Three things that make me hate this game.

[shrinkshooter]

First issue is docking; you can't queue at busy ports to dock so instead you have to spam docking permission which is incredibly frustrating. I can not fathom why a simple queue system isn't already in place.

I haven't had any docking requests denied/long queues for docking since before Gamma, so our experiences differ here.

Second issue is the whole mission/bounty hunter/combat location system. It's a mess. It's totally random.

I agree with you on this point, being a bounty hunter myself, but not to the degree you show here. 3 hours to kill 3 pirates? You're doing it wrong. That's definitely not the game's fault.

The third issue is a how this game practically forces you to become a pirate.

Except it doesn't, and if you think trading or bounty hunting aren't viable, again, you are doing it wrong. I've made millions off bounty hunting and continue to do so. I make over 300k in 30 minutes easily. The game needs serious improvements in certain areas, but these issues are on your end. You're blaming the game for your own shortcomings here.

Trading is terrible. It's completely broken with the current tools available to you and the only profits you make are in trading on courier missions for a bit of pocket money(1k CR is abysmal for 10minutes travelling and docking from one system to another).

...what. Believing that freaking courier missions are more profitable than trading proves you're doing something terribly wrong.

Bounty hunting blows as mentioned in my second point about how utterly random and low the chances are you can come across a bounty/pirate.

Random and low chances? I sit in supercruise in a system for five minutes and I'll see a wanted Asp, Python, or Anaconda show up worth 20k in bounties minimum. Sweet moses, son, what are you doing?!

So much is just poorly implemented. I want to like this game, I want to enjoy it and I really want to sink my teeth into it but I can't do that right now because 90% of what you do is a complete and utter waste of time with absolutely no payoff.

There are most certainly things that should be implemented much better, for sure. You're right about that, the hunting missions and some assassination missions being among them. However, 90% of what I do in the game makes me money, full stop, and the other 10% is me just flying around and donating goods to faction for rep boosts. I could write a book on how to "properly" play the game, but I can't understand how you're having these issues. None of this is difficult to figure out or execute, but perhaps someone else later in the thread will feel generous and go step-by-step of how to perform the basics.

 

[Darkflame]

The queueing system sounds like a great ideas to me, not sure how anyone could have complaints about that idea.

 

[Muthax]

It's true it doesn't force you into a profession. No one is forcing anyone to play the game. However if one mechanic of the game makes credit profit 10x easier than another then people will eventually flock to that method most of their game time. If I can spend 3 hours making 300k+ doing method A and I make 0 credits in 3 hours doing method B then the game kind of funnels you into method A to realize progress.

I feel for the OP on the in regards to Bounty Hunting. I did the whole trading thing for many many many hours to build out a tricked Cobra and Viper. I don't want to trade all the time, I want to Bounty Hunt to play the other advertised part of the game. Guess what though..since I started playing in Gamma I have never found a Assassination mission target at any USS...ever...ever..so is the game forcing me to go back to trading to make credits since I can't seem to with Assassin missions or do I only get to do 50% of the "Bounty Hunting" by scanning for Wanted targets for lower payouts?

Well it is actually realistic that being a pirate is a more lucrative profession because it's in theory riskier

 

[Slacker]

Not sure what the problem with trading is. It should be easy enough for anyone to find a system selling gold for 500cr/t less than another planet is willing to pay for it.

That's 32*500 = 16000 profit per run in a shielded Cobra III and 100*500 = 50000 in a shielded Type 6.

An 800cr mark-up for gold isn't unusual which makes things even better. Do that as you do other missions around the gold mine and it soon ramps up.

As you go around your area look for other decent mark-ups on things like coffee, tea, performance enhancers, beryllium, robotics and so on. Don't just wander, learn the little selection of systems around your profit centre. As you build up rep with the different factions you'll also get better missions (188k to shift some palladium in system is the best mission I've had).

I'm not sure it scales well beyond where I am because I'm not sure the deeper game has been developed yet.

 

[CmdrKull]

...'question about relevance that for some reason cannot be quoted or even copied on my ipad.'

It was OPs third point that the game forces you to be a pirate. Everyone is kind of scratching our heads about that one as the first 2 points are pretty spot on, and then point 3 is like "it won't stop raining hotdogs!" And we're like "whaaaaaa?"

 

[Muthax]

The queueing system sounds like a great ideas to me, not sure how anyone could have complaints about that idea.

