pic for those who says bounty hunting doesnt pay..
- Thread starter Calaban
- Start date
Feels great doesn't it? 
Not bad at all.
I've those kind of days in my cobra. It's nice to cash in on some big bounties.
I've those kind of days in my cobra. It's nice to cash in on some big bounties.
Not bad for an outing in an Eagle.. and a single cannon magazine worth of fighting...
(3 anacondas, several cobras/sidewinders)
.. gotta LOVE those systems with one law abiding faction, and 3 pirate factions, at a resource extraction sight. [/bounty hunting tip]
yeah! hello neighbour
Erevate, Swaza, Apoyota are really great for bounty hunting.GG..how many hours did that take to earn that 289k and what equipment level are you running on that Eagle and how much did it all cost?
The issue isn't that it "doesn't pay" rather that it doesn't scale. I can make 100-300k an hour bounty hunting, but there's nowhere to go from there. If you want to keep upgrading your ship and getting new ones - it gets drastically slower as you move from ship to ship. I'm in a Cobra, because I like to smuggle/trade/pirate some - and it's 1.6 million for the top modules (A4). An Asp is 6 million, but that's stock and it won't do much for me at all. I'd probably need more like 20 million to outfit it. Try reaching that goal in a reasonable time frame with bounty hunting. For now, I've settled on just making my Cobra the best, because I don't feel I'll be able to afford a higher tier ship (Asp/Dropship/Python/Anaconda).
Besides the Anaconda missions, there is no *reliable* way to find large bounties. And those missions are super annoying and can end up taking hours based on the random nature of the USS system. Otherwise, most of the bounties you run into at nav beacons/anarchy systems/resource are fairly low, if easy to kill usually. The real issue is once you get a Viper/Cobra pretty fitted out - then what? It'll take forever to move up (say to the Asp) and then it's even slower to fit that out, since those modules and the repair costs on it are even higher. Frankly at this point, I would be scared to get an Asp, because of the times NPC pirates crash into me and take me out. I wouldn't want to have to pay the insurance costs on anything higher than a Cobra.
Each time you move up a tier in ship, your bounty hunting income stays more or less the same, with a slight increase in efficiency. Reason being is even though you are stronger, you won't necessarily be fighting anything harder .The same is not true about trading - where bigger, better ships expand your cargo capacity and thus your income potential. There bounty hunting missions need to be refined or some other system implemented to help with the scale/progression of bounty hunting.
Besides the Anaconda missions, there is no *reliable* way to find large bounties. And those missions are super annoying and can end up taking hours based on the random nature of the USS system. Otherwise, most of the bounties you run into at nav beacons/anarchy systems/resource are fairly low, if easy to kill usually. The real issue is once you get a Viper/Cobra pretty fitted out - then what? It'll take forever to move up (say to the Asp) and then it's even slower to fit that out, since those modules and the repair costs on it are even higher. Frankly at this point, I would be scared to get an Asp, because of the times NPC pirates crash into me and take me out. I wouldn't want to have to pay the insurance costs on anything higher than a Cobra.
Each time you move up a tier in ship, your bounty hunting income stays more or less the same, with a slight increase in efficiency. Reason being is even though you are stronger, you won't necessarily be fighting anything harder .The same is not true about trading - where bigger, better ships expand your cargo capacity and thus your income potential. There bounty hunting missions need to be refined or some other system implemented to help with the scale/progression of bounty hunting.
Deleted member 56127
D
Excellent Commander. Now put those skills to use and pop some Federation cans.
I believe the current problem with bounty hunting isn't so much the payouts but that spawn rates don't change depending on the total dps output of your current ship so there isn't any escalation of earnings with bigger ships, that means you can make pretty much the same amount of money in a viper as in an Asp or python and considering the upkeep costs of those it doesn't really make a lot of sense to fly them for combat...
The perfect example of escalation of earnings is trading, a cobra makes more than a hauler, a t6 more than a cobra, an Asp more than a t6 and so on, as it should be; right now, this doesn't happen when you progress to bigger combat ships because you still keep finding the same number of sidewinders, vipers, cobras, etc.
I'm all for realism but some aspects must be made more arcade like in order to balance them better.
The perfect example of escalation of earnings is trading, a cobra makes more than a hauler, a t6 more than a cobra, an Asp more than a t6 and so on, as it should be; right now, this doesn't happen when you progress to bigger combat ships because you still keep finding the same number of sidewinders, vipers, cobras, etc.
