I'm feeling a bit bummed at the moment. Had my Type 6 for months now running my trade route. At first I could tolerate running back and forth in my Type 6 because it was quite profitable coming from a Cobra but even now with a 1k(ish) profit route on gold making 103k in profits per trip(One stop over) it's just way too big a stretch to a Type 7 to have the drive to spend any amount of time beyond a few trade runs. That and it's incredibly boring trading the same items over and over in the same space for the same profit with absolutely nothing else going on. It's like "Oh, just 100k..." and I lose interest seeing that 17.5million mark for an upgrade. I end up not playing for days or even weeks because I just dread that massive hill to climb in progression but then there are times I have all day to just say: Right, i've nothing to do so i'm going to spend all day doing trade routes and actually get somewhere... then I start doing it, get to my fifth trade run and see i'm only 500k towards that hefty sum and I just log out. There's literally nothing in between except one massive grind.
This really just feels like a reflection on the serious lack of in-betweens in ships. I mean, a Type 6 costs 1million to buy then the next upgrade from that is 17 times the price. That's quite a massive leap for something that's still mid-tier in ship scale and when I do upgrade the next freighter upgrade is 76million. Then you consider that the Type 7 is only roughly twice the hold of a Type 6 it just feels like far too big a grind for what you're getting and for the point you're at. What makes it even more upsetting is the fact that credits aren't spent on anything other than ships. You could use credits to buy commodities for trading but other than that you're paying only a small bit of credits for ship upgrades which, after a point, you really don't have to invest much.
I'm all for select few who take the time to get to some of the best ships in the game as they are rare and should be rare but when you've only flown three ships(Sidewinder, Hauler, Cobra) in a game of this scale and for the difficulty in upgrading to ramp up so significantly after that... It just kills the enjoyment of progression to the point where it really doesn't feel like you've progressed at all for the time you've invested. Sure, the upcoming Lakon Diamondback(Which looks like a freighter, similar design to the Type 6 and developed by Lakon, specific to freighters) may be an in between a Type 6 and a Type 7(Given the massive difference in design from both ships and the similarity of the Diamondback to the Type 6) but who knows. Personally, I can only hope the Diamond back is an in between as the role for trading sorely needs it but even at that it won't be much of an upgrade(170T max hold?). It would definitely help feel less grindy(9million to buy?) and be a nice pit stop between ships, however.
I guess my main gripe is just how few ships are in the game and how big a gap there is in upgrading from ship to ship where you go from a relative curve to the equivalent of a wall, quite literally, in upgrading from ship to ship. It's not even as if you hit this wall towards the high end of ships, it's quite literally at the entry level of mid-tier which just doesn't feel very fun. Anyone else feeling a bit drained by this?
This really just feels like a reflection on the serious lack of in-betweens in ships. I mean, a Type 6 costs 1million to buy then the next upgrade from that is 17 times the price. That's quite a massive leap for something that's still mid-tier in ship scale and when I do upgrade the next freighter upgrade is 76million. Then you consider that the Type 7 is only roughly twice the hold of a Type 6 it just feels like far too big a grind for what you're getting and for the point you're at. What makes it even more upsetting is the fact that credits aren't spent on anything other than ships. You could use credits to buy commodities for trading but other than that you're paying only a small bit of credits for ship upgrades which, after a point, you really don't have to invest much.
I'm all for select few who take the time to get to some of the best ships in the game as they are rare and should be rare but when you've only flown three ships(Sidewinder, Hauler, Cobra) in a game of this scale and for the difficulty in upgrading to ramp up so significantly after that... It just kills the enjoyment of progression to the point where it really doesn't feel like you've progressed at all for the time you've invested. Sure, the upcoming Lakon Diamondback(Which looks like a freighter, similar design to the Type 6 and developed by Lakon, specific to freighters) may be an in between a Type 6 and a Type 7(Given the massive difference in design from both ships and the similarity of the Diamondback to the Type 6) but who knows. Personally, I can only hope the Diamond back is an in between as the role for trading sorely needs it but even at that it won't be much of an upgrade(170T max hold?). It would definitely help feel less grindy(9million to buy?) and be a nice pit stop between ships, however.
I guess my main gripe is just how few ships are in the game and how big a gap there is in upgrading from ship to ship where you go from a relative curve to the equivalent of a wall, quite literally, in upgrading from ship to ship. It's not even as if you hit this wall towards the high end of ships, it's quite literally at the entry level of mid-tier which just doesn't feel very fun. Anyone else feeling a bit drained by this?
this very much does not seem to be the case. There's that and it's hard to see where resources are coming from and where they're going to. It just makes it all the more harder as it adds a lot of guess work and trial and error with nothing you can really learn from. I ended up just going into individual systems and seeing what stations were importing and exporting then checking another system and station in the galaxy map view to see if they imported/exported anything relevant to a station I was going to trade with. It essentially makes the tools for finding specific trade items useless... Even for specifics such as computer components, more times than not I would find that the station or system I was visiting to buy these items for missions simply would not be selling them even though they were a major exporter according to the galaxy map's filter. It essentially adds up to punishing the player for trying to explore different trade routes and do missions for a faction unless you're willing to waste a lot of time pointlessly.