With the way this year has gone, we need more optimists everywhere, forums included.
ANNOUNCEMENT Game Balancing Pt.2
- Thread starter Bruce G
- Start date
Some things can be changed server-side only, and are usually (frustratingly) unannounced. It is obvious from playing the game that changes have already been applied though, you should be able to test this for yourself to confirm whether the particular set of circumstances you have in mind have been affected.
Yes they are live.
Thanks!
While I agree they shouldn't require that many kills for solo (and I wouldn't take one), like with all types of missions there are inconsistencies between the requirements and payouts. I think some of that has to do with the amount of influence you have with that particular faction. I found this when looking at passenger missions in the past as well.
I managed to find a solo massacre mission last night (before the update) paying about $7mil for 18 kills which I thought was pretty good. I don't know what the new updated figure would be.
Here, here is some food for thought:
Why not make a mission slider?
Kill 1, get paid x.
Then the player can chose how many they want to kill. If you want to do 20, pick 20, only want to kill 5 because you don't have 2 hours, pick 5.
Pay would then get adjusted accordingly of course, maybe even a bonus for killing 10, 20 or 50.
Example:
1 kill would net you 200k.
10 kills would pay 2m +10% bonus for a total of 2.2m
20 kills would pay 4m +20% bonus for a total of 4.8m
50 kills would pay 10m +50% bonus for a total of 15m
BUT: It's the player who decides where to put the kill count. The player commits to killing x ships, not the mission giver just handing it top down "I want you to kill 70+ ship".
Give some controls to the players.
Rewards other than credit would adjust accordingly again of course.
This year has gone way better than I expected it to back in March.
It's already in the game. You lose the ship that had the bounty if you don't pay it off.
If you can't pay off both the bounty and rebuy you either have to sell other ships you have to make up the cost or you need to chose the freewinder.
Gankers simply don't care if they loose their ships, it's a risk they've already accepted with their playstyle.
This. This. So much this.
That's kinda how I'M thinking! I'm not in it for the money. I want to be a HERO OF SPACE!
Alright, so after session each of Assassination/Massacre stacking and bounty hunting, here's my consolidated feedback.
Just some preface, if I refer to an increase or decrease in reward, I'm referring to per-ship kill. This is obvious for standard BH stuff, but for missions less so.... if you didn't know, massacre missions reward per-kill, so a 40 kill mission will reward twice as much as a 20 kill mission. If I say "Reduce number of targets", there's an implicit reduction in total reward, but the per-kill ratio remains the same, so it's not actually a reward reduction.
Secondly, I will distinguish between "massacre missions" and "CZ massacres", as the two are very fundamentally different.
With that out of the way....
Wing massacre missions: Halve reward, Halve number of targets
Solo massacre missions: Quarter reward (yes, reduce them compared to what they currently are), Halve number of targets
Wing and Solo CZ Massacres: Fix the bug where Wing massacres have a higher per-kill reward than solo
Solo CZ Massacres: Halve number of targets (after fixing reward ratio)
Wing CZ Massacres: Halve number of targets (after fixing reward ratio)
Assassinations: Good change, leave
Wing Assassinations: Double reward (8-10m for Allied)
Bounties for Vanilla Kills: Keep as-is
Bounties for Engineered Targets: Quadruple payouts
Basically, the factor that's gone completely unconsidered is the stackability of Massacres. A single massacre mission now offers roughly 1m per kill. Lightly stacked that approaches 200m for per fifty kills of any ship type, and that's not even considering the bounties on top of that which stand to up that to around 50m, 100m if you include some Powerplay bonuses.
But the enhanced payouts work for CZ missions as they do not stack, except in the case of wing missions.
By reducing payouts and number of targets, stackability (which is where the excessive payouts come from) is mitigated, but the missions themselves become easier to resolve, lending themselves more to comparable game activity loops of around 10-20 minutes effort. I'm less fussed about Wing stacking, bully for you for getting mates into the game tbh... in lieu of some high-end dungeon-like thing/scenario to do.
Wing Assassinations are in dire need of a buff... for the effort involved (usually a wing of 3-5 fully engineered targets) they're woefully underpaid at 4m credits, compared to the mission I did recently to kill 12 vanilla ships (which I easily did in a ship not optimised for fighting) for around 17 million. Around 10m for a Wing assassination, when you also consider the next proposal to buff bounties on engineered targets, would bring a single wing assassination up to a total payout of =~ 30m. Considering the effort and difficulty of that compared to a comparable reward from massacres, that's pretty balanced.
New bounties are pretty on-point, but Pirate Activity Threat 5&6 payouts, and other engineered targets such as for Wing Assassinations are ridiculously low by contrast. These should be the premier bounty farming environments, not everyday pirates in a civil liberty state. Remember, PA Threat 5&6 only exist in Civil Unrest/Lockdown, so as people swamp these for the premium payouts, it will self-terminate once security increases again, so if engineered targets pay out signficantly more, it's only for a temporary period until you need to relocate for more CU/L states (which are pretty rare, because Elite: Best Friends)
Just some preface, if I refer to an increase or decrease in reward, I'm referring to per-ship kill. This is obvious for standard BH stuff, but for missions less so.... if you didn't know, massacre missions reward per-kill, so a 40 kill mission will reward twice as much as a 20 kill mission. If I say "Reduce number of targets", there's an implicit reduction in total reward, but the per-kill ratio remains the same, so it's not actually a reward reduction.
