What is everyones ideal credits per hour rate?

Enough rambling, I'll see myself out.

Good post. Very good post.

I think you absolutely nailed it as regards progression goals versus ultimate goals.

If you start playing the game to 'get a fleet carrier and anaconda', then there your desired credit per hour is going to be literally thousands of times more than someone with the goal of 'first, let's get a Viper'.

If I went into the music career determined to be the new Elvis, and nothing less was satisfying to me, I'd give up. Because all the smaller venues and goals you need to reach along the way would mean nothing.
But in life we can't just whine to the devs that we're not being Elvis fast enough, and if we're not Elvis in less than 50 hours of effort, then it's the music industry who are at fault.
 
More radically:
  • Should credits just be removed?
Well, no. Without credits you have nothing to work for, no reason to do anything other than battling, and then it would basically be everspace.
  • If engineering didn't exist, would you be okay with progressing on ships rather than power? Just not both.
Um, what? If engineering didn't exist then I'd be ok with the base power of each ship part and if my current didn't meet the standard I needed for a job I'd go get a new one.
  • Are people just concerned with credits because of gold rush dope, ie, playing a game because the community is excited about a new way to earn money surf the wave of hype, and because there is zero real world need for credits, the game itself becomes chasing credits, and there always needs to be an ever increasing rush, because its only about the rush.
Nope, don't care about no gold rush, credits serve as a reference point on progress and how far you have come and how far to go to get that next item on your list.

Speaking of ships:

  • Would you happy if you just got one of every ship and free rebuy on every save? Unlimited ships.
Hell. No. What would be the point? I play so that I can work hard towards my goal and feel a sense of accomplishment when I reach it.
  • Is doing something token still interesting, maybe story based to experience getting it instead? Sounds okay to me.
Again, what?
  • For anyone who doesn't want them for free, how much time do you think its fair to earn each ship?
Depends on the ship.
  • Many issues raised often reference a specific ship, the Anaconda. If the anaconda was bulk produced on a special pilots federation grant for 1 million each, does this change the dynamic of the problem? Maybe it would.....
Yes, then everyone would have one and no one would have to work hard to get a high class ship.


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?

I'm happy at around 20 - 40 I know where I could get more, I know where I get less, but I mostly play to enjoy playing. I'll do one task for a while then move on to another task, sometimes I'll earn lots, sometimes I won't. But at least I'm having fun. (even when I'm regretting taking a stupidly long exploration mission).
 
enjoyed your long post very much.
Good post. Very good post.
Thanks, both of you.

One of the reasons, I suspect the main reason why I carried on babbling for so long was that I don't want to be "that guy" who seems to be telling everybody who disagrees that they're "enjoying themselves wrong", because you can't. Enjoy yourself wrong, I mean.

We all have different expectations. Some want to plow their way through a game to move on to the next one, some want to stay in it for ages because just the "getting there" is the part that they enjoy. Both are right, because that's what brings them enjoyment, and both are wrong, because one man's steak is another man's biowaste.
 
I've never understood this obsession with credits per hour!

Nor me. I just play the game, ignore those get rich quick meta tricks and do what I enjoy.

Whether in RL or in Elite, a lot of people think cash or virtual currency is the most important thing in life. They RL grade chase and/or grind CR just to accumulate more "wealth".

OP. To answer your quesion, >= 0 credits / hour.
 
At this point the ships need to be FAR more expensive to make sense. The new bounty payouts are good considering the pay of the missions you are on. They make it actually worth turning and killing that pirate FDL. The problem is that all the early game ships are meaningless when you make enough to buy them all in a few missions.

Personally, im pretty happy with 5 to 15M per hour.

I often make much more but that level of income puts me right at one or two hours to feed the FC treadmill and then the rest is gain for me. Im working my way up towards 2B to outfit another Cutter hull. That level of income means that goal is one that takes some time.

its harder to calculate now though. I spent two months out exploring and mining gathering everythingI could pack into my mining hold. Now im back and im running 40 to 80M per hour as I drop off the goods in a Python. Probably a pittance when you factor the hours gathering it but I didn’t care to much because mining was really just a break from the FSS.

So id say between 10 and 20M per hour would find me happy with the gameplay and the earnings. 5M per hour would be okay but start to feel grinding. 1M and I would have to toss the keys to the carrier and probably would not bother.
 
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Carriers are/were meant to be expensive. Current upkeep of 5m/week is really cheap compared to what was in the beta of 150m/week.
at 50m per hour of chilled mining, you can get one after 100 hours. Combat pilots who might even cop a rebuy might get one quicker.
Upkeep is 20+m per week with all of the services, I pay around about 13m per week as I suspend the Shipyard and Outfitting. Fleet Carriers were complained about enough for it's upkeep. I largely disagreed with the people complaining about upkeep as I would say that an hour mining could pay for like 10 weeks of upkeep on a fully kitted out carrier. But having figures of cr/h at what you were saying would essentially kill carriers.

Imagine being a new player and seeing a mountain that steep to climb for end game content. Not really fair that the veteran players have reaped the rewards of consistent 200m/h+ over years when new players would be subject to a measly 40-80m/h for the same activity.

That isn't balance that's just straight up nerfing income streams.
 
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Tough question, as far as I'm concerned, since it really depends entirely on what your "goal" is in the game, as in "when have I 'beat' the game/'won' the game/done all that I can in the game".

As such, it's highly subjective, as is anything and everything I write in the following. All of it works for me, but that doesn't make it any more or less "valid" (how I hate that word) than anybody else's opinion.

