If you choose to play the pacifist in a game described as 'TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR OWN STARSHIP IN A CUTTHROAT GALAXY' then that is your choice. You need to decide how to do that. Much as people can decided to play Iron Man mode etc. At the moment the game makes that pretty easy, I think I played the first 2 years without doing any combat, but I don't see any reason we couldn't have mission options that are more challenging for those who want them.
Didn't FD balanced payouts? Just logged in after some years and it still looks the same old broken mission payouts
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Options - absolutely. But if you read through this discussion it is a blanket plan to make all missions/cargo transport more difficult, with harder NPC and harder encounters - this is not an OPTION... The only option is to carry sh** or play combat game...
Pretty sure at least some commentators were arguing thing like Biowaste should probably be easier - attract less interdictions etc - because ... Biowaste.
yeah, not interested in the 'make everything only playable by "Elite" players' crew, but having more variety would be nice.
Precisely what I am saying. You carry sh** or fight...
Oh dear. nvm.
That's why i said "high risk high reward" as Fdev stated. If you don't want to fight you can always pick easy mission that won't involve npc pirate, but if you want to make money... you may have to. Of course Fdev could find some other way than fighting in order to make those mission difficult, but for cargo hauling, except for longer distance, I don't have any idea.
High reward come with high risk, that's how games work. The typical way to introduce risk in a game like Elite, is to throw powerful enemies at you, because Elite is at its core a space shooter game, always was. You may not be interested in combat as your main activity, but surviving combat or avoiding it was always part of the gameplay loop for trading in Elite and other Elite-like games. And where the option to reduce the risk or likelihood of being forced into combat as a trader should exist, it should also come at a cost, because otherwise it's not an option.
A solution to your particular issue with not liking combat would be to also introduce some risk factors which don't rely on combat, but that's already a much taller order. Most importantly you need difficulty which can't simply be bypassed by the use of third party tools as almost anything I can think of would be.
This one.
If you give well-paid options that are a walk in the park compared to other equally paid options, then you might as well just add a button labelled "GIVE CREDITS NOW!" for those people who want credits but don't want to play the game at all. Progression and a sense of achievement are crucial to a game.
Now, there's been a few people saying that "cargo value should matter, it should make harder targets come after you"... I 100% agree that there should be a sliding scale of how difficult a hauling mission is and that should affect the reward, but again, cargo value should have nothing to do with it.
Consider these scenarios:
- A hauler moving 180t of gold @50k/t from High Sec System A to High Sec System B as part of day to day business.
- A hauler moving 100t of personal weapons @4k/t from an industrial system, to a system with a war state where two factions are fighting to for control of a system. Your delivery is destined for one side of that faction, with the other side maintaining a system-wide blockade to prevent delivery of such goods coming in to the system, with mandatory stop-and-scans for all non-aligned pilots.[1]
That second scenario should be much higher risk and much higher reward than the first scenario. This is why I suggested making cargo more "generic" and with no market-resalable value would actually be a good move by FD. It's absolutely not the value of the cargo that matters most here, rather it's the risk factors, the quantity of cargo, the tonnage and the speed of delivery required. That's still a formula to have two different missions with the same tonnage and same value, going to the same target, with very different rewards (where the risk and delivery time is different).
But @Ydiss kinda alludes to this a bit in that implementing something like that needs a substantial overhaul of the game, not just tweaking numbers.
- The "risk" needs to be way more substantial and variant than just "size of the ship coming after you in supercruise" which is all but a solved, optional threat vector which virtually adds no risk. There needs to be scenarios where you drop out and face down pirate(s) either by handing over some cargo whether mission or no, or fighting them off, or going through security checkpoints or similar... longer ranges... tighter timeframes... dangerous/harmful cargo (where's the missions to haul 180t Thargoid goop?)... all of that.
- Coupled with that, there needs to be a sliding scale of mission types to cater for different playstyles... low-reward "safe" missions which are just A->B hauling by another name, or safe missions which just have tight timeframes or multijump distances.... through to high-reward missions which need you to fly cargo through an active CZ with one side hostile to you and "hunters" on the field who specifically target you and your cargo.
