ANNOUNCEMENT Game Balancing

[D.D.Hariman]

Bruce Garrido said:

I'm pro Open-only Powerplay and BGS personally. I understand this is a long standing debate and know a few of the reasons it hasn't happened before. Maybe we'll be ready to have that conversation again sometime in the near future.

I am willing to play in OPEN WHEN there is a functioning Galaxy Wide system to punish the gankers.

I think I could enjoy Power Play if (as the Power Players rightful complaint about) people in cross mode (Solo/PG) were not able to subvert.

 

[limpetdwarf]

They don’t, exploration data is valued the same regardless of ship type.

That referrs to the suggestion that it should pay differently.

Yes it is balanced. Passenger, Cargo and Data missions all pay more for longer distance drop-offs. More time, more reward.

I'd have to verify to be sure, but I think they aren't. Especially the passenger missions that have you fly so many thousands or tenthousands of LY to take someone there and back to gather data are much underpayed.

I've never taken one of those. If you ask me how much they should pay, I'm not sure if it would matter. OTOH, if it payed about 2 billion, I might do one.

VIP passengers don’t want to be bundled in with prisoners of war or violent rebels. Makes total sense...

What's the problem, they all have their own separate compartment in the cabin and are not bundled up like mummies in sarcophaguses. If they were, it wouldn't matter anyway

 

[Maymo]

That referrs to the suggestion that it should pay differently.

I don’t get it. So a person could go exploring in a big ship then switch to a small ship when they return to make an increased profit?

I'd have to verify to be sure, but I think they aren't. Especially the passenger missions that have you fly so many thousands or tenthousands of LY to take someone there and back to gather data are much underpayed.

They are. Try running some passengers going to 36 Ophiuchi, it’s a 45 minute supercruise (£££)

I’ve taken one of the 50m deep space passenger runs. The reward is just a small cherry on top of the huge amount of explo data you come back with. All missions are capped at 50m, some players do want this cap removed...

Data missions to Colonia are notoriously low. This is possibly to do with a cap also, otherwise we’d have data missions in the bubble to Hutton paying tens of millions. Not sure.

 

[JheredParnell]

How do you suggest that the miner defends himself against such pirates?


Maybe give us flying mining fortresses that pack at least 5000t of cargo, a bunch of weapon and missile turrets in addition to all the mining equipment and, of course, very heavy shields and armor --- plus two or three medium sized landing pads so we can carry a fighter for defense, a freighter to fly ourselves and another one for a crew member to trade with stations and settlements because the fortress is too big to dock. Allow us to hire a wing of player or NPC pilots that we pay to protect us --- and make mining pay enough so we can afford that.

guns, shields, fighters, friends (wing/multicrew)? see my notes about raising bounty reward 20fold makes it worthwhile to defend you. i think you're over exaggerating how dangerous 'pirate npcs' are. they're generally very weak to fight and can be killed with small lasers.

Why should a player who sells the same exploration data get more money for it just because he used a more expensive ship to get it? If anything, the player with the cheaper ship should get more money because he's been more efficient in getting the data, and it may have required more effort (time) because the cheaper ship has a lower jump range.

as mentioned by frontier they're doing this because people are getting access to later ships too quickly. so it's the obvious way to linearize progression while still letting exploration have a 'top tier' that pays out like mining. I cant think of anything about ship upgrades that speeds up how fast you make money, not in the amounts that going from let's say a cobra to a cutter will with mining.

 

[limpetdwarf]

I don’t get it. So a person could go exploring in a big ship then switch to a small ship when they return to make an increased profit?

It wasn't my suggestion that exploration data should be payed differently for. To prevent switching ship, the data could be tied to the ship just like you loose the data when the ship is destroyed. Or if you use your mining fortress for exploration, optionally transfer the data from the ships you land on it to the fortress and transfer them back to a ship to sell the data at a station or settlement. Or let us have radio connections to stations or settlements when close enough to use some of their services remotely from the fortress.

