actual math time. IT IS NOT 100 MILLION TO BUY ALL THE MERITS.
Factor in round trip times, and the free merits you get, unless you think you can somehow haul all 10k merits at once, which you sure as hell can't. Anyone who starts with the assumption that you're buying all your merits is an idiot.
Next, merit decay doesn't kick in for a full week.
For example, if you earn 5k merits a week
Week 1: 5k earned, 0 carried over = 5k merits total
Week 2: 5k earned, 5k carried over = 10k merits total
Week 3: 5k earned, 5k carried over from week 2, 2500 carried over from week 1 = 12500 total
week 4: 5k earned, 5k carried from week 3, 2500 from week 2, 1250 from week 1 = 13750 total
week 5: 5k earned, 5k from week 4, 2500 from week 3, 1250 from week 2, no more from week 1 = 13750 total.
anyway, TLDR: weekly earned x 2.75 is total value approached.
According to FD, they can't program math for , so this will be 'fixed' sometime to have the decay kick in immediately at the end, resulting in a merit total approaching 1.875 times your weekly contribution.
But for now, take advantage of the bug ridden 'content'.
edit post: here's some more napkin math from another post of mine. fill the numbers in to suit your ship and needs.
not surprised that their math is wrong, but that's how it is and has been for ...4 or 5 weeks now?
and killing ships, especially for those who don't have a type 9 or conda is perfectly good for earning merits. at this current rate, it's 35 ships interdicted and killed undermining per day to get and maintain rating 5 (for practically no cost), as opposed to (let's say a type 7, buying merits, 15 minute round trip, 200 merits one way, plus 32 cargo at 1k profit per ton, then 232 cargo at 1k profit per ton back...just for simplicity and 'best case' scenario, and we'll say you're getting 20 free commodities, which seems more than reasonable for a mild effort previous).
30 minute increments means 20 free commodities, and 380 bought commodities, so 3,800,000 deficit every half hour, or 7,600,000 every hour and a total of 800 merits. add in 232x2 and 32x2 for 528 regular commodities at 1k per ton for 528k profit, a net loss of 7,072,000 per hour. (we'll just call it 7 mil).
going by the same 3636 merits per week (with the bunk math that FD is currently using) to get and maintain rating 5, that's 4.6 (rounded up) hours, or 32,200,000 credits per week invested.
getting the same 3636 merits per week by combat means roughly (350 merits an hour is my lowest average in a vulture, which is about type 7 quality) 10.4 hours at a cost of about 0. so, there's a 5.8 hour difference in amount worked for a 32,200,000 credit cost, or 5,550,000 credits earned per hour, which, if you have a type 7 or vulture, you're most likely not making reliably.
Now, if you have a smaller trader ship, the numbers skew even more in favor of interdiction as the primary source of merit income.
