There's also no or very little money in creating bot scripts that work the BGS, yet they exist. Money isn't always the motivator.
News Implementation of a dedicated mission server
There's also no or very little money in creating bot scripts that work the BGS, yet they exist. Money isn't always the motivator.
I love flying the Orca. It's really smooth. It actually feels luxurious when you're flying it. Did a exploration trip to SagA* once and it was great.
Bot scripts aren't expensive and require a paid account that can be banned if caught.
While I'm sure you'll continue with the 'but you can't rule it out' line of reasoning, realistically it isn't a big concern. FDev have done plenty to really, really annoy some players, if they were going to get taken down it would have happened already. Probably has tbh & we didn't really notice.
AWS is big.
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To bring things back "on-topic" for a moment. I am going to confess-right here-that irrespective of what people might think, I never have cared overmuch about so-called "board flipping". I don't do it myself &, aside from thinking the people who do it are a bit sad & pathetic, I don't much care that other people do it.
The reason why I am so glad they're moving the missions to a separate server thus has nothing to do with board-flipping, & I wish Will had never mentioned it in his spiel (as I feel its just a distraction). The reason I am glad is because I see great potential from the move-both in terms of freeing up space/resources on the main servers, as well as providing a great deal more space & resources for missions to "expand"-both in terms of overall numbers of missions/templates in the "mission pool", as well as perhaps additional room to expand the number of extra details & variables attached to missions (like wrinkles & follow-on missions). That is where missions are currently falling down for me-not the number of missions, or the variety in the templates, & definitely not the payouts......it all comes down to the lack of variety in how missions play out. There is only so many times I can salvage a black box, the exact same way, before it gets tedious.....no matter how much money you offer me to do it.
Instead, why not throw me a time limit on when I have to get to the salvage site, with failure to meet that time limit causing a new wrinkle that changes the whole nature of the mission? Why not have rival, clean salvage ships (random or mission specific) at the salvage site trying to get that black box before I can? Why not place the black boxes somewhere other than the high orbit of a planet? Why not make it so that I occasionally have to use a full range of exploration tools to both find the USS containing the black box & to find the black box *within* that USS? How about making it so that the black box is a persistent object for the duration of the mission......so that its destruction causes the mission to fail? Now *that* would get me excited about doing that kind of mission again....no matter how much you paid me.
The reason why I am so glad they're moving the missions to a separate server thus has nothing to do with board-flipping, & I wish Will had never mentioned it in his spiel (as I feel its just a distraction). The reason I am glad is because I see great potential from the move-both in terms of freeing up space/resources on the main servers, as well as providing a great deal more space & resources for missions to "expand"-both in terms of overall numbers of missions/templates in the "mission pool", as well as perhaps additional room to expand the number of extra details & variables attached to missions (like wrinkles & follow-on missions). That is where missions are currently falling down for me-not the number of missions, or the variety in the templates, & definitely not the payouts......it all comes down to the lack of variety in how missions play out. There is only so many times I can salvage a black box, the exact same way, before it gets tedious.....no matter how much money you offer me to do it.
Instead, why not throw me a time limit on when I have to get to the salvage site, with failure to meet that time limit causing a new wrinkle that changes the whole nature of the mission? Why not have rival, clean salvage ships (random or mission specific) at the salvage site trying to get that black box before I can? Why not place the black boxes somewhere other than the high orbit of a planet? Why not make it so that I occasionally have to use a full range of exploration tools to both find the USS containing the black box & to find the black box *within* that USS? How about making it so that the black box is a persistent object for the duration of the mission......so that its destruction causes the mission to fail? Now *that* would get me excited about doing that kind of mission again....no matter how much you paid me.
Not sure I own any ships purely for their look, but mostly by 'not really viable' I meant you needed to board flip to fill them. Missions requiring the hosting of a party or something would help a lot I think. With a cargo ship you can do missions or just fill them from the commodities board, with passengers there is no commodity board equivalent, maybe there should be one for commuters or refugees etc.
