Started a new user, playing iron man, not using any money making methods and the economics still seems messed up

Nerwan

Nerwan
Started a new user, playing iron man, not using any money making methods and the economics still seems messed up

So I reset my alt-user last night and started again in a Sidey. My new rules:

1. Iron man mode
2. Open only (except to avoid pad blocking)
3. No well known money making methods - i.e. no Sothis, no massacre/skimmer missions, no planetary scan spamming etc etc..
4. No relogging

I figured I'd spend quite a while in the Sidey, Eagle and Adder. I thought that by avoiding money making methods it would make aspects of the game that I'd never bothered with worth doing, such as:

* Finding crates of goodies on planets
* Pirating NPCs
* Rare trading
* Small scale mining in a small ship

Now, I am having fun, and I can recommend iron man mode from the point of view making life a bit more exciting. However, it seems to be almost impossible to not make a lot of money early in the game.. at least if you have a mentality like mine. Every station around the starter area has missions that can earn a new player 100,000 for making a 1 hop jump.. That kind of ruins the economics for me. I had a cobra in just over an hour and while I could have chosen not to do the starter missions and instead go mining etc, the reward disparity is huge so it makes you think it's not worth bothering with many of the other things you can do which are so poorly rewarded by comparison..

I'm starting to think I'll have to restart my save again and this time add "no missions" to the rules...

I can't help thinking that the economics is really screwed up in the early game. Either this should be a quick progression game, in which case let's make everything pay well, or it should be a slow progression game in which case make everything pay relatively poorly. But why have this situation where everything is completely unbalanced from the get-go? It makes aspects of the game seem very unprofitable and you have to really push yourself to do them...

Anyway, others may disagree, just my perception of it. Perhaps I'm more cash oriented than most, but I suspect a fair number are like me :)
 
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defekt

defekt
The 'economy' has either been dumbed down in the interests of holding the attention of the less persistent player, or FD simply don't know what they're doing.

Given how just about every playable aspect of this game is undercooked using 'place-holder' mechanics, I'm inclined to come down more on the side of FD not knowing what they're doing.
 

Whitehair

W
defekt said:
The 'economy' has either been dumbed down in the interests of holding the attention of the less persistent player, or FD simply don't know what they're doing.

Given how just about every playable aspect of this game is undercooked using 'place-holder' mechanics, I'm inclined to come down more on the side of FD not knowing what they're doing.
Click to expand...

Sure it isn't more of a case of you not knowing what you are talking about?
 

GammaZ

G
Noticed that too.
I've started fresh commander on separate account with the goal of getting reasonably travel-capable ship and getting to colonia to start there.
No ironman but still i have zero rebuys.
Another thing i wanted to do it non-combat way, so zero shots fired.
I've got adder with A-grade G5 modded FSD 3A fuel scoop and both scanners in like may be ~6 hours.
Planetary salvage in sidey, material collection to level felicity to get FSD mod, trevel to maia to get meta alloy (scanning systems for some additional money), then some missions (but no cheesy things like relog grinding or massacre missions)...
Overall it did not feel too fast, because i knew exactly what and how i am going to do and still spent fair amount of time doing it. Most time spent to get FSD mod.

Then, few month later (and few days ago) i arrived to colonia. Jumped around for a bit to scan systems, found stations with reasonable outfitting.
Bought T6 (i've got around 8M cr from exploration data) and did few cargo delivery missions... for like 300M each. That's like million worth of money in like 15 minutes. Now that's too fast...
At this point i decided that it is too easy and i should try combat way, here at colonia with only eagle and viper and limited outfitting it should not be too easy...
I've bought myself viper and outfitted it as good as possible, like this.
I went to nearest haz res, spent all the ammo there and returned with like ~2M worth of bounties. Too fast and too easy, again. Also, seeing all the regular spawns, like FDS/FGS/clippers/pthons/condas etc in RES in colonia was huge disappointment. And it confirmed the fact which i knew before - current NPC AI is completely braindead. When it is possible to farm pythons/condas in suboptimally outfited viper it is... just wrong.

Now i am completely disappointed in my original idea... nothing is different here... it is very likely that i will just wipe this save... again...
 
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rucky

rucky
Nerwan said:
So I reset my alt-user last night and started again in a Sidey.
...
I had a cobra in just over an hour and while I could have chosen not to do the starter missions and instead go mining etc, the reward disparity is huge so it makes you think it's not worth bothering with many of the other things you can do which are so poorly rewarded by comparison..
...
Click to expand...

I remember I needed one full month to get to a cobra back in jan/2015.
Then again there are so many peolpe complaining that there is so less money floating around nowadays...

But +1 for HC/IM and tossing all your assets...

If there would be another commander slot I really would like to start all over again, there's nothing in late game than the adrenaline of no-insurance-bulk-trading in the early business days ;-)
(and you know, you have done that too ;-)

But sadly I don't have the money for another copy + season pass, so... no new starting for me....
 
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Siranui

S
Nerwan said:
I'm starting to think I'll have to restart my save again and this time add "no missions" to the rules...
Click to expand...

It's the mission rank unlock that's done it, and caused a ton of other woe.

If Harmless pilots could not accept Elite missions with out-of-whack pay it would not be an issue in terms of unbalanced reward.

If Harmless pilots could not accept Elite missions with out-of-whack threat levels for their rank, there would be less whinging about how 'unfair' and 'impossible' mission enemies were.

