One by one trade is broken / OP, and needs to be fixed

[Ughkoff]

when we conducted tests, then selling through 1t turned out to be effective only at the moment, but if we take a 3-4 hour segment, then this is not the most effective method, High Res and the scenario brought more (but there is an element of randomness here and conditions)

as for afk standing with pirates... I don't really understand how this can be fixed without damaging the main game, i.e. how will the game determine this moment, and for example that the player is simply not admiring the scenery, is waiting for someone or just went for coffee instead of mining asteroids. Elite is still closer to a simulator than to an arcade, there are a lot of long pauses here. On the other hand, it is available to every player, and judging by the tests, this farm is slightly below average

 

[[VR] Bulbulunufus]

I don't think it's quite as big a problem as OP makes out. I can stand to do about 1 load occasionally at 4t per trade, and cba with macros. All my big merits have come from donations and mining. And now getting into foot stuff. But... it's still absurd. A simple fix was applied. All that should need to change is a quick reformulation to something even simpler. Get rid of the falloff per ton and simply apply a constant factor to bring the total merits down. Why in bejimminy they didn't simply do that in the first place, in favour of something this bad and more complicated bewilders me utterly.

 

[Neilski]

I don't think it's quite as big a problem as OP makes out. I can stand to do about 1 load occasionally at 4t per trade, and cba with macros. All my big merits have come from donations and mining. And now getting into foot stuff. But... it's still absurd. A simple fix was applied. All that should need to change is a quick reformulation to something even simpler. Get rid of the falloff per ton and simply apply a constant factor to bring the total merits down. Why in bejimminy they didn't simply do that in the first place, in favour of something this bad and more complicated bewilders me utterly.

I'd also pick out two of the other ways it could be "fixed", to remove the temptation for bad (unhealthy/illegal) activity:
1. make all sales have the same merits/ton regardless of sale quantity [edit: doh, what was I thinking, this is exactly what you said, bar the adjustment (which is necessary, indeed)]
2. use the quantity of a commodity in the ship's cargo hold as the means of compensating to benefit small ships, rather than the quantity sold in any given transaction

I'd greatly prefer #1, but it doesn't help to balance things for small ships (maybe not necessary now, given that nobody can't afford a Type 9).

I guess #2 is rather like the way that the game already behaves when you try to sell your mined stuff to a station with non-zero but limited demand - e.g. if demand for Monazite is 1000, and you show up with 500, you'll get a lower price than you expect.

 

[Mordred115]

T

But nevertheless, there is a balance of a sort:
- all Powers are much weaker at Undermining than Reinforcement and Acquisition
- so all Powers are growing, because they're not really practical to undermine. Everyone, even the weakest and most surrounded Powers, is up on systems since the start.
- some Powers are growing faster than others, of course, but this isn't a balance problem because you don't get any rewards for being large in either an absolute or relative sense, and everyone's already more than large enough to provide plenty of opportunity for their power bonuses to apply
- Colonisation is about to start expanding the bubble itself faster than the combined Power expansion rate, so it's not even as if a faster-expanding Power can use up all your possibilities.

Everyone gets to win.

They should have just multiplied the merits by 4x globally rather than just for the player... That would have gone a long way to getting rid of the slow stalemate and also made other methods more viable, some stuff would still be faster, but it would actually be possible to take a system by doing bounty hunting or other low merit tasks.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

They should have just multiplied the merits by 4x globally rather than just for the player... That would have gone a long way to getting rid of the slow stalemate

But only, I think, by turning it into a fast one and then an extremely slow one.

I'd certainly be more inclined to do things in systems if I knew it wasn't going to take me half a year to affect anything - but what it would primarily mean is that rather than getting 75M net weekly reinforcement we'd be getting 300M net weekly reinforcement, and all those strongholds would get lined up on the borders much more quickly.

 

[cmdr kruzer70]

But only, I think, by turning it into a fast one and then an extremely slow one.

I'd certainly be more inclined to do things in systems if I knew it wasn't going to take me half a year to affect anything - but what it would primarily mean is that rather than getting 75M net weekly reinforcement we'd be getting 300M net weekly reinforcement, and all those strongholds would get lined up on the borders much more quickly.

True, but Frontier doesn't do anticipation of problems and only deal with an issue after it has been an annoyance of a few years. So the sooner we get to that stronghold stagnation point, the sooner we start the multiyear wait for Frontier to address it.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

True, but Frontier doesn't do anticipation of problems and only deal with an issue after it has been an annoyance of a few years. So the sooner we get to that stronghold stagnation point, the sooner we start the multiyear wait for Frontier to address it.