The queuing system could mean i cannot get out of the docks because maybe there is a queue of people that need to use my pad to enter
Not that I am against, just they need to work out a system that somehow prevents that

 

[General Specific]

you cant make money trading? You are doing it wrong, made 150k cr profit today in 2 hours trading rares in a hauler with 8 units cargo. be in a cobra tomorrow and a lakon by the next week. Bought one rare for 300cr and sold for 25k cr 150 ly away!

The route planner makes this possible and the fuel scope means I can do the long leg without stopping.

Search rares in the forums or you could just go play something else if you don't like this. new update to arena commander in Star Citizen last week.

 

[CMDR Canaris]

OP: I make about 100k per hour bounty hunting, which isn't bad at all, or about 200k per hour making rare trade runs. I actually mined for about 4 hours, bought a Cobra, and kitted it out to B rating. Just over a million credits.

Also, pirates are whatever outlaw faction happens to be in the system. If you check factions on panel 4, one (or more) will mention a disdain for the law. These are the local pirates. Kill ships belonging to that faction (use the contacts tab on panel 1 to determine if an NPC is part of that faction), even if you get fined for it. Ships belonging to pirate factions aren't necessarily wanted.

 

[Phrygian]

First issue is docking; you can't queue at busy ports to dock so instead you have to spam docking permission which is incredibly frustrating. I can not fathom why a simple queue system isn't already in place. This should be standard regardless. "Requesting docking permission." -> "Docking permission granted. You are number X in queue for Dock 1/2/3/4." -> "Dock X is now available please proceed." It's just that simple or at least should be! Instead you can be waiting to chance up on a dock, spamming permission, for up to ten minutes. This should never have been okay for a release. It's frustrating, it's not realistic and it really makes you dread what was actually a pleasant treat in this game: Docking.

With you there. There should be a docking queue system, with priority for people friendly with the owners of the station. Gotta have nepotism.

Second issue is the whole mission/bounty hunter/combat location system. It's a mess. It's totally random. It's just not working well at all. For instance I have a mission to kill six pirates in system X or Y. I go to said systems and spend the next three hours aimlessly zipping around the system and entering random "unidentified sources" in hopes of finding pirates. Turns out I find a bunch of traders and "clean" NPCs. Hell, I even came across a single federation ship with two NPCs who happened to be clean. Are either one of them pirates with outstanding warrants? Nope. Took a gamble, shot at them and incurred a 100Cr bounty for it. It's just a mess. I spent three hours roaming around trying to kill pirates and only happened upon three of them in that time. Three pirates in three hours. That's pathetic!

I haven't had this problem since the last patch, but that was when I was looking for Black Boxes.

My advice..... check the system they are asking you to hunt in, make sure it is populated, which'll mean it has a nav beacon. If it does, take it. Only attack wanted ships. They tend to float about on the outskirts of whatever swarm is current, or sometimes you can see them having fights with the cops. Get there first and get your tokens.


Alternatively, if you must go hunting in anarchy systems, take a kill warrant scanner. Their naughtiness doesn't show up otherwise.

The third issue is a how this game practically forces you to become a pirate. I never play as a pirate in games like this. It's simply not the role I choose to play but in this game I feel forced to be a pirate. Trading is terrible. It's completely broken with the current tools available to you and the only profits you make are in trading on courier missions for a bit of pocket money(1k CR is abysmal for 10minutes travelling and docking from one system to another). Bounty hunting blows as mentioned in my second point about how utterly random and low the chances are you can come across a bounty/pirate. So piracy is pretty much the way to go from the looks of things. Everyone's a target including other pirates, faction ships and haulers. After all "Clean" NPCs and faction NPCs are plentiful as well as every second source being a hauler or Type 6 transport to cash in on with their cargo. Why bother roaming in the off chance you can come across a bounty that will give you 5k credits when you can go into any source and blast whatever the hell it is to hell and make a profit?

Again, nope. I've not had to resort to piracy once. I have, ahem, found new owners for certain items of cargo carelessly left around after my targets went boom, but I don't class that as piracy. I class it as good solid entrepreneurial behaviour befitting a classy commander such as myself.

 

[BellatorMonk]

Well it is actually realistic that being a pirate is a more lucrative profession because it's in theory riskier

Odd my point was trading is far more lucrative than pirating or bounty hunting. I make far less to nothing per hour unless trading.

 

[thewzdoc]

1) Agreed that would be an easy fix and should be implemented. Dumping the game and jumping into solo just to dock is a bit weak.

