You need to buff also terrorrist assassination missions as they require more gamplay (settlement interaction, tracking down, interdiction, often come in a awing.)
ANNOUNCEMENT Game Balancing Pt.2
So: aside from the things mentioned needing fixing
I have to say this is the most fun with elite that I've had in a very long time. The balance is just about right for most things. The mining missions pay really well so mining is pretty engaging, and having to see whats going for a lot has made mining fun (for me at least). Im loving the source and return missions. I'm finally using in game tools for trade. and the combat stuff is also sick.
If the smuggling black market glitch is fixed, and snake missions/smuggling missions make a comeback I'll be a very happy camper. Good job y'all.. this is definitely the right philosophy for gameplay.
I have to say this is the most fun with elite that I've had in a very long time. The balance is just about right for most things. The mining missions pay really well so mining is pretty engaging, and having to see whats going for a lot has made mining fun (for me at least). Im loving the source and return missions. I'm finally using in game tools for trade. and the combat stuff is also sick.
If the smuggling black market glitch is fixed, and snake missions/smuggling missions make a comeback I'll be a very happy camper. Good job y'all.. this is definitely the right philosophy for gameplay.
Sounds reasonable, but would require some reworking of the core game - something I think that Frontier want to avoid at all costs (because its broken)
Its not about what I would choose to do differently, it's about describing the reality of the state of the game, today - in order to set reasonable expectations about what frontier can be expected to change.
Mmm, okay.
Would you like fries with that?
Possibly, yes. But there's no obvious effect of this overall.
In the last hour, roughly 1400 market updates were submitted to EDDN.
Two weeks ago, on the 19 November between 0900 and 1000, before the pricing changes ... only 600 market updates were submitted to EDDN.
In other words, the amount of market updates being submitted to third party tools has more than doubled in the last two weeks. (Other update types show a similar pattern over the same time period) There's an obvious reason for that which has nothing to do with the pricing changes ... nevertheless, it's more likely now than it was before that EDDB and similar have the latest prices. The disincentive to share is not visible in the overall numbers.
Now, sure, someone who knows how to find a good price using in-game methods, understanding of how the market works, more intelligent use of 3rd-party databases than just looking for "highest reported price", and perhaps even a bit of BGS work to deliberately set up a good market? They'll get higher per-tonne profits than someone who merely knows how to read an EDDB page. That doesn't seem to be a bad thing, to me.
If you want a cooperative market endeavour, Ceramic Composites are probably the way to go - 27k/tonne profit is possible with the right combination of BGS states, which gives >100M/hour profit for a good hauler - and their supply and demand is huge so there's plenty for everyone: you just have to set up the state combination at the right station, which can itself be cooperative.
I'm sure many of us have been seeing missions like this. kill 80 ships for 40 Mil. That's not bad, value per kill wise, .5mill per ship on top of the combat bond, very nice.
What isn't nice is it's still going to take me ages to complete it, non stop combat is possibly the most draining activity in the game. 80 ships may take as many minuites, 1 1/3 hours of nothing but turning weaving and shooting. It's doable, but it sucks and is not very fun by the end.
Please reduce the number of ships required for these missions Kill 20 ships for 10 Mil would be so much nicer. If you need to make it more difficult then specify the difficult of the zone or the minimum rank of the targets.
This is my biggest concern by far. FD have always treated many ships as stepping stones, and with this change the stones are so close together that one can easily step over 10 at a time. (no really, one could easily get from one end of game to the other in 3 ships, and their are more than 30 ships.). Now all the ships in between are missed experiences and wasted dev time.
There's two way to resolve this, change the prices as Maymo says, or buff a lot of the cheapers ships so every ship has a better defined niche you'd consider it for later in the game.
Progression isn't simply tied to how big your ship is. Yes there's progression as you go from a sidey to a Conda, but there's also loads to see and do including ranks for the other big 2 ships, there's the ranks for combat, exploration and trade, there's engineering, thargoid combat, colonia, gurdian tech, etc. Plus I tend to fly mostly medium ships even though I have all of the big 3 and a carrier.
I personally think credit earnings are too high for mining still, and too low for combat (even after the buff). Ship Hulls could do with a price hike, maybe 50% more for hull. Keep modules the same...
That's all true, but doesn't really address the issue. Many ships will still be stepped over by the majority of players for the more expensive, near strictly better, variants. It'd be much better if more ships fitted into certain niches, and there are more than enough niches to go around.
Let's take the Annaconda and exploration as a example.
Properly outfitted the Annaconda has the best, or nearly the best, jump range.
So it's the best pure long range exploration ship, nice. Fair enough.
It's also got more firepower than the other jump-ships. So it's the best exploration/combat ship. Okay.
It's also got great cargo space, making it the best exploration/long hauler ship. Hmm.
Exploration VIPs don't care about ship looks or luxury suits... so it's also the best exploration/passenger ship. Ah.
And finally, it's well rounded in every way with plenty of internal slots, so it's also the best exploration/multirole ship.
NOTE: I know many explorers choose ships for looks, sound and feel, more than strict utility, this is just to prove a point, fly what you want.
So here we have one ship, that comes out on top for 5 different broad niches, covering all niches in what is considered to be a third of the game. When really, it would only need to fill that final ex/multi niche to be loved and viable.
