Mode switching for missions and Smeaton Orbital [200mill/hour]

[Cageman]

Obviously you can choose to not do Smeaton runs cause you want actual gameplay, but how many players will see that as a valid choice when they can just go print money somewhere else?

This is a complete lie.

Yes, I used Smeaton to get the credits to fully A-rate a Type 10 Mining Ship... And yes, I tend to do a lot of mining in this game... not for the cash, but because I like the activity. And, I have to say, the Type 10 is probably the best Mining rig I've ever flown + it has that gritty industrial look and feel to it + one of the better cockpit views in the game.

You can insert this logic into pretty much all activites in the game. PvP:ers / Bounty hunters will have the credits to outfit not just one ship, but many, and use a PvP ship for PvP and a PvE BH ship for Haz Res etc.

 

[Stealthie]

I would have thought LTT 9360 would be full by now.

Seriously, I like that the game generates these "gold-rush" scenarios but it's disappointing that they just go on perpetually.

It's kind of like, say, stealing all the stock from Warmaiden's (in Skyrim), carting it up the road, flogging it all at Belathor's and then going back to Warmaiden's and finding that it's fully-stocked so you can steal it all again ad infinitum.

IF ED's going to generate these missions it also needs to be capable of putting a cap on them too.
A given system should have a finite number of people who want to travel to a specific place and the destinations should only be capable of accepting a finite number of people too, and when either of those criteria is met, the missions should change or stop completely.

 

[Cosmos]

Why is it allowed to persist in the game?

It is depressing. Why? All things considered I think Frontier are more about selling 'cosmetics' and money than the integrity of the game. I've said this many times but ED has become a rat-ship of cheats, snowflakes and exploits. Its pointless playing it and when you hear the timeless gem of 'how does me cheating affect you?' its evident the whole situation has gone pear shaped.

I can get everything from ED by watching videos of it on youtube. Watching the videos has as much influence in the game as playing it does but without the frustration.

edit:

I think Brabens focus is on getting filthy rich, it would seem that was the motivation behind making ED in the first place. Not to say financial success is a bad thing but they appear like they couldn't care less about cheating despite the usual comments to the contrary so long as they are making money. I tend to judge people on what they do rather than what they say.

Long ago they talked about being able to pay for in game money with real life cash. If that had of been the case does anyone really think they wouldn't be on the credit exploits in a heartbeat? The people running this company make me feel nauseous.

 

[verminstar]

Is this truly the limits of your ability to contribute with something constructive in a forum discussion?

I did ask a question earlier but ye ignored it or didnt see it...then ye contradicted yerself by saying ye didnt care...but then went on to expand on how much ye care which was pointed out first by another, and then by me.

Ye wanna talk about ability to contribute some more or ye just wanna keep saying one thing and meaning another?

Why do ye care what options are available if ye claim not to care what choices others make? It doesnt even make sense...obviously ye do care otherwise ye wouldnt have started a thread to complain about something ye say ye dont care about.

But Im the one with lacking ability to contribute...thats cute, really...so why do ye care what options are there if nobody is forcing ye to choose them? How does it affect you if ye dont care? Ye see the confusion here?

 

[GreyAreaUK]

It is depressing. Why? All things considered I think Frontier are more about selling 'cosmetics' and money than the integrity of the game. I've said this many times but ED has become a rat-ship of cheats, snowflakes and exploits. Its pointless playing it and when you hear the timeless gem of 'how does me cheating affect you?' its evident the whole situation has gone pear shaped.

I can get everything from ED by watching videos of it on youtube. Watching the videos has as much influence in the game as playing it does but without the frustration.

Dooooom! DOOOOOOOOOOM!

 

[Shanaeri]

And yet there's a good number of very vocal players complaining they can't make money fast enough. Look around in the forum and you'll actually find people saying "my schedule doesn't let me play much, you should let me buy ships with real money." And there's a good number of people who won't do the passenger missions at all because they're boring/unglamorous/not fun. (indeed, half of the friends I play the game with are like this.)

And therein lies another point. Unless you are prepared to do the latest fotm money making scheme, you will end up with less resources to pay fines, rebuys or whatever. I do wonder if the damaged stations would be repaired by now or thargoids made nearly if for example it paid the same as this fotm.

 

[Cageman]

Watching the videos has as much influence in the game as playing it does but without the frustration.

Tell that to all those who are in player factions and working the BGS to take over systems.

 

[Ouberos]

It is depressing. Why? All things considered I think Frontier are more about selling 'cosmetics' and money than the integrity of the game. I've said this many times but ED has become a rat-ship of cheats, snowflakes and exploits. Its pointless playing it and when you hear the timeless gem of 'how does me cheating affect you?' its evident the whole situation has gone pear shaped.