They are. Try running some passengers going to 36 Ophiuchi, it’s a 45 minute supercruise (£££)

There is no way in the game of knowing about from where to where passenger missions go other than by looking at the mission board at the place you're currently docked at. Ok, you could ask other players if there is someone you know online you could ask, but how feasible is that. Or you could create a couple hundred commanders and fly them in their sidewinders to places and log through them one after another to look at the mission boards, and that isn't exacly within the game.

So I don't know about 36 Ophiuchi. Remember what I said about nothing being in the game that would allow players to learn how to successfully play it?

I’ve taken one of the 50m deep space passenger runs. The reward is just a small cherry on top of the huge amount of explo data you come back with. All missions are capped at 50m, some players do want this cap removed...

Then please first automate the FSS and make it point out only the things you might be interested in. To me, it's a stupid, annoying, repetitive and boring task that can much better be done by a computer and one of the things shouldn't be done by humans. What do you get from being forced to look at all the irrelevant rocky or icy bodies and gas giants? Or the high metal content worlds? It's not like we could deploy our mining machinery on them.

I never got really a lot of money from scanning systems. Some surface scans give good money if you're lucky --- and if the FSS would point out targets worthwhile to scan and if there was a reason to use it to look at them, it would be much more fun to do explortion. With the current FSS, the only incentive for exploration I'm seeing is that I could be the first one to discover a system and to map a planet and get my name on it which noone cares about. I've done the latter already and I'm not feeling like I have to do it as many times as I can. Giving better payment for repetitive tasks that are better done by a computer doesn't make anything better and doesn't make it more fun. I'm generally scanning all unexplored systems I come through just so I have the data, and that makes having to use the FSS more a PITA and a waste of time than anything else.

The FSS is only cool for the first few times you use it. And it doesn't make sense because it means you are supposedly operating a precision radio telescope from within the corona of a star (while scooping fuel). That is going to work as well as looking at the sun from within its corona with your naked eye. It's ridiculous.

Exploration needs an overhaul. We should be doing something more fun to do it.

Data missions to Colonia are notoriously low. This is possibly to do with a cap also, otherwise we’d have data missions in the bubble to Hutton paying tens of millions. Not sure.

Colonia is somewhere far away. Is there anything interesting there? I can envision it as a remote location that could give us an opportunity to build our own stations and have our own systems in undiscovered lands like in a gold rush. Unfornutately, we can't do that. We can't really do anything, can we.

The cap needs to be removed so missions can pay well ...

 

[D.D.Hariman]

Or let us have radio connections to stations or settlements when close enough to use some of their services remotely from the fortress.

Then please first automate the FSS and make it point out only the things you might be interested in. To me, it's a stupid, annoying, repetitive and boring task that can much better be done by a computer and one of the things shouldn't be done by humans. What do you get from being forced to look at all the irrelevant rocky or icy bodies and gas giants? Or the high metal content worlds? It's not like we could deploy our mining machinery on them.

I never got really a lot of money from scanning systems. Some surface scans give good money if you're lucky --- and if the FSS would point out targets worthwhile to scan and if there was a reason to use it to look at them, it would be much more fun to do explortion. With the current FSS, the only incentive for exploration I'm seeing is that I could be the first one to discover a system and to map a planet and get my name on it which noone cares about. I've done the latter already and I'm not feeling like I have to do it as many times as I can. Giving better payment for repetitive tasks that are better done by a computer doesn't make anything better and doesn't make it more fun. I'm generally scanning all unexplored systems I come through just so I have the data, and that makes having to use the FSS more a PITA and a waste of time than anything else.

The FSS is only cool for the first few times you use it. And it doesn't make sense because it means you are supposedly operating a precision radio telescope from within the corona of a star (while scooping fuel). That is going to work as well as looking at the sun from within its corona with your naked eye. It's ridiculous.

Exploration needs an overhaul. We should be doing something more fun to do it.

Humnnnn. Very interesting idea.

Then why bother even playing the game if you don't even have to be at the computer to do anything?
Is it really too hard to watch the readout and note the interesting ones? Or when done open the system map and read the descriptions?

