yeah. i recommed reading the post under the title, too.
The Smuggling discussion thread
- Thread starter Sheepykins
- Start date
yeah. i recommed reading the post under the title, too.
Fairly sure loot & crafting are coming in a few months as part of season 2, a while after planetary landings rather than any time this year, just FYI. Speaking of end-game though, the whole reason I've been concentrating on raising credits recently is so that I can buy a ally big ship when 1.5 hits. Even with the boost from this whole smuggling deal, I'm not sure I'll quite be able to afford it.
The OP's thrilling timeline does use Sothis, but I'm not sure Sothis is a key point. It works in the same way from other viable locations, with other ships etc. My travel time to missions seems ~5 minutes shorter, but that's about the only difference.
Er. I wonder if Sothis actually has a better payout per mission by merit of being so far out. I will go to Sothis and test this. I'd presumed it made no difference after making $stupid over a 12-hour period, but I'd better make sure. This was a fun discussion and a good break.
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I did. The thread isn't about Sothis it's about the new smuggling mechanics. Sothis is an example and not the only system that has smuggling missions. Don't be pedantic. Contribute to the discussion.
This! +100 million rep
This is a game that people play for fun! Not real life.
If we go off your logic murder in game should be a lot harsher than it is, pretty sure cops don't cease the man hunt after 6 days irl.
When I run long distance smuggling, I stack 10 or 15 missions and have 60+T in the cargo hold. So, if I'm scanned, it wouldn't be a low 70K fine. And if I die, it wouldn't be so quick to gain rep with all 4 of the factions at Sothis.
It's called Elite : Dangerous not Elite : Easy Autopilot Watch A Movie While You Play. I personally have no problem with crimes being more severe. The point I'm talking about though is that smuggling should have high payout, and should also have high risk. It doesn't have any risk, really. It's a game, yes, and there should be balance for fun etc, but there is no risk for something that's completely illegal. Fines. Hmmm...not a risk.
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Why would you die?
Risk is very relative to pilot skill. FD has to walk a tightrope. There are a lot of commanders out there who are risking their ships on these missions because they aren't as skilled or cool headed a pilot as others. Some commanders have no problem with interdictions, others really struggle (I haven't ever had an issue, my friend has had a hard time since 1.3, and he doesn't do well post interdiction). So what you define as no risk, is very risky, even life threatening to another commander, perhaps even the majority.
I don't use chaff to block a scan cuz I've heard that it doesn't work. Silent running by itself may not work fast enough to block a scan so heat sinks are very useful. For long range smuggling, cops tried to scan me about 10 times yesterday. Each time, I drop a heat sink, and then another one. This stopped the scan while I fled. Worked every time. I've used a heat sink dozens of times on entry to Coriolis stations when I'm carrying an Anaconda load of imperial slaves. If I used silent running, it might help but then I can't afford to drop shields with several pirates chasing me through the systems.
So when you get higher ranks you're still relatively low skill? Most of these profitable missions are only available for high ranking pilots. If you don't know what you're doing at that point you need to learn one way or another.
In the real world, murder are treated the same way. So apparently this game is not the real world.
Why would I die??? When there are wings of pirates (Clipper/Cobra, Python/Eagle) chasing me through the systems, and I'm only flying an Asp, the risk is high. Three times last night they dropped my shields. I ended up destroying them but not before they reduced my hull. Fortunately, the repair costs are trivial compared to the payout but the risk was real. And I'm not a slouch at combat - I use FA Off, power micromanagement, and chaff. The NPCs are better fighters these days, at least they are when you don't get the "roll around and cry in pain" NPCs.
i think i did? people are talking about their experience going to sothis, collecting a lot of missions, and then delivering them - how much fun it is, and how difficult. you don't experience that difficulty and suspense (if i read your posts right).
there are several things special about this, which don't scale down to a single smuggling mission:
a) you don't have a lot of minor factions in the sothis/ceos/robigo systems. so - flying around, collecting missions, getting interdicted - a reputation loss will hit hard in that way, much harder than delivering a mission x to y in a system you have no interest in.
b) if you run a lot of missions at one time, you have much more interdictions per system. very different gameplay experience
c) the involved distances ...
d) necessity of smuggling to outposts, with system sec chasing you - which is something very different to the very effective "boost through mailslot".
so - doing that sothis run i can very much recommend, and it is a different game experience than doing a single mission. it can't be compared with it.
that said, i'm totally pro making the consequences of a scan harsher (mission fail if scanned - system sec confiscating illegal goods....), and i think that longrange smuggling missions should better scale with distance (e.g.: it looks to me as if they are linear, i'd prefer a scaling like with rare goods - great payouts only above total range of most ships, e.g. above 120+ ly).
but there is something very good about what has been created through longrange smuggling missions in the colonies.