I can get everything from ED by watching videos of it on youtube. Watching the videos has as much influence in the game as playing it does but without the frustration.

Do you know what would be totally meta?

Doing the Smeaton run while watching a you tube of someone doing the Smeaton run. That would totally fry everyone's noodle.

Stream it too for added confusion.

In all seriousness though this game does suck sometimes.

 

[GJ51]

Credits never meant anything in the game. The "passengers in bulk" cash cow is just the new kid on the block. Frankly, I don't care anymore : I farm a few billion from time to time, just to get more zeroes on a bank account I never use.

Another type of goal/reward FD basically killed right at launch.

+1 - exactly this

Harmless Cutters for everyone

 

[S3B4ST13N]

Do you know what would be totally meta?

Doing the Smeaton run while watching a you tube of someone doing the Smeaton run. That would totally fry everyone's noodle.

Stream it too for added confusion.

In all seriousness though this game does suck sometimes.

*closes YouTube*
>_>
<_<
*cough*

 

[Cosmos]

Dooooom! DOOOOOOOOOOM!

Sadly I think I'm gonna have to put you on the ignore list. Bye

 

[GreyAreaUK]

Sadly I think I'm gonna have to put you on the ignore list. Bye

Don't worry, it won't stop me pointing out when you're posting complete bobbins. It just removes your ability to refute it.

 

[verminstar]

+1 - exactly this

Harmless Cutters for everyone

Im cool with that...Im here two years and am still 5% harmless...always fancied the cutter actually ^

 

[Ian Doncaster]

And yet there's a good number of very vocal players complaining they can't make money fast enough.

I think a lot of the problem here is the way the pricing progression goes, both on ships and on high-rated modules.

Ships ... fairly low prices up to Asp. Then the price curve accelerates considerably, especially for the big-3
Modules ... A-rated modules cost about 100x as much as E-rated, but are generally only about 50% higher performance.

So you end up with any linear earning rate being impossible to calibrate.
1MCr/hr is absolutely fine in Cobra III territory - you can buy and fully-fit a Cobra III in a few hours. It'd take almost two months of constant play, never sleeping, to fully-fit a Cutter.
10MCr/hr is great for Asps - you can again buy and fully-fit one in a few hours. It's still a week of constant play to fully-fit a Cutter ... but you can have the money for a Cobra III in 30 minutes.
100MCr/hr is about right for a Cutter - you can buy and fully fit it in 5-10 hours. But you can now earn a fully-fitted Asp in 30 minutes, or a fully-fitted Cobra III in under 5 minutes.

This wouldn't be so bad if the earnings for professions scaled in proportion to the ships you were buying - so you start with a Sidewinder. In X hours of flying a Sidewinder, you can buy a Cobra. In X hours of flying a Cobra, you can buy an Asp. Etc. Etc.
They don't, though.
Trading: this is the best as it scales linearly with hold size, just about. But hold size scales a long way sub-linearly with ship price. 130 Cobra IIIs will out-trade a Cutter (same price) by a factor of 10.
Mining: scales mostly linearly with internal count until you reach the practical cap on collector limpet cycle rate through your cargo hatch.
Combat: barely scales at all - in a High RES with cop assistance, the earning potential of a Viper III and a Corvette are not that dissimilar, especially after engineering both ships. The Corvette might make twice as much, perhaps, but really the limiting factor on both will be the rate new pirates arrive to be shot.
Exploration: doesn't scale at all - a Sidewinder earns as much as a Cutter
Missions: at best scales linearly with hold size/internal count, at worst doesn't scale at all

So you can't possibly have balanced earnings between professions, ship classes, and costs ... not without basically starting over on both profession design and ship design.

 

[JetsonRING]

I know people are going to hate on this for taking a stab at their cash-cow income in the game, but this is honestly just silly.

1. Set your ship up with all Economy Passenger Cabins.
2. Fly to Allen Hub in UPSILON AQUARII.
3. Stack Passenger missions going to Smeaton Orbital in LTT 9360.
4. Switch between Open/Group/Solo to get fresh missions on the board until you either have 20 missions or your passenger cabins are full.
5. When full fly to Smeaton (takes 40 minutes to fly)

With a Beluga, Anaconda, Cutter, Corvette being passenger fitted you are making roughly 200 million profit per hour (40 minute flight + 20 minutes for the return trip + modeswitching for missions).
This is just absolutely atrocious.
You are literally awarded with the highest cash-per-hour returns for
a) using an exploit (mode switching for missions)
b) literally NOT playing the game for 40 minutes while AFK in supercruise.
How does this in any way constitute a good addition to the game and good gameplay?
Why is it so hard to fix the board-hopping in different modes? Simply make the missions exactly the same in all 3 modes, and only change them whenever the timer expires.
Anyways... I read about players trying to play 'legit' and earn their money through trading, bounty hunting, mining, pirating, trading and regular passenger runs... hoping to get a Beluga, Type9, Anaconda or any other large ship some day... and then there is this massive loophole in the game, unknown to most players, where you can literally make 200 million per hour. That's literally earning 1 x Stock Anaconda per hour.
Seriously FDEV, I am positive you know about this loophole and insane cash generation done through exploiting this.
Why is it allowed to persist in the game?

