So people say Wing missions can be exploited, well I think yes they have some exploitable mechanics.
But no, they are NOT overpaid at all.
In fact many Wing missions if you do them solo are not even matching the usually meds to outbreak System profits.
In most cases many commodities have a abyssimal profit/ton reward if you consider Outbreak delivery as alternate option.
What DOES make the Wing missions NOT proficient is:
when there are like 500t to be traded for a 3k reward/ton. in that case both or multiple players can simply parallely trade their own 500t (if their ship can handle it on one trip) and even make more due to above 4k,8/t profits and the shared trade reward within a wing.
What DOES makes Wing missions profitable: when you need more than one trip for the mission and you involve further commanders. (paralleling the haul)
When the mission is about 1200 Units each at 3k/profit, and 2 commanders, then suddenly one trip turns out to be 6k/t profit reward for only having to do one trip instead of 2x this is simply because they get 2x the reward/tonnage by halfing the needed trips.
However, if 4 Commanders do a 1200units trip with each a ship possible to haul 600t, it IS HARDLY WORTH IT
each of them would get 3.600.000 credits. so a total of 14,4M for hauling
why is this? Well, if all of them do the trip they will simply have less than "soloing" meds. because they all could haul 600t at 4,8k profit, thats 2,88M per commander, + 3x5% for shared trading of 13.248.000 crdits in total for regular med trading.
As you can see, suddenly being 4 poeple hardly competes (but slightly does) with regular Outbreak trade profits.
And AT THIS POINT I have not spoken about the commodities where wing trading grants even less than 3k/ton in profit.
Now what is it that truly makes Wing missions proficient?
Well it is getting very proficient when the parallel delivery utilises the cargo to a high degree and heavily reduces the trips for everyone. Simply because the cargo/trip is doubled/trippled. But this requires Missions where everyone has a rather equal and full cargo. Otherwise single point to point trading within the current games possibilities simply exceeds the Wing missions possibilities. The $ commander example above nicely shows what happens if the full cargo cannot be reached yet 4 people do stuff parallel, the costs of opportunaty on those lost other cargo space just weight too heavy here.
What does this mean? well it means that if we consider using Anacondas, Cutters and T9's for Wing trading and making it proficient for them, we need A LOT higher profit/t missions so that low value commodities are worth to even be considered. And we need a LOT higher hauling counts of at least 3.000 Units and above so that the cargo space is sufficiently utilised. With strange hauling values of 1400 and 1600 there is always that one or other trip with half an empty cargo run sooner or later (or you fill it and regulary sell the commodity, or hope for anther mission of the same cargo to appear, but this isn't something to count for the cargo wing mission itself)
otherwise these Wing missions only get edgecase usability when it comes to profits. And even worse for small cargo ships they are even less appealing because they either live by the charity of someone with a big cargo in their haul or never finish them or better do the regular Outbreak trading. Further a single large cargo Wing mate would simply make more money by regular Outbreak trading as well.
The exploits?
they start to happen because one can hop into the missions without contributing getting the full hauls payout. But this is simply an issue with how you FD, designed the participation related reward in the Wing missions.
Wing missions should not be based on "finish" Mission trigger. Wing missions should be based on a high payout/ton delivered participation. In that case one gets rewarded by the participation of the "while he is around" involvment and not the "hop in in the last minute".
Now lets improve this entire System
So basically when a wingmember grabs commodities for the mission, everyone in the Wing at this moment gets a "stakeholder" marker on this commodity. If this commodity is delivered, they then get a reward "voucher" for those delivered tons that have a stakeholder marker. At the end of the mission everyone gets his vouchers paid out. The payout is a % based on the total needed commodities to be delivered divided by the vouchers he has on the delivered commodities.
And this has multiple exploit and abuse preventing features:
The vouchers stay on the pilot even if he leaves the wing/game. So no kicking of people for no rewards is going to happen. As once a voucher is claimed it stays.
One cannot even kick someone before delivering the "stakeholder marked" commodity, because it still turns into a voucher.
Inviting someone else for "quick money exploits" is also not going to happen because if he has no "stakeholder" marker he will not get vouchers, and without vouchers no payout. So this prevents the current most problematic exploit: the pilot hopping in the last second when another pilot delivers 20 Wing missions for hundreds of millions in a few minutes.
