Mining Missions Are Dead Now

[Starman 1966]

The "balance" pass on commodity prices has massively increased the prices and trade margins of metals and minerals. While this basically fine FD forgot to adapt the mission payouts of the respective mining and fetching missions.

Not that I'm surprised but this needs a fix ASAP.

 

[Andro]

Could you give an example? I think I might know what you're talking about, I did a few wing source & return missions for mined goods and I think I actually lost money on a few. I did them solo, granted.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

I'm hoping that this is just the mission server not having been restarted since the price changes, and so not having picked up the new galactic averages - if it's still not right after tomorrow morning I'll file a bug report.

(That said, there are also various ways to get paid more than you should because the mission server is behind on what stuff is worth now, so...)

 

[Jmanis]

Mining missions were always dead.

45t of methane clathrates for 2m? Why bother when you can get 45t of something else. Old painite would get you ~= 36m, new painite will still get you ~= 10m..

 

[Zeeber]

Mining missions were always dead.

45t of methane clathrates for 2m? Why bother when you can get 45t of something else. Old painite would get you ~= 36m, new painite will still get you ~= 10m..

only if you can find a station to sell at. They also seemed to have made demand global instead of CMDR now so by the time you get to a station demand is already at 0 and stays there until the next server tick

 

[Jmanis]

only if you can find a station to sell at. They also seemed to have made demand global instead of CMDR now so by the time you get to a station demand is already at 0 and stays there until the next server tick

Demand and supply were always global, and changes every ~10mins. Negative demand exists and painite is slow to replenish. It can take months to replenish full demand especially if players are overselling... but there's thousands of stations with plenty of demand for sale at around the 200-300k mark. The problem with painite before the balance was it's demand regeneration was infinite, not that it was per-CMDR.

Regardless, mining missions were pointless before the balance pass, and are still pointless. Forgetting painite, there's also osmium, platinum and other =~ 200k laser mining minerals which will still easily outstrip a mission for Methane Clathrates/Methanol Monohydrate Crystals etc. What needs to change is scarcity, not costs. In the time it takes to find 1t of something worth 200k, I should be able to find 50-100t of Methane Clathrates.

 

[Zeeber]

Demand and supply were always global, and changes every ~10mins. Negative demand exists and painite is slow to replenish. It can take months to replenish full demand especially if players are overselling... but there's thousands of stations with plenty of demand for sale at around the 200-300k mark. The problem with painite before the balance was it's demand regeneration was infinite, not that it was per-CMDR.

Regardless, mining missions were pointless before the balance pass, and are still pointless. Forgetting painite, there's also osmium, platinum and other =~ 200k laser mining minerals which will still easily outstrip a mission for Methane Clathrates/Methanol Monohydrate Crystals etc. What needs to change is scarcity, not costs. In the time it takes to find 1t of something worth 200k, I should be able to find 50-100t of Methane Clathrates.

Oh, I agree with you. I was just saying they broke the economy. It's not even a true economy simulator to begin with. I wasn't aware that prices change every 10m for other commodities since I heard that once the server "tick" happens, the prices and demand is pretty much set until the next tick.

What really needs to happen is FDev needs to drastically increase demand on all goods if they want to make everything global, revise the entire econ simulator to be goods based, and set demand drawn down from that. For example, raw materials are in demand to create other trade goods at refinery type stations, which are then traded to other stations that need those goods, which are possibly used to create the modules and ships we use. So if a station has x number of 7A frame shift drives, when a player buys one, it's supply decreases by 1, and now demand for materials to create another one increases. This cascades all the way down from finished goods like ships, modules, and certain trade goods, to the base raw materials such as the metals and rare goods used in the manufacturing of those items.

This would give "purpose" to each role: Miners get the raw materials, Traders move goods from station to station, Everyone uses the final products for new ships and modules, and the whole thing just chugs along. Personally I would also take this a step further and make sure to include the NPCs in this equation and have the trader NPCs use actual goods from actual stations, pirates used materials for their ships, etc to ensure an actual economy. But alas, that's way outside the scope of this conversation lol.

TLR - FDev is just manually tweaking numbers instead of running a real sim and trying to act like it all matters. They are just manually adjusting prices and calling it "balance" when a fundamental change is needed if they want to add "realism" to their game.

 

[Jmanis]

That's true, but I thought that was one of the things they wanted to fix/balance. Of course that would mean a bit more than just tinkering with a few parameters. How come that doesn't really surprise me...

The fundamental issue is scarcity. The so-called high-end minerals (of which Osmium and Platinum could now be considered in that league) are no more scarce than water, bauxite or methane clathrates.

These "lower end" materials continue to have:

• Higher demand
• Equal scarcity
• Equal difficulty to obtain.

That's the recipe for a higher price than high-end materials, but that's simply not the case. All it would take would be for scarcity of the lower end goods to be significantly greater, and the higher end goods to be significantly lower for the market to suddenly make sense.

But nope. Scarcity of Tritium = Scarcity of Bauxite = Scarcity of Platinum, and so they continue to not make sense with their fixed pricing.

