I was making comparable money from haulage in my T-9 before the mining update, so that's an option. Mining is arguably more enjoyable though. Personally, I've always felt that it was a mistake to nerf the high paying "distance from station" passenger pay-outs to the extent that they did. It's nonsensical that they were deemed excessive while void opal yields are fine. I guess it has to do with the fact that those hot-spots weren't evenly distributed, thereby causing issues with the BGS. I'd really like to see tourism given a proper overhaul - I miss my Beluga.
"Blaze your own trail"
- Thread starter CMDR ROGER
- Start date
I was making comparable money from haulage in my T-9 before the mining update, so that's an option. Mining is arguably more enjoyable though. Personally, I've always felt that it was a mistake to nerf the high paying "distance from station" passenger pay-outs to the extent that they did. It's nonsensical that they were deemed excessive while void opal yields are fine. I guess it has to do with the fact that those hot-spots weren't evenly distributed, thereby causing issues with the BGS. I'd really like to see tourism given a proper overhaul - I miss my Beluga.
They are... but you have to be * really* careful of the target system, and make sure that the furthest entity in the system is no more than a couple thousand Ls away. USS will spawn anywhere in a radius from the primary star out to just over the furthest distance to an entity. In a recent case... took a mission to kill 10 pirates. First USS was 156k ls away... second one spawned opposite side of the system, 520k ls away... because the furthest entity was 220k ls away.
The whole thing has been funny for years. Its like there's 3 different views that have been applied to credits and noone cares about balance at the moment.
- At some point someone who thought ship progression was a valid thing in elite made the system.
- At some point someone from marketing god handed it out because of reddit and steam reviews
- They're just taking the pss out of the whole idea with every new game system introduced.
Sorry, was on phone, so didn't notice this other post.
They all reliably spawn USS now. The only ones that don't are chain missions because they use different templates which never got properly updated.. chain assassinations have also been broken like this forever. I've reported them countless times, and the new issue reporting system pretty much guarantees most of the bug reports I put in will go unheard, despite the amount of detail I put into them, since "Chain assassination missions don't spawn mission USS. (Screenshots plus video proof inside)" won't get any attention compared to "what ALL MISSONS BORKEN FIX NAO FD!"... but I digress.
The new massacre missions, notwithstanding the distance-to-USS problem I posted before, are worth it in terms of credits, but sadly worthless if your pursuit is BGS influence. Upper-bound I see on these is something like 81 ships, which is "fine" because the payout will be almost 50 million and 81 ships is roughly 12m in bounties... you'll need to traipse off to about a 12-15 different USS in the target system but the influence for completing the mission is never higher than +++++ (5 +'s). This is equivalent to:
- A single assassination mission
- One submission of 100k+ bonds
- A single trade of reasonable-threshold profit margins
- A single hand-in of reasonable threshold exploration (one ELW would definitely do the trick)
Key being... to be worth it from a BGS perspective, it'd need to be worth something like a 50 +'s for the comparative amount of effort required.
Of course, you could accept one of these and "just do the kills as you go about doing other activities". This is fine for wing missions... but this brings me to another bug. Assuming (solo) Massacre missions are for some number of kills, with a time limit of 1 day, wing missions are, for the same reward;
- Less kills
- 7 days duration
This is pretty broken. For a mission "designed to be done by up to 4 commanders" it's pretty daft that they have 7 times the time, for less kills (I'll dig out the screenshots I got recently...)... but I don't dare report it because I suspect someone forgot to multiply the kill-count for Massacre missions by 3-4 (in which case, an equivalent 81 kill mission as a wing mission would be =~ 240 kills, like old times). Wing Massacre missions are perfect as they currently are, but solo versions for anything more than a dozen kills (which will only net you =~ 3-4m) are pretty broken.
So, I do accept wing missions for 81 kills, because I can spread them over 7 days of activity... taking out pirate ships from the correct faction which come for me to steal mission cargo or something... but 81 kills in a single day? I won't get anywhere near that many kills while I do other activities on the side.