- Ostensibly, these would all be different mission templates added to an already-bloated system. This just furthers the need to break-down the mission boards into more subtypes a-la Passenger Lounge... with a dedicated board for only trade-type missions, so you can get a guaranteed density of trade-mission offers to get a variety of options for your playstyle.
[1] There's plenty of alternatives to this scenario. Basic Medicines being transported between two Federal high-security medical facilities, pretty mundane, low value goods. Doing the same thing while having to go via a plague-ridden Imperial sector? Suddenly that risk goes up dramatically for the same goods.
Alterantely, there's other cargo types like Military Intelligence, Assault Plans, Diplomatic Bags.... intrinsically this cargo is worthless, and would be worthless to pirates, but would definitely have high non-monetary value to an opposing force currently locked in a battle with the people you're delivering for.
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So a bin lorry driver should be paid the same as a driver of a truck picking up a banks weekly cash takings ?
Even though the risk of being robbed for the cash is infinitely higher than being robbed for little Johnny's broken SpongeBob toy ?
Yes? You realise armoured guard drivers don't get paid that much more than a bin lorry driver, right?
Of course, that's because Australia is a relatively safe country. If you wanted to be an armoured guard driver in, say, some country where civil wars are currently active and poverty is high (because I don't want to talk politics), then yeah, you're looking at a lot more, but that's because of the risk profile, not the cargo value. In that same country, you'd probably even get an empty armoured car stolen just on a matter of principle.
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Not arguing a point because I'm not really that bothered either way but Elite definitely isn't a "safe country"
Biowaste needs to be hauled by someone. And threat of attack is just as valid because it disrupts the faction wanting it hauled. Flipside, having premium missions that pay more and have more about them are a good idea.
Yup. That's why the value of goods being hauled doesn't matterNot arguing a point because I'm not really that bothered either way but Elite definitely isn't a "safe country"
Biowaste needs to be hauled by someone. And threat of attack is just as valid because it disrupts the faction wanting it hauled. Flipside, having premium missions that pay more and have more about them are a good idea.
There's plenty of other variables that matter significantly more than that.
And indeed part of the gameplay loop for "not trading". In the previous three games the NPCs would shoot at you whether you were carrying cargo or not (well, there were no cargo scanners back then). There were a few safe systems, but unless you wanted to literally do the same A-B trade route forever, you had to fight and win ... since the previous games made "running away" a less reliably successful and repeatable option.
I'm not saying necessarily that Elite Dangerous would be better that way - if I want sufficiently many enemies per trip that the ammo count on my railguns becomes something to consider, I can stack up a few missions and get that, while if I'm just flying around for a bit of relaxing I can not take the missions or cargo and not have to worry about the security rating of the scenery. But certainly limiting your activities by the risk level you're prepared to take is nothing new to Elite Dangerous, and ED is already considerably more generous in that respect than its predecessors.
The concept of risk for trading missions seems to be basic scripted expert system that does include holes.
The key factors I found were:
Given its a really dumb implementation i don’t have a problem with trying to game it to avoid combat.
And if there was only one Npc pirate per mission instead of 4 I wouldn’t have even bothered and just enjoyed the combat break whenever I felt like it. I do wish for nice things sometimes.
The key factors I found were:
- Dropping out of super cruise in the target system.
- The number and type of target bases in the system.
- Most interestingly whether or not you have cargo picked up for a specific mission, to a specific target base, or not.
Given its a really dumb implementation i don’t have a problem with trying to game it to avoid combat.
And if there was only one Npc pirate per mission instead of 4 I wouldn’t have even bothered and just enjoyed the combat break whenever I felt like it. I do wish for nice things sometimes.
I think there's already systems in place to alleviate all the issue of payout amounts.
Contract work.
It'd be like wing missions except the payout is actually worthwhile. First, you'd farm up enough rep with a particular station and they'd offer you a "pledge" of sorts and if you accept said pledge, you could enter into contract work for killing, transporting, or whatever kinda work you wanna do. As long as you complete x amount of missions for them you get a weekly payout for work you accomplished. The difficulty of the contract would be harder than normal missions but doable if you're a skilled pilot. Kill missions have rougher NPCs to take down, Transport/delivery missions have longer routes and put you in dangerous situations, rescue missions may have thargoids creeping around wreckage sites. A real sense of progression.
