Is it time to rebalance commodity prices?

[DemiserofD]

With the massive credit inflation we've seen over the past few years with the war, it seems like the perfect time to rebalance commodity prices, and maybe fix Piracy in the process.

The problem I've noticed is this: piracy is almost never worth it, because you barely get any more profit than just trading. Why? Because you almost always get an exponential return on investment trading. What do I mean by this?

Well, look at Bauxite, for example. https://inara.cz/elite/commodity/51/

Currently, the minimum buy price is around 500 credits, while the maximum sell price is around 40k. Trading that way, you are making an 8000% return on investment. Why would you ever steal that, when you only get 8100% roi and become a criminal? You're looking at a meagre 1.25% extra income, which probably won't even pay for the bounty.

This is why I'd like to see these commodity prices rebalanced, while the income per trip is retained. For example, let's imagine you just add a flat 100k on both sides of the equation. Now, you buy bauxite for 100.5k, and sell for 140.5k. Same exact income per trip - but your ROI has been reduced from 8000%, down to around 40%. This suddenly makes piracy far more viable, since rather than a 1.25% bonus to your income, you're looking at a 250% bonus to your income! By stealing instead of buying, you are earning a free 100k per ton.

Naturally, this would need to come with some changes to the bounty system, but this could actually be beneficial, too. If criminals who destroyed traders were fined based on the credit value of the destroyed cargo, more expensive cargoes means larger bounties. Blowing up one cutter with a load of bauxite, for example, would give you something like a 100m credit bounty.

The final change I'd like to see is having Hatchbreakers changed to function more like hatchbreaking installations. Which is to say, they eject all their cargo at once, rather than one at a time. A good hatchbreaker could therefore eject a significant amount of cargo BEFORE someone menu logs out, making piracy much more viable. This would give the pirate, say, 10 tons of 120k prices, or 1.2m credits in around 30 seconds to a minute of piracy, which ain't bad! But on the flipside, they'd definitely NOT want to blow someone up, due to the larger bounties for doing so, which in turn gives the trader the confidence to try to run, instead. And, of course, SCO drives now give a much better chance of escape.

What do you think? Overall improvement?

 

[Robert Maynard]

Not seeing anything in this for the trader - apart from maybe reducing their likelihood of choosing to play among those who would pirate them.

 

[Riverside]

Not seeing anything in this for the trader - apart from maybe reducing their likelihood of choosing to play among those who would pirate them.

Go mining & win the game tho

If you're not in favour of popularising player piracy just say that.

 

[Weps]

What do you think? Overall improvement?

Yes of course, this should have been done years ago. Was probably even suggested several times in the past decade.

Alas FDEV are always busy planning their next feature. You can't put inflation balance in the store and you can't write a Twitter post or a gaming article about monetary changes.

 

[Koma Pahu]

Piracy is fun. It doesn’t need to be profitable.

I agree that commodity economy could do with a balance pass, as it stands almost everyone trades the exact same things because it’s the most profitable and markets don’t really react to demand in anything like a realistic way.

But I don’t think balancing it so piracy is as profitable is the way to go.

I do think Black Markets and smuggling needs some love.

Smuggling Imperial Slaves into a port where their illegal, for example, should make them a premium product that a small minority would pay a pretty penny for. Ideal for a small smuggling ship, but a cutter full would flood the market before you’ve offloaded 1/4 of your cargo.

A Black Market pass could also benefit pirates, but I’m going to pirate ships regardless of how profitable their cargo is, because it’s good fun not because I’m worried about my credit balance.

 

[DemiserofD]

Not seeing anything in this for the trader - apart from maybe reducing their likelihood of choosing to play among those who would pirate them.

The big advantage for the trader is more the long term consequences for murderhobos and the ensuing changes in player behavior.

Right now, there's also no real incentive to play together; but not because of piracy(which barely exists), but rather because most enemies will just blow them out of the sky on sight.