Why is it seemingly common sense, that piracy pays badly? I finance my PvP corvette with piracy heists, which pay up to 170 mil per run. I think the perspective of OPs post and others like him relies too much on hearsay. I've never mined, except for getting the engineers running and I have more than enough money. It's not that difficult to find out how to make money, while still actually playing, instead of grinding. The only thing, which makes things like mining and passenger runs stand out, is the complete absence of any kind of skill necessary.
Oh dear... i wonder if OP ever played the game at 1.0. Took me a year to earn my first 100 million.
I wanted to get rich quick when I started playing. Everyone and their pet dog were like, "Void opals! Skimmer missions!". I was like, "Nah, not my speed."
I blazed my own trail. I experimented. I figured out how to efficiently stack pirate massacre missions. I made like 1.6 billion credits.
So go blaze your own trail, OP. Nothing stopping you but your brain.
I blazed my own trail. I experimented. I figured out how to efficiently stack pirate massacre missions. I made like 1.6 billion credits.
So go blaze your own trail, OP. Nothing stopping you but your brain.
Not everybody's "trail" involves accruing billions of credits.
I've played since 2014 (with a couple of pauses) and am not elite in anything yet, nor do I have billions to spend.
My trail is to odd job my way round the galaxy making some cash buying bits for my ship and then doing more jobs.
Just because your trail isn't working for you don't blame the game.
I've played since 2014 (with a couple of pauses) and am not elite in anything yet, nor do I have billions to spend.
My trail is to odd job my way round the galaxy making some cash buying bits for my ship and then doing more jobs.
Just because your trail isn't working for you don't blame the game.
I'm quite happily blazing my own trail with what's currently available.
Start with the sidewinder gift and work up to the ranks by improving my ships to the point where I can reach Elite by blasting Thargoids. IIRC this was the path to Elite in the original game. I haven't invested as much time in a game since Falcon 4.0
Start with the sidewinder gift and work up to the ranks by improving my ships to the point where I can reach Elite by blasting Thargoids. IIRC this was the path to Elite in the original game. I haven't invested as much time in a game since Falcon 4.0
At the end of the day OP, just do what you enjoy. Credits are easy to make these days, unless you think you need to make tens of millions for 30 mins work.
You must be doing the wrong passenger missions. With a decent passenger build, faction reputation and exploration rank you can easily be earning well over 10 million per run in the Ceos - Sothis route. That's a one jump distance. I make around 60 million an hour this way. This is the most profitable passenger route I have found - it is in Federal space so you can also build up your Federal Navy Auxiliary rank. Both Ceos and Sothis are high-tech systems with lots of ships and modules, but they are outside the bubble. Good luck! 
You're right there.
This is fairly realistic - in the Ceos - Sothis route, I am currently earning over 30 million credits per half an hour doing passenger runs. When it starts to feel repetitive, I take a holiday to Sol, go mining, bounty hunting or take a trip to Colonia.
One thing that could do with un-nerfing is the material rewards for missions. I am after some modified embedded firmware, and found a mission that gave 4 as a reward. The mission? Haul over 6 thousand units of something to a system, recommended for wings it said. Now really, would a whole wing of players take that on for just 4 MEFs?
I think you misunderstand what 'arguably' means... Regardless, it is good to hear about your experience, are you talking about pve or PvP piracy?
@Ian Skippy: I'm not a native speaker, and assumed that "arguably" was meant in a negative way. I'm happy to be proven wrong in that instance. I'm doing PvP and PvE piracy, although PvP piracy rarely pays well.
My comments were more directed at op and I misquoted you cause of that misunderstanding, as in my experience this "mining/cash only" approach quickly leads to frustration.
My comments were more directed at op and I misquoted you cause of that misunderstanding, as in my experience this "mining/cash only" approach quickly leads to frustration.
Ah, no problem.
What I meant with 'arguably' was a neutral 'other people have discussed this with varying opinions'; my own experiences with piracy are limited to a multi-role Viper mk4 for RP purposes, so I couldn't offer a valid opinion about how much 'proper' piracy can earn myself. I'm glad to hear it is a viable path to take!
Sometimes I entertain the idea of starting a new CMDR and immediately hiring three NPC crew members to seriously nerf the credit inflation, just so I can enjoy the "earn your money" aspect the game used to have. Considering the conventional wisdom of the forum, this would definitely be "blazing my own trail". Perhaps when 'New Era' drops.