' Wrote:I agree with Nathrael fully... Besides buffing transports/freighters
Actually, why not? I think one of the most frustrating things about trading is that, even if you just get jumped by a little VHF in your big 5k Transport, you either flee or you're dead. There's no chance you can win against any semi-good opponent while flying a transport (not to mention freighters). Escorts are useless too when it comes do battle. They may be a nice deterrence, but if the attacker's not too bad and in a bomber he can make you explode in a ball of blue goo even before your escorts can say engaging. I'm not saying transports and freighters should become as powerful as GBs, but they should be able to defend themselves to some degree and have enough armor that taking out escorts before turning to the trader himself might be a better choice.
Quote:Non-RPers tend to have the patience for mindless grinding, while RPers rarely do.
And that is, at least from my experience, completely true (with a few notable exceptions).
Violette Wrote:Even worse when pirates demand I drop my cargo or give unreasonable amounts.
Guess why they are doing it. They probably hate trading just as much as you do, and want to finance their stuff with piracy - yuhee, even more frustration for everybody. A tip though for people being afraid of pirates...fly in convoys of 4 or more Transports. Percheron and Shire swarms are damn scary for Gunboat pirates. Bombers will still have an easy SNACk though.
' Wrote:And there we go. I absolutely agree with you here - but trading is the wrong approach to this. Especially for a new player. Sure, established people or people who come here and quickly make friends won't have it that bad, they'll try to get into a trading faction or group and then will get some RP along their runs. Trading itself will still be horrible and boring, but at least they get *some* RP.
I think I'll refrain from debating this topic with you, like we already have done so many times in the past xD
Our views on the topic vary too much and we just end up arguing back and forth...
I agree with this part, though:
Quote: * Skip the frustrating Starflea/Rhino phase newbies have to face.
Make it possible to start out as a properly repped character in a HF, Mk1 Freighter or LF of any faction you want (sans the admin-repped ones of course) per FLHook command. Nothing is more frustrating than the first 3 or 4 hours you spend on Discovery, and I wouldn't be astonished if it turns many people away, especially the ones that are here for the RP. It might as well spread people throughout Sirius. I believe NY is mainly as well populated because it's where most players stay when they "grow out" of their 'fleas. Many people attract other people, especially if they all are just one system away from your "birthplace". But if you gave people the possibility of starting out as whatever they want, without having to fly throughout Sirius and do tedious trading and repping first, maybe we'd finally see some more KNF, Blood Dragons, Gallic unlawfuls, etc.
I know that what I proposed here would be a lot of work - but I'm sure there'd be quite a few people willing to work on this (including me). Maybe we *can* fix trading. But we need to start working on it, else, things likely will stay as they are - utterly broken and devoid of anything even remotely resembling fun.
This topic has come up several times in the past, and it's a good one. I'll go look for the last thread which mentioned this, see what became of it.
Actually bombers wont have anything easy. Do you know how many Snacs do you need to kill 3 traders traveling together?
Like 25 direct hits to down one of them
Bats bott exchange, etc.
Also, make a fun rp out of it, don't buff transports. If i had a transport with like 50k cargo hold, i'ld just buy nuclear devices at early morning when noone is on, get a gunboat just i canse and make like 500mil and that'ld be enough for month of trading.
Sounds like no.
' Wrote:Actually bombers wont have anything easy. Do you know how many Snacs do you need to kill 3 traders traveling together?
Like 25 direct hits to down one of them
Bats bott exchange, etc.
Also, make a fun rp out of it, don't buff transports. If i had a transport with like 50k cargo hold, i'ld just buy nuclear devices at early morning when noone is on, get a gunboat just i canse and make like 500mil and that'ld be enough for month of trading.
Sounds like no.
With buffing transports, I mainly meant giving them better defenses, not expanding their cargo holds. The only ship that should get it's cargo hold further expanded is the Barge imo (it's a bloody space station >_>).
And don't forget, yes, under my proposed trade system, you could make 500 mills in maybe 3 or 4 hours in a Transport - which you'll have to split up to your escorts though. Only freighters will be able to cargo run (they will make a decent profit for their size though, similar to what you can get on the high paying .86 routes) - trading in transports will be highly risky. Paying the cargo you want to ship will be expensive. You will face organized attack forces, as getting your cargo will mean getting millions for them (*especially* if they bring a Salvager or PTrain/Transport to gather everything they can get). Transports will be like magnets for pirates.
