How common is the "disposable ARX ships" exploit?

[RadiKyle]

Hey all, genuine curiosity question here, not staking a side of any debate... I recently read (in the raging P2W thread) that ppl can use zero-rebuy ARX ships as disposable one-way shuttles to significantly speed up progression (generally credits per hour). Basically complete your task and get paid, destroy your ship, instantly teleport back to origin for a free replacement ship and repeat, etc. With no return trip it significantly speeds things up (perhaps up to double the normal credits per hr). All it takes is an ARX puchase...

When I read that it blew my mind because it's brilliant, but then my heart started to sink lol so I had remind myself to not think too much about others gaming the system if spending money happens to be their preferred "playstyle".

But I am curious how commonly ppl use this to grind credits or whatever. Like is it a pretty common tactic now? If you've got a goal and time is a factor and FD hang a meatball out over the plate like this one, I can certainly see it getting a lottttt of use. I assume it's got some drawbacks that nerfs it a bit, like sub-optimal pre-built loadouts or something. But I also assume it comes out ahead of flying full roundtrips even in optmized ships.

When I last played in pre-ARX 2018-ish none of this existed, so it's all new to me returning now. I couldn't find much discussion of it but one mention seems to suggest FD well knows about it and so far leaves it as is. Has FD ever commented on it?

Hoping even asking the question isn't TOS-able, just trying to catch up on the state of affairs. Cheers

 

[geoffrey.hdt]

So...use Arx ship to fly from A to B, then destroy your ARX ship to "teleport" where?

 

[kofeyh]

When I read that it blew my mind because it's brilliant, but then my heart started to sink lol so I had remind myself to not think too much about others gaming the system if spending money happens to be their preferred "playstyle".

The cost of deploying an ARX ship is that it can only be deployed once, and in practice it can't be engineered (as those modules will be lost, as will their cost on redeploy).

There are also caveats about where you can respawn and how to achieve that. For example can use escape pod in carrier, but there are none on a station.

 

[Darth Ender]

This sounds fake. Respawn points are your last docked station if you are still allowed to dock there... So it would be the destination station. No? It's been years since i respawned. The suicide highway, i know is real, it's a tool to shorten long travel distances if you wanna return to civilization...never heard it being helpful after docking at point b to return to point a. Sounds like the anaconda at hutton station.

In any case, hauling is like 1 to 2 jumps in most cases. I doubt it helps much if it's even real.

 

[RadiKyle]

So...use Arx ship to fly from A to B, then destroy your ARX ship to "teleport" where?

Back to the station at the start of the run, if I understood correctly.

The cost of deploying an ARX ship is that it can only be deployed once, and in practice it can't be engineered (as those modules will be lost, as will their cost on redeploy).

There are also caveats about where you can respawn and how to achieve that. For example can use escape pod in carrier, but there are none on a station.

I read the engineering part, my understanding is ppl were using the basic pre-built ship as-is.
It sounds like there's some mechanisms here I don't know about..., my understanding was it worked like a regular ship except the rebuy was zero-cost, so it's faster to crash it than to fly it back.

This sounds fake. Respawn points are your last docked station if you are still allowed to dock there... So it would be the destination station. No? It's been years since i respawned. The suicide highway, i know is real, it's a tool to shorten long travel distances if you wanna return to civilization...never heard it being helpful after docking at point b to return to point a. Sounds like the anaconda at hutton station.

In any case, hauling is like 1 to 2 jumps in most cases. I doubt it helps much if it's even real.

The impression I got is it was mission-type runs where there is no station docking at the delivery, so the respawn point remains the station at the start.

I did see mention of one-way shuttles for insta-travel like you mention. But these other respawn mentions were specifically for credits/missions gains. I'll try to post a link... many of the mentions are really vague tho which is kinda what led me to ask is this really real and common.

 

[GraXXoR]

OP is conflating two different topics into one.

I won’t explain how it’s done here, but you can prepare a bunch of low-cost chips, self-destruct and “end up” in one of them in a station halfway across the galaxy.

