Quite right too. We should set ATR on the explorers to discourage their unprofitable activities further.
Fix Piracy by making Commodity Trading more risky by increasing purchase prices.
- Thread starter DemiserofD
- Start date
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
Of course players could choose those goods at the "low NPC interest" end of the range - however I strongly suspect that those would also be low profit goods - so those players lose out in terms of reduction in Cr/hr.
Trade missions are an opt-in addition to trading - with simply buy / sell trading being a baseline.
Was it really as long as that? A quick hunt suggests it was less than eight months.
The difference between systems at the opposite ends of the security spectrum has existed for a long time - however it's not as wide as some would like. While there is precedent for difference, I don't expect we'd see a change to the levels of difference that some players want to be forced on all players.
Indeed - which may, in and of itself, be telling with regard to Frontier's stance.
You seem to be of the opinion that every field of endeavor should pay the same thing.
The world doesn't work that way. It never has. It never will.
Ah, but as previously established, mere reductions in Cr/hr without change in that activity's combat risk are fine: Borann wasn't stopped by bringing in pirates to attack LTD holders, but it did (among with other changes) change the optimal Cr/hr earning method from non-combat mining to stacking combat massacre missions. Sad for the non-combat players who still wanted to make optimal money, but not the first time "best earner" had switched from non-combat to combat and back again.
My suggestion was ~3k better Cr/T for the high interest goods, which sounds a lot but would be wiped out anyway on Cr/hr by the need to fit shields to the freighter (or use an actual multirole) so the tonnage would be less, and would still be considerably lower Cr/hr even if successfully done in an unshielded cargo-only T-9 than the (easier) trade missions, so no-one would be missing out on a new optimal earning approach.
I really don't see what's opt-in about trade missions that's not opt-in about buying a cargo marked as high threat over one marked as low threat. Both attract more optional risk (or not, if it's a low-threat-level mission) in exchange for a higher (on paper, excluding costs) reward. Why does exactly which station interface screen you pick the cargo up from make such a difference?
Much higher reward, at that - trade missions can pay out over 250k/tonne, whereas bulk trade even in absolutely ideal circumstances won't go much above 50k/tonne outside of a Tritium CG. (Is that CG an opt-in mission or baseline in this scheme?)
And uniquely to odyssey on-foot activities, you can do so purely through killing mission targets.
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
True - noting that the LTD boom was relatively short lived - whereas trading has been around since the outset.
I doubt that 3k/t would satisfy those seeking to lure traders into being more accepting of PvP due to having to equip their ships to survive combat (not that surviving NPC attacks and player attacks are particularly close in challenge / risk).
The mission information details what the likely consequences of taking the mission are - unlike simply buying cargo from the commodities market.
CGs are opt-in by definition - as one will not contribute to the CG if one does not sign-up - noting that one would still enjoy the increased profits whether or not one was signed up (and also noting that for some particularly lucrative CGs there have been "please don't sign up" pleas from those wanting the profits to last as long as possible).
True, but pure bulk trading has never been the most profitable career. It's only relatively recently - and that mostly as a side-effect of mining price reforms - that it's got into the same order of magnitude as more specific activities and it's still consistently inferior to mission-based or combat-based activities.
What a pity. But as I'm not making this "cargo threat level" suggestion with any intent whatsoever of keeping PvPers happy I'm sure it's fine.
What I mainly want is a more reliable way to set the threat level of my own A-B trading trips - am I feeling like a bit of actual combat, or am I feeling like an easy run perhaps with a single really overconfident pirate - without having to mess around finding and stacking and then completing several trade missions in the hope that enough of them generate opposition. Sometimes I just want an easy run and I'll pick low-threat cargoes, sometimes I'll want a bit more of a challenge and I'll pick medium threat ones, occasionally I'll want to have a proper FE2-Anarchy-style gauntlet, stick a cargo rack on my FDL, and fill it up with high-threat cargo [1].
I do think it needs a little bit of on-paper extra profit/tonne - which my FDL is not going to be realising as Cr/hr profit in any way! - to explain why pirates only go for those goods, though.
