Hi. I've heard that there has been a recent nerf of long haul missions and passenger runs in terms of their payout. In the interest of seeing the money making options in regard to these missions expand and in order to make them worthwhile they should reward the play for distance traveled from the warp in point in the target system to the destination.
This is essentially how real trucking works (paying by the pound per unit of distance or by cubic foot). Passenger and cargo haul missions should be the life and sustenance for many players and a fall back that they can rely on when their attempt to get rich bounty hunting or pirating fails.
If that leads to players flocking to the distance runs for their grind, then other stations would be pressured into paying more by the sheer lack of pilots willing to take those jobs until the economics model in the payout of both those areas of shipping and passenger missions meet a sweet spot of balance. After all, if there's a lack of pilots, that means the rates go up to attract pilots.
If there's too many, then the rates go down. If long hauls pay more, they'll draw more pilots until the rates offered by other stations and systems are enough to keep pilots from flocking away to find only long haul missions. That's the model that Elite Dangerous should employ if it is at all possible. If it could be built into the mission generators for passenger and cargo haul missions that would probably improve the state of misery caused by the current need to grind. The grind should scale as a pilot is able to afford better hardware. I hope that was clear enough to make sense.
Keep up the great work FDev!
This is essentially how real trucking works (paying by the pound per unit of distance or by cubic foot). Passenger and cargo haul missions should be the life and sustenance for many players and a fall back that they can rely on when their attempt to get rich bounty hunting or pirating fails.
If that leads to players flocking to the distance runs for their grind, then other stations would be pressured into paying more by the sheer lack of pilots willing to take those jobs until the economics model in the payout of both those areas of shipping and passenger missions meet a sweet spot of balance. After all, if there's a lack of pilots, that means the rates go up to attract pilots.
If there's too many, then the rates go down. If long hauls pay more, they'll draw more pilots until the rates offered by other stations and systems are enough to keep pilots from flocking away to find only long haul missions. That's the model that Elite Dangerous should employ if it is at all possible. If it could be built into the mission generators for passenger and cargo haul missions that would probably improve the state of misery caused by the current need to grind. The grind should scale as a pilot is able to afford better hardware. I hope that was clear enough to make sense.
Keep up the great work FDev!