Pirate MM's post balance test

[ADAMtheWELSHMANz]

Yup, bounties are fine as is for casual Cmdrs that just want an hour in a haz rez.

Either cross-stacking or solo MM's for pirates needs looking at. Higher kill count or remove the recent payout buff at very least.

That should still allow for 80-120m/hr with room to go upwards for CZ's and Thargoids.

 

[KW001]

So basically make bounty hunting worthless for anyone unwilling to be a kraut and stack missions. As I see it, mission stacking was removed for a reason. Cross faction stacking remaining seems an oversight, and use of them, an exploit.

I expect FD to apply the nerf exactly as you demand. They'll probably look at credits per hour and if it's too high, determine the problem is the bounty vouchers. The fix will be applied with a hammer rather than a paintbrush as usual.

I'm not making any demands, just suggestions. To be clear, lazy ass pve hunting in a HAZ, flying completely overpowered for the task condas & vettes is about all I can be bothered doing in Elite these days. The recent changes absolutely benefit me, and Im perfectly content if they remain, but as far as bounty hunting goes I dont think anything needed to be changed other than bounty vouchers reverting to their pre nerf levels of 12 to 18 months ago, when you could make an easy 10 or 12 mil p/h (maybe even a juicy 15 if the spawns were super good) from bounty hunting alone. No one was complaining about vouchers back then. PvE HAZ hunting is about the lowest form of combat you can engage in, once you progress to the point where you dont need system security to back you up in a RES. The mission types that deserve the kind of payouts that solo pirate massacres received are stuff like wing assassinations, combat zones, thargoid hunting (and possibly they did, I honestly haven't looked). And maybe some of the other combat oriented missions I have never tried and have no idea what they entail, or how difficult they may be, like spec op missions.

As for getting rid of pirate massacre stacking, thats an obvious no, for me. Cross-faction stacking pirate massacres is exactly the kind of temporary gold rush that FDev have for years told us exist within the game. A group of systems might be flooded with massacre contracts one week (or month), and then dead the next. Its not like a LTD triple hotspot that FDev had to patch out of the game. Cross-faction stacking opportunities appear and dissappear as a natural part of the BGS. Myself and others have been making decent money off them for years, but even the best money making spots are not always reliable, and thats completely fair. The stacking of combat massacres from a single faction was removed, because theres always a war or 500 or more going on somewhere in the bubble. Stacking combat massacres is like having 500 different LTD triple hotspots that change systems each week, and are easily identifiable via galmap filtering.

 

[BL1P]

Wings:-
One kill shouldn't count towards Four missions at once.
One kill shouldn't count as Four kills for a single mission.
The reward for the single kill should be divided by the amount of Cmdrs in the wing not given in full to all.
Those three things "I think", should be addressed.
Then when that is done, increase the actual payments if that makes doing the missions in wings too low of a reward.

 

[Jmanis]

So basically make bounty hunting worthless for anyone unwilling to be a kraut and stack missions. As I see it, mission stacking was removed for a reason. Cross faction stacking remaining seems an oversight, and use of them, an exploit.

Cross-faction stacking was a deliberate compromise (no, can't find the post, but it was definitely explained, and I even think FD ran a forum poll on old forums). Note at the time, massacres paid out only 2-3m, rather than the 20-40m that they do now.

What then followed was a series of changes (including the increase in price) that is seemingly done in-ignorance to that deliberate design choice, just like how the current decision to buff solo massacre payouts (but not wing massacre payouts, as that's another cash-meta) seems again in total ignorance to that design choice.

If FD are serious about the rebalance, and want to keep solo massacres where they are, cross-faction stacking must be removed, or knocked back down to a 4-5m payout (as per the buff for assassinations) in acknowledgement that cross-faction stacking is still a thing.

It seems to be a hallmark of many design/balance/change things FD do that they hone in on a single issue with blinkers on, ignorant to the rest of the mechanics in the game (a-la the recent change to the metals market resulting in huge-paying delivery missions)

 

[KW001]

Cross-faction stacking was a deliberate compromise (no, can't find the post, but it was definitely explained, and I even think FD ran a forum poll on old forums). Note at the time, massacres paid out only 2-3m...

Was it really that low? I first noticed & began the stacking thing around Feb 2018. When did they bump payouts to around 17 mill for 30 kills solo?

 

[ADAMtheWELSHMANz]

Cross-faction stacking was a deliberate compromise (no, can't find the post, but it was definitely explained, and I even think FD ran a forum poll on old forums). Note at the time, massacres paid out only 2-3m, rather than the 20-40m that they do now.

Sounds the easiest solution.

MM's provide a small/med bonus to an hour in a haz rez, potentially adding 50-100% to the 40-60 mil an hour the current bounty vouchers offer post buff.

