Introduction
Well here we are. Welcome again, I made a few posts earlier in the main thread. Since that one is pretty clustered and I was kind of rambeling on, I've decided to make a sort of quick summary of everything I've said and hopefully a bit better sorted.
Part 1 - Immediate Changes
So here is a list of immediate changes that should fit into the idea of just tweaking numbers:
Long-Distance Tourism
Add a new aspect to long distance tourism missions: Since most involve the player scanning quite a few systems, either have the passenger ask to complete a full scan of some particular planet/surface feature/system for a nice pay-out, offer to buy discovery rights for a 50-100% increase of the exploration data "sold off". Basically a tourist becomes the opposite of a NPC Crew member: They increase your profits. All of the above benefits are of course only awarded upon completion of the mission.
CQC Tournaments
Setup a bunch of automated tournaments. I would say 4 per week one for EU and US timezones with one running thursdays and one running on sundays. Each tournament consists of a series of 4 matches and the fourth round should always be an 1v1 with maybe an extended match timer/objective limit.
Example: 120 Players enter a tournament. Round 1/4: 10 Deathmatches á 12 players. We take the top 3 and gain 30 competitors for the next round. Round 2/4: 5 Deatchmatches á 6 Players. We take top 2 and have 10 competitors Round 3/4: 1 death match with 10 players. We take top 2. Round 4/4: 1 Death Match with 2 players. Maybe double required points to increase length of match. Final ranking: Winner of 4th round, loser of 4th round. 3rd place in 3 round.
Make a pot based on players in all matches per round (this way you cannot just rig it for money if noone bothers with a tournament but you and a few friends). So 120 Players, 30 Players, 10 Players, 2 Players for a total of 162, if no one leaves the tournament early. Slap some sort of modifier on this either a flat amount or take the individual CQC rank of each player into account make a pot. One half is split somehow between first 3 places, the rest is split between other participants based on order on leader boards.
Cash Sinks
And now a long list of items following the same principle: Add more ways to spend currency. Because right now, if you managed to get ahead of costs and are able to afford the most effective builds for your profession, there isn't much more to do with all the extra cash. Fleet Carriers are a nice money sink, but as FDev suggested: a) They are end game content and b) not for everyone. So here are a few ideas on how to spend money:
Yeah, I am done for now. Lets see how it goes.
Well here we are. Welcome again, I made a few posts earlier in the main thread. Since that one is pretty clustered and I was kind of rambeling on, I've decided to make a sort of quick summary of everything I've said and hopefully a bit better sorted.
Part 1 - Immediate Changes
So here is a list of immediate changes that should fit into the idea of just tweaking numbers:
- Increase the payout for Salvage Missions according to threat level. If I get attacked by a full wing the moment I drop into a salvage location, it should pay at least as much as whatever new combat missions pay that pit me against a similar threat.
- Increase the yield(in tons) of low paying minerals until the hourly pay rate in a large ship compares to 50-70% of whatever the method equivalent high tier material pays in the same market. Laser Mined Materials -> Panite, Core Mined Materials -> LTD or VO. This should give a good mix of feeling accomplished and not wasting your precious playtime.
- Increase the payout of the random salvage missions, which have you search a wrack using coordinates and pop up randomly. They are nice to chase down, but the reward simply makes people delete them. So maybe add up to 5 million on them. Alternatively have them grant 1-3 high engineering data mats as a scan reward.
- Increase the vouchers for scanning geo, bio and xeno signatures by a bit. Maybe by a factor of 10-50 because scanning, landing and then scanning is quite a time sink.
- When a station is burning add a +10-20% boost to any sale, if delivered directly to the station rather than the rescue ship. After all you are cutting out the middle man aka rescue ship and risk being cooked alive while explosions rock your vessle.
- Add or increase a multiplier for Tourism mission with multiple stops based on their number and distance. There are so many tourism beacons, yet few bother to visit them as part of tourism missions as they pay so horrendously little. Shouldn't affect Sothis, Robio and so forth, just those with many destinations.
- Add a 25%-50% increase to any split wing members get from a bounty. Yeah it gets easier, especially with healy4feelies, but playing as a group is usually more fun and should be incentivised in a multiplayer game, even if you have to defy math for it. Power of friendship go!
- Increase the CQC pay to at least 1-10 millions per hour, considering the average duration of a "rigged" game and regular game as baseline.