Truthfully, that is part of why I explore in wing. One ship scans and the other reads the descriptions in the system map and when something looks interesting, heads toward it for a surface scan while the first ship completes the scans. BUT, This is one of the things the F___ C(ommoners) triple dump broke. The data doesn't always get shared between the wing members.


I sort of agree in that once you have seen one Iron Magma lave spout, it is kind'a let down when the next one looks exactly the same.

 

[limpetdwarf]

guns, shields, fighters, friends (wing/multicrew)? see my notes about raising bounty reward 20fold makes it worthwhile to defend you. i think you're over exaggerating how dangerous 'pirate npcs' are. they're generally very weak to fight and can be killed with small lasers.

Last time I tried that, I was in a Python and was attacked by an Eagle. I even had some lasers on the Python and I ended up running because I could't hit the Eagle and it would have shot me down.

I haven't tried on-board fighters yet; I only recently found a station where I could buy a fighter hangar (though I didn't particularly look out for stations that sell them). I put a hangar or two into storage in case I should need them and didn't fit them because I didn't want to decrease my jump range. Do these tiny fighters even any damage or will I get killed in one right away? I'm not inclined to try.

I have been in a wing only two or three times for a short time each. Nobody is really doing anything in wings I guess, and there may be 3 to 5 people who do multicrew, if any at all. How do you even do that? It's not like the interface is actually working, and even if you can figure it out, you don't end up in the same instance. I dislike wearing headphones, so I'm inclined to do something in a wing or with multicrew because it usually requires me to wear one. I'm not a peoples person and I don't have 5000 friends, so nobody is gona come to protect me when I'm mining even if you increase the bounties by a factor of 40.

The first ship I tryed to go mining in was a Keelback. Good luck defending yourself against pirates in an unarmed ship that doesn't have shields. I couldn't afford any better, and a Keelback can't be equipped with all the mining equipment in addition to a lot of weapons and shields. I was shot down by an NPC pirate on the way back, and as mining was already broken about a year ago when I started, I wouldn't have made good money if I had been able to sell the few minerals I got. It was nothing but an expensive and frustrating waste of time --- and now you want to put players off even more through pirates showing up that shoot them down every 10 minutes or so while mining.

Fine, why not have pirates showing up every 5 minutes shooting you down not only when you're mining but also when trading, exploring, flying or when you're doing nothing? The game would be much better balanced then, and it would be much better for preventing "progression". It's simple: If noone plays the game, noone progresses.

as mentioned by frontier they're doing this because people are getting access to later ships too quickly. so it's the obvious way to linearize progression while still letting exploration have a 'top tier' that pays out like mining.

Their approach to improvements is wrong. The idea that players shouldn't be able to get the ships they want quickly is bad.

I don't understand why they don't want us to play the game. Aren't they making money when people are playing it?

I cant think of anything about ship upgrades that speeds up how fast you make money, not in the amounts that going from let's say a cobra to a cutter will with mining.

I'm not sure what you mean. Do you think there should be more ways to upgrade ships such the upgrades allow you to make more money with your ship? If you reconfigure your ship for something that lets you make more mony, you may consider that an upgrade. Do you want the game to be reduced to and kept at making money?

 

[F4fred]

There are so many people on the forums here that are like "Players need to EARN their credits!" which is fine in theory. The problem is at what cost? I'm not going to play for 6 months to get to the next ship. My time is worthwhile and I'm not here for a second job, I want to play a FUN GAME. This game can be fun, and having OPTIONS is what makes it so. I don't want to be shoehorned into combat on any particular day, or mining, or trading, whatever, in a BALANCED game, each one would be fun AND lucrative in it's own way.

Credits/hr should be balanced out for each activity. Miners should make money mining, Traders should make money doing trade routes, combat pilots should make money fighting and explorers should make money exploring. It's that simple. FDev has simply blown up the economy as some sort of "control" over the whole thing and it's really made the new player experience suffer.

