra. besides engineer unlocks and levelling i only did salvage and ring surveys. i owned a sidey, cobra, dbs and t6 maxed out before i had the materials to engineer. This can't be right.

I remember in the earlier days of my Elite 'career' looking at the price of a Cutter and think "how on Earth am I supposed to make that kinda cash? It will take me years!", and then looking at the module prices for it and almost falling off my chair. It was a genuine "this is way out of my reach" feeling and eventually getting there was such a satisfying experience (though it did make me grind, even if it took a lot longer than it would now).

You can't really replicate that feeling anymore, when it's possible to quickly generate a million credits by simply tagging pirates in a High RES in your D/E rated Sidewinder within the Starter Zone, as I experienced on my second account recently, before the bounty buff yesterday. I have to actively go out of my way to avoid certain activities outright otherwise I'm swimming in credits in no time. But that seems to be what a lot of people want these days, judging from the forum and system chat. You can argue that experience counts for a lot, but then it's so easy to find 'get rich quick' guides plastered all over Youtube you don't even need that now.

 

[Florenus]

I've never calculated credits per hour, so I have no idea what would be the best number.
For me the most important thing would be to have enough options to spend money on.
Ideally, there would be so many ships and equipment to buy in game, that I would never run out of goals to pursue.

I really like engineering. It does give me goals to gradually improve my ship.
In my alt account I've got A rated DBS after a week of casual playing. I think it's little bit too fast, but what the hell - I could aim for FDL and this will take longer.
Since I pretty much decided I'm going to stick to DBS for now, without engineering all I can do is to find something to accupy myself with, but the game in ship customization would be over. With engineering I can travel to some weird specialist, decide what to upgrade, go and look for more materials, upgrade again, etc. It's a whole game revolving around that aspect. Just getting ship and buying better equipment versions is not enough, but I would be ok with engineering providing only slight boosts and being cosmetic for the most part (like f.ex tuning your engine would give it slightly more power, but also add some visuals on the ship itself - some cables, tubes and coils sticking out of the hull- kind of engineering specific ship kits that you gain through gameplay)

There's a reason why in many games, like RPGs, there's whole gameplay revolving around getting better equipment, constantly pursuing something new, often with elements of crafting and customization. It is simply fun.

 

[Deleted member 182079]

I've never calculated credits per hour, so I have no idea what would be the best number.
For me the most important thing would be to have enough options to spend money on.
Ideally, there would be so many ships and equipment to buy in game, that I would never run out of goals to pursue.

I really like engineering. It does give me goals to gradually improve my ship.
In my alt account I've got A rated DBS after a week of casual playing. I think it's little bit too fast, but what the hell - I could aim for FDL and this will take longer.
Since I pretty much decided I'm going to stick to DBS for now, without engineering all I can do is to find something to accupy myself with, but the game in ship customization would be over. With engineering I can travel to some weird specialist, decide what to upgrade, go and look for more materials, upgrade again, etc. It's a whole game revolving around that aspect. Just getting ship and buying better equipment versions is not enough, but I would be ok with engineering providing only slight boosts and being cosmetic for the most part (like f.ex tuning your engine would give it slightly more power, but also add some visuals on the ship itself - some cables, tubes and coils sticking out of the hull- kind of engineering specific ship kits that you gain through gameplay)

There's a reason why in many games, like RPGs, there's whole gameplay revolving around getting better equipment, constantly pursuing something new, often with elements of crafting and customization. It is simply fun.

I'm taking a similar approach with my alt, Cobra Mk3 as the only ship, and with minimal engineering beyond Farseer's stuff (and Quinn who I just unlocked) as I'm bored of the same old engineering game loop, and I probably will end up wiping the account again at some point.

I'm trying to steer the focus of that account away from ship progression (incl. engineering) and take in more of the lore, i.e. become a tourist and just do sightseeing in the bubble (and beyond possibly). That account currently has less than 500k credits in the account, it feels great. Two rebuys and I'll be broke, some proper sense of risk.

 

[goemon]

For those suggesting a value "per week": how many hours per week do you envisage that person to be playing?

A couple of hours every Saturday evening, 2 hours per week?

Four hours every evening, maybe 6 evenings per week, 24 hours per week?

Or are you suggesting passive income, where earnings per week aren't too dependent on hours played?

this is a serious problem.

but to approach it - US statitistics say the average gamer spends 6 1/2 hours playing games. This will probably differ in other countries, but coming from there, 50 mio per week is close to 8 mio per hour, a bit less than i'd ask for.

coupled with the difference of people who invest a lot of time researching the game (a lot of them on these forums, and a bit higher % probably in ED compared to other titles), this broadens the gap between

• "i took a mining missions for cobalt, and slapped 1 collector limpet controller, a refinery and a mining laser on my cobra" and
• "recent research by eliteminers reddit shows, that a mapped minimg run in an optimized mining cutter, taking advantange of the lasers MW/per active collector stats can raise your fragments per seconds refined by 13,8%"

crowds.

good thing is, FDEV have the full stats of hours played and credits earned on average, and can apply their metrcis. i guess it will always end for people like me, who easily spend 20 hours a week ingame (if i don't play a different game for months in between) and love to understand the mechanics earning too much to play a progression game.

 

[Nadreck]

If maximum incomes are reduced, then cheaper Carriers ought to be within reach for those who don't have them yet.

There is currently a rather large gap in price between the cheapest ship that can carry a SLF (the Keelback) and the cheapest ship that can carry a Sidewinder (the Drake-class Fleet Carrier).

