Quality ships on the market (no D-mods) shouldn't "practically free" to begin with.
Are you forgetting that in the SS setting there's a lot of stagnation and technology loss, and a spaceship - ANYX spaceship - is a complex and expensive thing by it's nature and need to survive in the most hostile enviroment (space). A spaceship is never, EVER going to be like a car is today.
Ah, I see. You're arguing a conceptual point vs a practical one, though previously you were arguing that *D frigates* were underpriced. Concept aside, mundane d-frigates ARE free in the game currently, no matter what they're priced at in the store. A player can pick one of these up after any battle or simply floating in space. They aren't a scarce resource, hence they have little value and are priced accordingly. Inflating the cost in the store would be nonsensical, like charging a million dollars for dirt. Pristine frigates are slightly scarcer and are priced higher. The cost for losing a pristine ship in battle is much higher as you must pay to restore it to retain the pristine quality in addition to the higher store price. Losing one of these would obliterate profits from 2-3 low tier bounty missions, depending on whether you recover the ship.
Wolves, while great ships and "hi tech", are simply not scarce. Hence their low market value.
Ok, lets define "trade". Randomly buying low at a port and selling high at another? No, that's not easily profitable by design, and the game tells you this.
Fulfilling trade style procurement missions, or delivery of goods missions? Those are indeed profitable, and easy with very little risk. Profitable as running bounties? Of course not--but again, risk vs reward.
99% of the time those mission don't turn any profit at all either.
I'm sorry, you're mistaken.
No, I am not. Only bar mission give a decent profit.
Buying low and selling high is very unprofitable as it is, due to *** tariffs and a operational costs. And bulk selling doesn't work since you cannot even FILL your freighter fleet on the markets.
The entire trade/economy aspect of the game right now is HORRIBLE.
So, you're not even pretending to read anything anyone has told you explaining why you're wrong? I'll give you one more chance to demonstrate that you're worth engaging with. Refute these points, or abandon your argument.
1) Again, random buy low/sell high is not designed to be easily profitable. The game informs you of this.
2) The aforementioned bar missions are easily profitable and very low risk, requiring no investment, and only short hops through safe space.
3) Selling found resources to any black market or pirate bases to avoid tariffs is profitable--IF your fleet is efficiently designed for the task it's performing, has enough cargo space to trade in high volume, and is not carrying around a lot of extra ships not contributing to this purpose and causing the fleet to hemorrhage fuel and supply. Even bounty missions can become unprofitable if your fleet is not efficiently designed for that purpose.
4) Selling goods to planets with high demand can be profitable even if you actually used your own money to purchase the goods at a port in which they were cheap. Again, your fleet must be efficient, and have sufficient cargo space to trade in bulk.
5) Salvaged goods can be profitably used to fulfill procurement missions, since you got the goods for free. Rather than outright selling the loot you find, store it, and use it to fulfill these missions when they they arise. This will be more profitable than just selling them, and will gain reputation points.
In no way do I assert that trade is as profitable as bounties--you can turn bounties around much faster, and gain huge amounts of EXP to boot, whereas Trade requires a lot more legwork, but are very low risk. In all cases, your profits diminish the less efficient your fleet is. Dont do trade missions with a heavy war fleet and expect to profit, any more than you could do the highest paying bounty missions with a fleet designed for trade.
You should NOT be able to replace half your fleet from a single bounty.
Hyperbole doesn't help your argument. If you lose half your fleet of the size and quality needed for high tier bounty missions, you could not replace them for the price of the bounty even assuming you could find the ships for sale. You certainly couldn't profit doing this. If you're successfully doing low tier (50k bounty) missions with only two frigates, frankly you deserve whatever rewards you get by being so skilled.
Again you with the economy/income. I'm talking about how it is in the game right now. Yes, the entire economy needs fixing, but it doesn't matter if you reduce incomes or increase ship prices, the point still stands that the PROPORTION needs to be fixed.
I'm sorry I cant make you understand this point. There will come a point in the game's development where a lot of these infinite money streams are reigned in, and it's not much use to be overly myopic in pricing ships to try and balance against functionally limitless money. Ships will be priced on scarcity and anticipated average income potential. If you were to narrow your field of vision to only look at the cost of a certain ship type vs a specific mission type payout, you might do something foolish like call for a mundane ship type that is essentially free to the player to be tripled in price.
Frigate price may be adjusted. Bounty payout may be adjusted. Supply/fuel cost could be adjusted. All of these things could happen. Looking at frigates in isolation is pointless at present.
