Really, what we need next are trading missions. Something like the cargo missions from Elite: Dangerous. Have ships deliver cargo from one base to another several system over for extra profit, with the cargo selling for a lot of money at unlawful bases if intercepted.
I would say I am the number one world authority on Indie money making at the moment.
I made some 3+bill solo trading. Then deleted all my characters and quit, because it was just too frustrating an indie.
I came back BECAUSE of missions allow you to log, have fun, log various ships and make money, and team up with players at no effort.
And again regrinded from sunburst power trading and doing missions. I like caps so I needed a lot of money. So I powertraded a LOT and I flew a lot of missions on 10 caps across all sorts of regions.
And since Disco was my quarantine outlet I've done that all in last couple months
Trading now as indie
- Routes are too long, you meet people less.
- The only very reliable ones with PoBs always stocked with waypoints lead through bugged waypoints and bugged gates (Scrap+Mill.Salvage)
=> Trading is pretty much just an rp instrument right now e.g. See here
Missions Cruiser missions are on par with trading now, and even on maxxed out heavy BS you die to high level cruisers from time to time. And need some skill to farm fast without dying and end up at 0 bars many times if you max profit to the edge. People complain about caps being bumped? Well that's what makes cruiser missions perfectly balanced now $/hr and effort wise and I would take them as an example of what works
Gunboat missions Have NO RISK of dying to on caps. Only skill is how fast you are at killing them, good at turret view and adding and hitting with prims and heavies along with switching to secondaries. There are also factions that only drop gunboats even at 4 million level 39 missions, and they are the most profitable missions in the game now by quite some margin.
Non-nomad BCR and Battleship missions Have a LARGE risk of dying solo, take a long time if you kite or use torpedo loadouts, and generally are bad money to effort solo. Except for nomad ones as you can sell what they drop for more money - That's why Delta is such a shitshow of teaming up heavy bs.
Conclusion
Trading should give more money BECAUSE it is boring imo.
At the same time, at least some AFK trading routes should be made more fun, shorter, directly connecting with more frequent interactions and workable with waypoints and gates. Think Bristol=>New London and back before the change. This is not the fault of the missions balance.
Gunboats need to give less money plain and simple, they give too much for the no risk+effort. Cruisers are just right now and cruiser missions should be a benchmark for cap missions balance.
And I'd buff BattleCruiser and Battleships drop money clearly (and nerf anti- nomad missions somehow -but I think there's a fix coming on the delta farming anyways on all sorts of caps.
Nerf remains prices is one, replace them with azurite gas for cloaks for example. And/OR make Delta FP only for zoners+indies)
I'm glad some of you found an outlet to complain about how you hate the mining overhaul and powertrading in general, but the only way that would be relevant for this topic is if it had substantially changed ore hauling profits, which it didn't. The general issue of missions well exceeding powertrading in profit would be there, mining changes or not.
I am not saying they should be unviable as a way to make money, I quite enjoy them as well. But with their current profits there's literally no reason to use transports anymore, and that's not to mention the massive imbalances within the mission system.
(06-15-2020, 08:38 AM)Skorak Wrote: I'm fine with it ever since ore trading became insanely boring.
Maybe some slight tweaking but it's certainly more fun than flying the same route 100 times.
I'll just agree here.
Any alternative to insanely boring ore trading is tremendously good.
Freelancer needed that since times when trading became the only efficient way to earn credits.
Considering that any meaning in ore trading was killed by remade routes(by some person having pink avatar and named Karst), it became especially important.
Using transports for silent trade when no pirates are capable to stop you and/or provide with RP more than "2 mil and dai"? Nah, I'd rather farm missions and so Brets will raid Aquitaine while me farming there.
or simple: MISSIONS CREATE MORE INTERACTION THAN TRADE BECAUSE YOU REMAIN WITHIN VERY SMALL ZONE AND SO ANYONE CAN COME AND INTERACT
I don't see a problem here. Finally you don't have to metagame the money from a traders account to buy military ships. Makes much more sense RP-wise.
If anything, make ore transporting a bit more profitable, like the proposal that SwiftWing brought up.
(06-15-2020, 09:36 AM)Karst Wrote: I'm glad some of you found an outlet to complain about how you hate the mining overhaul and powertrading in general, but the only way that would be relevant for this topic is if it had substantially changed ore hauling profits, which it didn't. The general issue of missions well exceeding powertrading in profit would be there, mining changes or not.