Here's a simple thought excercise: Ask yourself "WHY do new players look for a way to make credits?" They want to experience NEW and DIFFERENT CONTENT. So many people are caught up on "IT TOOK ME 6 MONTHS TO GET MY NEXT SHIP RA RA" and fail to realize that the time in months is irrelevant. How many HOURS was that? I put in 90+ hours in my first 2 weeks because guess what, COVID happened and I happen to have a lot of free time. Just like the new people coming in through epic. We all want to experience what the game has to offer and simply slowing down progression for the sake of it is going to hurt the new player base. Plus all the "old" players have been able to take advantage of every gold rush that has happened up to this point, so why shouldn't the new players?

This whole "rebalance" was done in reverse. They should have boosted the other trades prior to adjusting mining and looked at the results. The reason so many people do mining is because it's lucrative, easy to get started in, and allows them to jump start into the various other activities. Perhaps if the other trades such as exploration, combat, and smuggling paid as well, they would outfit and start those activities a lot sooner. Even passenger missions are lucrative, but like mining, some people find it mind numbingly boring. Others enjoy the laid back playstyle. So why not just let people enjoy the content they find themselves doing? Personally I liked mining since it was relaxing and made my account balance go up for the HOURS and effort I put in. I could see a tangible result. THIS IS CRUCIAL.

If I have to grind for days on end to see ANY result, guess what, this isn't a game; it's a JOB. I have other games on my game backlog I can go play. If FDev really cared about the longevity of the game, rewarding players for their time spent is what keeps them playing. Not artificially limiting progress to pad game time. Make each "profession" lucrative in it's own way so players are rewarded for the effort, and let them get into the next section of the game.

And I have news for you; An Anaconda isn't "end game", it's merely the shell of a new playstyle. It used to be endgame because there wasn't anything else to do. But now we have Engineers, modules locked behind Factions, Ships behind factions rep, etc. THERE IS TONS TO DO. Giving a player choice in how they go about it by giving them access to more ships isn't a bad thing. The ship price is only part of the puzzle. There are still modules to upgrade/buy, engineer, and places to go to and do all of that. Having a source of income allows progression to those other systems. Being stuck in a Sidewinder for weeks isn't fun, because you see all these other ships in the game and don't see a way to get them anytime soon, and if you play in open....yeah how fun will that be?

Also the veterans are all complaining about how new players can make 250+ million credits/hr. NO THEY CAN'T. YOU CAN. A new player has no idea how to make that much money because they don't even know the systems the game has thrown at them yet. After sifting through hours of youtube videos and guides, finding out many are out of date and obsolete, finding the "new" meta, and THEN equipping themselves for it, maybe then can they even think about making money in the realm of possibility of 200+ credits/hr; IF they do it perfectly. Which will take hours of doing it before they get the hang of it and know what they are doing. It's going to take awhile. But you know what? They SEE the progress they are making, and that is motivation to keep them moving forward. That is reward. And once they can move on to doing another activity they will because they CAN.

Unfortunately your thought experiment has one glaring flaw. There is no new or different content to experience with a bigger ship. All the activities you can do in a big ship you can do in a Sidewinder. Ever hear of the guys who got to triple Elite just using the Sidewinder? Or seen Exigeous’ vids of him doing PvP Piracy in a Sidewinder or the vids of solo Thargoid kills in a Sidewinder?
There is a perception that the big ships are more fun. They aren’t. Go bounty hunting in a Sidewinder and you get a real sense of danger and you have to fly well and exercise judgement to survive. Fast forward to a fully kitted out and engineered Corvette. Drop into a Haz Res site with it and blow up everything you see, zero risk. It is too easy and very boring. I have a Cutter. It is boring as hell, has the inertia of a planet and flies like a brick. Why do I have it? It is a very efficient way of hauling a lot of cargo, so I use when I need to, but swap to something else ASAP.
Some of the smaller ships are just plain better too. DBX is cheap as chips and one of the best exploration ships in the game. The FDL widely regarded as one of the best fighters. Mine fully kitted out cost less than 90 mil. An hours mining at the new rate.
The people who are going to be most affected by all this are the content creators who make how to get rich quick in ED videos. There are going to be 3 times as long now as they have to explain all the ways you can make money!

