ANNOUNCEMENT Game Balancing Pt.2

[BL1P]

Painite only gave 200m per hour?

Don’t you think that’s a little odd in a game where the hull of the most expensive ship is just 209m?

Doesn’t anyone else?

(Sorry RuIncognito, I’m only really quoting you because you were the last to comment)

I’m just really starting to struggle to understand what’s going on here with this rebalance.

People are talking (and arguing) in the 100’s of millions per hour with absolutely no regard to the price of the games ships...

What the hell is the point in ever buying a Crusader when you can save up for just 15 more minutes and buy a Krait Mk2?

With the changes to BH you can now probably go from a Sidewinder to an A rated Vulture in just a few hours...throw in a rainy Sunday afternoon and you have a Python.

I just don’t get it.

If we’re going to continue to talk 50, 100, 200m per hour then I call for a total rebalance of every single ship in the game.

Lets hope balance pass #5 or whatever increases the price of Ships, Modules, Rebuys, Refuel, Repair, Rearm.
Because making 100s of millions an hour but only paying 100s of credits in costs is a bit out of whack.

Hopefully not another credit sink like FC offline upkeep.
Want a credit sink Fdev ? ... heres one for you, when odessy arrives let us walk around our FCs and buy things for the FC like a Bar, gym, Swimming pool, Bedrooms, Movie lounge all at 1-10 billion each.
Want a Hyper jump viewing room on your FC, it costs 5 billion credits.
Also there is nothing wrong with it costing billions of credits or ARX if its only cosmetic.

 

[Tikanderoga]

Lets hope balance pass #5 or whatever increases the price of Ships, Modules, Rebuys, Refuel, Repair, Rearm.
Because making 100s of millions an hour but only paying 100s of credits in costs is a bit out of whack.

In what way?
Ammo isn't exactly expensive, considering you can synthesize it out of basically nothing (micro materials).
Then again, why not be allowed to have a ton of ammo in your hold so you can refill without synthesis? I wouldn't mind.

Fuel is cheap as as it is. If you want to skimp on that, get a scoop and refuel at the star.

It's the rebuy that really hurts the wallet, as it should, considering one is flying a multimillion credit ship.

The upkeep for ammo and fuel has been lowered since the beginning, as it was too high in comparison to what one was earning. Considering how much we are making these days, might as well up the bills for fuel, ammo and other rearms a bit?

 

[Jmanis]

Painite only gave 200m per hour?

Don’t you think that’s a little odd in a game where the hull of the most expensive ship is just 209m?

Doesn’t anyone else?

(Sorry RuIncognito, I’m only really quoting you because you were the last to comment)

I’m just really starting to struggle to understand what’s going on here with this rebalance.

People are talking (and arguing) in the 100’s of millions per hour with absolutely no regard to the price of the games ships...

What the hell is the point in ever buying a Crusader when you can save up for just 15 more minutes and buy a Krait Mk2?

With the changes to BH you can now probably go from a Sidewinder to an A rated Vulture in just a few hours...throw in a rainy Sunday afternoon and you have a Python.

I just don’t get it.

If we’re going to continue to talk 50, 100, 200m per hour then I call for a total rebalance of every single ship in the game.

Keep module prices the same and whack up the value of every hull 10 fold...

Yup.

I'm taking this all in stride somewhat... given deliveries now fetch insane amounts but even normal trade spins a high per hour income... I'm resigned to the fact that whatever figure FD is aiming for, it's over 100m an hour. And if everything gets buffed up to that, well there's no point arguing.... 100m/h is excessive, anything over that is just throwing matches into a burning firework factory.

I'd love to see a proper balance and income for activities around the 20m-50m per hour mark... and some activities were definitely balanced around that. But if we're YOLOing this, then let's making everything massive faucets is better than just having imbalances again....

.... though i lament broken smuggling , megaship hatch breaking, core minings broken pws and the broken research limpets.

 

[Scoob101]

I just don’t get it.

If we’re going to continue to talk 50, 100, 200m per hour then I call for a total rebalance of every single ship in the game.

Keep module prices the same and whack up the value of every hull 10 fold...

I have to agree. If the objective here is truly to rebalance the game in terms of income from activities (activities which are almost exclusively used to finance the purchase of ships and modules), then the ship and module prices most be similarly aligned in order to avoid progression being too fast. Its not even up for discussion, it has to happen in order to keep that core component of the game* coherent.



*And yes, there are other aspects of the game which are unbalanced, but they are separate topics.

 

[CMDR BlackFyre]

Just want to hone in on this again and verify that this change has not taken into account the difficulty of opponents, and it really, really should.

