FDev, Have You Lost Control of Your Game?

So much of the player base could also ignore 10x inflation because they already own the ships and modules they want. You could inflate prices by 100x and I wouldn't care because I already own a Krait ... most of these rich people already have fleet carriers and fleets to put on them and wouldn't care either.

If you want to bring down the rich, a progressive wealth tax is needed - assets below 1 billion are untaxed, assets higher than that are taxed at X%/week with X rising the more billions you have. This would be exceptionally unpopular - see how hated an optional 5 million/week cost is - but is the only thing short of a full reset that would stop the already rich from staying rich, or at least make them have to struggle to stay there.

If you just want to bring down beginners so it takes them longer to get going, stick some frag cannons on a Mamba, engineer it up, and get out to that mining hotspot like the rest of the public service gankers are - remember, you can reduce another player's net income more effectively by increasing their costs than by reducing their earnings.
There you go - a fifty percent progressive tax on all holdings and income per day would certainly slow the filthy-rich cats. :D
 
Yes it is.
I can't think of anything that pays that much in so little time.
Maybe Robigo might come close, but mining is the undefeated #1 activity if you want to make lots of money in this game with low to no risk.
I was doing passenger missions not long ago for about the same amount, if they request redirection to closer stations instead of Colonia. I'd bet there are some high end runs happening now, and once those doing it get bored they'll likely share.

So much of the player base could also ignore 10x inflation because they already own the ships and modules they want. You could inflate prices by 100x and I wouldn't care because I already own a Krait ... most of these rich people already have fleet carriers and fleets to put on them and wouldn't care either.

If you want to bring down the rich, a progressive wealth tax is needed - assets below 1 billion are untaxed, assets higher than that are taxed at X%/week with X rising the more billions you have. This would be exceptionally unpopular - see how hated an optional 5 million/week cost is - but is the only thing short of a full reset that would stop the already rich from staying rich, or at least make them have to struggle to stay there.

If you just want to bring down beginners so it takes them longer to get going, stick some frag cannons on a Mamba, engineer it up, and get out to that mining hotspot like the rest of the public service gankers are - remember, you can reduce another player's net income more effectively by increasing their costs than by reducing their earnings.
No taxation without representation.

Conviently ignoring that earning masses of credits is possible without mining. If mining is an issue, so is everything else.

Looking at my current earnings, I'll have enough for a fleet carrier in a couple of months without touching LTD mining since mission running piracy and trade is getting me 60-80 million each day I play.

The problem is that by nerfing mining for credit per hour addicts, the players who just pick up the game and mine for a quick hit of cash to buy their new ship have much longer to wait. Perhaps FDev accept that mining is never going to be the most interesting thing to do, so are making it quick.

Faction supporters, AX players, PvPers , Station repairers all seem to be having fun doing stuff that doesn't necessarily earn credits. If earning 20 billion credits that quickly ruins your game, don't do it.

I've been playing for years. Sure you can make billions now in a short amount of time, but many of us who have made billions got there the hard way first.
 
Last edited:
This is wrong. Just changing the sub-surface respawn mechanics to minic those of core asteroids (preferably with a one hour timer) would solve this exploit.
But, the core issue (pardon the pun) is the static economy without modeling supply and demand. So instead of swinging the nerf hammer left and right with a blindfold, they shoud focus on creating more realistic economy. That would introduce some new gameplay loops and lucrative trade routes popping in organically, not artificially.

PS: LET ME GRIND MY FC MONEY IN PEACE GOD DAMN IT :D
 
This is wrong. Just changing the sub-surface respawn mechanics to minic those of core asteroids (preferably with a one hour timer) would solve this exploit.

Yeah that sounds nonsensical.

Since we have no effective way to return to a single point in space after having left it unless it has a specific SC nav-mark, maintaining a list of mined rocks should be trivial since it can be purged regularly.

Of course the very idea of a realistic galaxy where asteroids magically re-appear with their deposits is a gigantic break in game logic, which is probably a bigger problem than mining containing an exploit making it even more lucrative, because non-exploited mining still renders credits meaningless.
 
