What is everyones ideal credits per hour rate?

[Kastor]

A lot of people on this thread are throwing around 50, 100, 200 million a hour. That's nuts to me. I remeber the first time I earned 2 million from a mission that took me the best part of a hour an I thought that was a GOOD deal.

In my opion 10 million a hour should be standard for high risk gameplay, 25 mill if you are really pushing it.

 

[theBreadSultan]

I don't think the issue really is credits/hour. As has been alluded to - the metric of importance should be content/hour

Credit gating makes for meaningful progression early game, but should not really factor in much late game.

There is a strange skew - that many of the ships are ranked by their credit earning potential.

Simply put, a ship should be able to pay for itself, and make profit for upgrades and the next ship.

I see credit farming, the same as any other activity.

Why are we not asking what the maximum kills/hour should be

Or maximum missions/hour is?

The truth is, its not about how long it takes you to get 'x' ship and upgrade it - its what can I do with that ship, what content can I unlock with that ship I couldn't do before.

Given the sparse nature of content in ED, it is a wise move to ensure that the full range of activities available be made available in fairly short order.

Personally I think that energies spent on messing around with credit gain amounts are energies wasted.

It's better to accept that top players are going to be able to grind credits at a faster than normal rate - and focus on ways in which the game can be improved make the game better and enable ship builds to be more unique

Also we need more ships and rovers

 

[Kastor]

While we're here lets talk about the other type of balance, because it's relevent here as well. For all of you saying you should be earning up to 100m/h.

What should we do with all the cheaper ships? The ones that almost never see the light of day as it stands. I'm not holding it against high credit incomes, I'm just saying that if players can hit the big three in a week or two... when are they going to fly anything else? Sure, the FDL for combat maybe, but beyond that the big three have every gameplay style well covered.

If we want to maintain high credit incomes, we need to make small ships more viable, else we are just wasting good content.

 

[goemon]

when are they going to fly anything else?

actually - a quite typical move from those staying with the game longer than needed for the big three plus FC is starting to fly smaller ships "because they can".
what can i say - i hated my first cobra mkIII and couldn't rush it enough to get into an AspE (did one of the very first CGs for a reduced hull price, and took me even more time to outfit it). today i tell everyone that you can enjoy and experience and survive all of the game in a cobra mk III.

 

[Northpin]

I've always considered the previous setup pretty spot on.

Mining as a neutral activity that could yield big credits when done properly
And everything else more or less decent in term of credits generation.
Sure there was Robigo with an average of 80-100m per hour, sure a wing stacking CZ massacre missions that could yield 200 millions per hour.
But Robigo missions is drying out after 1h or so. And wing depends on all its members to give those 200m/h, but they were rather good alternates.

With the previous setup i could level my alt at a slow rate avoiding big credits generators, generally by doing missions

With the current "balance" if they boost all activities to stupid credits, bounties, missions and the rest...
well, bye-bye slow gains...

 

[Siranui]

1.
Maybe 2.
Took me a week of casual play to get a Cobra, two-three more for an Asp, and that 'felt' right.

I'd argue that the sheer number of carriers laying around everywhere is it indicitive of not really being end-game content, no matter what was intended.

 

[Northpin]

I'd argue that the sheer number of carriers laying around everywhere is it indicitive of not really being end-game content, no matter what was intended.

I'd say it is.
The estimates are about 200k-300k active players. After Carrier lauch there were like 12-15k carriers.
Which means that only 5% of the regulars had enough credits to buy one.

5% makes quite an endgame.

yet mining was chastised for ruining the game...
After 18 months of unrestricted mining, only 5% had enough credits to buy a carrier.

 

[Rat Catcher]

But what is a reasonable timeframe?

Well, it took me 6 days to get my 2nd Fleet Carrier... Without mining... It should have been only 3 days, obviously

But I did have the help of my main account & FC to be able to realise it!

 

[goemon]

just leaving this here. note: i'm identifying with calvin:

(okay, another note. the point is, as it is set up by devs, what you experience as a reasonable time(-challenge) is very much about your interest in the game. I'm all for ~10 mio/h earning, but at a guardian site farming guardian blueprints modules the 5th time or so, i wonder why the devs torture me by putting it "behind" a "needlessly" complicated to drive structure. Who's got that kind of time?)

