Okay. I understand that the developers are working busily to update the mod to the next version, but why is the everything having to do with making money disappearing?
RP trade routes that provide profit are nigh impossible to find these days. Only a handful of Smuggling routes exist, and they too are becoming less profitable.
I'm going to point out the only commodities I know of that have a decent credits per second if you "Powertrade" them.
Slaves.
Cardamine.
Blood Diamonds.
Counterfeit Software.
Artifacts.
Synth Paste
Lane Parts (debatable.)*
Nuclear Devices (debatable.)**
Military Vehicles***
Diamonds****
Gallic goods*****
Deuterium
Platinum
Niobium
Quantum Multiplexors
*: Takes up multiple cargo slots, divides profit
**: Most pirates will either demand a huge sum, or just take them from you, divides profit due to multiple slots
***: With the current status of Sirius, you will most likely be attacked by a House Military, since they may not believe you're supporting them
****: Best route is illegal, thanks to the Lib/Rh war. Also pirated heavily.
*****: Punishable by death if seen carrying them and not a Gallic faction. Extremely long travel time.
Now what I see is a lot of smuggling. Way too much smuggling. But I also see very little profit, because on all of these routes, the trips are no less than 10 minutes, and up to 40, the average being about 25.
Not only that, mining has become non-existent. Any mineable field that made more than 7 million an hour has been completely eliminated, thus leaving you to mine very low yield fields, and travel 15+ minutes to drop off your load. On top of that, there isn't even a single mineable field in Liberty for factions like DSE.
My main problem is the stigma that comes with power traders. Everyone claims that a power trader is only out to get a capital ship, and we just mock them and kill them. The reality is, we're trying to make as much money as possible in little time so we don't have to spend more time trading than roleplaying characters we actually WANT to spend time on. We do not like doing the same routes over and over again, and we do not like sitting around doing nothing while we trade.
Yes, some of you say bring a book or watch some TV, but I don't have a TV near my PC, and I've already read the few books I have been able to purchase. Trading is utterly boring, and only some people are capable of finding entertainment while doing so.
We love the dev teams very much, but the money making is becoming unbearable.
<strike>Old members who have gathered billions and billions of credits in ships, armor, and cash before 4.85's economy update, you don't need to post here. Please.</strike>
Dev team, newer, less fortunate players, comments?
EDIT: To wave off some of the confusion I may inflict: There's few routes to actually make decent profit in comparison to time for smuggling. But there are too many commodities that are considered illegal in general.
I wasn't around for the economy before September '09. But from what I've experienced in the economical downfall in Sirius since then, I'd say we need a redo here.
When I came here, it was wonderful. A quick trade run around Liberty would give you six or seven million credits in a 2k transport. Mining scrap in one with a few friends and dropping it off at Pittsburgh made good money. The game was fun because you didn't have to spend hours to make enough for a SNAC.
Well, when Boss and I discovered the profitable Niobium Ore from Tau-37 to New Berlin route, we hit the jackpot. We were at about 70 million a run in a 4.3k, where one run of mining and transporting took about 45 minutes. That's a little over two hours for enough money to get a light cruiser and outfit it with guns and a UAU8. We were making metric fraktons of money. It was awesome.
But when the mining mod came out, a lot changed. It became harder to keep up that 100-mil-an-hour run, and it slowly degraded to 50 mil an hour. That's not right. We lost half our expected profit in two days. The admins, in effect, ripped us off. How pleasant. The admins had taken not only our money, but one of our favourite group activities, and utterly destroyed half of it.
Now, as an aside, this wasn't 50 mill an hour for each of us. This was in total, with about 4 or 5 guys mining and transporting. So we were down to each receiving about 10 million credits for an hour of long, hard work. Not very profitable, but more fun than powertrading.
So we lived (slowly) off it. We made a living in Disco off of this at the beginning of the Niobium Ore runs, so we kept on doing it. It was no more than a week before the mining mod was the biggest ****up that, to this day, I have EVER seen in my time on Disco. I mean it; in the past six months, this has been the biggest economy disaster on disco I've seen. I'm pretty sure there have been more economical deaths before this, but this one was pretty freakin' bad.
We were down to 25 mill/hour in total and it kept going down. Eventually it was a combination of people going to pirating and trading because it simply wasn't profitable to mine anymore. It sucked big-time.
Now, you can't get 25 mill/hour in a group of three mining Niobium Ore. Here's why:
The original Niobium Ore drops were 15-30 a shot for about three out of five shots. Pretty decent. Now, we get about 1-10 with proper ID/IFF/ship/guns every three or four shots. Comparison of drop rates: 6:10 original, to a max of 3:10 now.
Original Niobium ore prices at New Berlin were over 16k per unit of ore. I think it was closer to 17k. Now, the price is just over 10k. That's a 7k profit loss per unit over a month of economy "retuning".
I don't feel like crunching the numbers, but it's probably going to be freakin' similar to the (over 75 mill/hour) profit loss we experienced over less than one month. We never exploited any bugs or anything. We just played the way the economy worked.
guys you have no idea what a complex and overwhelming web this damn economy is. And right now there is only one person planing it with a bunch of helpers. all of whom have a real life to attend to.
So what I suggest is this:
A) You have patience or
B) You make constructive route proposals with concrete numbers and locations AND try double check if you don't accidentally create some uber exploitable route while doing so
remember that before the new economy was introduced there were only the diamond and the beryllium run. things have improved and they will go on improving either way.
Edit: Also, atm you get 30-40 mil an hour for standard trade routes. I think that's more than sufficient, considering that it buys you any fighter or gunboat.
' Wrote:Old members who have gathered billions and billions of credits in ships, armor, and cash before 4.85's economy update, you don't need to post here. Please.
Seriously, stfu about how much money you have. We don't care. You didn't have to make it under this regime.
[font=Courier New]AND THIS:
It should additionally be required to make the economy developers trade for 150 million credits with each commodity revision. I am thoroughly convinced that this would lead to a satisfactory economy for those of us with lives to live.
EDIT:
Also, Cawdor, do not tell me to be patient.
I hate to say things like this, because it's immediately doubtable and I really hate saying anything about myself, but I am probably one of the most patient people on this server. I have flown a barge. Through the badlands. While sipping tea. Without going red. I also have had to deal with the mining situation in Dublin.
' Wrote:Edit: Also, atm you get 30-40 mil an hour for standard trade routes. I think that's more than sufficient, considering that it buys you any fighter or gunboat.
Yes. But I can barely stand trading for more than 30 minutes now. Why? Not because I'm lazy or impatient, because I've done the route so many times, it has become a chore to do it.
' Wrote:Yes. But I can barely stand trading for more than 30 minutes now. Why? Not because I'm lazy or impatient, because I've done the route so many times, it has become a chore to do it.
Exactly. Re-iterating on what we've all said many times, trading is a full-time job of its own. We don't have time to spend trading for boring hours to get a few dozen million credits to make a few ships just a little more shiny so we can (RP or PvP; choose one) better. Not to mention the credits we lose when FLHook screws us over, but that's not what we're here about.
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