So I've done a bit of everything, but I always find myself gravitating back towards bounty hunting with a bit of smuggling on the side. However I get the impression that the different play styles are very out of wack right now because bounty hunting plateaus pretty quickly, whereas trading keeps advancing. What do I mean by this? Well bounty hunting starts off with you at nav points/resource collection points and you can get 1-10k for most easy bounties. This works great as you work your way up to a Viper/Cobra, but then not much changes. The highest bounties you'll see are anacondas and they usually sit around 50-90k it seems. Most bounties however are still fairly low, even if they are easy to kill. Getting 1-10k for most bounties is a very slow road towards the next ship after Cobra (Asp is what.. 6 million?).
Sure you can run the assassination missions to kill anacondas, but those missions can take forever and be unpredictable. The mission system in general is fairly annoying. You have to visit one of the 3 systems and visit USS over and over until you get lucky enough to find one that tells you where the target is (it never seems to be in the 1st system you try sadly) then you have to head to that system and repeat the process. This can take quite a bit of time if you get unlucky. Sometimes your USS just keep being random lone ships with no bounties/cargo (what's the purpose of these?). I'm sure lots of players will come here to say how easy it is to kill anacondas, but for your average player, its not. Especially when their PPC can take you out in almost one shot, even if it is inaccurate.
Besides that, the other kill missions are usually fairly light (1-15k for 1-6 pirate kills).
Meanwhile traders can keep improving their cargo size and scaling up their profits - whereas bounty hunters can get bigger ships but bounties stay mostly flat lined. I'm worried about the long term effect, especially on PvP. Traders are going to outstrip the combat capabilities of bounty hunters/pirates very quickly and it's a bit disappointing when you realize if you want a bigger ship, you need to go trade.
Basically i'd like to see far more variety and progression for hunting bounties. Right now the low end is working, but profits drop off too quickly to really make much headway into larger ships. Most posts i've seen cap bounty hunting out at around 200k/hour if your lucky. Most traders seem to be well beyond that. I'd also like to see missions that let you assassinate different ships. Going from sidewinders to anacondas is a little extreme. Why not missions to hunt down wanted Vipers/Cobras/Asps for less money(30-100k instead of the 130-170 the anacondas pay).
I'd just like to see the various "roles" in the game be a bit more balanced. Traders seem to have a nice way of working their way up towards bigger and bigger ships (and thus more and more profits) whereas bounty hunters profit flatlines pretty quickly.
Sure you can run the assassination missions to kill anacondas, but those missions can take forever and be unpredictable. The mission system in general is fairly annoying. You have to visit one of the 3 systems and visit USS over and over until you get lucky enough to find one that tells you where the target is (it never seems to be in the 1st system you try sadly) then you have to head to that system and repeat the process. This can take quite a bit of time if you get unlucky. Sometimes your USS just keep being random lone ships with no bounties/cargo (what's the purpose of these?). I'm sure lots of players will come here to say how easy it is to kill anacondas, but for your average player, its not. Especially when their PPC can take you out in almost one shot, even if it is inaccurate.
Besides that, the other kill missions are usually fairly light (1-15k for 1-6 pirate kills).
Meanwhile traders can keep improving their cargo size and scaling up their profits - whereas bounty hunters can get bigger ships but bounties stay mostly flat lined. I'm worried about the long term effect, especially on PvP. Traders are going to outstrip the combat capabilities of bounty hunters/pirates very quickly and it's a bit disappointing when you realize if you want a bigger ship, you need to go trade.
Basically i'd like to see far more variety and progression for hunting bounties. Right now the low end is working, but profits drop off too quickly to really make much headway into larger ships. Most posts i've seen cap bounty hunting out at around 200k/hour if your lucky. Most traders seem to be well beyond that. I'd also like to see missions that let you assassinate different ships. Going from sidewinders to anacondas is a little extreme. Why not missions to hunt down wanted Vipers/Cobras/Asps for less money(30-100k instead of the 130-170 the anacondas pay).
I'd just like to see the various "roles" in the game be a bit more balanced. Traders seem to have a nice way of working their way up towards bigger and bigger ships (and thus more and more profits) whereas bounty hunters profit flatlines pretty quickly.