I'm all for realism but some aspects must be made more arcade like in order to balance them better.
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Dunno if its provable or just a hunch, but i found when hunting anacondas via the missions, that it was best to only accept one mission, having anythign else seems to make the USS spawn random stuff more and it SEEMED to me that the anaconda location trigger and the anaconda became a lot harder to find with more missions accepted at the same time.
people are hitting the nail on the head when they talk about scaling being the problem, theres no progression in bounty hunting, you hit the peak pretty quickly and then its a grind of the conda missions cause nothing else pays.
people are hitting the nail on the head when they talk about scaling being the problem, theres no progression in bounty hunting, you hit the peak pretty quickly and then its a grind of the conda missions cause nothing else pays.
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I'm not 100% sure I agree. Sure there are some rare cases of 1M+/hr I think most people are topping out at around 500k/hour while "grinding". I can't imagine that taking am asp into a resource extraction site would generate bounties aft the same speed a cobra does... I imagine it'll be much faster. Take a look on YouTube and see how fast a multicannon asp takes out an NPC cobra... I'm sure having a bigger ship will earn bounties faster. How can you claim it won't of you haven't tried it? Your cobra earns faster than your last ship doesn't it?
Besides, progression can't be linear... If it takes you 3 weeks (random " casual player" timeframe I made up) to get into a fully loaded cobra, you can't expect to get to a fully loaded asp in the same amount of time... They would mean everyone in decked out condas within a couple of months...
Boom..nail head meet hammer.
I can't say for Calaban, but in my case it is 20-60 minutes in those systems, no matter if I was on Eagle or Viper, but Viper is more reliable for Anacondas.
My setup for viper now (but grades where lower and claims were same - not scalling issue):
2x shield cell banks (A/2)
2x multi cannons (G/1 gimballed)
2x pulse lasers (F/2 gimballed)
Hunting mostly for Anacondas, Pythons, Clippers and Dropships and all that is worth more then 3k CR
Sidewinder and Eagles are two hit targets for this setup so no big deal with ammo.
Bounty hunting is a fun way to save for a type 6 though.
Agreed. I hope they're working on this.
Because the issue is not how fast you can kill stuff - nothing really takes that long to kill honestly (except Pythons/Anacondas). The issue is, bigger ships do NOT mean you find bigger bounties. You are still fighting the same little annoying Sidewinders and Eagles most of the time. The game seems to spawn the NPC's based on some % system no matter where you are. So you tend to see mostly small fighters, some Vipers/Cobras/Haulers, a few Asps/Type 7's and very rarely Clippers, Dropships and the like.
My Cobra does not really earn faster than Viper - no. I only got it because I wanted my cargo room so I could run some missions and pirate/smuggle some so I wasn't solely reliant on bounty hunting. Plus Vipers have horrible jump distance. I'm fairly sure an Anaconda wouldn't earn drastically more than an Eagle really if you just stat a nav point. That's the issue. Especially if you consider the increased running costs.
Definitely this. Frankly it's so much obvious that I don't understand why it hasn't already been fixed. Even the X-3 games had higher paying combat missions (with harder targets) the higher your combat rating got, and those games aren't exactly refined.
Ah, but Bounty Hunting is all about the value of the kill and not a progression that increases in value as your ship operating expenses increase. It's a great way to start with entry level ships but of course it will have a finite profit ability.
Rare Commodities is another way to generate better profits with the least risk. It requires say a Cobra cargo hold and a good jump range to be effective.
Finally regular Trading comes in which also has a finite profit ability but can be expanded as your cargo hold increases.
That's the profit system which is great and works. As a Trader I have more credits and a bigger ship but a Bounty Hunter has kills advancing to Elite status where I have 3 (Interdictions). So it's all about what a player wants and using the available tools to get there.
Rare Commodities is another way to generate better profits with the least risk. It requires say a Cobra cargo hold and a good jump range to be effective.
Finally regular Trading comes in which also has a finite profit ability but can be expanded as your cargo hold increases.
That's the profit system which is great and works. As a Trader I have more credits and a bigger ship but a Bounty Hunter has kills advancing to Elite status where I have 3 (Interdictions). So it's all about what a player wants and using the available tools to get there.