At the end of the week, as long as you've done enough of your contract work you get a nice tasty payout, and maybe even a bonus if you exceed your quotas. You wouldn't get paid per-mission, so if you only meet half your quota and fail to fulfill your contract you'd get nothing. It'd be a delayed payout but mathematically worthwhile (1 or 2 billion for a completed contract quota) and give the player a bigger investment in what they're actually doing if there's a more tangible goal to chase after and a real consequence for failing to meet their quota. Like a mini-community goal except it's for a single player.
There'd be a limit to the amount of contract work a player could actually do in a week but you could balance it so a skilled pilot could be juggling 3 or 4 contracts a week, each with their respective payout. Maybe even add in a loyalty bonus for re-upping on contracts with stations. This could also tie into BGS with stations getting economic boosts if a large enough number of players do contract work for them.
As it stands right now wing missions, transport, delivery, kill, rescue and pretty much all other mission types are okay for gaining rep and scrounging chump change but if I want to actually make money in a timely manner I'll just mine or do the robigo run. I don't have any incentive to mess around with anything else.
Contract work.
It'd be like wing missions except the payout is actually worthwhile. First, you'd farm up enough rep with a particular station and they'd offer you a "pledge" of sorts and if you accept said pledge, you could enter into contract work for killing, transporting, or whatever kinda work you wanna do. As long as you complete x amount of missions for them you get a weekly payout for work you accomplished. The difficulty of the contract would be harder than normal missions but doable if you're a skilled pilot. Kill missions have rougher NPCs to take down, Transport/delivery missions have longer routes and put you in dangerous situations, rescue missions may have thargoids creeping around wreckage sites. A real sense of progression.
At the end of the week, as long as you've done enough of your contract work you get a nice tasty payout, and maybe even a bonus if you exceed your quotas. You wouldn't get paid per-mission, so if you only meet half your quota and fail to fulfill your contract you'd get nothing. It'd be a delayed payout but mathematically worthwhile (1 or 2 billion for a completed contract quota) and give the player a bigger investment in what they're actually doing if there's a more tangible goal to chase after and a real consequence for failing to meet their quota. Like a mini-community goal except it's for a single player.
There'd be a limit to the amount of contract work a player could actually do in a week but you could balance it so a skilled pilot could be juggling 3 or 4 contracts a week, each with their respective payout. Maybe even add in a loyalty bonus for re-upping on contracts with stations. This could also tie into BGS with stations getting economic boosts if a large enough number of players do contract work for them.
As it stands right now wing missions, transport, delivery, kill, rescue and pretty much all other mission types are okay for gaining rep and scrounging chump change but if I want to actually make money in a timely manner I'll just mine or do the robigo run. I don't have any incentive to mess around with anything else.
That's pretty dang good considering the job is to essentially do nothing.
It depends on the amount of the cargo, the distance being transported, and the danger involved in the delivery. If it was a contract/quota thing like I mentioned above, you could also factor in a time limit which really isn't much of a current factor in missions right now. Occasionally you'll get a slight bonus for an early transport but most of the time you have 24 hours to complete a transport when most of those missions can be completed in less than 1% of that time limit.
Passenger missions OP? Yeah, they are a problem, because they can pay well to distant targets based on scaling (distance to system, distance to station). If they increase payouts for those, then Robigo wouldn't be 100 million per hour it would be 200 or 300 million per hour.
There are a lot of wide reaching changes that can happen by simple tweaks to payouts and my feeling is FD will never solve it without a complete rework of how credits can be earned across the board.
There are a lot of wide reaching changes that can happen by simple tweaks to payouts and my feeling is FD will never solve it without a complete rework of how credits can be earned across the board.
They do go higher as well. Not just at Robigo but also to distant stations. There exist missions where you get paid over a million for sitting in SC for an extra 5 minutes.