Secondly, I will distinguish between "massacre missions" and "CZ massacres", as the two are very fundamentally different.
With that out of the way....
Wing massacre missions: Halve reward, Halve number of targets
Solo massacre missions: Quarter reward (yes, reduce them compared to what they currently are), Halve number of targets
Wing and Solo CZ Massacres: Fix the bug where Wing massacres have a higher per-kill reward than solo
Solo CZ Massacres: Halve number of targets (after fixing reward ratio)
Wing CZ Massacres: Halve number of targets (after fixing reward ratio)
Assassinations: Good change, leave
Wing Assassinations: Double reward (8-10m for Allied)
Bounties for Vanilla Kills: Keep as-is
Bounties for Engineered Targets: Quadruple payouts
Basically, the factor that's gone completely unconsidered is the stackability of Massacres. A single massacre mission now offers roughly 1m per kill. Lightly stacked that approaches 200m for per fifty kills of any ship type, and that's not even considering the bounties on top of that which stand to up that to around 50m, 100m if you include some Powerplay bonuses.
But the enhanced payouts work for CZ missions as they do not stack, except in the case of wing missions.
By reducing payouts and number of targets, stackability (which is where the excessive payouts come from) is mitigated, but the missions themselves become easier to resolve, lending themselves more to comparable game activity loops of around 10-20 minutes effort. I'm less fussed about Wing stacking, bully for you for getting mates into the game tbh... in lieu of some high-end dungeon-like thing/scenario to do.
Wing Assassinations are in dire need of a buff... for the effort involved (usually a wing of 3-5 fully engineered targets) they're woefully underpaid at 4m credits, compared to the mission I did recently to kill 12 vanilla ships (which I easily did in a ship not optimised for fighting) for around 17 million. Around 10m for a Wing assassination, when you also consider the next proposal to buff bounties on engineered targets, would bring a single wing assassination up to a total payout of =~ 30m. Considering the effort and difficulty of that compared to a comparable reward from massacres, that's pretty balanced.
New bounties are pretty on-point, but Pirate Activity Threat 5&6 payouts, and other engineered targets such as for Wing Assassinations are ridiculously low by contrast. These should be the premier bounty farming environments, not everyday pirates in a civil liberty state. Remember, PA Threat 5&6 only exist in Civil Unrest/Lockdown, so as people swamp these for the premium payouts, it will self-terminate once security increases again, so if engineered targets pay out signficantly more, it's only for a temporary period until you need to relocate for more CU/L states (which are pretty rare, because Elite: Best Friends)
mining was around what, 500m/hr? (with top tier conda/cutter)So you're basically attempting to fix an economy that suffered localised inflation by applying universal inflation.
Yeah, sure, that makes sense
bounty hunting was what, 5m/hr? now it's maybe 20m/hr (note: after you have a top tier vette or FDL)?
maybe MORE relevant is entry level bounty hunting is around 5k per kill as opposed to mining which could net you a couple mil per hour with a COBRA 3...
You really think this is not needed in bounty hunting/conflict zones?
Totally agree and have mentioned it before too.
Would also like to add that Wing objectives should not get multiplied by wing member count per single objective done.
One example is: 4 wing members doing a wing massacre mission for a CZ, if in same instance, will generate 4 kills towards the mission per single kill.
There are other ways to exploit wing missions too.
Ive made over 37B just via mining, I have never ever hit 500M/hr.
Not saying its not possible just that, even with mapped Borran LTD mining, in a fully pimped mining cutter, it took me 4hrs (including flight to ring and station) to get 1 billions worth of ore.
But yes Combat has definitely needed a balance pass for some time now.
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I've avoided bounty hunting because I'm just starting out and losing a ship has been too costly a risk for my limited skill, so I just mined and ran cargo. Only combat I saw was fighting with the occaional ganker. The new rewards induced me to give it a try again and I must say it has been a blast. I'm getting more skilled and earning enough to replace a ship if I screw up. It's worth the effort now and hella fun!
Mining and some of the cargo runs are still more profitable in many cases, but it was getting a bit tedious. The new system has also gotten me to take interest in the Engineering aspect of the game. The re-balance has really rounded out the whole experience of the game.
WELL DONE !!
the production of painite was with a profit of 200M / hour and why was it necessary to cut prices?
Brilliant stuff.
I'll be going shooting after work. Yeeha
I'll be going shooting after work. Yeeha
I am for increasing profit from other types of activity. But I am strongly against nerf mining. It's pointless. I agree that a billion in 2 hours is a hell of a lot, but painite gave only 200 per hour and if there was somewhere to take ... on average, I got 175 million per hour per circle. At this time, I turn on takeoff from an aircraft carrier, arrival at the mining site, mining, flight to the place of delivery ... And the risks are not zero, the pirates got out with a full hold ...
Was pleasantly surprised to pop a single corvette and pick up 800k bounty in addition to the mission reward (prev highest ever bounty payout had been 320k!). Then saw this post linked on twitter, which explains it.
Liking this tweak a LOT
Liking this tweak a LOT