 

[Kissamies]

Has anyone noted the effect of increases prices of some commodities to the source and return missions? The commodities sometimes cost more than the reward now.

 

[cmdr Ramius007]

Has anyone noted the effect of increases prices of some commodities to the source and return missions? The commodities sometimes cost more than the reward now.

This is that skill requirement, you have to know how much is 2+2

 

[skananote]

Has anyone noted the effect of increases prices of some commodities to the source and return missions? The commodities sometimes cost more than the reward now.

So it is true. Someone mentioned that yesterday I think... So they've broken this as well... Good job FDev...

 

[Pug]

I'll ask again -
What do 'you all' think should be the maximum amount that can be made in an hour? in any activity.

 

[D.D.Hariman]

Fine, why not have pirates showing up every 5 minutes shooting you down not only when you're mining but also when trading, exploring, flying or when you're doing nothing?

When I first started playing it was almost as you suggest (sarcasm noted).

There were two things happening at the same time

1. It was almost impossible to spend more than 10 minutes in Supercruise without getting Interdicted by an NPC. That was why I researched the Interdictor and the "mechanics" and then tested various ideas to be able to evade interdiction. >>

Interdiction – Google Drive

drive.google.com

2. The gankers were posting at every opportunity. "Don't fight it in supercruise. Submit and then try to run." (Can work against an NPC if the player has some previous experience at flying combat evasion.) But they weren't telling the newbies that running would be futile since the gankers had top end ships and engineering that would make escape impossible.

 

[F4fred]

Last time I tried that, I was in a Python and was attacked by an Eagle. I even had some lasers on the Python and I ended up running because I could't hit the Eagle and it would have shot me down.

I haven't tried on-board fighters yet; I only recently found a station where I could buy a fighter hangar (though I didn't particularly look out for stations that sell them). I put a hangar or two into storage in case I should need them and didn't fit them because I didn't want to decrease my jump range. Do these tiny fighters even any damage or will I get killed in one right away? I'm not inclined to try.

I have been in a wing only two or three times for a short time each. Nobody is really doing anything in wings I guess, and there may be 3 to 5 people who do multicrew, if any at all. How do you even do that? It's not like the interface is actually working, and even if you can figure it out, you don't end up in the same instance. I dislike wearing headphones, so I'm inclined to do something in a wing or with multicrew because it usually requires me to wear one. I'm not a peoples person and I don't have 5000 friends, so nobody is gona come to protect me when I'm mining even if you increase the bounties by a factor of 40.

The first ship I tryed to go mining in was a Keelback. Good luck defending yourself against pirates in an unarmed ship that doesn't have shields. I couldn't afford any better, and a Keelback can't be equipped with all the mining equipment in addition to a lot of weapons and shields. I was shot down by an NPC pirate on the way back, and as mining was already broken about a year ago when I started, I wouldn't have made good money if I had been able to sell the few minerals I got. It was nothing but an expensive and frustrating waste of time --- and now you want to put players off even more through pirates showing up that shoot them down every 10 minutes or so while mining.

Fine, why not have pirates showing up every 5 minutes shooting you down not only when you're mining but also when trading, exploring, flying or when you're doing nothing? The game would be much better balanced then, and it would be much better for preventing "progression". It's simple: If noone plays the game, noone progresses.



Their approach to improvements is wrong. The idea that players shouldn't be able to get the ships they want quickly is bad.

I don't understand why they don't want us to play the game. Aren't they making money when people are playing it?



I'm not sure what you mean. Do you think there should be more ways to upgrade ships such the upgrades allow you to make more money with your ship? If you reconfigure your ship for something that lets you make more mony, you may consider that an upgrade. Do you want the game to be reduced to and kept at making money?

I think it is safe to say you suck big time at combat, if you can’t hit an Eagle flying a Python! No offence intended! As a suggestion you could try turreted weapons on your Python and concentrate on flying the ship to avoid fire.
Can’t outfit a Keelback to mine and survive NPC pirates? Here you go! A build with 68t of cargo space, all the mining gear you need and a decent shield.

