First thanks to the Fdev team for all the balancing so far. It's been a rocky start but most things seem to be roughly somewhere reasonable, so good job and keep it up.
That said there's a few things outstanding (besides rare and S&R balancing, which is being worked on so I won't touch on it much)
Trading should give linear merits per ton, ignore sales price. Payout decreasing as tonnage increases just encourages min/maxing by selling in small quantities and that's not fun (not fun for the min maxer who feels compelled to sell a few ton at a time and not fun for the casual who finds out that a min/maxer got 20k merits in the same time they got 2k doing the same thing). Rares, once the exploits and unintended side effects like carrier stockpiling are dealt with, should give more merits per ton than trading. Overall rare trading should balance to favour small ships by making it inconvenient for large ships and bulk commodity balances to favour large ships. Don't try to balance both for both.
Strongholds, intended to be a display of a Power's strength, are now a strategic weakness due to the ease of kiting NPCs away from carrier defences to a safe distance where they can be killed easily. It may be too much to ask but having the AI prioritize staying in range of the carrier guns (defending the carrier) over pursuing enemies could go a long way to balance the activity to the proper risk/reward it deserves
Power goods give horrible merits per ton compared to other activities and are meted out so miserly that they are completely non viable. While it's not a bad idea for them to payout less, it should still be viable, so either keep the volume restriction and pay out more so that a load of pp materials per unit time pays slightly less than a load of rares (after implementing balance as above) OR remove the volume restriction but make it pay worse than a full cutter of trade goods (after removing the nonsensical square root merit conversion)
That said there's a few things outstanding (besides rare and S&R balancing, which is being worked on so I won't touch on it much)
Trading should give linear merits per ton, ignore sales price. Payout decreasing as tonnage increases just encourages min/maxing by selling in small quantities and that's not fun (not fun for the min maxer who feels compelled to sell a few ton at a time and not fun for the casual who finds out that a min/maxer got 20k merits in the same time they got 2k doing the same thing). Rares, once the exploits and unintended side effects like carrier stockpiling are dealt with, should give more merits per ton than trading. Overall rare trading should balance to favour small ships by making it inconvenient for large ships and bulk commodity balances to favour large ships. Don't try to balance both for both.
Strongholds, intended to be a display of a Power's strength, are now a strategic weakness due to the ease of kiting NPCs away from carrier defences to a safe distance where they can be killed easily. It may be too much to ask but having the AI prioritize staying in range of the carrier guns (defending the carrier) over pursuing enemies could go a long way to balance the activity to the proper risk/reward it deserves
Power goods give horrible merits per ton compared to other activities and are meted out so miserly that they are completely non viable. While it's not a bad idea for them to payout less, it should still be viable, so either keep the volume restriction and pay out more so that a load of pp materials per unit time pays slightly less than a load of rares (after implementing balance as above) OR remove the volume restriction but make it pay worse than a full cutter of trade goods (after removing the nonsensical square root merit conversion)
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