- Add a multiplier to the bounty reward for destroyed Ships carrying a Power Play commodity, based on the ammount carried by yourself. PP is one of the few legal PVP situations. The simple asymmetry between Ships with some cargo and ships with no cargo in a contest of strength is rather jarring in addition to the probable inexperience by the hauler vs the assailant. By incentivising everyone to carry at least some cargo, you break up the meta a bit and add another level of risk reward to the mix.
- Give Multi-Crew members a 10%-25% cut of the ship owners profits, like an NPC crew member, in addition to the 10% bonus profits. Having fun in other peoples ship shouldn't be a waste of time.
- Unleash the maximum bounty that can be claimed from killing a player. But any money above the current bounty limit will have a 50-75% tax applied. Cash Transfer is already a thing since FC appeared and this will just open up the Player Bounty Hunter career for real.
- Remove the distance cap on unique commodity trading, with an steep drop off after the current 200ly limit. The change should only be noticeable along the Colonia Highway and really be worth if stuff is hauled between places like bubble and colonia. I suggest a value increase by a factor of 5-10.
- Replace Source Missions (and their reskinned mining versions) with a Contract that simply offers a fixed higher than average price on a commodity for a big contingent of like 10.000 tons over the course of a week. All of them wing compatible. Completing one grants an extra reward. Use to incentivise the collection of low tier commodities and mined stuff. There are a lot of things like Leather, Biowaste, Beryllium and so forth that are simply just fillers at this point. Exclude high tier materials of course to avoid exploits.
- If you feel particular generous make versions of the above that award engineering materials instead of money. They are their own currency after all and while yes you can gain small amounts from shooting rocks already, simple visits to some resource sites are far more attractive that that right now, but also far more boring.
Long-Distance Tourism
Add a new aspect to long distance tourism missions: Since most involve the player scanning quite a few systems, either have the passenger ask to complete a full scan of some particular planet/surface feature/system for a nice pay-out, offer to buy discovery rights for a 50-100% increase of the exploration data "sold off". Basically a tourist becomes the opposite of a NPC Crew member: They increase your profits. All of the above benefits are of course only awarded upon completion of the mission.
CQC Tournaments
Setup a bunch of automated tournaments. I would say 4 per week one for EU and US timezones with one running thursdays and one running on sundays. Each tournament consists of a series of 4 matches and the fourth round should always be an 1v1 with maybe an extended match timer/objective limit.
Example: 120 Players enter a tournament. Round 1/4: 10 Deathmatches á 12 players. We take the top 3 and gain 30 competitors for the next round. Round 2/4: 5 Deatchmatches á 6 Players. We take top 2 and have 10 competitors Round 3/4: 1 death match with 10 players. We take top 2. Round 4/4: 1 Death Match with 2 players. Maybe double required points to increase length of match. Final ranking: Winner of 4th round, loser of 4th round. 3rd place in 3 round.
Make a pot based on players in all matches per round (this way you cannot just rig it for money if noone bothers with a tournament but you and a few friends). So 120 Players, 30 Players, 10 Players, 2 Players for a total of 162, if no one leaves the tournament early. Slap some sort of modifier on this either a flat amount or take the individual CQC rank of each player into account make a pot. One half is split somehow between first 3 places, the rest is split between other participants based on order on leader boards.
Cash Sinks
And now a long list of items following the same principle: Add more ways to spend currency. Because right now, if you managed to get ahead of costs and are able to afford the most effective builds for your profession, there isn't much more to do with all the extra cash. Fleet Carriers are a nice money sink, but as FDev suggested: a) They are end game content and b) not for everyone. So here are a few ideas on how to spend money:
- Add Custom Bounties to the game. I made a very long defence on the idea here: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/game-balancing.558895/page-29#post-8806034
- Allow players to bribe/pay station officials to give them the name of any Player that passed through the station during the last 24 hours. A second bribe reveals Completed Missions, Sold/Bought Commodities on the local market and turned in combat vouchers. Can be used to track Player's down, see above. Or to better detect enemy factions messing with your BGS. The data should be already on the server's now just make it purchasable for like a few hundred thousand credits.
- A bunch of stuff, you could pack under Squadron Treasury, including Mini CGs funded through them: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/squadron-improvement-part-1-treasury.476390/
- Betting on CQC matches/tournaments against other players.
- Trigger Tip-Off Missions, if you feel like chasing shadows.
- And finally if you are feeling particulary generous FDev. Allow players to burn through their cash to mess with Arx. Not directly buying them, but for example add a 20% boost for a day or raising the weekly cap by 100 in exchange for something exorbitant like 500 Million. You know just for the people dedicated to the grind for that sweet sweet paintjob or jacket
Yeah, I am done for now. Lets see how it goes.