OPG Ivan Wrote:Actually bombers wont have anything easy. Do you know how many Snacs do you need to kill 3 traders traveling together?
Like 25 direct hits to down one of them
I've done convoy trading, and seriously - a well piloted single bomber can down an entire convoy, and two...you're utterly screwed and better pay up or run like hell.
Cut the price of items by half. (maybe except for capital ships)
Give players more possibilities to earn money like for example npc hunting. (slaver id's would have a use then)
Up the price on missions
Up the trading sum.
I know grinding and leveling up so to speak is a core gameplay part but people tend to lose more to pirates right now than they earn.
Well it's a rock and hard place aint it Sindie. What's a pest for us will become a pest for them if we get a flash flood of lulwutters. The place will be swamped with caps and funboats and we'l be back to square one. The status quo is irritating and obscenely time consuming (And nobody else feels the pinch on this as much as i do). But it's the lesser of two evils right now.
SImply can be done by reducing teh universal armor upgrade price. That would .. make grinding a character faster + would encourege to use fighter crafts more. And now pay 25 mln for each VHF char a is a bit to much.
If you afraid bomber spam, there is psosible to make snac or other bomber equipment more expensive.
' Wrote:Give people a reason to actual RP traders, please. I rarely see traders stopping in a system and RPing longer than they'd be in the system anyways except occasionally Bowex and AIL (shameless faction plug there). Traders aren't encouraged to go through high-traffic areas, where they'd lead to the most encounters; they lose money doing so. I personally avoid New York like the plague simply because half the pirates of Sirius are there at any given moment, and flying to Fort Bush with a Shire full of Gold is sure to get me pirated for 10 or 15 million. Fight off the pirates? Shires are good, but alone they aren't good enough to out-fight anything more than a fighter or a PTrans who doesn't know how to fly his ship. Hire escorts? Doesn't matter how many escorts I get, because any pirate who's worth his salt'll still destroy my transport before he goes down, even if he has to dodge like a mad monkey on a sugar high while spamming CDs to do it. Plus, escorts cost money too, and thus I might lose just as much money hiring enough escorts to keep me safe as I would if I just payed all the pirates anyways.
Also, if you accept that you can't use jump holes, that limits trade even further. And that makes sense. You aren't going to be seeing Shetlands and Mastodons flying through Omicron Theta loaded with Gold... or you shouldn't be, anyhow.
In short, trading needs to be more profitable so we can enjoy RPing it instead of having to worry about earning enough money to even support ourselves, much less actually by new ships we need for other RPs. Before you go telling me characters should be supporting themselves, don't. My military people are hardly going to have to build their own ship up; they'll be issued their ship from a military stock. People come by lucky breaks. Things happen. Some of these things have existed in-RP for a long time, and it wouldn't make any sense for the characters not to have them. And so forth. Anyhow.
I rest my case.
While I'm not convinced that the trade is so bad that we struggle to support ourselves, I do see where the lack of income from actuall rp routes is often a huge issue. I, personally, don't need money. I've a couple billion credits floating around, but when I'm in a tradeship, I feel a bit of pressure to earn some cash. When I'm on a strong RP route that doesn't earn me as much as I could flying out to, say, Theta...I get pretty frustrated.
When my RP ends up flying out to Delta because the Rhienlanders put Iridium in Engines which I can ship back to Bretonia...I get pretty frustrated, and not because of the profit or poor rp of the route, as they're both decent (could be a lot better if I could, say, profitably move Iridium from Tau 37 to Newcastle) but because there's an RP going on in NB. There's one going on in Delta, and one in London. I slip through each of these, and I cannot participate without stopping what I'm doing: earning money. I admit, its pure greed/statswhoring that makes me continue, but thats what a transport does, yes? That's good RP for a transport; keeping moving, keep earning profits, time is money, etc.
The problem is that RP is very much split up and divided along the system lines, and trade isn't built to happen, ever, in single systems. Why can't there be a loop, earning around 160-170 cr/sec (yes, a good route), which doesn't, or only breifly, leaves the home systems? In London, something that ships from NL to Kensington, from Kensington to Waterloo(or another base there) and then to Southampton, and back to NL? (admittedly, this would be hard to justify, as there's a bowex/gateway rivalry issue, but you see the idea) One in London, one in NB, one in Tokyo. I'd say not in NY, just because we don't -need- to draw attention to those systems. We could add, and Bretonia is my focus, so there my examples will be, an unlawful route between Trafalgar and Lisbon Rock(I'd suggest moving Lisbon rock from the cloud so near the leeds hole to somewhere closer to the london gate for this) and you've both smugglers and lawful traders working in London. A microcosm trade system, to be sure, but one that'll likely attract a few players. 3 or 5 transports, mostly insystem, so they can rp with the rest of the players such an attention to systems brings: Pirates, to prey on the transports, police to halt the smuggling, and military to hunt the pirates.