 

[Jukelo]

IMO the ideal spot for me would be 10 mil an hour for a moderately skillful activity. Halve or double that accordingly.

 

[shadowhand]

Eh, it's just credits. I like playing the game. Helps that I've already purchased the ships I currently enjoy flying I guess. But then I've no interest in fleet carriers, or mining. Just doing regular activities have kept me with more than enough credits so far.

 

[Miklos Atreides]

For me there's some kind of failure in the inflation of income credits. Income has risen by muliple factors over the years. Raising profits to insane cr/h values. On the other hand ships base prices are still the same at their point of introduction. prices for lower value commodities didn't raise either. So there is an elemantary mismatch of income 2 profit to cost and risk.

CR/h maybe is important in real life, here it doesn't matter that much (at least to me), but I think if anyone wants to adjust it then there is a hollistic aproach to be made. The proposal to be able to make the profit to get into an Anaconde in one year can be a baseline to adjust all the other things around.
In the end you will have to convert all the balances in palyers accounts to give that adjustment a start. Can you hear that rage too?

Regards,
Miklos

 

[Deleted member 182079]

Eh, it's just credits.

That's exactly the problem these days, isn't it.

 

[Rat Catcher]

Tough question...

A week ago this account had around 500 mill in loose credits...
Sunday I bought a Fleet Carrier and equipped it, and have 700 mill+ 'banked' in the FC.

The purchase was assisted by my main account 'doing stuff' in his FC and transferring funds between accounts.

No asteriods were mined/detonated/SSD stripped in the process.

If anyone wants to focus solely on credits, methods are in-game to make them quickly.

 

[shadowhand]

That's exactly the problem these days, isn't it.

No, that's my personal opinion. I've never had more than a few hundred million at any given time, due to my hobby of collecting one of each ship and then a-rating and engineering them.

I guess I just never needed more than that, but it's not a recent development at least for me. I don't see the point in grinding credits unless I need them for a specific goal. At which point I'll go murder some pirates, or do a few cargo missions in the pleiades...

It wasn't a comment on "the times we live in", just a statement of preference. Or as the cool kids say "don't @ me"

 

[Ian Doncaster]

I think the problem is that there's no good answer to this, even if you believe that credits make a good progression-gating device in the first place [1]. The exponential cost curve for mostly sub-linear capability increases means that a balance which allows people to buy a carrier at all makes all the small and medium ships "pocket change" ... but an earning basis which meant the Cobra or Asp was a significant milestone would mean no-one ever got a carrier.

Realistically it's far too late to fix it [2], and materials (not perfect, but a lot better balanced than credits) are the more meaningful currency.

[1] In the highly unlikely event of me ending up with enough money to make my own vaguely-Elite-like space game, there'd be no global currency: you'd basically get everything through patronage or barter.

[2] Given that Elite, FE2 and FFE all had basically the same problem, and if anything it was even easier in those to rush to "more money than you can possibly spend" if you knew how to do it, probably 1984 was the time this could have been changed?

 

[Nadreck]

[2] Given that Elite, FE2 and FFE all had basically the same problem, and if anything it was even easier in those to rush to "more money than you can possibly spend" if you knew how to do it, probably 1984 was the time this could have been changed?

Yes, I think it's rather ironic when people argue "life was hard in the old days"...

It was a long time ago, but I do recall in FE2, shipping food from an agricultural world to an industrial one and shipping computers back. Food was cheap but gave a big percentage (sold for about 4 times the buying price), computers were good for profit-per-ton. That combination rapidly inflated my income, the size of my cargo hold was soon the only limiting factor, and I could upgrade to a bigger ship every few trips. Not difficult at all.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Yes, I think it's rather ironic when people argue "life was hard in the old days"...

It was a long time ago, but I do recall in FE2, shipping food from an agricultural world to an industrial one and shipping computers back. Food was cheap but gave a big percentage (sold for about 4 times the buying price), computers were good for profit-per-ton. That combination rapidly inflated my income, the size of my cargo hold was soon the only limiting factor, and I could upgrade to a bigger ship every few trips. Not difficult at all.

Yep. And that's without counting the Barnard's-Sol loop where you could strip all the defences off your ship because there were never any pirates, and haul Robotics/Luxuries, which you'd usually be able to find a source mission for at the destination paying double. "Optimal", though really dull.

 

[Morbad]

[2] Given that Elite, FE2 and FFE all had basically the same problem, and if anything it was even easier in those to rush to "more money than you can possibly spend" if you knew how to do it, probably 1984 was the time this could have been changed?

Well, these were single-player games, where the dynamic is ultimately up to each individual player.

I'm a pretty big stickler for balance and well enforced constraints in multi-player titles, where individual fiat ends when it threatens the broader continuity of the whole, even when the multi-player aspects are abstracted. However, a single player game is as that player dictates it to be. They are very different things, or should be. Elite: Dangerous' problem is that it tries to give everyone what they want, while they all share the same game.

I also don't believe it's ever too late to fix something. Too late for the community to accept it without complaint certainly, but not too late to actually improve things, even if player retention is a goal.

 

[Cheradenine]

todays max of 120/160 million per hour seems reasonable

 

[d8veh]

Ships could be unlocked by rank - combat ships for combat rank, explorer ships for explorer rank and trader ships for trading rank, multi-role ships when you reach a level in all three, and the Corvette and Cutter when you're King and Admiral.

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

Keeping it simple, my credits per hour should ideally cover the rebuy of my most expensive ship, minimum.
But the more likely I am to need said rebuy, the higher the pay.

So basically bounty farming (easy) can pay 1 rebuy per hour.
AX (very hard) should pay several.