Tangentially: A lot of players are constantly asking for a "player-run" economy like in EVE, thinking that's something that will help. In EVE, the cheapest mined commodities as well as the most expensive are both viable products to mine, because, like in Elite, the more expensive items have lower demand, while the cheapest ones have much higher demand. So you can make a career out of either bulk harvesting the cheap stuff or tailoring to mine small volumes of the expensive stuff. Elite has no analog of "bulk harvesting cheap stuff", so mining missions for those and other cheap commodities simply don't make any sense, especially given the relative value of those missions.

Truth is right now, a player-run economy would ruin the high-end mineral market.

 

[DemiserofD]

Honestly, I really just don't think the current supply/demand system works well AT ALL. It's incredibly convoluted, counter-intuitive, and punishing.

What I really wish they'd do is create a system of realistic demand,have prices scale off it, and then adjust supply and demand until the model gives them the prices they want. This is more complicated for them, but simpler for the player, and also more effective in the long run.

Example. Each station starts with 0 demand for Painite, paying 90k each. Every day, that demand increases by, say, 10000, and for every 10000 higher it gets, the price increases by 10%. Other stuff like BGS state could also impact demand. This demand is shared between ALL players; no weird adjustments that make demand PARTIALLY scale among players.

From that point on, the ONLY thing that effects the price would be player interaction. Players sell a lot of painite there? It quickly bottoms out. Nobody trades there for a few months? The price can get really high.

If nobody is mining a given resource, the prices for that resource would naturally climb and climb and climb, until it IS worth mining.

The best part? If you see a price that's like 900k/each for platinum, you could just look directly at the Demand and know EXACTLY how much you'll get for it. At that price it'll probably have something like 200k demand, so your entire load of 796 platinum will only reduce the total price by about 1%.

 

[ubedead]

Lately I have only mined for mission rewards. The pay isn't as good but you get to mine the less popular materials and get paid pretty good also collect rare materials. So no need to do the grind missions like Daves Hope or Jamesons crashed annaconda.

 

[CMDR DragonHorn]

I would like mining missions revision so much...

 

[Jmanis]

The big difference in EVE is that these goods are consumer goods that are actually used to produce something (by players, not just GalNet stories). For once, I have to protect the developers because I think they are very aware of the problem: This isn't something that can be "fixed" just like that. Because that would practically mean creating a completely new game-in-the-game. After all, its economy is the core of EVE, without which it would be completely empty and meaningless. As much as I personally dislike EVE, I still have great respect for this part.

Absolutely. Anyone thinking a "player run market" will solve the game's economy issues is way off the radar there. I think it would be horrendous for Elite.

The only material with a substantial player demand right now is Tritium.

 

[DemiserofD]

You don't need a player use for commodities to have a usable galactic consumption of those commodities.

I mean, they have a demand model now, but all it basically does is put an artificial time limit on good prices. If you find the good prices first, you win, otherwise, you lose. This doesn't drive any good content, and in fact does the exact opposite, as it pits players against each other.

 

[Eraden]

The only way that an EVE style market system would work is if EVERYTHING had to be manufactured by players. That includes ships and modules. I used to be a proponent for that kind of change to Elite Dangerous but these days.....I'm not so sure anymore. I think it would be way too much work for the developers.

 

[BL1P]

I'm hoping that this is just the mission server not having been restarted since the price changes, and so not having picked up the new galactic averages - if it's still not right after tomorrow morning I'll file a bug report.

(That said, there are also various ways to get paid more than you should because the mission server is behind on what stuff is worth now, so...)

I am hoping they fix the "can use market goods" for mining missions bug.

 

[Jmanis]

The only way that an EVE style market system would work is if EVERYTHING had to be manufactured by players. That includes ships and modules. I used to be a proponent for that kind of change to Elite Dangerous but these days.....I'm not so sure anymore. I think it would be way too much work for the developers.

Which is kinda why the balance of credits/credit incomes is so critical to the game.

 

[K Olley]

Lately I have only mined for mission rewards. The pay isn't as good but you get to mine the less popular materials and get paid pretty good also collect rare materials. So no need to do the grind missions like Daves Hope or Jamesons crashed annaconda.

I mine from my FC, this has the advantage of plenty of storage space, I not only mine for the higher priced materials but most of the others that appear on the mission boards, when I return I normally accept most of these missions and just collect them from my FC.

This also has the advantage that my mining runs can be shorter as it takes a lot less time to fill my hold on any of my miner's.

If I don't want to spend too much time selling I can sometimes get a reasonable price (above sale but below mission price) selling to other FC's.

 

[Starman 1966]

Some of you guys pointed out that mining Missions have been dead already for a long time. I tend to agree. But the mining missions for purchasable ores and minerals were always well usable for BGS work and PP backhauling purposes. These very aspects are gone for now.

 

[goemon]

I'm hoping that this is just the mission server not having been restarted since the price changes, and so not having picked up the new galactic averages - if it's still not right after tomorrow morning I'll file a bug report.

(That said, there are also various ways to get paid more than you should because the mission server is behind on what stuff is worth now, so...)

you have been correct.

Mining missions have now (this morning) got the new values.
of course 50 Mio mission limit kicks in.

 

[Starman 1966]

That's good news indeed. Will have look this afternoon.