As a contrast, using the same ship in both instances I did the following three fights:

• Vanilla, unengineered Elite-rank Anaconda for an Assassination mission. It barely got me below half shields, =~ 1m credit payout + 4m mission reward.
• Fully engineered Deadly rank Vulture at a Threat 5 Pirate Activity site. Knocked 30% of my hull, =~ 260k payout.
• Fully engineered FDL, rank Deadly at a Threat 5 Pirate Activity site. Would have been a 1m credit bounty, but I had to flee.

In the first balance thread, it was said:



... if the aim here is to balance for skill, effort and risk, then the bounty payout on these Threat 5 & 6 targets is way out of whack. I can live with the lack of mission reward in the equation, but that vulture was a way tougher fight than the anaconda, and yet it pays out a quarter of that vanilla conda's bounty.

Meanwhile, that FDL would've paid the same as the anaconda, yet I couldn't even take it down.

The payout on engineered targets like this needs to be at least doubled or quadrupled again... vanilla targets simply shouldn't be paying out equal to or more than these ones.

I find the difficulty should be tailored to the players rank and unlocked engineers as well as the NPC's rank,bounty and perhaps ship.
A Elite Conda shouldnt be less dificult then a Vulture with a lower rank, to me it seems like the rank of the NPC is only an indicator for the money and not the difficulty.

An Elite ship should be dificult to beat due to its high quality equipment and skill after all the Elite Combat rank is the highest rank and should mean something when talking about NPC, the increased pay is definetly apreciated but without adjustments in the dificulty of The NPC especially at when npc and/or player have high combat ranks.

 

[Rubbernuke]

Ages ago I suggested this:

Fuel and repairs more expensive based on ship type, engineering / manufacturer + other ideas

Since money flows like a river, how about making ship ownership a bit more interesting? Firstly, raise the base repair cost by x10, and maintenance by x5. Repair costs are then based on: Tier of ship- basic generic ships are massively inexpensive to repair. So workhorse freighters are cheap...

forums.frontier.co.uk

There has to be some form of link between ship type, level (and type) of engineering and frequency of repairs, otherwise major parts of the game are slowly drifting away from each other. It should be IMO an unengineered T-9 should be easy to repair as well as cheap, and that it hardly ever requires repairs to begin with...while high performance hot rod bleeding edge engineered ships need constant maintenance.

If not, then repair cost and fuel are pointless.

 

[Shadowdancer]

You really think this is not needed in bounty hunting/conflict zones?

What I think is that if one part of the game is too profitable and quite frankly broken by not meeting the stated design goal, then inflating profits in other parts of the game is ignoring the problem.

Taking your numbers as an example (500Mcr/h for mining and let's say 15Mcr/h for just about any other "regular" activity), and considering the rest of the "economy" which is still tailored around pre-mining incomes, the fix would have been to bring down the overtly broken aspect (mining) by 97%, put that number behind the requirement to find rare things, and then reconsider the average time that it "should" take to afford things like ships or other equipment.

Looking at other numbers, mining is still stupidly profitable through the sheer ubiquity of "rare" materials, and the way things are going, it's just another step towards the "give me free money" button right in the cockpit and selling the whole mess as a clicker game. Seeing how there is no real in-game incentive for activities other than making that credits number tick up (there's no real meaning to any "soft stat" like reputation, and status effects like system states are too ephemeral to even bother), that would be disgustingly on brand.

 

[Shadowdancer]

None of the above makes sense to me.

Then you may want to work on your reading comprehension.

 

[BL1P]

In what way?
Ammo isn't exactly expensive, considering you can synthesize it out of basically nothing (micro materials).
Then again, why not be allowed to have a ton of ammo in your hold so you can refill without synthesis? I wouldn't mind.

Fuel is cheap as as it is. If you want to skimp on that, get a scoop and refuel at the star.

It's the rebuy that really hurts the wallet, as it should, considering one is flying a multimillion credit ship.

The upkeep for ammo and fuel has been lowered since the beginning, as it was too high in comparison to what one was earning. Considering how much we are making these days, might as well up the bills for fuel, ammo and other rearms a bit?

You misunderstood me, I think.
I am saying all costs need to go up a lot ! like 500% or something.

 

[Rubbernuke]

You misunderstood me, I think.
I am saying all costs need to go up a lot ! like 500% or something.

They should, but not uniformly. A Sidewinder (which is as common as dirt) should have hardly any rise, while a Cutter or Corvette should be very expensive, since they are top of the line military ships.

