Thanks! Have some rep as a token of my appreciationI nominate ½ of the +1 rep I could give as given by you Ziggy.
The Smuggling discussion thread
- Thread starter Sheepykins
- Start date
Ian Phillips
Volunteer Moderator
Indeed. Please don't post extra threads on existing topics. It makes the forum very difficult to navigate to find thread on subjetcs someone wishes to read about.
Thank you.
Thank you.
And so starts a vicious cycle....Thanks! Have some rep as a token of my appreciation
Wow, this smuggling thing really is very popular, but all I was hearing over local was people explaining how to mode switch to get the best mission :/
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That is because it is great fun and it allows you to make the same sort of money as you can bulk trading but without the mindless grind. It is the most fun thing to happen in ED in a while, it actually feels like the game I wanted to play when I bought the game a year ago.
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Hey,
I think that it is indeed the people who are focused on gaining credits and (trading) rank a.s.a.p, that do not want to see smuggling profits brought into line with profits made doing other activities in the game. Should smuggling pay more than it used to, seeing that NPC's got tougher? Yes, I think so. But not this much.
Currently is it on par with the out of whack profits people used to make with 'Seeking Goods' trading, or rare trading when rares were just introduced.
I think it should be adjusted. It's bad enough you have people with Combat Elite who got it hacking the game, next thing you know people will get to Trade Elite in no time with these smuggling profits. Bonkers, I tell you!
Cheers,
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Hey,
Why pick and choose? Let's address them all!
Cheers,
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They absolutely need to be nerfed. Last night between doing stuff around the house and playing I got 30 mil in 2 hours plus 4 percent towards elite trader using an asp. Attentive trading in an anaconda would have been 10-15 mil and 1 percent trade rank. Other important fixes are back ground simulation, interdictions, and nerfing PP bounty hunting.
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Yeah, I'm familiar with k, kilo; it comes from a Greek word that literally means a thousand. But I have never seen someone using it to say one thousand thousand and one thousand thousand thousand.
In the English language, we use k to represent a thousand in money but it's informal - borderline slang. I know that in the past we would use "mille" or m for a thousand in accounting and then accountants decided to use mm for a million. (Despite the m being born from the Roman Numeral M for one thousand, where MM is two thousand, not one million). I thought perhaps the k was used in this way in another language.
Language is a strange beast, soon we are going to get "Internet English" as an entirely new language.
I'll always remember Sothis.Great fun.Seems like a lot of people is enjoying it but something tells me that FD will cater to the tryhard maniacs shouting NERF!Oh well.We don't want too much people to have fun do we?
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If FD want to reduce the income from smuggling they can, and at the same time make smuggling more "smuggly" by having stations automatically scan any ship leaving or entering. If you have illegal goods you get fined and/or shot down. To counter this introduce a new cargo module specifically for illegal goods which has less (half?) the cargo capacity of a normal module to represent it not being an actual cargo space, more like hidden panels in the ship structure and cannot be scanned making it also useful against pirates.
I have to agree with those saying the smuggling changes are a GOOD thing in that they add gameplay aspects to travelling around the void. The value of the mission must be high in order to peak the interest of both smugglers and pirates. Yes, I made a lot of credits in one hour last night on 4 missions without switching modes. However, one of the stations was 295,000ls away from the jump in point and I had an npc cop on my tail the entire time. The interdictions were tough, I used all my heat sinks while silent running and boosting to avoid scans, and only picked up a bounty as I was sitting on the outpost platform being lowered by the automated landing system. The NPC followed me the entire way and gave commentary on comms as well. That doesn't count the player pirates and other npcs I had to avoid...And that was just one of the missions!
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After getting to Entrepreneur doing standard trading in the conda, this is a welcome change.
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After getting to Entrepreneur doing standard trading in the conda, this is a welcome change.
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So, In short, you just want to remove any skill in smuggling something, as either you use the normal cargo modules and get auto scanned, or use the other ones and auto-succeed.
A better idea (IMO), would be to have those shielded cargo bays with less capacity take a longer time to be scaned.
Also, why not having internal heat sink modules that make ships take longer to heat up/down during/after silent running, stealth armor in addition to the existing types and
cold gas propulsion when running silent (less thrust, uses way more fuel but little heat).
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There already is no skill involved in smuggling. Unless you count leaving a station at max boost and only taking smuggling missions to outposts as "skill". All that fluff with silent running etc would be great if it were actually required to smuggle anything at all and I would relish smuggling as a career if it was.