An incentive to search them out for the more experienced or min/max Cmdrs, but not enough that the simplest form of PVE combat remains the highest paying.

 

[Jmanis]

Was it really that low? I first noticed & began the stacking thing around Feb 2018. When did they bump payouts to around 17 mill for 30 kills solo?

I actually think it git buffed at the same time as same- faction stacking got nixed.

I remember the payments were a complaint of mine because we're looking at roughly- equivalent reward to an assassination, but required a significant amount more effort than an assassination. This was before:

• wanted ships were mostly limited to anarchy factions only; and
• mission USS were implemented

... so massacres were really hard. The only ones that could spin credits were stacking CZ massacres... which would spin 50-60m for a stack of 20.

I had an unrelated bugreport i was pursuing at the time, I'll dig out the screenshots.

 

[Jmanis]

So, just as a fresh post rather than a quiet edit, I was a little out with the massacres, but nonetheless... massacres scored around 10m for the highest quantities of ships, down to 2-3 for the lower, down to tens or hundreds of thousands if your rep sucked. Unfortunately my screenshots are somewhat sporadic, but this is one at friendly rep:

Certainly not tipping the 30-40m mark like we're getting today, and I believe it was for higher quantities. This was when many missions such as Assassination and Salvage missions hadn't been buffed yet either, so you ended up with corkers like this assassination for 7,000cr

Either way, rewards were much, much lower. Over time, rewards for massacres have gone up, kill counts down (I remember wing missions were at peak needing over 200 kills)

There's also this guide from Obsidian Ant about stacking wartime massacres. It's hard to read because the shot was fuzzy and my internet sucks, but it looks like he accepts one mission for 84 targets (Allied Rep) for 10 million. At the end of that session OO's made about 150m, but would've had to kill at least that many ships.

Nowadays you can get, what, 200-300 mil off just 40 kills?

Also, just want to draw attention to the big, bold "HUGE PAYOUTS" in that video title, might give people some context these days.

Considering you can cross-faction stack pirate MMs, but not CZ MMs, yet there's relative parity between their payments... yeah... FD really haven't done their homework.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QE6KZ-9Wl8

 

[KW001]

Nowadays you can get, what, 200-300 mil off just 40 kills?

Yeah but how long is it taking players to collect (and then cash in) those 40 million missions? Cause Ive been floating around Pleiades for an hour and a half collecting missions for a final run and Ive currently only got.... 6 of the 40 mil solos, out of a stack of 17 (4 wing missions), with one more station to stop at before I hit the HAZ in Maia (which itself takes 18 minutes to reach in super cruise). Highest kill count for a faction in the stack is 75 (2x30 and 15), which if the spawns are good will take me 90 minutes to get through. Then I gotta spend probably another 45 minutes travelling to 6 or 7 stations to cash 'em all in before the whole things done. If we're just talking about how long it will to complete the stack in the HAZ, then yes I will earn somewhere between 400 and 500 million tonight in (hopefully) 90 minutes, but that'd be intentionally disingenuous about how much I'm making per hour.

 

[ADAMtheWELSHMANz]

@KW001 There are many better areas for this where visiting a single station can lead to plenty of MM's.

If you get nearer the rim of the bubble there's normally less player activity so fewer pirate MM's lost due to wars/ civil wars.

Also, while a haz rez can be an easy way of doing them, hitting the mission related USS's is far quicker and more profitable as the MM's ahould be prioritzed over bounties if you're focusing credits.

Nothing wrong with your way, but just want you to know there are ways to speed things up significantly, your choice whether or not to hunt them down.

Use the tool linked (about 3 times) in this thread and find your own system. Takes some doing but one with no secondary star and gas giants is a good place to start to avoid long SC times and extreme gravity wells.

 

[Factabulous]

It seems to be a hallmark of many design/balance/change things FD do that they hone in on a single issue with blinkers on, ignorant to the rest of the mechanics in the game (a-la the recent change to the metals market resulting in huge-paying delivery missions)

Or alternately you don't grok what they are trying to achieve

I think they're trying to level out the minimum earning level (so you can go combat hunting, or mining, or trading) with minimal research and come back thinking you did ok. And I think the recent changes have been towards this (and pretty successful).

You are talking more about the maximum earnings if you research the meta, go to the right place, do the right things. While I understand your quest to stop people abusing the game mechanics I'm not sure how much fdev should care - so what if people are sat on billions? As long as they don't give a purpose to those billions (<cough> FC prices) then let them, if that makes 'em happy.

I'll be happy when I can choose more things to do randomly without thinking 'that was really a waste of time' - like S&R missions, smuggling missions, etc etc - let's buff them before worrying about meta-billions

Also, just want to draw attention to the big, bold "HUGE PAYOUTS" in that video title, might give people some context these days.