[1] Yes, I know, I could just take the FDL into a Pirate Activity Detected (Threat 7) signal with a tonne of biowaste aboard and get the same amount of combat. I could skip the cargo entirely and just shoot five or six targets in that POI on arrival, too. The point is the specific getting from A-B challenge which involves a mix of combat, running away, evading interdictions, finding space to recover, etc ... in a way that Elites 1-3 did very well and Elite 4 just doesn't do at all without a huge amount of setup.
And there would need to be a "threat level" column added to the market screen to provide similar information, absolutely.
Maybe even an "are you sure?" prompt if you're below Expert combat rank and attempt to buy the high threat goods, or a requirement to have a particular Trade/Combat rank before the market will even offer them to you. Definitely not trying to trick anyone into accidentally picking them up here!
Why should only a small subset of mined goods be worth pirating? Why change NPCs to regularly carry these supposedly rare minerals rather than just fixing the more general problem?
Isolated exceptions only serve to prove the rule.
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i would definitely support purchase and sales prices of goods be increased in price (but trade profits stay the same)
i would definitely support in anarchy systems them not caring if stuff is stolen or not so costing the same.
This wouldnt get me to play in open, however it would make it worth my time to consider picking up dropped goods that a would be pirate dropped when they bit off more than they could chew taking me on.
i cut my teeth in the 1st 3 games by being a reclamation expert...................... basically i didnt buy goods to trade, i used to fly in dangerous places, and then mugged the would be muggers after they attacked me..... i got the experience, the bounty vouchers and a hold full of free goods. it does sadden me that it is not worth my time picking up stuff in ED.
i would definitely support in anarchy systems them not caring if stuff is stolen or not so costing the same.
This wouldnt get me to play in open, however it would make it worth my time to consider picking up dropped goods that a would be pirate dropped when they bit off more than they could chew taking me on.
i cut my teeth in the 1st 3 games by being a reclamation expert...................... basically i didnt buy goods to trade, i used to fly in dangerous places, and then mugged the would be muggers after they attacked me..... i got the experience, the bounty vouchers and a hold full of free goods. it does sadden me that it is not worth my time picking up stuff in ED.
Because people are stealing Rolexes and not toilet paper and if you do steal toilet paper you should not expect to get rich...
And, besides that, there is no general problem to be fixed.
Depends on the global economical factors looks at 2020 and 2021
Cheese graters. look it up.
It's not really a matter of what pays the most, it's more about what pays enough. I enjoy PvE piracy, but it's profit is lower by an order of magnitude or two compared to other activities. The same can be said for smuggling and scavenging which are also enjoyable game loops, profit set aside.
I decided to just abandon the idea of ever owning a FC, because it's better to play the game in a way that I enjoy rather than grinding for days and weeks in a game loop that is soul crushing to me.
It should be considered a problem.
I bought a T9 and an anaconda in 2 days of bulk hauling starting with a T-7 and experienced the plat mining/bulk hauling level of profitability. It flattens all concept of value except for the FC.
that too should be considered a problem.
That said, I wouldn't want a fix that would harm the fun of others in any way, and I already said that OP's suggestion is flawed.
As far as I'm concerned, I simply chose another end-game goal as a pirate that is somehow meaningful to me : Be allied with every anarchy faction in my corner of the galaxy.
As an exercice and to celebrate my newly diagnosed schizophrenia I tried to find a system that would "fix" the issue :
First, commodities belongs to "tiers" : 10, 100, 1000, 10000, 100000. This is roughly their base price. It's Y.
The lowest value for a commodity should be Y - X, where X is the reduction.
The highest value should be X + Z, where Z is the increment
Now we can define lowest as Y - X > 0 and the highest as X + Z <= Max
And we have the maximum margin for a given commodity : maxX+maxZ where maxX is Y, and maxZ is to be defined.
Max is therefore the highest price a commodity can take.
To make trading worthwhile, X should be a proportion of Y but Z should be a flat value.