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Firstly, Sorry for the huge thread derail!
Sure. It's an understandable concern, "The EVE effect", but I personally have some problems with this idea, because EVE is very much the exception to the rule. Just about every MMO has social structures built in to the game. Things like Guilds/Corps/Clans, a Player driven economy, various social channels, and so forth. EvE also has these, but it is the exception in that it has over time evolved in to a lord of the flies type ordeal. The important thing to understand about EVE though as that as I have said, it is the exception to the rule. Try and think of another MMO where this has happened.
Let me put it this way. It isn't that there are social mechanics and claim staking in EVE that causes it to be so cut throat, it's that the central game design philosophy is one that funnels individuals in to collectives and actively pits them against each other. This is basically what EVE is, and not much more. It isn't just a natural occurrence in MMOs with open claim for stakes in the game world, EVE was designed to be this way, so to worry that it will happen if "social mechanics" were also implemented in to ED, and that ED was also turned into a fully true MMO, is based on a bit of a fallacy. ED was never built to be competitive, and it never truly will be. Even if it were to be 'open-mode' only. That isn't to say that I am arguing for it to be, my stance is purely one of observation.
The point being that it is entirely down to the way in which the socially enabling mechanics were implemented. I think it's always been much more about staking claim in the game world. A big thing with MMOs is a players desire to stake a claim to an identity. It begins with the avatar, the class, the build of skills. What they can bring to the table (the clan), and then what that table can do collectively, for the table's benefit. It extends directly on from that then into what clans provide. A structure around which individuals, attaching themselves to an in game identity, an avatar, can then attach themselves to a social identity. A "tribe", and stake out a place for that tribe in the game universe. You could get quite deep in to why, but psycho-socio behavioral commentary is beyond the scope of my motivation right now
This thing though is a core nature of how MMOs, in the social platforms that they are, give participants substance and meaning in what it is they're doing. Without these things, there is a base level detachment and sense of restriction for the player as they go about their game play surrounded by other players, but unable to form "natural" bonds with the other members of this world they're existing in. It manifests as a sense of invisible walls, a shallowness, a feeling of isolation. A forced vagrancy, as it were. I'll get back to this later.Clans aren't about competition, they are about islands of co-operation, identity and ownership. Those islands are only ever competitive if the game design synthesizes that agenda. It isn't by-proxy of the nature of social constructs that creates this behavior, it is the wider mechanics, collectively angled toward competition that does this. Elite Dangerous doesn't have this, so it will not happen in ED if they were implemented properly. They would, contrarily, give substance and meaning to the game world for many of the participants. It would enable individuals to stake a claim to a social identity, and that identity to collectively co-operate and synthesize their own purpose in the game world. This would manifest content by nature of how this stuff works.
We see it already happening in wider culture around the game itself with The Fuel Rats, Hutton Orbital Truckers, The First Great Expedition, and yes, also things like The Code, but isn't The Code also the exception to the rule? and would implementing true social mechanics in to the game fundamentally change the type of motivations for these groups of people to get together, instead into a want for domination? Or will it simply enable them to manifest their (already developed) Identities into the game world proper?
The problem with a lack of social mechanics like this in Elite Dangerous is that it does indeed create these voids, where-in natural social dynamics, identity forging and a synthesis of purpose cannot exist, yet would quickly emerge given appropriate means. Without these though, the vast majority of people are left to see themselves as ultimately the only player in the game. And so emergent player formed narrative cannot truly develop. Purpose is non existent, or at best forced, merely a fraction of the authenticity and scope one is used to in MMOs, and whom one desires in a social medium of any kind. That it is a social medium, and masses of people are involved in the world means that participants will naturally come to desire the tools to form these bonds, desire the means to establish social identities, brand themselves in view of other social groups and interact with them. These things will always fundamentally be healthy for the game, and for all people playing it.