Coriolis EDCD Edition

A ship builder, outfitting and comparison tool for Elite Dangerous

s.orbis.zone

If you get interdicted by a pirate either win the mini game and escape or if you feel you can’t do that submit. Put 4 pips into Sys and 2 into Engines. Boost away from the pirate as much as you can and as soon as your FSD cools down goto SC. Putting 4 pips to Sys will increase your shield strength by 2.5 times enabling you to absorb any NPC fire until you make your escape.

 

[limpetdwarf]

Humnnnn. Very interesting idea.

Then why bother even playing the game if you don't even have to be at the computer to do anything?
Is it really too hard to watch the readout and note the interesting ones? Or when done open the system map and read the descriptions?

I'm not sure what you mean. I imagine using services remotely from your mining fortress involves flying into range of a station, like 7.5 or maybe 15km in case it gets crowded, before you can connect to the station.

If a flight is long and if I have my computer running while I'm using the xbox, I can switch monitor and sound between them independently and I won't miss anything without staring at the screen and falling asleep. I didn't get a mug or what it was because my ship wasn't small enough to buy one, but it was a long flight and was fun to find out how long it would take and to find that I could get a mug or whatever with a smaller ship. (But then, who in their right mind puts a station into the middle of nowhere where there is nothing and the station is so far away from anything that it's virtually unreachable? Since I couldn't dock I couldn't check the prices, but they should be extremely high ...) Don't get me wrong, it's ok that sometimes places are far and it takes a while to get there. It's not like that it had been overdone.

Which readout do you mean? The FSS doesn't just give you a readout but forces you to tediously find and look at everything. Some systems have 30 or more bodies, so you're forced to repeat that 30 times or more over and over again and it only takes a lot of time and doesn't give you anything for it. 99.999% of the time I'm using the FSS, I am travelling somewhere doing something other than exploration, and I'm doing it mainly so that I have the data in case I happen to get into the same system again or when I want to look at the system map. It also means it always takes very long to go somewhere. Maybe I should stop scanning because not doing it would be much more efficient ...

Getting some money for it is nice as it is, and I'm not so sure if I would like it if it would pay better: because now it doesn't matter whether I scan or not while it might change into something I don't really want to do but if it payed so well it would be bad not to do it and make me feel like it's something I'm kinda forced to do and that would be annoying. Of course, if I wanted to do exploration, I would want it to pay well.

Truthfully, that is part of why I explore in wing. One ship scans and the other reads the descriptions in the system map and when something looks interesting, heads toward it for a surface scan while the first ship completes the scans. BUT, This is one of the things the F___ C(ommoners) triple dump broke. The data doesn't always get shared between the wing members.


I sort of agree in that once you have seen one Iron Magma lave spout, it is kind'a let down when the next one looks exactly the same.

Do you mean "interesting" in that surface scans might reveal something that might make you land and drive about to check it out? Otherwise you don't get to see the spouts.

I didn't mean those, I mean the images of all the rocky, icy, giant and whatnot bodies you can see in the FSS. They also all look all the same, and I don't need to be forced to see them over and over again. At least the spouts may have some material you can gather, the images in the FSS don't have anything for me once I've seen them.

 

[limpetdwarf]

[...]
2. The gankers were posting at every opportunity. "Don't fight it in supercruise. Submit and then try to run." (Can work against an NPC if the player has some previous experience at flying combat evasion.) But they weren't telling the newbies that running would be futile since the gankers had top end ships and engineering that would make escape impossible.

IIRC, I was shot down by a player pirate once. The next time, I logged out and got away. I don't go into open play anymore since, there's no point in doing that.

What is open play even for? There will always be someone who has some kind of advantage over you, be it that he has a better internet connection with lower ping times, sits in a combat ship while you're in a freighter, has more experience than you, has done more engineering, or whatever. There is nothing you could do about it; if that someone wants to shoot you down, they will.

 

[aRJay]

....

Why should a player who sells the same exploration data get more money for it just because he used a more expensive ship to get it? If anything, the player with the cheaper ship should get more money because he's been more efficient in getting the data, and it may have required more effort (time) because the cheaper ship has a lower jump range.