LOL, maybe you assume I'm someone who likes to argue for the sake of arguing. You mentioned AWS... That basically answers my question. Thanks.
I don't care. It was a problem.
I'm sure everybody will find things to be vastly improved when the main determinant of BGS success is simply how many neckbeards who can spend 10 hours a day playing computer games can be attracted to a faction. Not that I'm suggesting you'll be amongst their number obviously, but that's undoubtedly how it will go down.
Tried Allen Hub while it was a thing. Couldn't fill an eco-cabin conda without the first bunch of pax throwing an impatient tanty out the airlock, marooning themselves in space instead of just chilling til the end of the trip, even if it was free. Refitted my Orca with eco-cabins and couldn't fill that fast enough either, even with board flipping, which became massively tedious, incredibly quickly. Like, within a couple of runs...
My black Orca looks hawt, the Beluga is hideous, so I never bothered buying one. Most ships in my (aprox 4.6 BCR) fleet have been engineered for some specific niche, if I'm in the mood for that specific activity, and the vast majority gather dust while I buzz around in the ones with the best range, to save time. The Beluga just doesn't seem to 'fit' anywhere and has no useful purpose, as far as I can tell so far.
I finally found a niche for my conda recently. It's great for ferrying modules and weapons to the engineers, cutting many jumps from the trip in the combat ships they belong to. Using it for Guardian content might be nice, but the DBX and AspX are significantly easier to find a flat spot to land on. The Cutter and Corvette were being used as pilot trainers, but they've basically been obsoleted by the more versatile Krait.
I'm now considering putting a laser based SLF and four turreted MC's with smart rounds on the Type 10, to see if it can take care of itself in extraction sites but, I don't seem to be getting round to that very quickly. A mining Type 6 seems more than capable of doing the job if I just drop in on a remote part of the ring instead.
The ironic paradox, is that the board flippers are 'apparently' power grinding cash and rep for the big three (4-5), only to find they're pretty close to useless in terms of mission content that requires them. Passion and loyalty for the game, rewarded with a big smack in the face by the 'flipper' end of a big, wet (lack of) porpoise.
I often wonder if FDev do this deliberately, and giggle their knee-high, school-girl "Wendy-sox" off with sadistic glee at our folly. Or, am I attributing malice when incompetence would suffice?
Oh wait, I forgot about the nerf bat. Yep, sadistic malice confirmed!
If that was what I meant, I would have said “I watched yesterday’s mission Q & A livestream when I was home sick.”
You know what I mean, and surely so will they. My point, and my skepticism, still remains.
I did my rank grinding without board flipping, and board flipping is the reason why numerous mission types have had their payments nerfed in the past. Planetary scan missions are currently in their "don't pay anything close to anything worth the time it takes to complete them" state specifically because people were boardflipping and stacking 20 of them at quince, and any attempt to make the reward for a single mission worth the time/effort involved was being hampered by the fact that it made stacking them insanely lucrative.
LOL, completly wrong.
People stack scan missions in the past because they finish all at the same time/scan, you can still stack, but you will need to scan 10 settlements;;;
Definitely not a fan of this. Board flipping is a completely necessary evil, brought on by poor design of the mission board. Often times, missions simply aren't available in sufficient quantity, don't repopulate at anywhere near an acceptable rate, and very frequently the mission selection (and variety) is also just poor. People don't board flip for better payouts, in my experience. People board flip to actually be able to find missions - like superpower rank up missions, which seem to only exist in fairytales and fantasies. What's the point of having large ships like the Orca, Beluga, or Anaconda - and passenger missions - if it's not even practical or possible to utilize the ship's capabilities? Sure, you can take 3 people across the galaxy in your Jumpaconda, but... What are you doing with the other 6 internal slots, 8 hardpoints, and 8 utility slots?
Go to a station attacked by Thargoids to rescue people, and... Wait, because nobody needs to be rescued for the next ~20 minutes until the mission board resets.
Do a delivery mission for a huge interstellar corporation, and then... Do nothing, because they have literally no other work that needs to get done.