 

[CMDR BlackFyre]

What the hell guys? "Balancing" doesn't just mean "Money" you know. People played this game back when missions only gave maybe a million in rewards max, and they enjoyed it because it was fun and challenging. Back when getting a Big-3 ship was an accomplishment, not a weekend grind. Back when you WANTED a Big-3 ship because they improved the game, not because it was a participation trophy. We don't want >income< balanced. We want the freaking GAME balanced! Remove idiotic "engineering" that turns a 1,000mj shield into a 12,000mj shield! Remove idiotic "lasers" that somehow restore more shield energy then any other weapon can deplete. Do something to make small ships actually useful instead of just a stepping stone to larger ships that you'll be able to afford after one mission. You know, BALANCE THE GAME!.

I agree and disagree, I dont think Removing engineers will do much good while yes they are OP things Like AX could be dificult if not imposible under circumstances without them futhermore they make some weapons more viable due to some experimental efect on other weapons being able to counter their downside (like heat) I find it would be better to adjust the dificulty of NPC depending on the players Combat rank, Engineering, where you find said NPC and perhaps a bit by the players ship as well. I want a challenge in PVE combat like on my old save with my Unengineered PVE conda but at the same time i dont want to be forced to play with other players just to get something done, neither do i want to be forced to fly a specific ship to be able to do something in PVE

 

[BL1P]

They should, but not uniformly. A Sidewinder (which is as common as dirt) should have hardly any rise, while a Cutter or Corvette should be very expensive, since they are top of the line military ships.

Yes, very much agree with you on that.
Not only with the initial cost but also the running costs.
I think running costs should be very high for top end ships and very low for lower end.
It would work very well like that for entry level too.

I was using a Cutter woth 1.2B the other day to collect Salvage. Because even 1 piece of junk is worth more than the running costs.
I should have been loosing credits using one of the top tier to collect rubbish.

 

[Rubbernuke]

Yes, very much agree with you on that.
Not only with the initial cost but also the running costs.
I think running costs should be very high for top end ships and very low for lower end.
It would work very well like that for entry level too.

It makes sense because then you have an extra metric to tell ships apart- An FdL and Mamba would require a lot of specialist repairs, while the FAS, FDS and FGS shovel sturdy bricks in comparison to the Chief, Challenger and Crusader say. Right now each one repairs the same, which is a missed opportunity for some depth.

 

[cmdr Ramius007]

Bounty payout balancing should be very easy, but assuming state of spaghetti code it's not, but in perfect world it should go like this, ALL npc's regardless of scenario ranked up to competent not engineered, with a rated equipment at border competetnt rank, expert+, we face engineered ships at various degrees upwards, i still see place for specific scenarios using special ships (spec opps fdl's and vultures) and builds (pirates, etc) and then adjust bounties with this, but it shouldnt be linear increase, killing fully engineered ship is much more difficult than killing a rated, and paradoxes when we get 400k for anaconda vs 50k for engineered vulture have to be avoided.

 

[CmdrBerry]

This so called "balancing" is causing a lot of frustration on my end.

Participating on the community goal, doing combat, i managed to earn roughly over 10,000,000 Cr per hour. For that I parked a Federal Corvette in a Hazardous Resource Site. A fleet carrier, with decent outfitting, would cost about 10,000,000,000 Cr. So if my math isn't wrong, then that'd be about 1,000 hours of play time. If the average player invests 2 hours per day (which already would be a lot of time spent gaming, for most adults), that'd be 500 days of play time (without a brake) required, just to get that item.

It feels like no one bothered to seriously crunch the numbers, while considering what people should - and are actually willing - to invest into the game, in terms of play time and efforts. Agreed, getting the first couple ships, after starting the game, is a lot more comfortable. Then what? Suddenly the s-curve becomes steep and everything else isn't worth bothering anymore. People who exploited the system, and got rich before the balancing, and nerfing, of various systems, don't have any trouble anymore. Everyone else probably will lose fun as soon as they hit the center of the s-curve, when there is no more visible progress.

I would greatly appreciate if not only very specialized events would allow players to reach a situation, in which they can afford desired in-game items, but if also solo players could really enjoy the game, achiving everything it has to offer, in a reasonable time frame (which should be within several weeks, not months, or even years).

 

[Hellrider]

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 ...

It was still too high for activity without any risk.
Pirates? RANDOM PIRATES?!
This isn't any risk bro. Compare random pirates with pirates spawned by trade missions.