The best part about this system is, no one needs to worry about fully participating in those missions because someone who helped staying in the wing for only 40% of the mission will still get his 40% payout. And since the invested profit/tonne will be high by the parallel delivery system his payout will relative to the tonnes delivered be high as well. But he not necessarily needs to participate the whole Wing mission or worry about getting kicked. Payout will stay good, for what he participated and thats what the point is, proper payment for the effort done.
In fact this leads to a whole new "mini community generated mission" type where basically you can make 20.000 Unit missions appear on the boards and wings can form to work on then. Then everyone gets a good payout without exploitability when this missions ends based on his participation. Such missions could even last 5 days. And then they simply end and payouts get handed out on the contributed %.
Or finally do something cool and integrate it much deeper into the whole game.
In fact these kind of mini-community goal like wing missions could be triggered to handle STATES. They would stop being Wing mission, yet act like Wing missions due to the voucher System and therefore make them a lot more appealing of done in a Wing for maximised profit.
If a System Enters famine/boom etc, this kind of mission will spawn. The Units to be hauled may be based on the systems population.
So a System of 10billion people under starvation may trigger a whopping 10.000.000 Units food hauling mission. And the famine state ends after X time, or earlier when the entire Hauling amount has been done.
A smaller System like only 10.000.000 people may only trigger a 10.000 units of food hauling mission to end the famine.
This could be used for so many other states, like War with weapons and meds, Outbreaks with meds, boom states wiht various industry related commodities to export. . . .
At least such a implemention would make the universe feel more of a while interactive thing where more conditions are related to events and also affect events. Atm I can get loads and loads of food and weapon related mass cargo missions and even if everyone has 10 weapons already in the system it seems not to affect anything, or worse in famine even if everyone sits on 1ton of food, they are still starving. But you can simply with such implemention make the universe feel so much more as a whle and giving people more purpose than their own wallet to do these missions. Further this directly encourages people to play together, while evertyhing rewards the effort they came for AND the exploits are gone.
but please do not nerf the payout, because the payout isn't high at all, it is in many lower value commodities cases even not worth it compared with existign tasks.
But no, they are NOT overpaid at all.
In fact many Wing missions if you do them solo are not even matching the usually meds to outbreak System profits.
In most cases many commodities have a abyssimal profit/ton reward if you consider Outbreak delivery as alternate option.
What DOES make the Wing missions NOT proficient is:
when there are like 500t to be traded for a 3k reward/ton. in that case both or multiple players can simply parallely trade their own 500t (if their ship can handle it on one trip) and even make more due to above 4k,8/t profits and the shared trade reward within a wing.
What DOES makes Wing missions profitable: when you need more than one trip for the mission and you involve further commanders. (paralleling the haul)
When the mission is about 1200 Units each at 3k/profit, and 2 commanders, then suddenly one trip turns out to be 6k/t profit reward for only having to do one trip instead of 2x this is simply because they get 2x the reward/tonnage by halfing the needed trips.
However, if 4 Commanders do a 1200units trip with each a ship possible to haul 600t, it IS HARDLY WORTH IT
each of them would get 3.600.000 credits. so a total of 14,4M for hauling
why is this? Well, if all of them do the trip they will simply have less than "soloing" meds. because they all could haul 600t at 4,8k profit, thats 2,88M per commander, + 3x5% for shared trading of 13.248.000 crdits in total for regular med trading.
As you can see, suddenly being 4 poeple hardly competes (but slightly does) with regular Outbreak trade profits.
And AT THIS POINT I have not spoken about the commodities where wing trading grants even less than 3k/ton in profit.
Now what is it that truly makes Wing missions proficient?
Well it is getting very proficient when the parallel delivery utilises the cargo to a high degree and heavily reduces the trips for everyone. Simply because the cargo/trip is doubled/trippled. But this requires Missions where everyone has a rather equal and full cargo. Otherwise single point to point trading within the current games possibilities simply exceeds the Wing missions possibilities. The $ commander example above nicely shows what happens if the full cargo cannot be reached yet 4 people do stuff parallel, the costs of opportunaty on those lost other cargo space just weight too heavy here.