....

They shouldn't get more money for selling the same data no matter what ship they used.

The good thing is they don't get paid more money for selling the same data, in fact the player with the more expensive ship might get less money as they might have to pay their SLF pilots out of the money received but even then Cartographics paid the same amount.

 

[jonesskill]

Fdev, any chance you guys can comment on the PWS issue please?

Yeah, to broke things they are really fast, to fix... months of this issue already reported (Nota that this issue started to happen after one update, so they just need to revert the they have done on that

Really, it takes you 6 months of play to get your new big Anaconda? You must be doing it wrong.

At the current new "low" painite price, say you only managed to sell them at 300K credits per ton, you can mine at a slow 4-5 hours pace and still earn enough credits to buy an Anaconda. Or is that not fast enough for you, you only want half hour mining = one Anaconda?

What a new thing, someone that nows NOTHING about minig talking about the current... (Yea i read your post complaning about taking days to mine 2k tritium) What you thing about actually mining for 4-5 hours with your best mining ship now and then TRY TO SELL TO A STATION before posting ? DO us this favor or keep quiet till you have some experience to tell something.

Has anyone noted the effect of increases prices of some commodities to the source and return missions? The commodities sometimes cost more than the reward now.

That is new, Frontier Broking things tring to "fix"things that dont need fix? lol.

 

[SH4DOWM4K3R]

The game is no longer fun.
Construction sites on every corner and you can no longer rely on anything.
Thanks for nothing.

 

[limpetdwarf]

I think it is safe to say you suck big time at combat, if you can’t hit an Eagle flying a Python! No offence intended! As a suggestion you could try turreted weapons on your Python and concentrate on flying the ship to avoid fire.

No offence taken, I suck at combat. I have been avoiding it because it's too expensive to do and because I don't like dying. For some reason, we don't have escpape pods anymore. Please bring those back! Only recently after doing lots of engineering, I was able to do a little combat and got a little better at it. And how do you get the money to do that if not by mining.

I didn't have turrets, and even if had some, maybe it wouldn't have made a difference. I don't like the Python for combat because it's so utterly sluggish, and it's so easily shot down. Maybe it's ok when you engineer the hell out of it, but I happened to try a Krait and I suddenly felt at home in a ship for the first time.

Can’t outfit a Keelback to mine and survive NPC pirates? Here you go! A build with 68t of cargo space, all the mining gear you need and a decent shield.

Coriolis EDCD Edition

A ship builder, outfitting and comparison tool for Elite Dangerous

s.orbis.zone

So you're going to defend yourself with limpets, mining lasers and chaffs? Where are the seismic charge launchers and the abrasion blasters and the other things for the subsurface depots? Perhaps if you drill a hole into the pirate ship they will be forced to interrupt their attack because they run out of oxygen?

I survived the pirate attack by running in my Python. You can do that with a Keelback, yes. But it was suggested that pirates should show up while you're mining. So you'd have to run every couple minutes when they show up, and you won't be to do any mining any at all.

Maybe I didn't use a Keelback but something smaller, I don't remember exactly. There was a reason that I couldn't have shields. (I still have my Keelback and use it sometimes, tough, it's a nice little ship and I like it.)

Anyway, I usually don't have a ship I use for mining equipped for combat, so I just run. It beats having to pay the 12 million or so insurance for the T9 or the Defender. So if they do as suggested and pirates keep showing up, it would be impossible to go mining and I won't just do it anymore. (I don't do it anyway because mining is totally broken, but at least I could if I wanted.)

If you get interdicted by a pirate either win the mini game and escape or if you feel you can’t do that submit. Put 4 pips into Sys and 2 into Engines. Boost away from the pirate as much as you can and as soon as your FSD cools down goto SC. Putting 4 pips to Sys will increase your shield strength by 2.5 times enabling you to absorb any NPC fire until you make your escape.

Right, it eventually occurred to me that it might work, and it does. I didn't know that in my Keelback or what it was.