META DISCUSSION Was the Golconda CG good gameplay?

[Disemboweled Ego]

Or was it only good because of the money?

This could use its own discussion, because I think the high profits had potential to create new gameplay or enhance some existing gameplay.

For carrier owners it was mostly business as usual, except it was much more valuable to organize with others to load/unload the carriers for a faster turnaround.

Does this part of carriers actually get enough play without these kinds of CGs? I get a feeling most don't really participate in it outside of mining commodities.

Could it have been even better? Say if carriers were easier to load from large pads, but could only be offloaded for the CG at a station with medium pads (Like Rackhams Peak works). This would hopefully make cooperating to unload a carrier even more valuable/required. Also slowing it down and allowing more people to participate while spreading out the profits. On top of all that it'd also motivate some different ship use.

Near the end of the CG I saw carriers drained of 12k+ tons of tritium before I could make a 7-8min trip to the station and back to the carrier.

Even the day before the end finding stock or hunting for a good deal was kind of it's own minigame. That part of it heavily depends on external tools or communication though and would be significantly better in-game if we had some quality of life features related to carriers on the system map/nav panel such as hiding un-dockable carriers.

Normally the trade enviorment is fairly static and there's a reliable optimal answer for what you should trade. You can almost always expect stations nearest to the CG to get drained of the profitable stuff pretty quick though.

But with this many carriers around things start changing so quickly it becomes an entirely different thing adding unique factors to consider beyond price that usually wouldn't come up.

• Are there better deals?
• Are there deals that are better just because they're a shorter trip?
• Will there still be stock by the time I get there?
• Should start and commit to a trip to buy something now or wait 30s in hopes a better(or less risky to be a bust) deal pops up?

Usually only the first 2 things in that list come up and the remaining two kinda require intuiting things instead of just analyzing raw data.

Is this emergent gameplay? Glimpses of what a more player run economy could look like? Is it actually fun or just stressful multitasking or gambling compared to straightforward A-B space trucking?

 

[goemon]

Glimpses of what a more player run economy could look like?

no, because all profit came from the CG station, and that was massive. imagine the same situation with somebody having to pay from it out of his own pocket, where ones gains are the others loss, where a deal is more complicated than "will i make a billion in 45 minutes or 1 billion in 50 minutes". not the same thing.

but yeah - gameplay was good. almost as good as running a BGS operation together.

 

[shingouzi]

This was awesome. Lots of people, easy income, my reward was to buy a carrier I would probably never have been willing to grind for otherwise. First CG ever that I participated in.

At one point one carrier owner mentioned in the system chat if anyone and enough people are interested he will take his carrier for a tritium loading spot close to a station and everyone will make huge profits too. Around ten complete strangers arrived, we all went to open in Odyssey, we were all hanging out on the carrier seating area, noting that chatting while seated doesn't work. Then we were hauling tritium, everyone in open, to the carrier. Didn't require too many trips to fill it with teamwork, constantly chatting around. Even mentioning how nice it was and how nobody tried to kill anyone. It was probably the best experience this game can ever offer, it was really nice. Friends were added afterwards from this temporary carrier crew, then during the trip back we went into solo again for obvious reasons.

Then at one point a bit later I was flying in open to the CG station arriving from a longer trip. Cheap Vulture without cargo or usable weapons, bought just for longer jump range instead of using T9. Someone interdicted me and just killed me without me even shooting back. Why? I don't know. No reason. Ended up faster to the CG station that way though, but think this is exactly why we can't have nice things. Back to solo after that experience again.

Near the end finding a carrier to unload, or load for that matter was quite hard. When you got a hint where one might be, it didn't help finding it that parked carriers were pretty much clogging the maps.

 

[aRJay]

Or was it only good because of the money?

No I don't think it was just down to the money though it certainly boosted some aspects of the CG.

This could use its own discussion, because I think the high profits had potential to create new gameplay or enhance some existing gameplay.

For carrier owners it was mostly business as usual, except it was much more valuable to organize with others to load/unload the carriers for a faster turnaround.

Does this part of carriers actually get enough play without these kinds of CGs? I get a feeling most don't really participate in it outside of mining commodities.

