Traders make more money but dont really need it.fighters risk a lot more (lose their ship).we need balance me thinks !
Bounty hunting needs to be more profitable
- Thread starter lycan6under
- Start date
yeah.traders dont really need to upgradee their ships that much,nowhere near as fighters do...
So many things in this game need to be reworked... sigh
True but there are also so many things wrong in in this thread it's laughable.
You mad bro? You can make rakes of money shooting wanted people. I have just racked up 400k in 30 minutes (including selling 64 tons of other peoples stuff). Maybe you are talking about the bounty contracts on the bulletin boards? Blow that noise, turn up somewhere dodgy with a ton of something illegal and hang around a resource extraction area. Since getting my Asp ive gone from trader to scalp collector. I don't even leave the system.
Ok right, traders fill their ships with expensive cargo and run between systems with millions worth of commodities in their holds, sometimes more than their wallet can handle if they loose the ship. NPC pirates and player pirates are always a danger and could interdict them and kill them. They loose the ship and cargo sometimes 400 units of it whether it is gold, palladium or any other high level commodity.
A combat ship looses just their ship and some credits. My fully kitted out Cobra will set me back 250k credits if destroyed. My type 6 only 30k credits when empty. When full at 100 tonnes I can loose double that of my Cobra.
A combat ship looses just their ship and some credits. My fully kitted out Cobra will set me back 250k credits if destroyed. My type 6 only 30k credits when empty. When full at 100 tonnes I can loose double that of my Cobra.
Having dabbled in all the occupations except piracy, I feel more likely to lose a wad of cash when trading than other professions due to driving a slow space-cow with crap defences. How often do people really lose their ship bounty hunting? Do people just not know when to turn and run?
Trading should earn more money than the other professions because it's the least fun (aside from maybe mining, which creates tradeable goods out of nothing, making it much lower risk). You're also putting more cash at risk each trip than any other profession (except maybe bounty hunting in a shieldless Anaconda in a combat zone with lots of other players).
Trading should earn more money than the other professions because it's the least fun (aside from maybe mining, which creates tradeable goods out of nothing, making it much lower risk). You're also putting more cash at risk each trip than any other profession (except maybe bounty hunting in a shieldless Anaconda in a combat zone with lots of other players).
I don't have much problem with the earning potential for bounty hunting, and I certainly don't think that bounty hunters should automatically make just as much as traders, since as someone mentioned, traders are taking a more hefty financial risk than any bounty hunter.
However, I do wish that bounty hunting was a little more consistent in terms of those earnings. Maybe it's isolated to my experience, but while I've had some days that have been highly profitable, with a solid day of blowing ships up resulting in 700k credits or more in unclaimed bounties, (still much less than I make trading, but quite respectable considering I'm having a blast blowing stuff up,) other days I'm lucky to find anything meatier than an Eagle or sidewinder, and my earnings can struggle to even reach 150k for the day. And I tried everything, whether it was occupying one area consistently, or moving around in case I was 'thinning the herd.' There just seems to be instances where the game decides that I'm not going to encounter something suited to my capabilities, and I end up picking off lower hanging fruit instead.
Again, it doesn't bother me that as a trader I make more in a day then as a bounty Hunter. It does bother me a little more when some days as a bounty Hunter fail to match even one trip worth of profit as a trader, solely because whatever handles Random encounters decided to drop me in the kiddie pool.
However, I do wish that bounty hunting was a little more consistent in terms of those earnings. Maybe it's isolated to my experience, but while I've had some days that have been highly profitable, with a solid day of blowing ships up resulting in 700k credits or more in unclaimed bounties, (still much less than I make trading, but quite respectable considering I'm having a blast blowing stuff up,) other days I'm lucky to find anything meatier than an Eagle or sidewinder, and my earnings can struggle to even reach 150k for the day. And I tried everything, whether it was occupying one area consistently, or moving around in case I was 'thinning the herd.' There just seems to be instances where the game decides that I'm not going to encounter something suited to my capabilities, and I end up picking off lower hanging fruit instead.
Again, it doesn't bother me that as a trader I make more in a day then as a bounty Hunter. It does bother me a little more when some days as a bounty Hunter fail to match even one trip worth of profit as a trader, solely because whatever handles Random encounters decided to drop me in the kiddie pool.
The earning potential for bounty hunting is actually pretty good, especially if you combine it with hunter/assassination missions.
It doesn't compete with rare trading, but rare trading needs a good route and a lot of planning, as well as a fair bit of tedium. Mining in the right location (pristine metallic) is highly profitable, but it's going to appeal to even fewer people.
So, all in all, I don't think bounty hunting is in too bad of a state.
It doesn't compete with rare trading, but rare trading needs a good route and a lot of planning, as well as a fair bit of tedium. Mining in the right location (pristine metallic) is highly profitable, but it's going to appeal to even fewer people.
So, all in all, I don't think bounty hunting is in too bad of a state.
One could say bounties should be more.....bountiful. In fact two could even say that 
But I kind of agree with OP. It would be nice to have weighted RNG spawn proportional ships based on your rank and ship.
I just hope that if/when they buff it, they don't go overboard and make other jobs obsolete, much like what trading has done.
But I kind of agree with OP. It would be nice to have weighted RNG spawn proportional ships based on your rank and ship.
I just hope that if/when they buff it, they don't go overboard and make other jobs obsolete, much like what trading has done.
I don't like such scaling systems. Everything that is there should be there regardless of whether you have a starter Sidewinder or a 400 million credit combat Python.