Last edited:
Since we have no effective way to return to a single point in space after having left it unless it has a specific SC nav-mark, maintaining a list of mined rocks should be trivial since it can be purged regularly.
And yet people come up with ideas how to circumvent the problem, it's a trait of the human race, our true superpower. Mapped SSD mining is a thing, and good. I would like this expanded to make maps through asteroid belts with a % of credit from map sale going to the original mapper for example :D So it would incentivise prospecting the rings and also gave a nice navigational minigame if provided with not so obvious nav-marks and required reading ship instruments (which we currently don't have).
 
And yet people come up with ideas how to circumvent the problem, it's a trait of the human race, our true superpower. Mapped SSD mining is a thing, and good. I would like this expanded to make maps through asteroid belts with a % of credit from map sale going to the original mapper for example :D So it would incentivise prospecting the rings and also gave a nice navigational minigame if provided with not so obvious nav-marks and required reading ship instruments (which we currently don't have).

Well, I guess that shows how up to date I am. Well, it makes it trickier since we would be needing an ever-growing data-set in a world with literally billions upon billions of potential seeds.

Of course the obvious solution seems to be to just randomize the results as you approach and maintain the result in a sufficiently large bubble. This doesn't really need any more explanation than rocks and rings shifting, but I don't know enough astronomics to know how realistic that is (but as far as I know, the dense rings in ED are very unrealistic compared to how sparse they are in our solar system anyway).
 
Haul tritium cargo as a pure trader - you can have that FC in ~4 weeks even with casual play of 15 hrs/week.

90M per hour x 15 hours/week x 4 weeks = 5.4B

Getting a FC without mining in ~4 casual weeks of play doesn't seem bad.

My friend... did you get we are talking about a game and not a work?

This is just pure grind: doing the same route over and over: hell even a bot would be able to do that.

But a bot is a bot: me no.

Bounty hunting, cz (before that absurd increase of npc health), stacking mission were nice because they were fun.

Bounty hunting was blaze my trail not a grindless loop of wasting time...
 
My friend... did you get we are talking about a game and not a work?

This is just pure grind: doing the same route over and over: hell even a bot would be able to do that.

But a bot is a bot: me no.

Bounty hunting, cz (before that absurd increase of npc health), stacking mission were nice because they were fun.

Bounty hunting was blaze my trail not a grindless loop of wasting time...

CONTEXT is important - you left out why and what I was responding to. First let's start off on things we do agree on to be nice -

a) I don't like grind either - in fact hate it. For example I hate using SRV to randomly hunt for mats on planets, to me that is pure grind. But others will disagree, many find SRV fun. In same way, I can see why hauling cargo is grind to you, but it is fun for me. To say it has to be a bot or grind activity for everyone is foolish - clearly many ppl like hauling activity.

b) I love bounty hunting, cz and hazres combat - really wish FDev would boost these activities. I wish they would bring back things like ground skimmer attack missions that used to pay really well. I still do these activities because I have earned enough to do what I like regardless what the pay is, but I do wish it was boosted to be close to mining earnings. But again, this doesn't mean I think EVERYONE has to think only these specific activities to be the fun and anything else means you are a bot that likes to grind. That is not only wrong but condescending to presume for others what they can find fun or not.

Now back to context - this is the quote from yourself I was replying to:

I have nothing against mining paying so much.

The problem is that it has hidden every profession out there being the only way to get a Fc.

Mining is the only reasonable way to get a FC.

You made 2 claims here that could easily be disproven - that a) mining has hidden every profession out there being the only way to get a FC, and b) "Mining is the only reasonable way to get a FC"

As I showed in my hauling tritium example, even a casual player that plays less than 15 hrs/week can get FC in ~4 weeks without ever mining. So clearly, mining is not the only reasonable way to get a FC, nor only profession "being only way to get a FC".

You can disagree about hauling being an activity you like, even a grind if that's what you personally dislike - but the 2 statements you made above were absolutes. You made the easily disproven claim that ONLY mining was the way to get an FC, which is clearly wrong. You presumed to talk for ALL players rather than just your own opinion.
 