 

[cmdr Ramius007]

A fleet carrier, with decent outfitting, would cost about 10,000,000,000 Cr. So if my math isn't wrong, then that'd be about 1,000 hours of play time. If the average player invests 2 hours per day (which already would be a lot of time spent gaming, for most adults), that'd be 500 days of play time (without a brake) required, just to get that item.

Fleet carrier shouldnt be referance point for game progress, also you didnt included in your calculations that you are losing only 10% of value of your vette hull if you decide to sell it, so actully with 1! session you made up for your corvette purchese, i wouldsay it's very generous payouts, even if you play less than 2h per day, i remind you, it's impossible to lose fully engineered ship to npc's

 

[CMDR BlackFyre]

This so called "balancing" is causing a lot of frustration on my end.

Participating on the community goal, doing combat, i managed to earn roughly over 10,000,000 Cr per hour. For that I parked a Federal Corvette in a Hazardous Resource Site. A fleet carrier, with decent outfitting, would cost about 10,000,000,000 Cr. So if my math isn't wrong, then that'd be about 1,000 hours of play time. If the average player invests 2 hours per day (which already would be a lot of time spent gaming, for most adults), that'd be 500 days of play time (without a brake) required, just to get that item.

It feels like no one bothered to seriously crunch the numbers, while considering what people should - and are actually willing - to invest into the game, in terms of play time and efforts. Agreed, getting the first couple ships, after starting the game, is a lot more comfortable. Then what? Suddenly the s-curve becomes steep and everything else isn't worth bothering anymore. People who exploited the system, and got rich before the balancing, and nerfing, of various systems, don't have any trouble anymore. Everyone else probably will lose fun as soon as they hit the center of the s-curve, when there is no more visible progress.

I would greatly appreciate if not only very specialized events would allow players to reach a situation, in which they can afford desired in-game items, but if also solo players could really enjoy the game, achiving everything it has to offer, in a reasonable time frame (which should be within several weeks, not months, or even years).

honestly this is my biggest issue, this game is very time consuming For me A fleet carrier would need restock,repair,refuel as well as outfiting and a shipyard just for basic fauntions a CARRIER should provide those being suporting ships with ammo, fuel and repairing them as need while also storing them and their equipment.
Pretty much like Aircraft carrier storing ships( aircraft) as well as their equipment while i would also sell some equipment and ships so that some people cna get a Cobra or something if necesary but overall it should just do what it is desinged for, transporting a fleet of smaller ships and support them.

but i dont think i will ever get one, as of how things are right now it will take to much time for me to get a Fleet carrier and other things i want. There are more important things in life and it is quite likely that there will be weeks or month if not years where people cant play due to IRL issues and the Fleet Carriers to me seem a dream game property that i will never achieve. I am already nearing that point in the "s-curve" i may buy, equip and engineer some mediums and perhaps a conda but i doubt i will reach the Corvette or Cutter or even Fleet Carrier.

 

[The Berta]

So you're basically attempting to fix an economy that suffered localised inflation by applying universal inflation.

Yeah, sure, that makes sense

I am in the game since April and realised all the small changes they made. But the last 2 (Mining and Bountys) are insane.
For Example: Sell Painite each for 249.000,- at a regular station. Or Osmium for 217.000,- (Pleiades) and so on.

And now the bountys. I couldnt believe what I have earned after "25 Expert" Pirates. - 12 Mio. for the contract and 8 Mio. in bountys - haha. Thats ridicoulus.

In my opinion, they push themself to get the game more MMO compability for the Odyssey expansion.

 

[madbilly]

Hi all,

I read the first post about balancing with some hope, but now I read only about increasing payouts, nothing about reducing them, "significant increases", "increasing the payouts", "improving the pay".... I don't want to spoil anyone's fun, I am definitely not a fun sponge, but Elite is meant to be hard, it was always hard, has always been hard, until the past few years, when it suddenly became incredibly easy to get mega rich super quick and buy the end-game ship with all mods in no time at all. Fine, there is some grinding, but that is only hard in terms of the time needed, not in terms of the thinking or the skill level.

I'm pretty sure I'll get flamed for posting this but since I won't read the replies due to lack of time it doesn't matter. IMO, balance will only be achieved when payouts for everything are reduced again, or cost of ships and parts are increased. Even that won't be a whole solution, as other parts of ED have already been made too easy with no way back, short of story-related changes. E.g. long-distance travel is now super easy compared to how it used to be; actually a nice way to balance this would be to increase the rate at which modules degrade, especially from supercharging FSDs.

I posted elsewhere about the possibility of finding Raxxla, i.e. Nirvana, in ED. I'm sure it's possible, but for me the possibility is becoming even harder to imagine.

Cheers