Another example of why trading needs some real risk

[Dr. Uzi]

Who makes more money: a police officer or Wall St trader? Yes, I don't think FD have the whole risk/reward balance quite right, but I'm totally OK with profession / money-earning inequity in general. I earn less credits bounty hunting but have a whole heckuva lot more fun in the process.

This is about right. I do believe the OP has a point however. If I get interdicted by some miracle in my T6 I can just boost and warp again, never been in any real danger while trading so far. Then again I haven't come across any CMDR's that wanted to destroy my ship either. I would agree, there needs to be some sort of jump inhibitor or a longer FSD cool down to make a successful interdiction more of a threat.

I do not trade only, I also run a Viper and handle Federation combat and delivery missions. I tend to run the Viper more because its fun, trading is just to get stuff I want. With the Viper now fully tricked out I have set my sights on a Python, fully kitted for combat. Obviously I will need to trade my a** off to get it, and really theres nothing to fear but the absolute boredom of piloting a T6 from jump to jump.

 

[Darth Ender]

I totally want income imbalance but i think income should directly relate to risk. Wall street traders take huge risks on investments. Trading in ed is risk free unless you go out of your way to make it not.

The point of the thread is to expose the risk free nature of trading and suggest ways to give the intended risk some actual teeth. And maybe suggest some kind of skill to warrant tradings complete domination of earnings.

Trading in ed is not akin to wall street. It is literally like being some independent transport company that acts as a middle man. The profit for middle men is not high and is dependent on the cost of transport. In ed, the way things are, traders should only command profit to cover the small amount of time and fuel ... There is no other real risk.

 

[CMDR L0wlander]

This is about right. I do believe the OP has a point however. If I get interdicted by some miracle in my T6 I can just boost and warp again, never been in any real danger while trading so far. Then again I haven't come across any CMDR's that wanted to destroy my ship either. I would agree, there needs to be some sort of jump inhibitor or a longer FSD cool down to make a successful interdiction more of a threat.

I do not trade only, I also run a Viper and handle Federation combat and delivery missions. I tend to run the Viper more because its fun, trading is just to get stuff I want. With the Viper now fully tricked out I have set my sights on a Python, fully kitted for combat. Obviously I will need to trade my a** off to get it, and really theres nothing to fear but the absolute boredom of piloting a T6 from jump to jump.

The FSD cooldown after submitting to an interdiction wasn't intended to be this short, and will be fixed. I am not sure whether this will be in update 1.2, but it will be changed.

 

[imadot]

I'm trying to get enough for a better ship. Running a T6 hauler in open. Just passed the 1 mil mark, with about 4 or so more to go for an ASP or something. This takes a bit of time as I work for a living. If you want to punish trading (which most of us are doing imo) do it after we have 20 million racked up, so that at least we feel we have accomplished something before losing an expensive purchase just to provide target practice. You want to provide teeth for trading fine, but wait until we have some hiney to chew on...

 

[Artophwar]

Even in Solo the NPCs should be more of a threat to traders. Right now the balance isway out of whack. Trading and mining should be the most profitable but the GAP between trading and everything else is too high. They need to buff mining and combat. The mission rewards should scale better the higher combat rank you are.

 

[mossfoot]

That's fine for real life. But people supposedly load up games to have FUN. When a bounty hunter's aspiration is to buy and fully fit an Asp in 6 months compares to a trader's aspiration to own every ship fully fitted in the game in 6 months, there's a HUGE divide.

I want to fly those big ships too. I just have this stupid hang up, where I won't NOT have fun in a game. Stupid me...

I hear this argument all the time, but there's one problem with it - part of the fun, for a large number of Elite players, comes from the verisimilitude the game provides. The illusion of reality. So at least a feeling of that "real life" you mention needs to be there.

When Freelancer came out one of the things I absolutely HATED about it was the fact that I, in the most basic ship possible, unupgraded, ended up taking out over fifty pirates in the first half hour of play like they were tinfoil. That right there killed the mood of the game for me. Still played it. It has its bright sides and it was the only thing going for a while. But I never forgot that feeling of disappointment that I wasn't in a living breathing world.

I don't have that problem with Elite Dangerous. Yes, you can get in lots of fights and rack up the kills, but that feeling of imbalance isn't there (though some tweaking of NPCs couldn't hurt and I hear they have been in 1.2). And to me, trading logically is going to be more lucrative than bounty hunting, but bounty hunting is going to be more fun.