Such routes exist, right now. They're great, they earn about 20 cr/sec. Why can't such routes coexist with the long high profit routes? I can't see a reason why not. A transport player could become deeply embroiled in the ongoing RP, which would help teach new players about RP, and on to Nathrael's points.
' Wrote:And there we go. I absolutely agree with you here - but trading is the wrong approach to this. Especially for a new player. Sure, established people or people who come here and quickly make friends won't have it that bad, they'll try to get into a trading faction or group and then will get some RP along their runs. Trading itself will still be horrible and boring, but at least they get *some* RP.
But that's not how it goes for most people. Most people create their first character, when they are lucky someone sends them 100k to get themselves a Rhino, and then, guess what they do...they'll mine near Pittsburgh or in Pennsylvania, mine for hours, without a lot of fun and without a lot of RP. They'll mine and mine and mine, maybe until they can afford themselves a Camara or similar freighter. Then they will trade, and trade, and trade. They now will occasionally get RP from pirates (if they are lucky and don't stumble upon the 2millordai GB pierats), but it won't really be amazing. Maybe they can listen to some veteran players RPing along the way, maybe they'll even take a break and listen to them. Now, if the newbie in question is stubborn enough, promising himself "There *will* be awesome RP for me too, I've read the forums, it can't be that bad as it is now, just wait 'till I get myself my first fighter" or alternately "olol jst wait m8, i soon have enough cash for BS and then I pwn u", he eventually will accumulate more wealth and leave the most frustrating phase in his or her Disco "career".
Couldn't we do better? IMO, newbies should be thrown right into RP, they should be a part of the faction they chose from the beginning on, not just some dude in a Starflea grinding. Especially since said grinding is, gameplay-wise, absolutely no fun - you can't even hope to get into some PvP with a chance of winning (unless you have a Cap8 liner or a heavily armed Shire, but in that case, you ain't no newbie anymore).
Above, I mention that traders -don't- get involved in the RP, just because they flit through the system so quickly that they miss their chances to sink into it. I'd like to encourage recruiters, even though I know from experience that you can spend an hour going through the list of players from level 5 to level 40 and not get a single response to an offer for an escort job. In the same mind, I'd like to ask what happened to the players online list which I imagine may have been really helpful for finding people. There are those of us -looking- for new players...and just as being a new player is disheartening, finding new blokes..is really hard. I fly with all my ships over level 80 just to attract questions from new players, I get maybe one or two a week.
Are factions really that bad? Because I fly Bowex tagged ships, I'm evil? Really?
Finally, I'd like to adress the suggestion that profits be upped: Not by much. Here's why: I'm all for factions. Factions have money, they've multiple members with supertransports, and they should be sucking up new blokes for just the reasons Nathrael suggested. Being a new bloke without a group is likely to not get you great RP, and I buy into the idea that factions are supposed to be setting an example. Two bowex transports can equip a VHF in 10 minutes, a Perch in less. We're looking for new members, and making money easier to get...well that takes off a lot of the edge we have. The signing bonus, which makes us extra-attractive. Trading's always been a chore, and having more credits won't change that, it'll just muck up the balance of transports to pirates, which mucks up a lot of other things.
40 Million an hour/person is as far as I'd be willing to go, and that's probably excessive.
I'm fairly sick of trading to fund overpriced ships now.
/Signed.
[17:45:39] Wolfs Ghost (Murphy): Tom, you have problems. Go kill yourself.
[19:25:12] Johnny (Jam): Tomtom, I will beat you with a spoon.
[14:22:56] Prarabdh Thakur: KILL HIM WITH A SHEEP.
[17:40:48] Eagle (Junes): Tom should be slapped with a spoon.
[11:32:18] Warspite: Thank you for being so awesome Tom. <3
[18:17:36] Metano: I love you tomtom
[20:06:24] Warspite: I will seriously give you epic head.
' Wrote:Edit: also, Tomtomrawr, fappin' like a boss.
For all those saying 'But trading is fun! You just need to look at it right!'
Be quiet please.
Do you roleplay in every faction in the game?
