Changes taking place?

[CaptnPicard2305]

Over the past couple of days I've noticed that combat in HazRes has become more difficult. I've lost full shields on my G5 Type10 three times when combating wings. Also the board missions no longer appear distributed evenly or fairly between factions, for example, passenger missions. On top of that, missions are now paying far less for more hard work required to fulfill them.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to perhaps equalise the three forms of play? Exploration, Trade and Combat.

It is little wonder why more and more CMDRs are now turning to pure Exploration to satisfy their style of gameplay.

I foresee a time quite soon when ED, as a space SIM, will be redefined by its player base as a game that features 80% Exploration / 10% Trade / 10% Combat. By that time nearly everyone will be out exploring the depths of the galaxy on their own. Multiplayer will become less and less. And at that point the face of ED will change forever.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to perhaps equalise the three forms of play? Exploration, Trade and Combat.

Can't be done.

The three types of activity have completely different behaviour in terms of ships and skill - exploration can basically be done identically in any ship, combat requires a reasonably good ship but a very skilled pilot can make an engineered vulture work for any sort of NPC combat, while in trade biggest is best. Missions of course resemble any of those three, depending on the type of mission.

They could equalise them so that top skill and best ship for the job pays out roughly equally, but very few players have top skill in any area, and the curve still differs, so "pretty good but not the best" will pay out quite a bit differently for each in the experience of most players.

Or they could equalise them so that average skill and average ship pay out roughly equally, but then the sort of player who posts on the forum and looks up the best approaches is going to experience one as paying out way more than the others.

Or they could make it so that exploration and combat pay out like trade - exploration data takes up space, so bigger ships are needed to carry more of it, and they've all got a limit - and no matter how good you are, you simply can't take down an Anaconda in an Eagle. That would be very unpopular too, of course.

It is little wonder why more and more CMDRs are now turning to pure Exploration to satisfy their style of gameplay.

I'm not seeing any sign of this, though - the relationship between the Trade, Combat and Exploration squadron leaderboards is fairly static over the last few seasons, the number of commanders flying around the bubble (i.e. not exploring) hasn't changed much recently either.

If you like exploration more than combat or trade, go explore by all means! But there are equally plenty of CMDRs who find the 5000LY to unlock Palin to be an extreme annoyance and that's their one exploration trip ever.