The key idea is that high value commodity would have their margin from cheap buy (Y is big, so if X is a proportion, it's in the range [0, Y[)
and low value commodities would have their margin from a flat Z that is proportionally higher than it is for higher value commodity.
I.E. with a flat Z as 100cr, a 10cr commodity margin can only grow by ]10 from a cheap buy, but grow by 100 from a expensive sales whereas a 100 000cr commodity margin will grow from cheap buy (up to ]100,000) and won't grow from expensive sales (100cr is negligible)
The potential margin for expensive commodity is therefore always better , but its value is under control (cannot be > than max), which prevent "gold rushes"
We still need to fix the supply/demand so that there is no scenario where stacking the most expensive stuff is always better :
The supply limit is something like N * 1/Y, so that low value commodity have N * 1/10 which is ten time more than one tiers above, etc. Very similar to the mechanism used by "rare".
The goal is that biggest earner cannot fill hundreds of tons so that lower earner have a role.
Now, since we define "Max", we also fix the value obtained from stealing and mining : stealing profit is always Y, and the mining profit is fixed through demand just like supply was a fix for bulk trading : M * 1/Y,
so that monomining expensive minerals/metals get hits by a diminishing return (not enough demand) and lower value metal/minerals have a role.
First, commodities belongs to "tiers" : 10, 100, 1000, 10000, 100000. This is roughly their base price. It's Y.
The lowest value for a commodity should be Y - X, where X is the reduction.
The highest value should be X + Z, where Z is the increment
Now we can define lowest as Y - X > 0 and the highest as X + Z <= Max
And we have the maximum margin for a given commodity : maxX+maxZ where maxX is Y, and maxZ is to be defined.
Max is therefore the highest price a commodity can take.
To make trading worthwhile, X should be a proportion of Y but Z should be a flat value.
The key idea is that high value commodity would have their margin from cheap buy (Y is big, so if X is a proportion, it's in the range [0, Y[)
and low value commodities would have their margin from a flat Z that is proportionally higher than it is for higher value commodity.
I.E. with a flat Z as 100cr, a 10cr commodity margin can only grow by ]10 from a cheap buy, but grow by 100 from a expensive sales whereas a 100 000cr commodity margin will grow from cheap buy (up to ]100,000) and won't grow from expensive sales (100cr is negligible)
The potential margin for expensive commodity is therefore always better , but its value is under control (cannot be > than max), which prevent "gold rushes"
We still need to fix the supply/demand so that there is no scenario where stacking the most expensive stuff is always better :
The supply limit is something like N * 1/Y, so that low value commodity have N * 1/10 which is ten time more than one tiers above, etc. Very similar to the mechanism used by "rare".
The goal is that biggest earner cannot fill hundreds of tons so that lower earner have a role.
Now, since we define "Max", we also fix the value obtained from stealing and mining : stealing profit is always Y, and the mining profit is fixed through demand just like supply was a fix for bulk trading : M * 1/Y,
so that monomining expensive minerals/metals get hits by a diminishing return (not enough demand) and lower value metal/minerals have a role.
That's exactly what killed Void Opal mining and LTD, and basically all precious minerals.
That would need to be done in a careful manner - you would need a believable reason why these piratable NPCs have exclusivity to profitable wares that is not available to any other pilots in the galaxy.
That's observably untrue. Engineering, Fleet Carriers, neutron boosts, synthesis, Q.E.D.
These changes are not making the game riskier
Where in this thread did anyone suggest challenge gating players out of existing systems? I defy anybody to display a pirate encounter - not an assassination target, not a CZ encounter, not a mission-generated wrinkle - that offers anything remotely approaching a challenge, as the game currently stands. Even before Engineering, I was capable of fighting off pirate encounter Anacondas in a Type 9.
Unless someone proposed to bring back bugged NPCs with things like beam-laser-plasma-accelerators, I really don't think it's valid to claim that anything remotely approaching "challenge gating" could possibly take place.
Synthesized ammo and Engineering most definitely pose risk in the PvP scene. How many videos have piled up over the years, of gankers literally obliterating player ships within seconds? The imbalance introduced by these changes are monumental.