I don't see that there'd be any actual problem then that there isn't already this week or in week 4, for that matter
- you can over-reinforce a Stronghold system and still get personal merits, so it's not a problem on an individual level
- there's no reason to attack anyone else's system, and even if you wanted to you're penalised mechanically for doing so
- the expansion of the bubble through Colonisation will mean no risk at all of running out of Powerplay destinations, so there'll always be something to do
Strongholds staring each other down isn't really any more of a problem than similarly unbeatable Exploited systems staring each other down, in terms of how much things stagnate.

But I don't see any evidence that most Powerplayers would happily take "we can Undermine more easily" in exchange for "our opponents can do the same", or that organised groups are attempting to make attacks on enemy space even at the cost of leaving some of their own systems under-defended.

 

[Angus McSix]

Selling commodities 1t at a time for the largest merit reward is an artificial time-sink added to make the merits/hour ratio comparable to other activities.

If it was removed, then there would be no reason to transport powerplay goods, because unit-for-unit, high profit goods are worth exponentially more merits.

I understand your point, but I think it needs to be the way it is. Otherwise it becomes THE activity to engage in.

 

[Ughkoff]

I can continue hours here..

Tell me please, what about a player like crudler, he is your top 1, with 14 million merits. Is he an honest player? The thing is, in addition to his unreal amount of abusive merits, he is currently undermining us, for the second day already. We know where he does it, we know the specific ground station, we have been watching him for the second day and we can't do anything with him, simply because no one can see him. Is he playing in an open game?

 

[Lu-v H8-2020]

Selling commodities 1t at a time for the largest merit reward is an artificial time-sink added to make the merits/hour ratio comparable to other activities.

If it was removed, then there would be no reason to transport powerplay goods, because unit-for-unit, high profit goods are worth exponentially more merits.

I understand your point, but I think it needs to be the way it is. Otherwise it becomes THE activity to engage in.

Still is worth doing it for positive bgs effect which in turn for the right systems will make mining a good activity to hit up (still isn't a reason to keep 1T meriting as acceptable)

 

[Ian Doncaster]

he is currently undermining us

If someone is Undermining you, then they're not doing it with 1t trades, because high-value trade is not an Undermining action. The equivalent Undermining trade/cargo actions don't have any benefit for selling in smaller blocks.

Reinforcement/Acquisition have plenty of dodgy routes well-publicised (some of them more clearly "exploits" and some of them just "Frontier can't balance their own game")
- 1t trades
- AFK bounty hunting
- wake scan repetition
and people can certainly use those to get high personal totals.

Undermining ... if someone is Undermining you then they're certainly not using any of the well-known exploits to do so.

Still is worth doing it for positive bgs effect

1t trades haven't had any useful BGS effect compared with selling the whole lot at once for over six years.

 

[CMDR Charybdis]

Issue Tracker

issues.frontierstore.net

@Purrfect the issue you've linked has expired. Can you create a new ticket please?

 

[Lu-v H8-2020]

If someone is Undermining you, then they're not doing it with 1t trades, because high-value trade is not an Undermining action. The equivalent Undermining trade/cargo actions don't have any benefit for selling in smaller blocks.

Reinforcement/Acquisition have plenty of dodgy routes well-publicised (some of them more clearly "exploits" and some of them just "Frontier can't balance their own game")
- 1t trades
- AFK bounty hunting
- wake scan repetition
and people can certainly use those to get high personal totals.

Undermining ... if someone is Undermining you then they're certainly not using any of the well-known exploits to do so.


1t trades haven't had any useful BGS effect compared with selling the whole lot at once for over six years.

I was meaning in the sense that doing bulk trading for bgs purposes (and didn't mention doing bv for sec+) in order to hit positive states to make mining worth for CP was still a good reason to do it but that it didn't mean I'd agree on leaving 1t trading for CP to be considered acceptable
As for that UM, personally I wondered if it had something to do with a fix that was mentioned in this update which involved core mining who knows with the polishing still needed on PP 2.0 /shrug

 

[Rebel Yell]

Tell me please, what about a player like crudler, he is your top 1, with 14 million merits. Is he an honest player?

What do you mean with "honest"?

The thing is, in addition to his unreal amount of abusive merits, he is currently undermining us, for the second day already. We know where he does it, we know the specific ground station, we have been watching him for the second day and we can't do anything with him, simply because no one can see him. Is he playing in an open game?

I believe you're just looking in the wrong place/direction...