Without these things we are reduced to substituting the 'tribe' for ourselves. And instead of tensions and narratives forming between our tribe and other tribes inside the scope of what the game proper comprises, we have tension forming between ourselves and other players, other selves, existing in the only way that it can, in the meta-game that surrounds. This is literally opposed to the social health of the game, almost a form of seeded xenophobia, and ultimately damaging to the culture of Elite Dangerous. It is why people bicker about nerfing this and nerfing that, or why "they" get it better than "me", because the player is forced in to this isolated world view, through the restricting lack of any proper means to extend the self-identity beyond the individual. No systemic, cultural co-operation can form, no shared glory... Indeed, a tribeless world has it's problems.
This is why we see what we do in the game, in the culture that surrounds it, and why implementing proper social tools, and allowing claim staking to the world (of course in a balanced manner, and always in keeping with the co-operative, casual ideology of Elite), is always one of the most fundamental things to get right in an mmo. It's what holds it together for the long term, what manifests as the vast majority of meaningful gameplay, and it will only do ED masses of good. To the contrary, that it hasn't done this has only damage the health of the game immensely.
How this is done? A lot of deliberation by clever people. It isn't my job to come up with definitive theory crafting. What I think is important to get across is why it's important to do so, and what has happened because it hasn't.
I hope this has helped you get a grip on my stance on this and the thinking process behind why I said what I did in my original post. Sorry for the length of it and semi garbled format too. It's a pretty dense things to have had to go in to, but I do hope you receive it as the reasoned argument it was intended to be.
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High-wake.
So, what happens when a smuggler gets caught with slaves? Death? That would be STATE SANCTIONED MURDER you are proposing. So thats it? Authority Vessels in ED are judge, jury and executioner? You make Judge Dredd come across like a wishy-washy liberal!
Would hate to see your reaction to parking tickets
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Rank is a function of time, not skill, and many of the missions are available at middling ranks.
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You should see the cops in a RES, one stray laser and they're after that booty, and not the stuff in your hold, the one in the cockpit!
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Yes yes, it's all just a matter of a few simple button presses and presto-chang-o you're away with not so much as a scratch. You're obviously on a plane of piloting, coolness, daring and skill beyond that attainable by us mere mortals.
Of course there are ways to get away, but players are not perfect, situations are not always ideal. What do you want? A 6 anaconda death trap floating just outside the toaster rack of every port of call on your mission list?
So, what happens when a smuggler gets caught with slaves? Death? That would be STATE SANCTIONED MURDER you are proposing. So thats it? Authority Vessels in ED are judge, jury and executioner? You make Judge Dredd come across like a wishy-washy liberal!
Would hate to see your reaction to parking tickets
Parking tickets....hmmm. Well considering stations blow you up for blocking landing pads I think you already know the answer.
And if we're really going to look at this from a lore perspective why are combat pilots able to survive multiple ship explosions and "eject eject eject!". It's just as likely the 1 tonne of slaves in a cargo container are going to survive as the pilot in an escape chair.
Edit: Maybe only half the tonne of slaves will live due to being thrown against the metal chamber. Acceptable losses? It's the law!
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Made it to Sothis. Looks like Sothis' payouts (8.5mil per mission?!) are at least twice as large as those in Vesuvit, where I'd been doing the same missions yesterday. Vesuvit (Suri Station) generally offers between 1 and 3 mil per smugglement performed, and they should take less time to carry out successfully than the ones in Sothis, so hopefully it'll be a useful option for those with less time to spend. It's in Empire turf, and in a much less distant location.
Sorry I failed to realise this. I was practically making the fabled 20mil per hour at Vesuvit, and I thought the really big payouts I'd occasionally read about were the best rewards for Elite-gated missions. Never thought they'd double or triple the reward just because it takes an extra 5 minutes of the allotted 10 hours to get there. :S
Heheh, the Sothis Herald is funny. "Twenty ships used to be a busy day - this week we've logged over a thousand. All people are talking about is Crystalline Gold."
To punish us for being caught smuggling, make the fine turn into a bounty after ~10 minutes instead of a week. If someone's taking a week to pay it, they're not paying it. But then if the servers go down, everyone dies... hrmph.
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