Your wish for grindy ... Otherwise easy tasks to be buffed to make more credits is wrong. It is a balancing act that is wrong everywhere. The current tasks are easy and basically safe and should be balanced in compensation relative to the risk they put the player in. So most if not all should be low pay.

A new set of tasks is needed for higher pay rates. Tasks that are actually risky for veteran players and rich players. Separated from the current set by needing a show of skill in mastery of the game in various ways and the very real chance of loss of assets on attempting.

And those two sets of tasks need to be balanced with units and modules and such that expensive things would take forever to pay doing the safe stuff yet you would be able to fund the cheap stuff reasonably.

Nothing safe should be a means of practical income for anyone looking to fund expensive things.
 
It's what the people want. You are out of touch with the rest of society.

This is the content people play. Look at the numbers.
Reminds me of Battlefield servers playing Metro or Operation Locker only with 64 players. From a game designers' perspective borderline broken, those maps were/ are played a lot. It does not make them good, though.

I'd agree that a massive influx of credits very quickly would skip over a part of the game that I found a lot of fun.

However, how many players accidentally stumble across LTD 2 or 3s? I'd guess the vast majority have watched max credit per hour videos on youtube. If you're the sort of player who has done that, you've already made the conscious decision to skip to the 'more credits than you know what to do with' part of the game.
If a player needs to compromise his playstyle to have more fun in a game, it's a sign of lacking game design. In general a good learning curve challenges the player by making him aware of new means and mechnics. The player then is able to make interesting choices to find solutions best to his abilities.
 
But, the core issue (pardon the pun) is the static economy without modeling supply and demand. So instead of swinging the nerf hammer left and right with a blindfold, they shoud focus on creating more realistic economy. That would introduce some new gameplay loops and lucrative trade routes popping in organically, not artificially.

PS: LET ME GRIND MY FC MONEY IN PEACE GOD DAMN IT :D
So much this. If the ingame economy worked as it SHOULD, we wouldn't be here right now. The problem is there is no supply and demand. Everything is static and unchanging. If there was ACTUAL supply and demand, LTDs price would PLUMMET because of how flooded the market is with them. The "credit boom" resource would be different every week simply because of how supply and demand works. As miners focus on one resource, other resources become less prominent in the market and start demanding a higher price. Miners move to THAT resource, and the previous one starts rising in price.

The core problem of the BGS is that there IS no BGS. Trade resource values never change. You can flood a station with LTDs for days and it'll pay out the same amount of credits every time. To fix this situation would require a COMPLETE overhaul of how the ingame economy functions (or doesnt function), which is a man-hour time sink I think we all know FDev would never commit to.
 
New to the game with a mining Anaconda. This helped put things in perspective for me. https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/new-to-game.548694/

Is this the game most new players play these days? 🤔
Based on traffic reports, there are still some flying low-level ships. Cobras are pretty common.
But if you care enough to participate in the community, for example by reading the subreddit or watching youtube videos with tips, it is hard to avoid. At that point, you will have to decide if you want to mine or engage some kind of role-play mode where you pretend to be a hard-working space trucker hauling food cartridges and mining bauxite. I think exceedingly few choose the latter, even if they would have been totally OK with a slow progression or even actual hard grinding, if no alternative was given.
 
New to the game with a mining Anaconda. This helped put things in perspective for me. https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/new-to-game.548694/

Is this the game most new players play these days? 🤔
I can't see anything wrong with this approach after reading that:
  • they want to explore
  • they mined the credits and now are asking about explorer builds with best view

How are they wrong? Why should they concern themselves with progressing through all the meaningless ships if they are interested in exploration and not in bubble pew pew or trading? They ground the credits, now it's happy spending time. How is that wrong? To me it looks like a good progression system, albeit the grind part was probably atrocious.
 
They ground the credits, now it's happy spending time. How is that wrong? To me it looks like a good progression system, albeit the grind part was probably atrocious.