Could it have been even better? Say if carriers were easier to load from large pads, but could only be offloaded for the CG at a station with medium pads (Like Rackhams Peak works). This would hopefully make cooperating to unload a carrier even more valuable/required. Also slowing it down and allowing more people to participate while spreading out the profits. On top of all that it'd also motivate some different ship use.

Near the end of the CG I saw carriers drained of 12k+ tons of tritium before I could make a 7-8min trip to the station and back to the carrier.

I have seen that sort of draining happen to carriers at a previous CG, arrive in a fully loaded carrier do a single jump and return in my T9 to find that the locusts had stripped the carrier almost bare and the owner preparing to do the long jump back for us to load him again. Actually thinking about it it was two carriers working together.

Even the day before the end finding stock or hunting for a good deal was kind of it's own minigame. That part of it heavily depends on external tools or communication though and would be significantly better in-game if we had some quality of life features related to carriers on the system map/nav panel such as hiding un-dockable carriers.

Normally the trade enviorment is fairly static and there's a reliable optimal answer for what you should trade. You can almost always expect stations nearest to the CG to get drained of the profitable stuff pretty quick though.

But with this many carriers around things start changing so quickly it becomes an entirely different thing adding unique factors to consider beyond price that usually wouldn't come up.

• Are there better deals?
• Are there deals that are better just because they're a shorter trip?
• Will there still be stock by the time I get there?
• Should start and commit to a trip to buy something now or wait 30s in hopes a better(or less risky to be a bust) deal pops up?

Usually only the first 2 things in that list come up and the remaining two kinda require intuiting things instead of just analyzing raw data.

To be honest those are fairly standard concerns at a hauling CG from years before carriers, the uncertainty being that not everyone supplies data to the external tools, some even used to turn it off for a CG in the hope of preserving a good source for themselves. Carriers just increase the search volume.

Is this emergent gameplay? Glimpses of what a more player run economy could look like? Is it actually fun or just stressful multitasking or gambling compared to straightforward A-B space trucking?

This was awesome. Lots of people, easy income, my reward was to buy a carrier I would probably never have been willing to grind for otherwise. First CG ever that I participated in.

CGs are in my view fun and addictive to the point of interfering with other aspects of your gameplay.

At one point one carrier owner mentioned in the system chat if anyone and enough people are interested he will take his carrier for a tritium loading spot close to a station and everyone will make huge profits too. Around ten complete strangers arrived, we all went to open in Odyssey, we were all hanging out on the carrier seating area, noting that chatting while seated doesn't work. Then we were hauling tritium, everyone in open, to the carrier. Didn't require too many trips to fill it with teamwork, constantly chatting around. Even mentioning how nice it was and how nobody tried to kill anyone. It was probably the best experience this game can ever offer, it was really nice. Friends were added afterwards from this temporary carrier crew, then during the trip back we went into solo again for obvious reasons.

As a non carrier owner I have done this before back in the early days of carriers in a CG setting up stations in the Coalsack region. The carrier was emptied in the time it took me to do one unload run it had taken us several runs each to load it there are locusts out there.

Then at one point a bit later I was flying in open to the CG station arriving from a longer trip. Cheap Vulture without cargo or usable weapons, bought just for longer jump range instead of using T9. Someone interdicted me and just killed me without me even shooting back. Why? I don't know. No reason. Ended up faster to the CG station that way though, but think this is exactly why we can't have nice things. Back to solo after that experience again.

I use various Private Groups all the comradeship of Open without the random acts of blowing ships up because there is a vowel in the month.

Near the end finding a carrier to unload, or load for that matter was quite hard. When you got a hint where one might be, it didn't help finding it that parked carriers were pretty much clogging the maps.

That is one of the major issues with carriers, another one caused by the fact that a huge number had descended on the area was that they couldn't get a time slot to jump out for hours.

 

[maehara]

It was the same 'gameplay' as every other hauling CG. Fetch, carry, deliver, repeat ad infinitum / ad nauseum. With a side of organising carrier loads / unloads & trying to find a parking spot.