 

[Siranui]

After Carrier lauch there were like 12-15k carriers.
Which means that only 5% of the regulars had enough credits to buy one.
...
After 18 months of unrestricted mining, only 5% had enough credits to buy a carrier.

Are there? Where's that derived from? Anecdotally, I'm kind of bored with tripping over suserations of them absolutely everywhere!

 

[Northpin]

Are there? Where's that derived from? Anecdotally, I'm kind of bored with tripping over suserations of them absolutely everywhere!

Ofc you are.... the bubble has about 20000 systems. Even with 15k carriers you are prone to get into them, especially if you go to popular places which are, i don't know - hundreds of popular places? Even if there are 2 thousands of popular places, 15k carriers are more than enough to clog them

Edit: Inara is currently listing bit over 16k carriers.

 

[Biff Stryker]

I dunno, 20-30 an hour with current prices? I never really considered it before. I was making around 80 an hour lasering painite and as a mostly casual player that was a lot of boring work. With my normal playing time that would have taken me 4-5 months to earn 6 billion which was my goal. I am done with that and back to casual play but I have financed myself into a comfortable position in time for the new expansion.

I do this is real life to an extent too. I will bid on certain jobs that I normally wouldn't take on but sometimes the profit margin is enough to finance another part of the business. i.e. I took on and finished a job that sent me well into what most people would call insane crazy hours for several weeks but came out on the other side able to buy a nice new work truck.

 

[Craith]

200k (harmless) to 20M (elite) for non-optimized activity - double to triple if you go for higher risk activities (AX, pirate activity, core mining in a Haz-RES - ok, the last doesn't really work atm),

(carrier prices are a result of the late monty haul economy, so slightly cheaper carriers, maybe half of current price)

 

[Bigmaec]

But what is a reasonable timeframe?

My opinion:

with optimized gaming (aka you know what you do and already have a specialized ship) -> 1 billion for reactive prismatic Vette / Cutter

=> 10 hours of raw grind for the money, double that for the engineering. 30 hours for an endgame ship.
60 hours for two of them.

Not included are the 200 hours to learn the game and 100 hours to get your first mediums to somewhat high engineering.

This is still WAY beyond what you get from AAA games.

And then you can finally grind for a Carrier or play the game

 

[Drelthar]

52.67432548 squadrillimillibillion

 

[goemon]

52.67342548 squadrillimillibillion

typo, corrected for you.

 

[Bob McBobblehead]

Eleventy seven million credits pa ahwa.

 

[HrafnKolbrandr]

Weird that people even pay attention to their credits in this game after a certain point.

I reached the point long ago where I don't really need them for anything anymore, and I've never used any of the huge moneymaking methods. Honestly, the credit progression still seemed way too fast.

I guess if you're constantly trying new builds the cash comes in handy.

 

[XW_Ziggy]

For me, the cost of endgame, fully-engineered ships like the Corvette or Cutter seem to be about a billion and the rank/rep grinds to reach them should be a long-term goal. I can make half a billion in an evening after work if I want, via deep core mining or passenger missions which makes the purchase cost of the endgame ships nonsensical.

Either the ship prices or the income needs to change, because there's no feeling of progression or accomplishment if you can jump straight to endgame ships on day one.

Assuming the ship prices don't change, my feeling is that you should probably be playing for at least 50 hours to buy an endgame A-rated ship which means that 20M/hour should be seen as the upper limit on any form of credit earning. An Anaconda is, from Li Yong-Rui space, just 125M credits, and even at 20M/hour - that's something that can be still attained on day one, so no, I don't think 20M/hour is unreasonable. Perhaps it should be considerably lower than that even.

The only thing that needs money is Carriers, and they've been designed as money-sinks on purpose. You only buy one if you have money to burn and nothing else to do with the money.

 

[Craith]

Actually, something equivalent to your rebuy value per hour sounds quite fine as a target value.

A bit more for more risky stuff. Anything above 2x rebuy is ridiculously high IMO. And I actually mean rebuy value for a standard ship to use this, you can try to do it in a weaker ship if you want, your payout wouldn't get reduced.