I definitely wouldn't call it a grind. But that is the evolution of games. When a game is first released starting players are all at square one. There are lots of discussions on how to beat the grind. As the game develops and they introduce new things, then they have to introduce ways to earn more to pay for them. The byproduct of that is that the 2nd and 3rd generation of players benefit because the past experiences plastered up on YouTube provide them with considerable shortcuts to skip over the learning experiences. The big issue I see with Elite is simply that for an origin in a space trading game, they have really lost the plot in providing a "living" economy. Simply put, when a system is provided with a supply of something, the price should quite immediately react. "Dump" pricing is a temporary hack to this, in reality though constantly delivering LTDs or any other Flavour du Jour commodity in a system should deflate the prices there and in proximity for a time. But then that doesn't seem fair because players "dumping" in a system mean others won't get good prices, oh well. Such is life.Be quick and spread out a bit when relying on commodities.

In all honesty, credits are only a challenge if you want them to be a challenge. I tinkered with running cargo in the starter area, but courier missions and other missions were enough to get me an Adder where I got a taste for mining. There are no "Triple Hotspots" in the starter area so I set up to try core mining. Alexandrite and Grandinite still paid hella-good and I had a Cobra in no time. Polymer trading was a byproduct on the return trip from where I mined the stuff to where a site told me to go to sell the stuff for a good price. I ran missions to improve my rating to "Ally" and set out. By then I had over 10M in the bank so the 100k "reward" wasn't even a consideration. That took me less than a week as a spanking new player. One mining trip for Opals basically paid for a Keelback which I fitted out and tried out sub surface mining where I discovered how lucrative SS LTDs are. A couple good hauls from VO cores & LTD and I had a Python fully kitted with 50M to spare. I did a couple more runs with the Python to put 350M in the bank... So now I don't need to worry at all about money. I did in less than 2 weeks of really casual playing what many early days starting players probably had to spend months on.

Now I've kitted up a DBX and headed into the black for a while. When I get back I'll probably get more into the real remaining grind, getting engineers unlocked and increasing rank with Fed to unlock Sol, maybe grind Empire to unlock a Clipper etc. Credits are no barrier to any of that, only time. When FCs were announced and I saw the price tag/upkeep I thought "damn".. Now I think it's rather funny to see people complain about the upkeep. Wow, so once a week you need to spend a couple hours mining LTDs. Big whoop. The byproduct of that is now a new player can spend a dedicated day or 2 in this game and "grind" from Sidewinder to Python. Everything in-between is nothing more than a 1-3 trip stepping stone. (Working as designed?) No easy answers there. If buybacks get more expensive to discourage skipping ships then ganking & such gets far more disruptive. If they slap a ban stick on credit gen, you have a bunch of haves vs. have-nots and players that have "spent up" on FCs will struggle to keep them flying. Of course FC owners will get cranky about Tritium, but hell once they open their eyes and see that subsurface deposits are hella-plentiful in LTD hotspots, that should simmer down. (I can spend an hour or so filling a Python with SS LTD, I can fill it with Tritium in about 20 min) All they need to do is find some icy rings. That means going Battlestar Galactica, jump into a DBX/AspX to scout ahead then calling your FC in when you find something.

It's a bit of a shame though because they've spent quite a bit of time to set up a diverse economy of goods, routes, etc... But the game may as well just have 3 or 4 commodities. Everything else is solely there now for grinding missions. Neutronium, Duranium, Tritanium, and Molybdenum anyone? :)
 
I can't see anything wrong with this approach after reading that:
  • they want to explore
  • they mined the credits and now are asking about explorer builds with best view

How are they wrong? Why should they concern themselves with progressing through all the meaningless ships if they are interested in exploration and not in bubble pew pew or trading? They ground the credits, now it's happy spending time. How is that wrong? To me it looks like a good progression system, albeit the grind part was probably atrocious.
Meaningless? You make me cry Cobra pilot tears :cry:
No, seriously: do you really think this is a 'good progression system'? Do you think it was the intention of FD to create all these 'meaningless ship' assets that everyone should just skip on the streamlined path to their profession endgame loadout?
 
Back
Top Bottom