It's fine for NPCs to react differently to different ships, but the universe, especially a persistent online one, should not be tailoring itself to individual players.
i make 500k in bounties in 30 minutes... I don't think that's bad at all and rather enjoy some pew pew over trading anyday. I make as much as traders do, just in less time and smaller increments but the end result is we all are rich. A trader takes an hour for a 1m profit, I take two trips of 500k bounties for 1m profit, win-win.
I've tried Mining, Trading, and Bounty Hunting.
From what I can tell, Bounty Hunting makes a little less than Mining considering the average scenario. Sure, sometimes you get that 150k Bounty, but most of the time you're fighting sidewinders and cobras. Sure sometimes you find a load of high %-age Platinum and Palladium, but other times you're just lucky to find Gold/Silver.
Bounty Missions (Elite Anacondas) average out to be a bit higher than Mining, assuming you can find the available missions and know how to fight them.
Trading (once you get a ship that has at least 32T of Cargo) can net you ~1.5k-3k / TON round-trip for about 10m of work depending on your ability to find a good trade route. Trading is by far the riskiest, since you have to not only risk your ship, but all the cargo in between. A Type-6 with 112 Cargo can have 1.5m+ worth of Palladium sitting in her cargo bay, and fitted out with D-modules, Cargo Space, and an A-type FSD you're looking at another 140k worth of insurance. You'd have to risk a bounty hunting ship worth 32m to equal that kind of risk to a lowly Type-6.
You don't really need anything bigger than an ASP for Mining. Honestly I thought my Cobra did a better job since it didn't have quite as much inertia when approaching rocks and metal chunks, but I'd have to make more frequent runs to the station to sell.
In terms of enjoyment, however... I'd rate Bounty Hunting at the top, followed by Mining, and Trading is the most monotonous thing in the game I think. Gotten pretty darn good at landing in strange places and using the slow-down feature of various celestial objects to refine my trade times, but that's about as much excitement as you get usually, apart from the occasional interdiction that is - which is more annoying than exciting IMO.
From what I can tell, Bounty Hunting makes a little less than Mining considering the average scenario. Sure, sometimes you get that 150k Bounty, but most of the time you're fighting sidewinders and cobras. Sure sometimes you find a load of high %-age Platinum and Palladium, but other times you're just lucky to find Gold/Silver.
Bounty Missions (Elite Anacondas) average out to be a bit higher than Mining, assuming you can find the available missions and know how to fight them.
Trading (once you get a ship that has at least 32T of Cargo) can net you ~1.5k-3k / TON round-trip for about 10m of work depending on your ability to find a good trade route. Trading is by far the riskiest, since you have to not only risk your ship, but all the cargo in between. A Type-6 with 112 Cargo can have 1.5m+ worth of Palladium sitting in her cargo bay, and fitted out with D-modules, Cargo Space, and an A-type FSD you're looking at another 140k worth of insurance. You'd have to risk a bounty hunting ship worth 32m to equal that kind of risk to a lowly Type-6.
You don't really need anything bigger than an ASP for Mining. Honestly I thought my Cobra did a better job since it didn't have quite as much inertia when approaching rocks and metal chunks, but I'd have to make more frequent runs to the station to sell.
In terms of enjoyment, however... I'd rate Bounty Hunting at the top, followed by Mining, and Trading is the most monotonous thing in the game I think. Gotten pretty darn good at landing in strange places and using the slow-down feature of various celestial objects to refine my trade times, but that's about as much excitement as you get usually, apart from the occasional interdiction that is - which is more annoying than exciting IMO.
Last edited:
I Bounty Hunt and bring in 300,000CR in about 1 hour. It's pretty profitable if you do it right. I try not to get hurt too badly, I know when to cut my loss and move on.
Mining....I just can't take it.
Trading....not enough action. Don't really care about making CR just to make CR.
Exploring...like to explore but going to a new system to only find a Star (maybe 2 or 3) Rocks (if you are lucky), Planets, Moons (sometimes). Next system....
Mining....I just can't take it.
Trading....not enough action. Don't really care about making CR just to make CR.
Exploring...like to explore but going to a new system to only find a Star (maybe 2 or 3) Rocks (if you are lucky), Planets, Moons (sometimes). Next system....
cheers for your input guys.also which ship do you think is best for bounty hunting ?
The problem is that there's nothing persistent about the NPCs. They are generated specially for you whenever you enter normal space anyway.
I'd personally prefer if average ship size depended on some parameter of the star system that can be checked beforehand.
Cobra is one of the best, if not the best. After that there's ASP, but the issue is that maintenance costs on ASP are significant, while income doesn't scale that well.
Before Cobra, it's Eagle -> Viper.
Some might argue that Viper is better than Cobra for bounty hunting, but while it's true that those ships are nearly equally capable in terms of combat, Cobra allows you to perform two roles at the same time, which makes you way more effective at earning credits.
Last edited:
That all depends on your own style and taste.
A Cobra can be made into a decent bounty hunting ship with a small cargo bay for dropped loot, but this is stolen and will net you a fine if caught.
In beta 3 I had a Viper with no cargo space ( I learned that lesson well ) and it did very well against everything up to Federal Dropships and Imperial Clippers. Never tried it against the anaconda ships though.
If I was to have a ship for bounty hunting it would be the Cobra just for the cargo space to give me some leeway to take missions and trade between systems when I decide to move on.
The trick to killing pythons and anacondas in small ships is using other ships as decoys. If there are none, just let a few bullets hit you and wait for security ships to arrive.
This way you can take out absolutely anything in any ship.
http://i.imgur.com/SIRLvTx.jpg
And well, shield cells aren't exactly balanced too. If you have enough of them, you just outright tank everything. Chaff launchers are also very useful, as almost all weapons on bigger ships are turrets.
Last edited: