Oh, while i'm here, is it me or have regular mining missions been improved a little? I seem to recall missions like go mine 100t and get a couple of million. Now the quantities seem to have been reduced for similar payouts, making them somewhat (if not totally) more interesting.
ANNOUNCEMENT Game Balancing
That's the kind of thing that might make BGSers actually motivated to keep Anarchy systems around, or at least maintain some variety of government types rather than blandly painting the bubble in swathes of monotone too.
So the old formula for delivery missions was here: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/rev-enging-mission-boards.543467/post-8476668
Pertinent part in spreadsheet form being:
Payout = 10000 + (Rank factor * (LY Part + Ls Part + CV Part + 1029500))
Rank factor = Rank / 9 (Elite = 1.0, Merchant = 5/9, etc.)
Ls Part = ROUND(Ls)*7.982
CV Part = 3.96 * tons of cargo * galactic average price of cargo
LY Part = Adjusted distance * 27720
Adjusted distance => take FLOOR(LY). If <10, subtract 1/7LY for every LY less than 10 (can go negative for same-system). If >25, subtract 1/7 LY for every LY greater than 25. Otherwise use it.
Spreadsheet formula: A2=rank 1-9, K2=tons*gal avg, J2=adjusted distance LY, H2=distance Ls
=10000+FLOOR(((A2/9))*(1029500+(3.96*K2)+(27720*J2))+(7.982*H2)))
Consider a hauling mission of 180t of arbitrary cargo, taken 20Ly, 1,000Ls.
Before balancing started, these commodities would generate these sorts of rewards:
Biowaste (Galactic average 324): ~1.8m reward
Gold (Galactic average guess ~10,000): ~ 8.8m reward
The initial change did this, using that same formula:
Biowaste (@324): ~1.8m reward
Gold (@ 47,487): ~35.5m reward
Then FD did this:
I'm not entirely sure what they did, but it certainly didn't achieve the effect they said they wanted. Even zeroing that cargo-value reward produces a 1.6m credit reward for any tonnage, there's missions fetching far less than that out there. It's as if, instead of dividing the tonnage*value component by 10, they divided the overall reward by 10, or something like that. Either way, what we've got means that, even if you leave any opinion about the overall value of delivery missions at the door, the premium rewards still sit with missions delivering high value commodities, rather than high tonnage and distance. 196t of silver will pay around 4-5m while 196t of biowaste will pay closer to 1m or less (I need to confirm, happy if someone else could please)
As @DemiserofD points out, cargo type shouldn't matter jack, 180t is 180t, and any game where players have control over the costs of delivery reflects that. Pirates will come after you regardless of if it's 180t of biowaste or 180t of gold, and even then that risk is fairly low.
The correct rebalance would've put both 180t of Gold and 180t of Biowaste paying out =~ 8m credits by pumping J2 and H2 (Distances), and removing cargo value from K2, then pumping that (so it's just a factor of cargo tonnage).
Yea, not sure why they go for panic-mode corrections instead of doing a more proper job
If you did increase distances then wouldn't that make it less likely to be able to get multiple loads to the same system? That's a shame.
Also : you'd probably end up with a few edge-case systems with one lucrative trade target - which would become the new Robigo. And which you usually say you don't approve of? So why create more?
Anyway - hopefully they'll tweak these missions again, since people seem to find Source & Return too complex somehow
I have to disagree. We're talking about Palladium - higher value than Gold. Would you put 8 tons of Gold in a truck and just roll away for cheaps? No, you would need a military vehicle with armed escort. NO ONE would transport that amount of Gold without protection and high pay.
Let's be real about this - transporting valuable cargo must have high rewards, or no one will do it at all.
I'll add another detail:
The most similar case in reality was the spanish treasure fleet. They carried all sorts of valuables from Americas in one huge fleet. Not 1 unprotected ship.
And because it was such a transport of high valuables, every Pirate in the Caribbean wished it.
You just can't transport a high amount of riches without someone spilling the beans. You WILL be pursued 100%. Even more if you go without protection.
So here I leave my opinion on all things that should influence a cargo mission reward:
1-distance between systems. - 10%
2-distance to station within system (Hutton orbitals, beware) - 14%
3-value of cargo - 20%
4-amount of cargo - 16%
5-risk (drop on station security, drop off station security, illegal cargo in those stations, etc...) - 16%
6-faction reputation - 14%
7-faction influence - 10%
Feel free to add and change values as you like. O7
The most similar case in reality was the spanish treasure fleet. They carried all sorts of valuables from Americas in one huge fleet. Not 1 unprotected ship.
And because it was such a transport of high valuables, every Pirate in the Caribbean wished it.
You just can't transport a high amount of riches without someone spilling the beans. You WILL be pursued 100%. Even more if you go without protection.
So here I leave my opinion on all things that should influence a cargo mission reward:
1-distance between systems. - 10%
2-distance to station within system (Hutton orbitals, beware) - 14%
3-value of cargo - 20%
4-amount of cargo - 16%
5-risk (drop on station security, drop off station security, illegal cargo in those stations, etc...) - 16%
6-faction reputation - 14%
7-faction influence - 10%
Feel free to add and change values as you like. O7
At the moment there is no risk from NPCs in Elite. Its easy to avoid an NPCs interdiction and even if they do succeed or you submit. Now the average player is a billionaire and is flying a Cutter armed to the teeth, which destroys the typical Pirates you get at Elite ranks.