Go find a faction at war 800 units of landmines, and... Nothing else. Only thing on their shopping list was landmines. No water, medicine, food...
Instead of fixing exploits, maybe work on fixing the reasons why people use them in the first place? I'd like to see what percentage of players actively completing missions were utilizing the board flip mechanic - not just the percentage of total players online who used it. Bet it's a lot more than 2.8%.
Go to a station attacked by Thargoids to rescue people, and... Wait, because nobody needs to be rescued for the next ~20 minutes until the mission board resets.
Do a delivery mission for a huge interstellar corporation, and then... Do nothing, because they have literally no other work that needs to get done.
Go find a faction at war 800 units of landmines, and... Nothing else. Only thing on their shopping list was landmines. No water, medicine, food...
Instead of fixing exploits, maybe work on fixing the reasons why people use them in the first place? I'd like to see what percentage of players actively completing missions were utilizing the board flip mechanic - not just the percentage of total players online who used it. Bet it's a lot more than 2.8%.
.... which was made worse by the fact that you could board-flip for 20 instead of taking whatever was on the board. That's exactly the point I was making. It was abusable in the past, but stacking/flipping turned it from "a bit cheeky" into "oh my god this is insane I can go from a sidey straight to a conda".
(besides, have you stacked any scan missions lately? Last time I had two to the same system, they both pointed at the same outpost as the target so all I had to do to get the second was low-wake, drop, and scan it again - not bad considering it essentially allowed me to skip the in-system-cruise part of the mission for everything past the first)
Viajero
Volunteer Moderator
This.
Many patrons here (and including Yamiks poll), seem to be victims to the same misinterpretation.
It is not about “who dunnit” but about how often. What FDEV figures indicate is that board flipping is just not something done in impactful amounts at all.
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That is what is happening now except the neckbeard impact factor is exponentially higher because they are able to stack specific missions to get a specific outcome.
I've been reporting illogical and apparently unintended game mechanism surrounding missions and instancing persistence exploits going as far back as I can remember. I filed bug reports, with attached videos for the initial Sothis long-range missions, 'Seeking Luxuries', and the original use of capital ships + turrets in CZ to automatically accrue combat bonds.
This was back when a few million cr an hour was an anomaly and the most expensive vessel my CMDR could afford was an Asp.
I never used the ladder you are referring to. It's rungs were always clear exploits based around the abuse of non-nonsensical mechanisms providing handouts that were never good gameplay and were always harmful.
Your career in BGS manipulation started the first time you logged in and had your CMDR trade a commodity, kill an NPC, or take a mission. You don't need to have any intent, or even awareness of what you're doing, to have a very tangible impact on the BGS.
There is a constant tide of BGS activity that is driven by relative in-game rewards, and mechanisms that can be used or abused to game those systems have a major impact on BGS inertia.
No, I don't know what you mean because I find the data presented, in the context it was presented in, to be entirely plausible.
I'm not sure a figure covering a wider time period would be any more useful. They are likely far more concerned with the general prevalence of board flipping rather than the proportion of players that have ever done it at some point.
The fix for this was rather hamfisted.
Each faction should only ever be giving a single mission to scan the same terminal at a time and missions from separate factions to scan one terminal should all complete simultaneously.
As it stands now you can take a stack of these missions, re-instance, and scan the same target repeatedly to complete multiple copies of the same mission for the same people, which is flatly absurd. Anything that requires or incentivises reinstancing is silly and broken.
I love this idea !
I can answer on that
5xWing transport mission worth 50mil each made by 4 people with T9 in 1hr transporting Gold. Yes we have such a location.
What you need for that is re-loging all 4 people to get 5 or more mission
Investment in gold is low whilst income 250mil per each on 1 hour. Of course you need to deduct our investment in to gold but you now, it's not so heavy when 4 people doing this.
So Yes, 2+ per hop is god damn inefficient.
In general is even worth to transport landmines worth 20~26mli each missing from planetary base, but again with new server solution we will be sitting and waiting for another refresh.
That is not how I see playing a game.