That's streamers for you - they need the views If he'd called it 'combat now more in line with other incomes' I don't think it would 'sell' as well. DTEA would be proud

 

[Kastor]

Either cross-stacking or solo MM's for pirates needs looking at. Higher kill count or remove the recent payout buff at very least.

Please no, as a player with limited play time options some kill counts are already way to damn high. (especially CZ missions but that's beside the point). I'd much rather they addressed stacking instead.

 

[Jmanis]

Yeah but how long is it taking players to collect (and then cash in) those 40 million missions?

Personally, not that long. But tbh, that's irrelevant.

Premium rewards for combat should not be derived from how well you go station-shopping for missions. It should be based on the skill and ship requirements for the combat activity.

As i said in another post, massacres should not be simple kill quotas. They should function more like, well, every other mission-USS based activity. Fly to USS, destroy a wing (or a couple waves of wings, depending on the reward/rank of the mission) of vanilla ships for solo, engineered for wing. On clearance of the USS by completing the scenario, that one mission completes, just like how all other USS based missions count for a single activity.

 

[Jmanis]

That's streamers for you - they need the views If he'd called it 'combat now more in line with other incomes' I don't think it would 'sell' as well. DTEA would be proud

But that's the thing... it was massive income, just like this one

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MX1Xk9BUkg

Or alternately you don't grok what they are trying to achieve

I think they're trying to level out the minimum earning level (so you can go combat hunting, or mining, or trading) with minimal research and come back thinking you did ok. And I think the recent changes have been towards this (and pretty successful).

Thing is, it's not a hard equation, but this has been a recurring theme over the years... bump one thing, forget the other facets.

 

[ADAMtheWELSHMANz]

Please no, as a player with limited play time options some kill counts are already way to damn high. (especially CZ missions but that's beside the point). I'd much rather they addressed stacking instead.

This thread is diacussing PIRATE MM's only as FDev haven't yet implemented any changes to CZ's or Thargoids.

 

[Kastor]

Considering you can cross-faction stack pirate MMs, but not CZ MMs, yet there's relative parity between their payments... yeah... FD really haven't done their homework.

Especially given the higher danger of CZs and the higher TTK.

 

[Kastor]

This thread is diacussing PIRATE MM's only as FDev haven't yet implemented any changes to CZ's or Thargoids.

Please note my "beside the point".
Pirate MM's also have high kill counts that boarder on the edge of my playable range. Again, I really think the focuse should be on the issue of cross faction stacking.

Edit: Also I'm pretty sure CZ MMs have been buffed, it's just CZ combat bonds that haven't. Maybe I'm wrong though.

 

[Factabulous]

But that's the thing... it was massive income, just like this one

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MX1Xk9BUkg


Thing is, it's not a hard equation, but this has been a recurring theme over the years... bump one thing, forget the other facets.

Well, yeah - like I said - if they're not bothered about the high income (some would say they are 'rewarding expertise'), but are more interested in levelling up low earners then they're achieving what that said they would do. But you can't hear those words, so I'll leave you to your confusion!

o7

 

[KW001]

@KW001 There are many better areas for this where visiting a single station can lead to plenty of MM's.

If you get nearer the rim of the bubble there's normally less player activity so fewer pirate MM's lost due to wars/ civil wars.

Also, while a haz rez can be an easy way of doing them, hitting the mission related USS's is far quicker and more profitable as the MM's ahould be prioritzed over bounties if you're focusing credits.

Nothing wrong with your way, but just want you to know there are ways to speed things up significantly, your choice whether or not to hunt them down.

Use the tool linked (about 3 times) in this thread and find your own system. Takes some doing but one with no secondary star and gas giants is a good place to start to avoid long SC times and extreme gravity wells.

Yeah I'll be giving the search tool a try out once Im done down in Maia. I actually stopped coming to Maia on a regular basis back in 2019 because of the length of time it started taking to reach the mission limit, but since it was my first best spot for massacres, whenever I reinstall Elite I head down hoping its back to its old form.

Ive tried out the USS a few times, but since I do these solo Im usually out of cell banks and low on hull armour by the fourth signal source, and then spend time heading back to a station for refill and repair.

 

[Jmanis]

Well, yeah - like I said - if they're not bothered about the high income (some would say they are 'rewarding expertise'), but are more interested in levelling up low earners then they're achieving what that said they would do. But you can't hear those words, so I'll leave you to your confusion!

o7

Is it?

I thought it was balancing risk vs reward?

In response to your feedback, will bring a series of balancing adjustments to the rate at which credits are earned in each core gameplay mechanic: mining, trade, combat and exploration. Our goal is to have rewards better match the level of skill, effort, and risk each method requires. This means we'll see increased credit rates in some activities and reductions in others.

Emphasis there on reducing the incomes of some.

In other words, they very much should be bothered about high incomes, as not doing so would be counter-productive to their stated goal.