I am not saying they should be unviable as a way to make money, I quite enjoy them as well. But with their current profits there's literally no reason to use transports anymore, and that's not to mention the massive imbalances within the mission system.
I think they do have to be compared
It's about $/hr:effort:fun ratios and they are competing now, not just $/hr
There's is a massive pressure on trade to deliver now there never was before
I only really ran the mill salvage/Pscrap routes
But it was - Buy at Bristol=>click highest price in commodity waypoint => click+F3 all the way to new London.
Buy in one of the 3 PoBs next to it, the same back. Almost no effort, just pausing for more frequent interactions as it was shorter and lead through more played areas, while you did other things like forum RP. Effort was lower, fun was higher, $/hr the same.
Making trading more fun, easier with more interactions and thinking of buffing $/hr go hand in hand with missions balance, and it's something the awesome guys like you who were willing to put in the huge amounts of much appreciated effort for free have to face when the missions became relevant again.
I can actually understand both sides here. I've played on and off over the years and honestly, this has been the most fun that I've had versus many other iterations. Missions/bounties are definitely very strong, and absolutely the best way of making money at the moment, but I don't think they should be nerfed. This is coming from someone who was explicitly a trader and quasi-lawful smuggler for literally almost 8 years on and off.
Rather than nerf missions, this should actually prompt a deeper look into other money-making methods, for example why not just make trading more interesting? Missions are actually hard to get started into, but once you have the equipment and ship, then you can begin to make some serious money. This is exactly the same as trading, mining, salvaging (the latter in previous iterations). The larger you go, the more you make.
The supposed issue you are actually talking about is the top middle bracket of missions, where someone in a Battleship/Dread can just farm gunboats/cruisers for seemingly infinite amounts of money. Solo this is okay in my opinion because it takes a while to ramp up to that point. The problem is this then gets multiplied per person in a group of players. Create a train of players, all doing the same thing, you go from making 100+mill an hour casually to literally double, triple, quadruple collectively, based on the number of people in your group. If you pool your money together then bingo.
Before someone says, 'But you can do that with trading ships', you are right, but there always had to be significant investment beforehand, for example putting everyone into an advanced train, running the train, buying the goods, risk of getting pirated or losing it all, etc. This was a fun time because you would hire escorts, have loads of RP, people would group up to pirate you, and so on.
So, as I've said this current version is very fun, but going from making 100mill an hour to 300mill an hour by literally just having three people in your group who might not even contribute, completely negates the risk of the mission, but increases your collective rewards exponentially. Bare in mind, that the number I have pulled is also a conservative number, based on what I and a group as fresh spawns have been doing in gunboats/destroyers. I could only imagine how much more you could make with a group of BS/Dreads. I imagine if you pooled your money you could literally get a fresh spawn into a fully fitted battleship in an hour or two, something which used to take months.
(06-15-2020, 09:43 AM)Groshyr Wrote: Using transports for silent trade when no pirates are capable to stop you and/or provide with RP more than "2 mil and dai"? Nah, I'd rather farm missions and so Brets will raid Aquitaine while me farming there.
or simple: MISSIONS CREATE MORE INTERACTION THAN TRADE BECAUSE YOU REMAIN WITHIN VERY SMALL ZONE AND SO ANYONE CAN COME AND INTERACT
Reminder: Trade forces you to go through several of such very small zones where anyone can come and interact (called bottlenecks).
But if we gotta stress the activity concentrating benefit of missions, why not make good use of that feature?
Idea: restrict gunboat and higher difficulty missions to bases in warzones, and if required, rearrange destroy_vignette zones to be near combat areas and easily accessible by both sides of an open conflict.
(06-15-2020, 09:43 AM)Groshyr Wrote: Using transports for silent trade when no pirates are capable to stop you and/or provide with RP more than "2 mil and dai"? Nah, I'd rather farm missions and so Brets will raid Aquitaine while me farming there.
or simple: MISSIONS CREATE MORE INTERACTION THAN TRADE BECAUSE YOU REMAIN WITHIN VERY SMALL ZONE AND SO ANYONE CAN COME AND INTERACT
Reminder: Trade forces you to go through several of such very small zones where anyone can come and interact (called bottlenecks).
But if we gotta stress the activity concentrating benefit of missions, why not make good use of that feature?
Idea: restrict gunboat and higher difficulty missions to bases in warzones, and if required, rearrange destroy_vignette zones to be near combat areas and easily accessible by both sides of an open conflict.
Yeah. Increase the amount of activity we can get, and give battleships a purpose. Dibs