What should Frontier do about this?

[Thespen Tombs]

At the moment once you reach 16/32 tons cargo capacity, trading becomes a good/very good way of making money. Once you get cargo capacity into the 100s, money in the game stops being a concern, you can easily make more than you can spend.

IMHO this is will be bad for the game in the long run, now maybe Frontier have this well in hand and later in the beta the ability to earn mega bucks will end. But maybe not, so what ideas can we come up with that Frontier might like to consider?

Bearing in mind that just decreasing the profit margin will make it impossible to start out trading, the only thing I can think of is decrease the profit margin but increase the number of courier or light cargo missions available at the start.

I'm sure someone must have a better suggestion?

 

[Aleksej]

I think that high profit is now set for testing purposes (a lot of players requested earlier the ability to earn money fast). IMO it will be much harder to earn money in the final release.

 

[Patrick_68000]

IMO it will be much harder to earn money in the final release.

Especially if we start the game with 100 cr

 

[Mars]

My solution would be to make larger ships considerably more vulnerable to piracy.

Smaller ships should mostly be able to run successfully, maybe even fight. But larger ships would struggle to run and face having to lose a cargo hold far more often unless they give up considerable trading space for weapons and shields.

This way you can still trade in large ships, but a % of your profit would have to go on hiring escorts.

This all seems realistic to me too.

 

[baskila]

IMO it will be much harder to earn money in the final release.

It won't solve the problem. It will be more difficult to start but when you get your hands on a decent capacity ship the outcome will be the same as OP described.

 

[Daeron]

Especially if we start the game with 100 cr

It could be worse. In a few expansions we could be demoted to driving/walking a Fork Lift. Like Ripley in "Aliens".

 

[Patrick_68000]

It could be worse. In a few expansions we could be demoted to driving/walking a Fork Lift. Like Ripley in "Aliens".

Or as I said in a previous thread, the dissatisfied could begin with an Interplanetary Shuttle and a bounty on their head

 

[alchemy42]

I think we should wait and see. As this is beta any data (mainly prices) we have to work with may be skewed in order to help us test out scenarios and various ships etc.

Profit margins may not be as great when the real deal lands.

 

[Riedquat]

Well for one,, Michael had already said that ships will be much more expensive in the final stages

 

[baskila]

Well for one,, Michael had already said that ships will be much more expensive in the final stages

This won't solve the problem either. You will just have to grind for longer to buy one. When you do it's back to the problem described by OP.

 

[laz001]

There needs to be a sliding scale of profit.

If you sell a whole lakon9 worth of cargo, currently, every unit is sold for the same amount, leading to huge profits.

However, if the profits drops as you sell more to a station (the station has less demand), then eventually, profit will level out with larger transactions.

See this thread:

http://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=31826

 

[Hellhawk666]

Ship and equipment prices are probably being evaluated right now in this build, and will be considerably higher in the release version. The Hauler & Eagle should probably be a bit more expensive, but not too much or it introduces a very long grind at the start, but the medium sized ships should be much more expensive and the big ships enormously so.

 

[Clifford]

(old post)

 

[Stan Cask]

Thats the thing about capitalism though, the more you have the easier it becomes to make more

 

[Rog]

Why is it a problem?

If you want to explore you will do that, if you want combat you'll want a combat ship etc. Wanna trade and make a bundle? Knock yourself out. Missions for the Feds? Money's not much help.

Not everything should be 'balanced' into a homogenous grey goo.

 

[baskila]

It still just a Beta test.

This is a test. This is only a test.

You keep saying that it's a test like if we didn't know it already.
It is a test but the problem OP pointed out is still valid and will be.
We need solutions - not statements that it's a test as it won't change anything.

 

[el_tel]

The issue is that profit scales linearly with cargo capacity.
One way around this is to set a Normal Market Size (NMS) for each commodity

 

[Clifford]

(old post)

 

[Vikinger]

Remember also that in the final game we are gone be able to own more than one ship.
It will take quite some time to gather them all and pimp them out.
It will also cost a fee for the storage of them.

 

[Jenner]

Personally I don't mind that trading is super powerful as you get more cargo capacity. What concerns me is the viability of the *other* professions in comparison.

As long as they all have a similar level of progression and risk/return ratios that make sense I'll be happy.