 

[Sandmann]

Since making credits with combat is not a real profession
[snip - rant about how normal people doing normal jobs should make less money than outlaws who don't want to work]
Elite: Dangerous unless you happen to want to participate in the highest earning activity in the game.

Yeah, because 5000+ traders who have left open for Mobius group already isn't enough and open isn't dead enough already, so let's push the rest of them out too eh? Brilliant plan, then all the pirates can just go round shooting each other.

I don't know if it crossed your mind but trading is SUPPOSED to be profitable. That is what it's FOR and there is NO OTHER reason to do it. Make it hard to profit by trading in open and all the traders will go solo or to groups, in fact it's already happening in HUGE numbers. Make it hard to profit anywhere and traders will simply stop playing. Can you imagine what open would look like if those 5000+ traders from Mobius WANTED to come back to open? And here you are trying to make them more likely to stay away? Well done.

 

[Darth Ender]

I love the fud that exists suggesting that OPEN is dead. Open play is far from dead. The only idiots who think so think the entire game takes place in lave.

go away, your opinion is based on a false assumption. Anyone who bothers playing outside of core systems like lave barely ever interacts with other human players so the idea that you have to move to some closed group like mobius or solo is idiotic.


Edit: also, the idea that everyone in mobius actually only plays in that closed group ever is a stupid assumption as well that can't be proved. Anyone can join any group and can be a member of any number of groups simultaneously. But in any case, I've done more than twice the amount of trading than I did bounty hunting (29 million to 9 million bounty hunting) so as a trader in Open i can easily say that it's easy as hell and there is absolutely no risk to the trader. Open doesn't require you to play in areas of the game that are frequented by other human players, and those other systems in the game are just as easily profitable. I'm not sure what kind of brain damage makes people think that that Open requires them to play in systems heavily trafficked by other human players while they are in ships (or they themselves) can't defend themselves in.

The entire reason why players are currently allowed to jump a single character between modes is because they are not supposed to differ in difficulty. Obviously that is wrong because anytime someone has a problem in open they go to solo or private group. That's why this thread is only focused on game behavior regardless of if your opponent is npc or human player or the environment in general.

 

[Quineloe]

Fsd takes 45 seconds to recharge and you take damage even on submission. There is no point submitting any more.

Has absolutely nothing to do with the topic, and submitting needs to have a point.

Also, as pointed out a hundred times: Submitting against a ship that masslocks you and as is faster is the wrong move.

 

[Ziegfried]

I tend to agree with you. I've only been playing for three weeks, and even though I'm really liking this game, I've found trading to be almost to easy. I wouldn't mind seeing NPC's being made tougher, or interdictions harder to escape.

 

[Sandmann]

I love the fud that exists suggesting that OPEN is dead. Open play is far from dead. The only idiots who think so think the entire game takes place in lave.

I've been to Lave a whole once.

go away, your opinion is based on a false assumption. Anyone who bothers playing outside of core systems like lave barely ever interacts with other human players so the idea that you have to move to some closed group like mobius or solo is idiotic.

First, no I won't "go away". Second, I don't appreciate you insulting me just because your opinion differs from mine, so keep a civil tone. Third, I'm not assuming anything, it's simple mathematics. You can't remove between 5000 and (guesstimate) 10000 traders from open and not have it make any impact.

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I tend to agree with you. I've only been playing for three weeks, and even though I'm really liking this game, I've found trading to be almost to easy. I wouldn't mind seeing NPC's being made tougher, or interdictions harder to escape.

Wait till 1.2 is released into the wild. It's a whole 'nother ball game.

 

[Schattenbogen]

FD, if you want to make interdicting traders have a point at all (and it doesn't currently) you need to get rid of the completely idiotic fast cooldown for the FSD on submission. Until then, I can play with no weapons in the game and unless you start implementing insane npcs who station camp like the clowns in the human world I'll keep doing it in complete safety.

1) Trading is the most lucrative and most boring activity. Pretty balance.
2) If you think this game is only about making money in order to have the biggest what you want, I'm pretty sure you are wrong.
3) My cargo ship was never armed because no cargo ship is able to stand a fight against more specialised combat ships. It's pretty dumb and this why most cargo ships are unarmed. You don't make a run between a Ford Transit and sport car. What a cargo ship need is being able to have better sensors to see pirates coming, better shields to buy time until police/friends are coming, better boosters in order to flee and some kind of decoys to help . Which is mostly what is recommended IRL when cargo ships enter in a pirate area.