The second topic is that with ARX purchased ships, you can de-spawn and respawn them for free.

So the idea is that you fly your ARX ship somewhere, de-spawn it, and self-destruct back to the pre-prepared cheap ship you placed earlier using a technique which is described elsewhere.

 

[Darth Ender]

Meh, sounds like a lot of steps to get credits or materials....both of which are easy to get more than you'll need by actually doing the game stuff instead of playing in menus... But hey. If it's fun for them. Some people like really weird things to like in this game so, doesn't seem like a problem to me.

 

[RadiKyle]

OP is conflating two different topics into one.

I won’t explain how it’s done here, but you can prepare a bunch of low-cost chips, self-destruct and “end up” in one of them in a station halfway across the galaxy.

The second topic is that with ARX purchased ships, you can de-spawn and respawn them for free.

So the idea is that you fly your ARX ship somewhere, de-spawn it, and self-destruct back to the pre-prepared cheap ship you placed earlier using a technique which is described elsewhere.

Here is the first mention I saw for the ARX ships:

Latest CG, the clearest example of P2W in ED to date?

In this CG a fleet carrier is no advantage at all. Using a carrier means you have to shift every ton twice instead of once. In cases of many jumps or long SC to stations that might be worthwhile, but in this CG neither of those factors apply. It's only half the time to haul straight. Well...

forums.frontier.co.uk

which back-traces to this earlier post in the same thread:

Latest CG, the clearest example of P2W in ED to date?

I rather doubt anyone in the top 10, Panther Clipper or not, could be considered a 'new player'. Even if they have the PC they're still going to have to source the commodities in bulk, which listening into syschat seems to be taxing quite a lot of participants. then of course you have the factor...

forums.frontier.co.uk

Is it bunk? Or am I misunderstanding it? (or both lol)

My googles brought up examples of the suicide taxi, and also of ARX combat respawns, but not so much on the one-way mission/trade runs suggested in the linked thread. (And that thread is so deep into P2W arguments I didn't want to ask there, thus made this thread.)

 

[Aashenfox]

There is always going ot be a way to exploit a ship being destructible for free and instantly redeployable. Most things in this game can be exploited simply by relogging. Many things are not worth changing for 40k players at peak times. Only things that make us buy more arx, and that's neither a good nor bad thing, just reality. Whatever keeps this game going, I can support, cos many publishers would have shut it down ages ago. Between 'ships can be bought for arx and are somewhat exploitable', and 'we decided to stop offering ships for arx a year ago, because of the exploits, and now we've run out of money', it's a real easy choice.

There are hundreds of things I would ask to be addressed before this. I realise everyone has different priorities, just saying.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

You could potentially - it would generally need two different ARX ships, not just one:
- go to station A, spawn ARX ship
- fly it to station B, complete its task
- despawn it, spawn a different much faster ARX ship
- fly back to station A, despawn the second one, repeat

I think it would need a very specific set of circumstances for the limitations of this:
- you can't keep engineered modules on either ship other than the ones they come with
- any engineering or outfitting you do to adjust them takes credits and materials and very importantly time
- you need to be doing a task spread across two systems with very specific build requirements
for it to be an improvement on just having a properly engineered single ship for the A->B task and flying it back from B to A yourself. Possibly at some point they'll bring out pre-builds that are good enough to do that - the newer ones are more powerful than the originals - but it's still going to be fairly specific.



There is, after all, a non-ARX way to do this too:
- have a ship, use it for the A->B task
- use Apex to return from B to A
- use ship transfer to get the ship back from B to A
- repeat
And that's almost certainly less efficient than flying the ship back too, in terms of in-game time elapsed ... but since you can safely go AFK for the Apex trip, and log out entirely for the ship transfer, you might nevertheless end up ahead on earnings per "at controls" hour, especially if you have an alt and can do the action with one CMDR while the ship returns for the other.