They would need to make NPCs better to add risk.
So you're saying they should only offer such missions to people flying armed vehicles? Seems a strange decision. I do those missions in a Clipper. Any pirate tries to interdict me and and its meep meep time. No protection needed. I boost at around 600 even with cargo, assuming they can even beat the interdiction (never happened, the Clipper has very nice SC maouverability).
High sec systems are no almost risk from piracy anyway, so i don't see why there should be a massive premium for it.
More system security than station security. Little risk of being pirated at stations, its while travelling in SC is where it usually happens. The system isn't always controlled by the station you are delivering to/from.
No? If anything you'd more likely get more loads. Not sure what you've meant by "increase distances".
What i meant was that the reward per Ls and per LY needs to be increased.
Fixing Robigo edge cases needs a total overhaul of the mission generation system. Yes I'm opposed to them, but while that level of change isn't on the table, more "Robigos" probably isn't a bad thing if it means turning it into a general case rather than one or two edge cases. This is the time of YOLO CREDITS after all.
Ah gotcha - increase credits/Ly, not increase Ly. Makes more sense now - thought I must be missing something
This one.
And frankly, let's talk about the game, not real world (and trust me, value of goods is not the driving factor of costs in shipping, but that's a pointless debate in this context). 1t of biowaste attracts the same risk as 1t of gold. If all FD is interested in is tweaking numbers, not overhauling mechanics, 180t of gold should pay the same as 180t of biowaste, given the current in game risk is the same, and is unlikely to change.
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Taking the subject of mission rewards off on a slight tangent, can we not have fetch missions for valuable metals (gold, silver et al) where the purchase cost of the commodities is higher than the (capped) 50m mission reward? Please? Been caught out by that a few times...
(Argument I suppose is that these are technically wing missions that I'm doing solo - do them as a wing of 4 and they'd probably be profitable overall. But I'm a lone-wolf kinda guy...)
(Argument I suppose is that these are technically wing missions that I'm doing solo - do them as a wing of 4 and they'd probably be profitable overall. But I'm a lone-wolf kinda guy...)
Easiest thing FD can do is do these:
Please scale station drop zones according to BGS criteria
Currently station drop zones are tiny - you drop inside them and are instantly protected by the stations guns. This totally negates the 'no mans land' that exists around the station and the gameplay it would generate- for example Powerplay NPCs and players could attack in this space, pirates...
Revert no fire zone / drop distances to stations to pre gamma(?) distances and other C + P tweaks
Currently its far too easy to never see an NPC opponent from missions. Commanders drop far too close to stations and enter the no fire zone (NFZ) almost instantly, making any NPC bounty hunter or pirate instantly fly off (making them redundant). A distance like 20Km (or perhaps shrink the NFZ...
It would allow NPCs room to actually do things, and allow space for PvP piracy. IMO its worth the change despite the inevitable shrill notes about greifers.
No, because IT WOULD allow more griefing opportunities and drive more people off the Open mode. How many REAL pirates there actually are? A fraction. And it's not because there are no opportunity for piracy, it's because most people don't want to do that, they just want to kill other cmdrs. For example, landing at Farseer Inc. is almost impossible due to griefers nowadays (they shoot at ships that are landing and taking off; cmdr Lok3l comes to mind). Hell, gankers WILL hunt down AND kill even pirate vessels (which are a little bit weaker, since they need some limpets, cargo space, scanners, FSD distrupters and so forth).
And here come the shrill voices.
Planetary drops would be unaffected, since they are not the same as stations.
These changes benefit PvE (i.e. the bulk of the game irrespective of mode) much more, since they make ordinary station to station travel dangerous (based on the conditions set by the BGS as per the idea). Smuggling would be over a longer distance, PvE pirates (both human and NPC), Powerplay NPCs would finally have places to go. Gov type would matter, with anarchies being actually dangerous.
Griefing will be in the game, use the tools at hand (faster ships, better defences)- griefers don't care about station defences anyway, they can simply loiter and be hit by speeding commanders. Plus, FD have given the biggest gift of all, LR lasers where you can sit many KM away and simply snipe.
If somebody wants to be a PvE pirate he has plenty of opportunities to do so, i.e. use wake scanners, search for convoys, interdict haulers, robb miners in RES. There's no need for nerfing station defences. It would only serve ganks and nothing else.
And no, I don't care if I'm ganked. I'm pretty competent pvp pilot, have a lot of cash, almost 50 ships and a carrier. I can afford being killed on a daily basis. But I don't want to wake up one day with open full of gankers, griefers and no one else.
And no, I don't care if I'm ganked. I'm pretty competent pvp pilot, have a lot of cash, almost 50 ships and a carrier. I can afford being killed on a daily basis. But I don't want to wake up one day with open full of gankers, griefers and no one else.
xDDDDD
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