2) I don't have any major issues with the bounties or missions. Missions are a bit boring and I can make many more CR by bounty hunting so I don't do them often. Go into the extraction zones near a mining colony or a high tech system...lots of juicy bounties to be had.

3) I totally disagree with you here. There is nothing about this game that'll force you to be a Pirate. You aren't doing it right if you feel this way.

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Odd my point was trading is far more lucrative than pirating or bounty hunting. I make far less to nothing per hour unless trading.

Yup...after you get a larger ship and develop trade routes you'll rake in the CR....I don't like trading but it is the most lucrative way to get CR in the game.

 

[Muthax]

Odd my point was trading is far more lucrative than pirating or bounty hunting. I make far less to nothing per hour unless trading.

I heard pirates that can make quite a lot of money from NPC and players at the risk of of course constant annihilation

 

[SgtLennin]

Not sure what the problem with trading is. It should be easy enough for anyone to find a system selling gold for 500cr/t less than another planet is willing to pay for it.

I am at two systems where I run gold from A to B and clothes (yes) from B to A. Gold gives 800+ / ton profit. Palladium 1200 or something. Clothes only 100 or something, it's just for the cargo bay.

The rate makes sense. System A has a quite unique government and the station I am trading from/with is easily overlooked or dismissed.

 

[DangerousLarry]

There seems to be a lot of confusion regarding my comments made in my third point. Let me just clarify what I was getting at.

In saying "you're practically forced to play as a pirate" I was referring to the headaches caused by the USS system in this game. In my own experiences it can take an hour to find a specific target or even to find a bunch of pirates for a mission requiring you to kill six of them. For me it took three hours to find three, needless to say I didn't finish that mission on time given the time limit was three hours. These are missions that point me not to anarchy systems but faction controlled systems. When it's taking you three hours to stumble randomly upon your mission objective or target you may as well adopt being a pirate to make cash from every USS you enter or any enemy you encounter. You have a much higher chance of coming across something worthwhile as a pirate than you do as a bounty hunter or mission runner.

It's the fact that it's so unreasonable to come across specific objectives in this game primarily due to USS that it's a complete waste of time and really feels like pirating is what objectives should be across the board. Less headaches, more to make from it, more entertainment and action, less floating around wasting time spending three to five minutes crawling towards an unidentified source signal hoping, desperately, that this next USS is going to contain your mission objective/target. That's what I was saying. Of course you can play any role you want but realistically pirating is the less headache inducing role to take as your targets are plentiful and you don't have to worry about randomness as compared to the likes bounty hunters or playing missions.

 

[Witcherman]

There seems to be a lot of confusion regarding my comments made in my third point. Let me just clarify what I was getting at.

In saying "you're practically forced to play as a pirate" I was referring to the headaches caused by the USS system in this game. In my own experiences it can take an hour to find a specific target or even to find a bunch of pirates for a mission requiring you to kill six of them. For me it took three hours to find three, needless to say I didn't finish that mission on time given the time limit was three hours. These are missions that point me not to anarchy systems but faction controlled systems. When it's taking you three hours to stumble randomly upon your mission objective or target you may as well adopt being a pirate to make cash from every USS you enter or any enemy you encounter. You have a much higher chance of coming across something worthwhile as a pirate than you do as a bounty hunter or mission runner.

It's the fact that it's so unreasonable to come across specific objectives in this game primarily due to USS that it's a complete waste of time and really feels like pirating is what objectives should be across the board. Less headaches, more to make from it, more entertainment and action, less floating around wasting time spending three to five minutes crawling towards an unidentified source signal hoping, desperately, that this next USS is going to contain your mission objective/target. That's what I was saying. Of course you can play any role you want but realistically pirating is the less headache inducing role to take as your targets are plentiful and you don't have to worry about randomness as compared to the likes bounty hunters or playing missions.

Yeah, I totally agree with you on how frustrating it can be to find "pirates". It took me a while to pick up on the fact that if they scan you and say "Bah! No cargo" then they are a pirate. I probably missed out on this because I myself am spending so much time looking at alternate screens because I'm trying to figure out who they are and my stupid main screen doesn't display that information, just the first part of it, but not their affiliation (WHY???). Soooo much bad UI design that it takes months of playing just to figure something out that should have been fairly obvious. Again, bad UI design. (Please consider fixing this)

Once I did figure out what to look for, it's still a shot in the dark to find any. Like you, I've spent WAY too much time looking for a few measly pirates (and don't tell me I'm doing it wrong), it just comes down to everything else that's not working right about this giant, awesome game, the randomness equation is "off" and needs to be modified (like the trading algorithm). Hopefully they will fix it soon. I actually quite like some of the ideas about doing it more like some of the earlier Elite games, those sound more fun than this randomized goose chase.