If Harmless pilots could not have historically even SEEN Elite missions, instead of having them waved in front of them, out of reach, then there woud have been no whine-fest resulting in these entirely unsuited missions becoming available for Harmless players in the first place.
 

Spatial

S
Siranui said:
It's the mission rank unlock that's done it, and caused a ton of other woe.

If Harmless pilots could not accept Elite missions with out-of-whack pay it would not be an issue in terms of unbalanced reward.

If Harmless pilots could not accept Elite missions with out-of-whack threat levels for their rank, there would be less whinging about how 'unfair' and 'impossible' mission enemies were.

If Harmless pilots could not have historically even SEEN Elite missions, instead of having them waved in front of them, out of reach, then there woud have been no whine-fest resulting in these entirely unsuited missions becoming available for Harmless players in the first place.
Click to expand...


Exactly.

It almost beggars belief that anyone at FDev who plays the game couldn't notice this stuff and change the Mission presentation and availability accordingly.

Problem would have been solved. It's so ' simple.
 

bubbabenali

B
Iron Man mode and "Open" contradict each other.

Iron Man is single player without other players help

Just say'n
 
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Nerwan

Nerwan
bubbabenali said:
Iron Man mode and "Open" contradict each other.

Iron Man is single player without other players help

Just say'n
Click to expand...

I didn't realize it was defined in the dictionary... anyway, not getting help from other players, merely avoiding being killed by them.. and sometimes saying hello to them.

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Siranui said:
It's the mission rank unlock that's done it, and caused a ton of other woe.

If Harmless pilots could not accept Elite missions with out-of-whack pay it would not be an issue in terms of unbalanced reward.

If Harmless pilots could not accept Elite missions with out-of-whack threat levels for their rank, there would be less whinging about how 'unfair' and 'impossible' mission enemies were.

If Harmless pilots could not have historically even SEEN Elite missions, instead of having them waved in front of them, out of reach, then there woud have been no whine-fest resulting in these entirely unsuited missions becoming available for Harmless players in the first place.
Click to expand...

Yes I agree, the big problem with that whole idea is that Elite missions mostly aren't any harder... so there's no reason that a new player can't do them and just have massive rewards..
 
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DocPossible

DocPossible
As others have said, rank unlocking the missions has made life a lot more lucrative - it's not as if an Elite transport missions is any more dangerous than an Expert one as far as I can tell. What happens if you only run missions suited to your rank - are there 100k Harmless missions being offered?
 

Ian Skippy

Ian Skippy
All true. I have a second account, intended it to go for a 'scrounging for scraps' kind of thing. Its impossible, you're a millionaire in no-time, no matter what you do. :(

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DocPossible said:
As others have said, rank unlocking the missions has made life a lot more lucrative - it's not as if an Elite transport missions is any more dangerous than an Expert one as far as I can tell. What happens if you only run missions suited to your rank - are there 100k Harmless missions being offered?
Click to expand...

You'll be spending most of your time re-logging the board.
 

Cobra1984

C
Nerwan said:
Yes I agree, the big problem with that whole idea is that Elite missions mostly aren't any harder... so there's no reason that a new player can't do them and just have massive rewards..
Click to expand...

Once again, another example of no risk vs reward mechanics in the game.

It's really not difficult to see the problem.

I wonder does the higher paying Elite mission just require a longer time to complete...
 

Nerwan

Nerwan
DocPossible said:
As others have said, rank unlocking the missions has made life a lot more lucrative - it's not as if an Elite transport missions is any more dangerous than an Expert one as far as I can tell. What happens if you only run missions suited to your rank - are there 100k Harmless missions being offered?
Click to expand...

Elite missions tend to involve becoming allied with the faction (which I haven't bothered to do yet). I think the 100k ones are relatively low ranking, dealer or some such.. and you get them without any faction affinity.

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Cobra1984 said:
I wonder does the higher paying Elite mission just require a longer time to complete...
Click to expand...

No... some types are actually harder, like assassination missions. But most are quite similar.
 

JesusRocks1988

JesusRocks1988
Lol I don't know what you all are talking about... When I started the game it took me about 3 months to get a Cobra from a Sidey. The missions were all 1000cr or less and so far away relative to a stock sidewinder's jump range that I ended up getting stuck in an area of brown dwarfs at least 3 times without the fuel to get through it.

The missions weren't lucrative nor plentiful, and downright dangerous for a brand new player. Progression is hard for a newbie - there's no way I could have gotten 300k in an hour from a sidewinder.
 

Shar

Shar
A lot of casuals lobbied for months and months whined complained and frontier gave in so yes the exciting aspect of the early game is gone and thats a shame just another symtom of a game without a real direction that continues to react to noise as ive always said frontier need to learn that you cant be all things to all people.

But i'm with you i miss the early game it really felt like you were playing elite. ive been playing iron man to try and capture that feeling but no i have 5 ships 2 billion and find no challenge, I'm playing around with some other games now because i fear frontier do not have the vision or backbone to pull this into line and it will soon become just another mmo. - Hope i'm wrong and just for the record i'm usually labeled a fanboy. Most disturbing thing i.m seeing at the moment is other games developing in leaps and bounds and ED developing at a snails pace makes me wonder what i'm missing out on spending my time and money here. I'm not angry just sad........[sad]

Elite seems to have lost something it almost had.
 
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