If the greater rewards made that more engaging / palatable for people who otherwise wouldn't have bothered, or gave them enough money to do things they otherwise wouldn't, then more power to 'em. But let's not try and pretend the "gameplay" was anything different from the usual.

(Didn't participate myself; didn't need the credits.)

 

[GraphiteGB]

Picking a super high supply item with high price breaks their cargo CG system...
This is why it ended so early, tritium is in high supply, it did not even need FC use as the Cutters were still able to collect full cargo holds with out even needing a fuel scoop or extra Fuel tank or GFSD booster...

This is not the norm... high price item is normally chosen to have lower supplies so has higher price and you end up doing 200-240Ly runs if you want the high price item buy the end of the CG... Tritium was still in high supply just 120ly from CG system when it ended...

Tritium is a high supply item on stations its why people Mine other items then buy trituim for their FC, with the profits from mining players by tritium as it in so high in supply on stations its quicker to buy than mine it...

This was not the First Tritium CG it just had a higher value than the last one...
They did learn from last time and made it trade, not mining, after the last tritium CG where moaners were out in force who wanted to trade it instead of mining and still count... They got there CG...

Its not new gameplay as it was another rerun of old CGs...

 

[Old Duck]

Or was it only good because of the money?

I normally don't do hauling CGs, but when I got word of the payout, I signed up.

And yet, I still didn't do any hauling because while the credits were so tempting, because it just didn't tempt me enough.

The one thing that did tempt me was the player economy that arose during the CG, where carrier owners were offering really good rates for relatively easy loading and unloading. But timing was an issue there, since a carrier couldn't stay in a system too long before supply ran dry, so I never was able to take advantage of the offers.

Now here's the rub - I've been playing the bounty hunting CG, which is my normal preferred gameplay, and I just noticed the payouts. 800,000 credits for the top 50%.... In comparison to the hauling CG (which granted, the payouts weren't the reward but rather the sale of cargo), I'm thinking to myself "Why am I doing this?"

I've also been disheartened with how empty the CG system is now compared to when this cargo CG was running. I encountered 11 CMDRs in about two hours (Horizons). During the cargo hauling CG, I'm pretty sure I was encountering 11+ CMDRs in two minutes, as the station was full of them. So being in a busy system, watching CMDRs do their thing, that was good gameplay, as it's much more immersive than NPC traffic (bad networking notwithstanding).

 

[Jack Winter]

According to EDDN data (commanders that supply EDDN data), there are 3-4 times as many commanders in EDO as in EDH.. If you ran EDO you might have encountered 40 commanders instead..

 

[Maur]

The problems that I had with the CG wasn't the supply issue or the trucking... it was the bugs.

The autodock on a cutter was slower than manual docking, since it doesn't correct fast enough, allowing the cutter to overshoot due to its drift. I ended up using my autodock as assistance, rather than letting it do the whole job.

Secondly, and more importantly, in Open, there were NPC ships stuck in the mail slot, and the station wasn't blowing them up to clear the slot. With other players always in the instance, the bugged NPC in the slot caused other NPCs to queue up behind it, causing other obstructions in the station. With fewer players, the instance would be dropped once the last player left, and the bugged NPCs would be dropped with it.

If we have player ships destroyed for blocking the pads or the mail slot, then destroying bugged NPCs in the station for blocking the pads or the mail slot would be a good way to clear the problem, not just letting them sit in the slot for an hour.

Because of that bug, I ended up going to Solo, and I'm usually an Open-only player.

 

[metatheurgist]

It was not good gameplay at all. FD basically trashed the credibility of it's game, again.

Something that usually has to be mined is suddenly available in massive quantities everywhere (yes I am aware it's sometimes available for sale).

Remember when they insisted the prestige trade ranks were "content"? So insistent they were absolutely against people that had already earned billions legitimately getting those ranks because they didn't want to deny them "the content". I guess there was a lot of "content" this week.

I'd be surprised but this is par for the course for ED with it's mickey mouse BGS and systems controlled by small groups while the superpowers twiddle their thumbs.

There is zero internal consistency with the game and it's not a good thing for it at all.