With the higher bounties(a result of higher cargo values), player behavior would gradually be pushed towards being more utilitarian. It may seem counter-intuitive, but the costs of losing a few million tons of cargo is actually less than the costs of losing the whole ship, so despite there being a higher upfront cost, over the long term, open would actually become less dangerous.

 

[Koma Pahu]

With the higher bounties(a result of higher cargo values)

A) Player bounties are capped, and there’s been whole threads on C&P.

B) It doesn’t take long to amass enough credits not to worry about paying off the bounties if somehow a NPC manages to take you down.

 

[DemiserofD]

A) Player bounties are capped, and there’s been whole threads on C&P.

B) It doesn’t take long to amass enough credits not to worry about paying off the bounties if somehow a NPC manages to take you down.

You'd definitely need to uncap things, that's for sure. And you'd need to make sure the bounties come from the player in question, not some void. Those should be fairly simple fixes.

As for credits, if you're burning through a hundred million credits+ per murder, that adds up pretty dang quick! You can make credits quickly, to be sure, but if you're losing upwards of a billion credits per hour, that'll overcome just about anything. Best case for the murderer, they'll have to spend a significant amount of time making credits instead of just murderhoboing.

 

[Riverside]

You'd definitely need to uncap things, that's for sure. And you'd need to make sure the bounties come from the player in question, not some void. Those should be fairly simple fixes.

As for credits, if you're burning through a hundred million credits+ per murder, that adds up pretty dang quick! You can make credits quickly, to be sure, but if you're losing upwards of a billion credits per hour, that'll overcome just about anything. Best case for the murderer, they'll have to spend a significant amount of time making credits instead of just murderhoboing.

If the objective is to incentivise player piracy increasing the bounty goes against that.

Nevertheless I don't think the cost of the bounty is a factor, unless you are hoping to incentivise player bounty hunting which would be a whole other thing.

I do like the idea of the hatchbreaker dispensing more cargo before the victim CLogs, that idea is in line with the recent changes to USS mats spawn qtys.

 

[Koma Pahu]

You'd definitely need to uncap things, that's for sure. And you'd need to make sure the bounties come from the player in question, not some void. Those should be fairly simple fixes.

As for credits, if you're burning through a hundred million credits+ per murder, that adds up pretty dang quick! You can make credits quickly, to be sure, but if you're losing upwards of a billion credits per hour, that'll overcome just about anything. Best case for the murderer, they'll have to spend a significant amount of time making credits instead of just murderhoboing.

But it really doesn’t matter how large the bounty is if you don’t get caught. Most PvPers, even the low skilled ones, can out-wit the NPC security response units.

 

[DemiserofD]

If the objective is to incentivise player piracy increasing the bounty goes against that.

Nevertheless I don't think the cost of the bounty is a factor, unless you are hoping to incentivise player bounty hunting which would be a whole other thing.

I do like the idea of the hatchbreaker dispensing more cargo before the victim CLogs, that idea is in line with the recent changes to USS mats spawn qtys.

The bounty would be for the destruction of goods, not stealing them. Stealing them would be a fairly standardized bounty or fine that would be much lower. After all, you could be hatchbreaking for many reasons. The real challenge would be not getting caught CARRYING the stolen goods.

But it really doesn’t matter how large the bounty is if you don’t get caught. Most PvPers, even the low skilled ones, can out-wit the NPC security response units.

True, but with these much higher bounties, pvp bounty hunting could become much more a thing. And even the NPCs can be dangerous in the right circumstances, not to mention station guns and the like. Bare minimum, it'd make you play more carefully. You'd basically be playing on a single life, as death would mean your ship would get repossessed.

Which is also not as big a deal these days, since mats are so common, so that shouldn't be a huge deal, either.

 

[Weps]

I thought only the payout was capped (the fee paid to the bounty hunter). The bounty itself on the player is uncapped, isn't it?

Anyway this isn't about PvP bounty hunting, that's a whole different discussion on hunt gameplay (mechanics to track players, how do you put players in Open? what about the block list? etc. etc.). This is about disincentivising cargo destruction - by making cargo itself more valuable and adding it to the bounty, when it burns inside the cargo rack.