 

[PhazonAran]

1) Trading is the most lucrative and most boring activity. Pretty balance.
2) If you think this game is only about making money in order to have the biggest what you want, I'm pretty sure you are wrong.
3) My cargo ship was never armed because no cargo ship is able to stand a fight against more specialised combat ships. It's pretty dumb and this why most cargo ships are unarmed. You don't make a run between a Ford Transit and sport car. What a cargo ship need is being able to have better sensors to see pirates coming, better shields to buy time until police/friends are coming, better boosters in order to flee and some kind of decoys to help . Which is mostly what is recommended IRL when cargo ships enter in a pirate area.

1) It's boring so it must be lucrative ? I can't even... I agree that trading should be the most lucrative career, but at the moment the gap between trading and the other careers is too drastic.

2) What is the point of trading besides making money ? Why ALL the traders say that the big ships are for traders only if getting the biggest ship is not the objective ?

3) The Anaconda begs to differ.

 

[Zhanny]

Bad troll is bad, very bad....

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

Before demanding major changes it may be an idea to wait for a week. Whilst right now it may be "too" easy for a lone trader to survive, once we have the potential for wings of multiple enemy ships, be it AI or Human to interdict us, things may change. Also the AI has apparently been tweaked in 1.2 (I must admit I am done with beta testing so have not tried it, so if you guys are talking about beta I take it back - but if so you are posting in the wrong forum!)

While ONE cobra may struggle to bring down an unarmed T7, I imagine 4 of the blighters will, easily be able to kill an unarmed unshielded T7 before it can jump, and even if shielded cost a significant amount of damage in repairs.

I do agree that outside of hisec systems a tradeship should be seriously risking it flying without any form of weapons or shields, but then the balance of hisec and low/nul spec space is a whole different issue.

Ideally the theory is (as i understand it), that a (group of)pirate(s) should be able to either cause enough damage to a trader to make it cost effective to give up some cargo or alternately damage their cargo hatch to force them to give up some "loot". It is not meant to be balanced in such a way that a potential killer for lolz gets an easy kill every time they come across a lone trade ship.

I do not argue that right now in 1.1 the balance against pirates is perhaps a little off, but I do sympathise that it is a tough one to get right and needs careful brushstrokes. IF you are going to get the balance wrong, better to play it safe and err on the side of the trader and then move the bar slowly the other way, after all they do have a hell of a lot more to lose than the aggressor.

 

[BarFly]

Hello,

another typical pirates whiner thread: 'Live is so hard on pirates! There is a small chance left, that a trader can manage to escape. Dangerous says, that the trader has to be dead, the moment i, the proud pirate, interdict him, the cowardly trader.

I'm sick, i'm sick about the kids
(Very free interpreted from the Iggy Pop song - I'm Bored)

 

[Darth Ender]

Considering that the pirates being discussed are 99% npc, i don't think anyone cares much how hard their life is. This is a trading is too easy thread by a trader.

Running to survive is not a 'small chance to survive' tactic. Running is pretty much a '100% guaranteed chance to survive' tactic to the point where you don't even need to equip your ship with weapons to be a successful trader. You barely even need shields.

 

[Sandmann]

Considering that the pirates being discussed are 99% npc, i don't think anyone cares much how hard their life is. This is a trading is too easy thread by a trader.

Running to survive is not a 'small chance to survive' tactic. Running is pretty much a '100% guaranteed chance to survive' tactic to the point where you don't even need to equip your ship with weapons to be a successful trader. You barely even need shields.

Wait till you start getting interdicted by wings of 4 players.. or 6+ NPC's. You'll find life as a lone trader more exciting in a few days, and running won't help when you're surrounded.

 

[Midian27]

Considering that the pirates being discussed are 99% npc, i don't think anyone cares much how hard their life is. This is a trading is too easy thread by a trader.

Running to survive is not a 'small chance to survive' tactic. Running is pretty much a '100% guaranteed chance to survive' tactic to the point where you don't even need to equip your ship with weapons to be a successful trader. You barely even need shields.

Good luck running from a clipper. Or if you're in a t9 then good luck running from my conda.

 

[ciger]

Good luck running from a clipper. Or if you're in a t9 then good luck running from my conda.

so you are saying you can take down a t9 in some 10-15s? because i can spool fsd after 5s and send you a greetings card from another system shortly after that...