 

[Ronzer]

I've also been disheartened with how empty the CG system is now compared to when this cargo CG was running. I encountered 11 CMDRs in about two hours (Horizons). During the cargo hauling CG, I'm pretty sure I was encountering 11+ CMDRs in two minutes, as the station was full of them. So being in a busy system, watching CMDRs do their thing, that was good gameplay, as it's much more immersive than NPC traffic (bad networking notwithstanding).

I think this is the result of how massive the galaxy is, but obviously there are ways to gather more folks together and at the same time make use of the FC's. It seems to me ED doesn't make social things like chatting or grouping or anything easy yet, but hopefully it's becoming more clear that those things really can elevate whatever you do.
I haven't had time to do a run for the CG yet, but I was standing in the concourse, afk the other night, and when I came back, saw many folks had given me an O7. One of the perks from Odyssey!...nudge nudge wink wink.

 

[St0rmFury]

Neither good or bad gameplay. It's just another trading/hauling cg like any other.

Having said that, it did spur a few dormant players in my squadron to take part and I noticed a few long lost players in my friend list became active for a while.

 

[Jack Winter]

If nothing else it did make a lot of people happy.

 

[Danieros]

I love A -> B trading so whenever there's a good trade opportunity like this I'm in. Carriers can create an A -> B -> C more stable route but unless it's a silly long SC route, they aren't a time gain. Even more in a CG since you won't be able to reliably park the FC near the station.

 

[Disemboweled Ego]

I've also been disheartened with how empty the CG system is now compared to when this cargo CG was running. I encountered 11 CMDRs in about two hours (Horizons). During the cargo hauling CG, I'm pretty sure I was encountering 11+ CMDRs in two minutes, as the station was full of them. So being in a busy system, watching CMDRs do their thing, that was good gameplay, as it's much more immersive than NPC traffic (bad networking notwithstanding).

I remember checking the traffic report on https://inara.cz/galaxy/ right after the CG ended and it said 46.15% of commanders* were in Upaniklis in the past 24h - the rest of that list was Shinrarta Dezhra and the Col 285 Sector systems nearby. Even steamcharts is showing a very slight uptick already - though update 12 might overshadow that soon.

* who were on inara and updated their profile

According to EDDN data (commanders that supply EDDN data), there are 3-4 times as many commanders in EDO as in EDH.. If you ran EDO you might have encountered 40 commanders instead..

Is this because carrier movement often causes blue tunnels in Horizons? I did some hauling in Horizons at the very end of the CG and it seemed to work on for me, but I might have gotten lucky.

 

[Disemboweled Ego]

I actually forgot to mention the "don't sign up for the CG so it lasts longer" part in my original post which is also an interesting organic twist -- making the CG truly more cooperative than competitive. Unfortunatley I was going for the top 10 this time and didn't want to abandon the CG mission because of that, which actually makes me feel kinda bad about it.

 

[Rebel Yell]

Hauled 5k tons with one of my alts, but lost 20 or so ships doing it as I had to make a lot of trips (my fast Clipper only loads 104t, so I've lost just above 2k tons of cargo...) but overall balance for the gameplay, the fun and the challenge (subtracting the rebuys LOL) was pretty much postive.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Something that usually has to be mined is suddenly available in massive quantities everywhere (yes I am aware it's sometimes available for sale).

Tritium has always been available in massive (hundreds of millions of tonnes) quantities throughout the bubble - there was no special boost to its supply for the CG.

 

[aRJay]

It was not good gameplay at all. FD basically trashed the credibility of it's game, again.

Something that usually has to be mined is suddenly available in massive quantities everywhere (yes I am aware it's sometimes available for sale).

…

My impression from some of the carrier owners I know whose posts I read is the normal way to get Tritium is to mine Platinum then sell that and buy the Tritium with the proceeds as Platinum sells at a good price and is reasonably quick to mine while Tritium mining is a very slow process.

 

[Martind Forlon]

I liked it, it was fun! I've participated on this one with my son, was using my FC, and I've teached/showed to him few things how it works in ED during our trucking runs. He had good use for his cargo T7 boat and got few hundreds of millions credits. I've used this as occassion to finally buy more tritium for my FC and in the same time little increase assets. There was no need to hurry, payments were really nice for just very relaxed play without any need to "grind" endless runs.