While no ship is the best at every thing in Elite, there are a few ships that are the best at MANY things, which is why, combined with low cost to income, many ships are barely flown by the player base.
True, but the Conda is by no means a cheap ship to buy and especially outfit. It also has disadvantages – it's slow and cumbersome, it cannot land on medium pads, and it's not the BEST at anything. Yes it is a VERY GOOD all rounder. But if you think getting a Conda is the 'endgame' of Elite, you're missing the point.
Sure, some ships are just plain bad. The Asp Scout is a great example of a poorly designed ship that is useless in it's current state.
I agree that progression should be slower than it is now, but let's not go back to the days when grinding from a Vulture to a Python took weeks.
IMO the devs should make mining pay less, and combat pay more. And make it so you cannot earn more that 25m credits per hour no matter what you're doing.
That should be a wing mission. Yet a wing mission would have you kill only half the ships.
Increasing the price of the base ships has needed doing since even before the original mining update...
I was only half joking when I said that you could increase the price of every ship in the game 10 fold, but really if the Type 6 suddenly cost 10m credits would anyone even blink?
The thing is that when you increase the value of a ships hull to this extent you also effect its stealth repair costs (integrity repairs, not just normal hull repairs).
However i don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing. Proper repair and maintenance of our ships is something that’s been asked for many times and the whole integrity thing is a pretty shallow representation of that in my opinion anyway.
Routine repairs to a ships systems when traveling alone in deep space should have always been a thing, especially now that we have the means to actually do it with materials srv’s and modules.
When a more expensive ship costs more to run you begin to question if taking an Anaconda to SagA is really a sensible thing to do with your current budget.
Increasing ship value and introducing a proper ship maintenance system has the potential to add a lot of secondary benefits to the game that would perfectly suit the current credit-soaked situation we’re all in today...
It really is though, it has some downsides but how you define a thing to be best for a given job is how it performs in that jobs main parameters. You don't need a digger to have a good road speed. The main parameter for long range exploration and long hauling in general is jump distance. Which the Anni is the best at, especially if cargo or weapons are involved.
Again I stress: Plenty of players have specific preferences that make them prefer one ship or the other, and they are valid. But that doesn't have bearing on what ship offers the most utility for a given job.
I make no mention of what is and isn't endgame. Elite doesn't have a endgame, well known fact. My point is that MANY ships lack a niche because a few ships fill many niches so well. A more utility minded exploration player will look back from his Conda upon the other exploration ships and say: "Why would I." and that's a shame, even though such player may represent only a fraction of the playerbase.
So how do you feel about the current credit balance changes as they are right now?
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IMO...
Best at trade = Cutter
Best at Combat = Vette
Best at Exploration = Phantom
Best mission runner = Python
Obviously you're entitled to your opinion too.
Doing that, would mean those who only get to play a few hours per week, would be massively disadvantaged (More so than they already are) to those who play every day for several hours. So many suggestions in this thread by people who want the game to work for them and their method/style/frequency of pay, very few seem to be considering the caveats of their proposed actions on other players who may not want to do the same things, or may not have the same amount of play time. I play most days and usually for more than an hour or two, but one of the Captains in our squadron only gets to play for about an hour or two per day and some days, not at all. If/when this whole Covid situation goes away, I may end up working away during the week again and when I'm at home, playing a game, even one I love, is going to be fairly low on my priority list. As things stand right now, if that happens, I'll have to decommission my carrier altogether, because I'll basically have to go mine for an hour, or go bounty hunt for several hours, to even fund that, let alone do anything else in game. I think the general gist of 'skill should earn more money' is what FDev are shooting for, they've not quite hit it yet, as laser mining still pays more than core because of the efficiency bonus and combat still pays less than both, yet requires the most skill, the carries most risk, the most financial outlay to succeed, etc. Limiting earnings to 25M cr/hour would cripple the game completely for so many.
Maybe not 25m/h, but he has right.
Mining money generally IS too easy, we can't make all mechanics for people, which have 3 hours per week to play. Sorry. Carrier with all services cost...20m? So even with this cap (IMO too low, but again- generally he has right) it require 1 hour weekly.
Mining money generally IS too easy, we can't make all mechanics for people, which have 3 hours per week to play. Sorry. Carrier with all services cost...20m? So even with this cap (IMO too low, but again- generally he has right) it require 1 hour weekly.
Rather than write anpther lengthy post i'll just link my own result thread.
I specifically look at solo PIRATE MM's and how, IMO, they are paying way too much atm.
In the thread I offer all the tips and tools needed to test them for yourselves efficiently and form your own opinions.
forums.frontier.co.uk
I specifically look at solo PIRATE MM's and how, IMO, they are paying way too much atm.
In the thread I offer all the tips and tools needed to test them for yourselves efficiently and form your own opinions.
Pirate MM's post balance test
I just did a quick test run from LHS 54 BH'ing pirates in Parutis for Fed CG. I'm allied with all 8 factions and was getting offers in the region of 20 mil for 15 kills. That's 1.3 million per kill, stackable upto 8 times. As LHS only spawns these missions for Parutis that was easy to do. So...