Well that's depressing. Smuggling payouts are fine but if people are just mode switching to get far more money than they should then it will get nerfed... ruining it for those who don't exploit.
So, instead of proposing changes to improve a somewhat defective gameplay, you propose to just break it. Okay...
Btw, smuggling to an outpost with security is probably the hardest smuggling thing to do. I wish there were more of those...
It's interesting you feel that way. I think the opposite would have been better. Going full community centric instead, having a more balanced law, security and repercussion system to enable equal opportunity in a single shared universe instead of optional shards, with a lack of true, fully committed "we're doing it this way" community forming structures.
What we have instead is something that doesn't cater to either crowd. It's trying to be two things that each can only fully exist in a mutually exclusive way. What we have is six of one and half a dozen of the other right now, with neither the true freedom (re: no need to 'nerf' stuff e.t.c.) you'd get from a single player experience, nor the kind of structures around which healthy in game communities can realistically develop in a massively multiplayer setting. These things are well understood in terms of contemporary game design theory.
FD have done a very good job at constructing, well, something in between these two diametrically opposed demographics. Their biggest mistake in my opinion was going the kick starter route. They didn't need to as a basis for funding (the money from the event has been a fraction of total costs). They did it primarily as a test of "is this wanted?". The crowd they initially attracted was of course the aptly coined "old timer" group, of which the kick starter backers and DDS group was almost entirely comprised of.
This means that FD then had a pledge of responsibility to a group of people chasing a nostalgia from an era MMOs weren't remotely in the public lexicon, and whom had major sway in the core design development of the game; while, FD, being a company in the modern gaming era, and having decided to make a game around the scale of the milky way (and basic nature of a game's structure like Elite), were in a position that strongly urged them to go down the MMO route, a sensible business decision in terms of potential long term revenue.
So they found themselves in a very tricky situation, with two completely separate islands. One of a formal contract of a pledge of responsibility to the DDS kickstarter funders, acting not to differently as investors, and whom essentially, on the whole, desire a single player experience; and to a larger, contemporary online PC gaming demographic, which will in the long run provide them the majority of their revenue.
What we have from this is what has resulted in the game we see. A split, rather confused game with some very tricky design idiosyncrasies causing it to be neither one nor the other, and provide an incomplete experience to both core demographics.
Anyway, my observations aside, Going full community should have been the choice. It's the sensible thing to support the larger long term demographic and so keep revenue healthy. Even more, having done so would have (already) had plenty-fold positive effects on the social psychology of the in game culture. People would be focused on constructive, emergent points of tension, rather than this meta-game "finger pointing - They're having more fun than I am" crap that happens here on a daily basis in stead. This happens as a result of people filling the vacuum in place of what should be "in-world" politics and tension, that naturally evolves in an MMO with appropriate means of social construct. Something Elite Dangerous has been deliberately kept from supporting.
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So much this kind of stuff.
I was doing my last runs of the night, battle weapons and tobacco. I get to my second-last system, and on the final approach things asplode. First I get a weaksauce DBS gunning for my goodies. Alright sucker, come at me bro, I got lots of MC rounds just for you. I let him tag me and submit. In the middle of going weapons-hot, I notice there's TWO sigs in the drop. Police!
A lone security Eagle had dropped in as well; IDK if he was tailing the DBS, but he started lighting it up right away. I pile on, keeping in mind IDW the cop to be in a place to scan me. We dispatch the DBS and I begin to boost the hell away. While doing that I see 4 more sigs drop in; a security Viper squadron with a Conda escort. Really time to flee! COBRA AWAAAAAAAY
I get to SC, I'm not even 25Ls from the station, when I see the "SMUGGLER LETS GET IM" security comms. D: I cycle ship sensors, and find a pair of Vipers rising from the station I'm heading to. BUT! They're caught in the gravity well as they sunk in plotting a poor intercept course over the planet's rings; they're coming my way but slowly. I helped this along greatly by doing a gravity slide around the underside of the planet, causing them to E-drop into the rings and me to hit station drop point all badass-like. Home FREE! YEEEAAAHHHH
Or not.
I get to the outpost all smooth and cool, till about 3 klicks out. A security Eagle gets in behind me just as I'm on final approach for the pad. I blow the landing trying to avoid the scan, but get improperly vectored trying to escape and take the fine and rep hit. DAMMIT >:| The bounty on the DBS more than covered my fine luckily, but, dat rep hit.
And even though this story has a bit of a sad ending, it was BLOODY FUN. Getting busted just made me want to figure out more ways to get to outposts safely and run SC blockades. This is the most fun I've had in this game since I started playing.