The worst part of all this is it feels like you're constantly fighting the game just to learn the game, which wouldn't be a bad thing if I was wealthy and didn't have to spend most of my time at work.

All-in-all, I'm definitely enjoying this game and I'm really looking forward to seeing how it evolves.

 

[Marsman]

you're playing it wrong.

I like it when apologists defend broken game mechanics

 

[Tenshi]

How did you get up to 100 Cargo in a Type-6? Can you please post your loadout, I'm really curious.

Here you go.

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-...O7HiKStfo14/w1516-h853-no/Screenshot_0108.bmp

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-...yr8kSR-HWCg/w1516-h853-no/Screenshot_0109.bmp

 

[shrinkshooter]

Right, but that whole three hours thing sounds like it was one single experience, not a repeated one, and even if it were, I haven't seen a single person agree that such a thing is a reasonable length of time or that anyone else runs into such issues (issues meaning people not being able to complete a 3 hour mission in time).

Taking this point specifically: if you're hunting pirates, dropping into USSs and killing the wanted ships (well, the ones not in cargo ships; the ones equipped with cargo scanners are pirates) is all you need to do. Yes, the randomness of the signals can cause things to stretch out a bit. But if you gave me the task to kill three pirate ships in a system, I guarantee I could get it done in less than half an hour, max, unless I got extremely unlucky. I don't know what you did or didn't do, but there's definitely something that doesn't add up in your story. If there aren't any wanted combat ships in a signal source, just take off and try again...going minimum speed in SC will allow you to drop out instantly, and they show up anywhere between 15 seconds to a couple of minutes.

We got what the point of your message was, we weren't simply taking your statement at face value on strict technicalities. We understood that you were telling us nothing but pirating is worth it, and we all tried to explain that you're incorrect.

I challenge you to select another pirate hunting mission and try again. As plenty of others have mentioned in this thread, to which you haven't acknowledged yet, you are absolutely doing something wrong. So for scientific purposes, take another pirate mission, go to the system, sit at minimum speed in supercruise, drop into signals, kill wanted combat ships/wanted ships equipped with cargo scanners/wanted ships who ask you what you're hauling, and tell us how long it takes you. Don't count anything that distracts you like finding a cargo ship with a big bounty or scooping up floating proto tech.

You've made your complaint and you've gotten the responses, so a rational person has to think, after seeing every post in this thread: where is the discrepancy?

I like it when apologists defend broken game mechanics

I like it when someone implies that trading is broken in the same breath that they're implying someone is defending a game to the death.

He IS playing it wrong, and we're trying to explain why and help him along. Thanks for your constructive contribution to the discussion, though.

 

[Starender]

i love this post, my turn:

1: i hate being forced to use Cobra/ASP, they are so OP that nobody can play and progress without hours inside them, the Cobra is to good as a fighter and the ASP is not only the best explorer but the best ship overall
2: i really hate how fighters are crippled to the ground, not only they can't trade, but can't also explore because of they're crap Jump range
3: i really hate that multi purpose ships are either better or equal fast AND strong as fighters, this is totally anormal and render those fighter to the point that they are useless and must be avoided for our sake
4: there is no fighter ships between 150k to 56 millions... this prove that DEVs hate fighters

 

[Quineloe]

Trading requires you to understand to some extent what exactly is going on. If you just buy stuff because it's below galaxy average and try to sell it elsewhere, with zero other thought put into it, you'll fall flat on your face.

First you need to understand the various station types. Let's start simple.

Extraction stations mine raw minerals. They demand machinery to do this, such as "Mineral Extractors".

Refineries refine these minerals. That's why it is always profitable to ferry raw minerals to refinery stations. Refineries need equipment to do this just like Extraction colonies need Mineral Extractors. Refineries then sell "Metals" for export.

Industrial stations demand metals to produce their goods. That's why it's profitable to ferry metals from refineries to industrial stations. Industrial stations then produce Mineral Extractors, you can ferry to Extraction stations.

So basically your Three Way Trip for trading is start at the Extractor, buy minerals. Fly to a refinery, sell minerals, buy metals. Fly to an industry station, sell metals, buy mineral extractors, return to the Extractor station.

Is this the most profitable business you can do? Certainly not, that requires effort to compare prices, current demands and all that. But it will, without a doubt, be profitable every single flight without zero additional thought.