What does this mean? well it means that if we consider using Anacondas, Cutters and T9's for Wing trading and making it proficient for them, we need A LOT higher profit/t missions so that low value commodities are worth to even be considered. And we need a LOT higher hauling counts of at least 3.000 Units and above so that the cargo space is sufficiently utilised. With strange hauling values of 1400 and 1600 there is always that one or other trip with half an empty cargo run sooner or later (or you fill it and regulary sell the commodity, or hope for anther mission of the same cargo to appear, but this isn't something to count for the cargo wing mission itself)
otherwise these Wing missions only get edgecase usability when it comes to profits. And even worse for small cargo ships they are even less appealing because they either live by the charity of someone with a big cargo in their haul or never finish them or better do the regular Outbreak trading. Further a single large cargo Wing mate would simply make more money by regular Outbreak trading as well.
The exploits?
they start to happen because one can hop into the missions without contributing getting the full hauls payout. But this is simply an issue with how you FD, designed the participation related reward in the Wing missions.
Wing missions should not be based on "finish" Mission trigger. Wing missions should be based on a high payout/ton delivered participation. In that case one gets rewarded by the participation of the "while he is around" involvment and not the "hop in in the last minute".
Now lets improve this entire System
So basically when a wingmember grabs commodities for the mission, everyone in the Wing at this moment gets a "stakeholder" marker on this commodity. If this commodity is delivered, they then get a reward "voucher" for those delivered tons that have a stakeholder marker. At the end of the mission everyone gets his vouchers paid out. The payout is a % based on the total needed commodities to be delivered divided by the vouchers he has on the delivered commodities.
And this has multiple exploit and abuse preventing features:
The vouchers stay on the pilot even if he leaves the wing/game. So no kicking of people for no rewards is going to happen. As once a voucher is claimed it stays.
One cannot even kick someone before delivering the "stakeholder marked" commodity, because it still turns into a voucher.
Inviting someone else for "quick money exploits" is also not going to happen because if he has no "stakeholder" marker he will not get vouchers, and without vouchers no payout. So this prevents the current most problematic exploit: the pilot hopping in the last second when another pilot delivers 20 Wing missions for hundreds of millions in a few minutes.
The best part about this system is, no one needs to worry about fully participating in those missions because someone who helped staying in the wing for only 40% of the mission will still get his 40% payout. And since the invested profit/tonne will be high by the parallel delivery system his payout will relative to the tonnes delivered be high as well. But he not necessarily needs to participate the whole Wing mission or worry about getting kicked. Payout will stay good, for what he participated and thats what the point is, proper payment for the effort done.
In fact this leads to a whole new "mini community generated mission" type where basically you can make 20.000 Unit missions appear on the boards and wings can form to work on then. Then everyone gets a good payout without exploitability when this missions ends based on his participation. Such missions could even last 5 days. And then they simply end and payouts get handed out on the contributed %.
Or finally do something cool and integrate it much deeper into the whole game.
In fact these kind of mini-community goal like wing missions could be triggered to handle STATES. They would stop being Wing mission, yet act like Wing missions due to the voucher System and therefore make them a lot more appealing of done in a Wing for maximised profit.
If a System Enters famine/boom etc, this kind of mission will spawn. The Units to be hauled may be based on the systems population.
So a System of 10billion people under starvation may trigger a whopping 10.000.000 Units food hauling mission. And the famine state ends after X time, or earlier when the entire Hauling amount has been done.
A smaller System like only 10.000.000 people may only trigger a 10.000 units of food hauling mission to end the famine.
This could be used for so many other states, like War with weapons and meds, Outbreaks with meds, boom states wiht various industry related commodities to export. . . .
At least such a implemention would make the universe feel more of a while interactive thing where more conditions are related to events and also affect events. Atm I can get loads and loads of food and weapon related mass cargo missions and even if everyone has 10 weapons already in the system it seems not to affect anything, or worse in famine even if everyone sits on 1ton of food, they are still starving. But you can simply with such implemention make the universe feel so much more as a whle and giving people more purpose than their own wallet to do these missions. Further this directly encourages people to play together, while evertyhing rewards the effort they came for AND the exploits are gone.
but please do not nerf the payout, because the payout isn't high at all, it is in many lower value commodities cases even not worth it compared with existign tasks.
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