[wacky] The CMDRs who whine about this sort of game mechanic, which FDev has stated repeatedly is working as intended are the often ones who already have over a billion credits in their account so, what is your credit balance?

 

[Flatkat]

[wacky] The CMDRs who whine about this sort of game mechanic, which FDev has stated repeatedly is working as intended are the often ones who already have over a billion credits in their account so, what is your credit balance?

I was just thinking the exact same thing

 

[iFred]

I know people are going to hate on this for taking a stab at their cash-cow income in the game, but this is honestly just silly.

1. Set your ship up with all Economy Passenger Cabins.
2. Fly to Allen Hub in UPSILON AQUARII.
3. Stack Passenger missions going to Smeaton Orbital in LTT 9360.
4. Switch between Open/Group/Solo to get fresh missions on the board until you either have 20 missions or your passenger cabins are full.
5. When full fly to Smeaton (takes 40 minutes to fly)

With a Beluga, Anaconda, Cutter, Corvette being passenger fitted you are making roughly 200 million profit per hour (40 minute flight + 20 minutes for the return trip + modeswitching for missions).

This is just absolutely atrocious.

You are literally awarded with the highest cash-per-hour returns for

a) using an exploit (mode switching for missions)
b) literally NOT playing the game for 40 minutes while AFK in supercruise.

How does this in any way constitute a good addition to the game and good gameplay?

Why is it so hard to fix the board-hopping in different modes? Simply make the missions exactly the same in all 3 modes, and only change them whenever the timer expires.

Anyways... I read about players trying to play 'legit' and earn their money through trading, bounty hunting, mining, pirating, trading and regular passenger runs... hoping to get a Beluga, Type9, Anaconda or any other large ship some day... and then there is this massive loophole in the game, unknown to most players, where you can literally make 200 million per hour. That's literally earning 1 x Stock Anaconda per hour.

Seriously FDEV, I am positive you know about this loophole and insane cash generation done through exploiting this.

Why is it allowed to persist in the game?

Believe me, bro - for 200 million an hour NO ONE does board a spaceship nowadays. There are so many other possibilities to make a) more money per hour and b) with some entertainment that there´s no need for you to beat a dead horse by calling other players exploiters.

We had this discussion since the missions were introduced. Frontier has done nothing about it, but they were aware of it. So it´s clearly not exploiting and we don´t need the morale police to tell us what we have to do. In short: Your post is nothing but provocating.

*schulz*

[video=youtube;cUNwhg8V36I]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUNwhg8V36I[/video]

 

[Roland Deschain]

I have found my own little nice system with huge payouts and from time to time I turn on the TV, watch Big Bang Theory or whatever and farm money - very relaxing.

Of course I would rather have payouts corresponding to difficulty, skill and rank but we don't have that atm.
This way I can do something relaxing while gaining the money to do all the things I like in game.

OP rightfully criticizes this system, however a nerf wouldn't solve it. There is a reason so many people are doing what is pretty much afk-gameplay and that needs to be fixed in the first place.

That all being said, what I don't get is why so many players hate harmless CMDRS in Anacondas. I mean...good for them, no?

 

[Azamo]

I wish people would stop exaggerating about how much money you can make doing long haul passenger missions. No one is making 200m an hour. You spend at least an hour just flipping boards to fill your seats. Then spend another 40 minutes travel time and unloading missions. Then you have to head back for another 15 minutes. Also you only can maybe make 200m for the trip if you are elite in trade and have a big ship with at least 160+ seats. You also have to spend how many hours getting everyone to allied? ... So lets get real. The average person will make maybe 50-100m every 2 hours. So really this is at the very best is a 50m per hour for most people.

 

[xzanfr]

Sigh, same old story….
Find exploit,
grind exploit,
buy biggest ship / most stuff possible,
get bored,
moan about lack of content for "end gamers",
rage quit,
everyone replies with "can I haz your stuff"

I suggest that you level up your self-control and play the game rather than try and win it all the time, enjoy a bit of gold rush then move on to something else.
Grinding the same exploit is like picking the stickers off of a rubix cube or cheating at solitaire - the path of least resistance is generally the least interesting.

However the option is there so play it your own way.

….And Just so I can get in first, can I haz your stuff, pwese?