Do you fly every ship in the game?
Do you even have all the different types of attitude you could have in game?
If you answer no to any one of these then you have just magically come onto the point about why people don't like to trade sometimes.
They. Do. Not. Want. To.
Why do you not go out and make a lulwutting freak? Because:
You. Do. Not. Want. To.
It is not 'fun' for everyone to bloody trade. Spending hours of their life, that they cannot get back, travelling through systems, as Unselie said never being able to take part in any great roleplay in a single system if you want to make proper money, and then finally reaching your destination only to turn back and do the exact same thing again.
And again.
And again.
And again.
Repeat till the hour is up and you have your 20-30 million.
I use to make 20-30 million in 15 minutes. We have literally taken Sirius's economy and made everything 4 times more expensive simply by making it so hard to make money.
You complain about 'lulwutting' BSs. There are more NOW than there were when the economy was far better. You could say 'But then there'd be even more BSs' then get a bloody bomber. Or a battleship yourself:ohmy:
Just bloody grow up and stop complaining and instead do something instead of whining.
Next we'll hear about how piracy is too easy. We'll soon have to chew away at a transport for a few hours to get 2 million from it. Don't expect trading to be better though, the pirates will then complain about the easy trading. Then another round of nerfs comes along, yay!
' Wrote:For all those saying 'But trading is fun! You just need to look at it right!'
Be quiet please.
Do you roleplay in every faction in the game?
Do you fly every ship in the game?
Do you even have all the different types of attitude you could have in game?
If you answer no to any one of these then you have just magically come onto the point about why people don't like to trade sometimes.
They. Do. Not. Want. To.
Why do you not go out and make a lulwutting freak? Because:
You. Do. Not. Want. To.
It is not 'fun' for everyone to bloody trade. Spending hours of their life, that they cannot get back, travelling through systems, as Unselie said never being able to take part in any great roleplay in a single system if you want to make proper money, and then finally reaching your destination only to turn back and do the exact same thing again.
And again.
And again.
And again.
Repeat till the hour is up and you have your 20-30 million.
I use to make 20-30 million in 15 minutes. We have literally taken Sirius's economy and made everything 4 times more expensive simply by making it so hard to make money.
You complain about 'lulwutting' BSs. There are more NOW than there were when the economy was far better. You could say 'But then there'd be even more BSs' then get a bloody bomber. Or a battleship yourself:ohmy:
Just bloody grow up and stop complaining and instead do something instead of whining.
Next we'll hear about how piracy is too easy. We'll soon have to chew away at a transport for a few hours to get 2 million from it. Don't expect trading to be better though, the pirates will then complain about the easy trading. Then another round of nerfs comes along, yay!
/Uber signed.
When 4.85 first came out, I only knew one route I could do with my only trader at the time, my RepEx Collusus (just bought).
I did that route hundreds and hundreds of times. It made me hate the game, simple because it took so god damn long to buy anything! You'd have to trade for two or more hours just for enough money for a fighter.
And that is still the case. I still have to trade several hours for the money to buy a fully equiped fighter.
I'm in OSI now, and it still takes me ages. Even worse, the OPG are blocking the Omegas, and taxing 5 million credits each time we try to get past them.
And now that i'm trading for money for starting an entire faction, it's taking alot of time that I could be using spreading the word and recruiting for that faction!
And now I am varying which routes I use, but the ones that make the good money are being blocked! So I have to do the ones that don't make much money again, and again, and you get the point.
And there are more capital ships than before 4.85, as Linkus mentioned. The situation is worse than ever, and those that want to role-play are constantly stuck trading in role-play, whilst those who just want quick money are smuggling with Zoner Guard Whales and get them in a few days if they constantly trade.
Edit: I just say a Cardi-smuggling Zoner Guard Whale now, heading through Tau 37.
I am also trading, and it will take me about forty minutes for ten million credits.
[17:45:39] Wolfs Ghost (Murphy): Tom, you have problems. Go kill yourself.
[19:25:12] Johnny (Jam): Tomtom, I will beat you with a spoon.
[14:22:56] Prarabdh Thakur: KILL HIM WITH A SHEEP.
[17:40:48] Eagle (Junes): Tom should be slapped with a spoon.
[11:32:18] Warspite: Thank you for being so awesome Tom. <3
[18:17:36] Metano: I love you tomtom
[20:06:24] Warspite: I will seriously give you epic head.
' Wrote:Edit: also, Tomtomrawr, fappin' like a boss.