I play this game, indeed any game, to have fun and to feel that I'm "working" for something. However, my idea of that "something" I'm working for is most likely very different from anybody else's, and that's fine. I get the feeling, and I might be wrong, that the current, contemporary idea of what constitutes a goal in any game is "get to the end game as quick as possible. It isn't for me.

But, with that in mind, what are MY "goals?". Quite simple: to get to the "next ship." Or to get to the "next upgrade."

If my goal was "to get to the point where I can own an Anaconda", my ideal credits/hour would be much higher, because getting to that would be all that I cared about. Or it could be "owning an Fleet Carrier", it really doesn't matter, except the "ideal" Cr/hr goes up the more expensive my "goal" is.

I started back in the beta (oh dear, here goes another "back in MY day" post ;), but bear with me, it's relevant), and my goal was, and remains, as I said, to get to the point where I can buy a better ship. I couldn't care less about getting myself an Annie back then, except to the point where it would be awesome, but it was way out there, in the future. I didn't need it. I just wanted to upgrade the crappy modules on my Freewinder and then, when I'd done that, I wanted an Eagle. Then I wanted a Viper. Then I wanted an Adder. Then I wanted a Cobra. That was my focus. It was hard and it took a long time, but every single time I'd scrimped and scraped to get a better module or a better ship, it felt like a victory and it made me happy. I didn't care a whit about calculating how long it would take me to get to the vaunted Annie, I just cared about getting to the next step up the ladder.

It took me a long time to get into that shiny new Cobra Mk. III, actually not so shiny when I could first buy it, because I didn't have enough to kit her out with anything beyond the crappy stock modules, but, as with all of the previous ships, just hopping into her and taking her for the first ride was the biggest thrill of all.

Fast forward. I took a long break from the game, not because I stopped enjoying it but because RL and other games caught my fancy and then I came back. And suddenly realized that the Asp that would have been my next project was but a few hours of play away. And then, a mere tens of hours after that, I'd not only fully A-rated and engineered my Asp, I had more than enough money to get the Python, something that used to be a long term project. And now I can buy any ship in the game except for an FC without even worrying about my credit balance. I can go straight from owning a Python to buying literally ANY ship in the game and A-rating and G5 engineering it, almost instantly.

It took me months, almost a year, to get me into that Cobra, and I enjoyed every second of it because I got to learn how to fly every single one of the ships along the way, enjoyed every little upgrade, best time in the game for me. And then I got back after the hiatus and got to "money is not an issue" in less than two months. I threw out a quarter billion to transfer my Krait from the Bubble to Colonia because hey, whatever.

That hasn't improved my enjoyment of the game. I can't say it's significantly reduced it either, I'm still here, aren't I?

But I just don't care as much anymore. What's my "ideal" Cr/hr rate?

I'd be fine with pretty much what it was, but that's only because I intend to keep playing it for as long as it takes. I don't have an urge to "finish" the game, as a matter of fact I'd rather not finish it ever, but I completely understand people who measure their success by how quickly they can get to the "end." I don't agree with that approach, I like to get as much out of a game as possible, but I understand it.

So if the metric is "how fast can I get an FC?", then it's completely different from "how fast can I get the next step up the ladder."

And that's subjective. There is no right or wrong answer to that, I just know what works for me.

Enough rambling, I'll see myself out.
Love this!

That is after all the game that FD built and the one they currently seem eager to ruin.

Edit: some of the points being made on this thread would perhaps go further if they were posted over on the current balance thread.
 
I prefer measuring it in fun per hour these days. It has just taken me four daily sessions in my new account in the starter zone/Pilot's Federation Administration district/NooBubble to make a mere 9 million credits, but the pleasure of talking to new and enthusiastic players, and helping them out with advice and fuel limpets, was priceless.
 
Credits should scale with your rank per career, not be the same per mission per player. All methods should be the same. At harmless, your pay for a mission should be about 5k, and you should have to scrape for every credit. At Elite for the same mission, you should get 20 million. 20 million will still seem like scraping because the module you need is 80 million and whatnot. Just have a sliding scale that goes with rank for that particular career path. Experienced miners when switching to combat would feel like they were in a fresh game.
 
I prefer measuring it in fun per hour these days. It has just taken me four daily sessions in my new account in the starter zone/Pilot's Federation Administration district/NooBubble to make a mere 9 million credits, but the pleasure of talking to new and enthusiastic players, and helping them out with advice and fuel limpets, was priceless.
It'd be nice if we could get a special permit to just go help new commanders. I enjoyed it when I passed through. Don't want to reserve an entire account just for that purpose though.

Like an option to just access the system chat would be a good start.
 
It'd be nice if we could get a special permit to just go help new commanders. I enjoyed it when I passed through. Don't want to reserve an entire account just for that purpose though.

Like an option to just access the system chat would be a good start.
sounds like a ganker's paradise
 
I thought the whole point of the district is you're unable to pvp others...

At any rate, I'd say just taking is enough. That's all I did, passing through.
Pvp is allowed in those systems, I dont think you are invulnerable to pvp nvm just saw comment above
 
So it's actually a ganker's paradise right now then...

But yeh, no point letting anyone back if pvp is allowed.

So just helping via chat would be cool.
Even more so now with the current BH changes. It’ll be a trivial effort to put a few million together in a HiRES and go terrorise the noobs in a Vulture...
 
I dunno if the permit gets revoked if you actually kill one, though. I did fire on one accidentally (stupid gimbals), but as I was in a trading Cobra with very weak lasers, I barely scratched their shield before the system response team showed up (it was quite near the Coriolis).
 
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