 

[kofeyh]

Sometimes people assume leveraging mechanics like this has to be faster, because it sounds cool, and over long ranges, with prior planning, sure. But short range? No. Not at all.

 

[Dougie]

The cost of deploying an ARX ship is that it can only be deployed once, .....

Are you sure?

 

[Helmut Grokenberger]

Are you sure?

Once as in: If it is deployed, you cannot redeploy it until you sell it (or it possibly gets destroyed). You can only have one instance of an ARX ship deployed.

 

[thistle]

I wouldn't worry about it. Just play the game, if you like.

 

[vanFace]

People often forget that there are two modes in the Odyssey client. I guess this is contributing to the exploit, and I am not sure if FDEV can fix this. So yeah, flying from A to B, but instant travel back to A should be possible with ARX ships involved. Even if the destination is a station. The current CG will then become a walk in the park, especially with ARX PC2.

 

[Dougie]

Once as in: If it is deployed, you cannot redeploy it until you sell it (or it possibly gets destroyed). You can only have one instance of an ARX ship deployed.

That is exactly what I thought the situation was* - just that @kofeyh statement reads rather different to my mind.

* Not that I'd consider doing that since you lose all the engineering - ship transfer for 1,000 cr is what I have used.

 

[Felix DiCestria]

It doesn't work the spawn point would be the destination port as the loction is locked the moment you dock.
The teleport thing relies on having the suicide ship being transported to you and thus not docking.

 

[KRISXR]

I don't understand clearly what is going on, I have heard more and more from it and different ways players are using/abusing the method. Exploration seems to be a huge and very popular method. I am also, form my my simple point of view of- just play the game the way its meant to be played, reading players suggesting ways of making module transfer and ship deployment even easier. I mean why? Well of course to make it even easier for paid ships to become even more exploitable. I do not understand the mentality. If your too bothered to play the game and want paid shortcuts, then why are you playing a game if it's perceived as boring or too slow? I'm sure there are players out there who have this down to a science and are benefiting greatly, why else is it's popularity spreading?

I think there are two different player mentalities, exact opposites of one another. One type is- load up game, plan your goals, complete your goals for that session, no rush, all of that fine stuff you'd like is going to be achieved. And enjoy every minute of your time. Stop and smell the roses every now and then, take it all in, escape for a brief moment the weight of the world on your shoulders, and that is becoming harder and harder every day for me.

The other mentality is- I want it now, I want it all now, maximize every second, grind, grind, grind, grind, and burn yourself out by the time you've achieved your goals. That's when I have to ask, are you playing a game, or is the game playing you?

I also think it is a bad idea to post exactly how it's all being done. I don't think it's ultra damaging to the game and community, I see it as self centered behavior/mentality, and i am all against that.

 

[vanFace]

It doesn't work the spawn point would be the destination port as the loction is locked the moment you dock.
The teleport thing relies on having the suicide ship being transported to you and thus not docking.

Let's say you have all your other ships in station A. In Odyssey, you take an ARX ship in default configuration to station B many light-years away. At B, you disembark and sell the ship (despawn). Now you don't have any ship at B. You log out and log in with Horizons mode. What happens?

 

[Stealthie]

The only real "exploit" an Arx-ship can provide is the ability to instantly have an allegedly half-decent ship at your disposal.

You could be, say, doing a combat CG in a Corvette in the Pleiades and then, if you run out of mat's for engineering, you could deploy a jump-start AspX with a 75Ly jump-range and use it to go and collect some mat's instead of waiting half an hour for a normal ship to be transfered.


I recall, long ago, I was flying a half-decent ship, used it to travel to a CG system, sold it to buy a Viper for the CG and then, at the end of the CG, I realised that the nearest system was 40Ly away, the Viper couldn't jump that far and none of the stations in the CG system sold any ships capable of making a 40Ly jump.
Ended-up having to suicide myself back to my starter system, buy a sidey and then fly back to civilisation.

I guess, having an Arx-ship available could avoid situations like that.