 

[cmdr kruzer70]

I don't consider one at a time trading an 'exploit'. The rewards of 1t trading are only high relative to bulk selling. Maybe the merits gained by bulk selling are too low. It's a stupid mechanic and makes no sense. But, I'm with Mahon and all of the acquisition work I've done has been from mining. Trading even 1t at a time isn't any faster and you can see that in the difference it takes in getting to fortified in our systems when rings are available versus when they aren't. The only issue with 1t trading isn't the reward balance it is the fact that its mechanic makes it easy to automate, which I'm against. Besides any masochist that was willing to sit there for hours one ton trading are probably gone to colonization where they can try gathering CMM composites to satisfy their urges.

 

[Ughkoff]

What do you mean with "honest"?

Is he playing in an open game?

I believe you're just looking in the wrong place/direction...

The station sees him and his location for a couple of days at the time of the undermine. I will assume that he does not get into the same instance with our pilots, but 2 wings of the rapid reaction group and 1 wing of the fortifier never saw him, although they were constantly looking for him (they were looking for him very, very much). This is annoying. And it is not about the undermine itself, this is normal, it's part of the game, but the methods that he uses, playing dirty, abusing the ground ... I will not name so as not to advertise the method, it has been in the trucker for a long time .... and this leads to large losses of control points by the system, it is impossible to resist this with legal methods, but we forbid our people to play dirty. As a result, a bunch of people waited for 2 days until the big child played enough in his toy, and they start restoring

 

[Rebel Yell]

Is he playing in an open game?

In "open play"? You mean?

The station sees him and his location for a couple of days at the time of the undermine. I will assume that he does not get into the same instance with our pilots, but 2 wings of the rapid reaction group and 1 wing of the fortifier never saw him, although they were constantly looking for him (they were looking for him very, very much). This is annoying. And it is not about the undermine itself, this is normal, it's part of the game, but the methods that he uses, playing dirty, abusing the ground ... I will not name so as not to advertise the method, it has been in the trucker for a long time .... and this leads to large losses of control points by the system, it is impossible to resist this with legal methods, but we forbid our people to play dirty. As a result, a bunch of people waited for 2 days until the big child played enough in his toy, and they start restoring

If you look at locations from the bountyboard, those are flawed most of the times... also, there are some serious instancing issues with different server zones, so it also depends on that. The other way around, I don't see how the ground (if that's the case) powerplay activities are considered "dirty"... I mean, we're being undermined in the same way for the most of the times and we did not see any enemy CMDR on the ground as well. There are some activities (i.e. including mining) which under certain conditions are impossible to oppose. I have asked for balance many times in my reports and in many posts in this forum... as it is clearly not a good framework where to play. Not good, doesn't mean that it is "dirty"... it is just what it is and we have to cope with what we have (unfortunately).

Also, you can trade powerplay data between CMDRs, so everything for the numbers you see has to be taken in account.

 

[Ughkoff]

In "open play"? You mean?

yuzzz

- If you look at locations from the bountyboard, those are flawed most of the times... also, there are some serious instancing issues with different server zones, so it also depends on that. The other way around, I don't see how the ground (if that's the case) powerplay activities are considered "dirty"... I mean, we're being undermined in the same way for the most of the times and we did not see any enemy CMDR on the ground as well. There are some activities (i.e. including mining) which under certain conditions are impossible to oppose. I have asked for balance many times in my reports and in many posts in this forum... as it is clearly not a good framework where to play. Not good, doesn't mean that it is "dirty"... it is just what it is and we have to cope with what we have (unfortunately).


yes, but at the same time your guys have normal indicators of 7-8 million merits, +/- like most old guys. And this guy has 15 million, which is like... there is no justification for this, it answers all the questions. Only 1 Federal has more with 24 million

 

[Rebel Yell]

yuzzz

Well, there's no reason to play other modes.

- If you look at locations from the bountyboard, those are flawed most of the times... also, there are some serious instancing issues with different server zones, so it also depends on that. The other way around, I don't see how the ground (if that's the case) powerplay activities are considered "dirty"... I mean, we're being undermined in the same way for the most of the times and we did not see any enemy CMDR on the ground as well. There are some activities (i.e. including mining) which under certain conditions are impossible to oppose. I have asked for balance many times in my reports and in many posts in this forum... as it is clearly not a good framework where to play. Not good, doesn't mean that it is "dirty"... it is just what it is and we have to cope with what we have (unfortunately).


yes, but at the same time your guys have normal indicators of 7-8 million merits, +/- like most old guys. And this guy has 15 million, which is like... there is no justification for this, it answers all the questions. Only 1 Federal has more with 24 million

May be it's just focus, commitment and... some time to play

 

[Ughkoff]

May be it's just focus, commitment and... some time to play

You've been with the Pirates for at least 5 years, a veteran and participant in many skirmishes... you know every pixel... do you believe in it yourself?