Edit: ninjad

 

[Dragsham]

But how ( removing the player bounty cap) does fdev get round the exploit side of it which is why the caps there in the 1st place?
Namely 2 pvpers one amassing huge bountys against himself the other killing him to receive said bounty(s).?
get that fixed and yeah raising bountys considerably, is a good idea.

 

[DemiserofD]

But how ( removing the player bounty cap) does fdev get round the exploit side of it which is why the caps there in the 1st place?
Namely 2 pvpers one amassing huge bountys against himself the other killing him to receive said bounty(s).?
get that fixed and yeah raising bountys considerably, is a good idea.

The simple fix there is to make it come directly out of the pockets of the person WITH the bounty. If they can't afford it, their ship and modules used to commit the crimes are confiscated.

More than that, the bounty itself wouldn't actually be removed, just set inactive, and it wouldn't actually disappear unless they didn't commit any more crimes in that jurisdiction for a while.

So sure, you could have someone else kill you, but you'd only be moving credits around, and the bounty itself wouldn't actually be removed.

 

[Riverside]

But how ( removing the player bounty cap) does fdev get round the exploit side of it which is why the caps there in the 1st place?
Namely 2 pvpers one amassing huge bountys against himself the other killing him to receive said bounty(s).?
get that fixed and yeah raising bountys considerably, is a good idea.

Credits transfer between players is already a thing. I have helped at least 2 players get their own carriers doing nothing more than unprofitable trading to & from my carrier. There's no justification for retaining the bounty cap any more.

otoh bounties aren't a factor in encouraging piracy as a career, nor is smuggling or laundering stolen goods. Getting some booty before they CLog is, some motivation to not kill the prey is too which already exists (popped ships release no cargo).

 

[metatheurgist]

I'd rather the game return to being a simulation. IRL people don't pirate for fun, they pirate out of desperation or because it's the only thing they can or know how to do.

The ED economy is one in which anyone can literally make millions by doing very little, no one should be a pirate.

If they want credible pirates, then simulate a galaxy that would have them.

 

[Koma Pahu]

I'd rather the game return to being a simulation. IRL people don't pirate for fun, they pirate out of desperation or because it's the only thing they can or know how to do.

The ED economy is one in which anyone can literally make millions by doing very little, no one should be a pirate.

If they want credible pirates, then simulate a galaxy that would have them.

We play games for fun. No-one plays Microsoft Flight Simulator because they think it will actually make them a good pilot, they play it because it’s fun. Elite Dangerous has never been a simulator.

And privateers during the Golden Age of Piracy weren’t desperate.

 

[Dragsham]

Nope they wernt desperate. But after something like just 18 years, they became extinct. Royal Navy wiped em out.

 

[Koma Pahu]

Nope they wernt desperate. But after something like just 18 years, they became extinct. Royal Navy wiped em out.

So we have a good 8 years more to pirate in ED. Good to know.

 

[metatheurgist]

We play games for fun. No-one plays Microsoft Flight Simulator because they think it will actually make them a good pilot, they play it because it’s fun. Elite Dangerous has never been a simulator.

And privateers during the Golden Age of Piracy weren’t desperate.

And that too would be a great part of a simulation. Privateers didn't do that for fun either, they did it for greed (which is also sometimes desperation). That was just a cheap excuse to rob people. If only the political sim actually had the powers sponsor certain groups to damage their opponents while maintaining a clean hand, but they don't. The political sim is just nothing but pointless logos and talking written heads. Imagine what would happen if the circumstances where those services were desired could change (some of that diplomacy they keep talking about but isn't there) and players could stick their fingers in that. Picture striking at a pirate faction not directly but by pulling the superpower support out from under them and delegitimising their actions. What if we actually had jurisdictions and privateers could flee to safe harbor instead of the joke C+P system that exists. Imagine changing who's in charge of a system just to deny that harbor instead of just 'Oooo! I like my PMF here'. The game would be much better if there were actual in-game reasons for piracy instead of just pew-pew, har-har.