Fractal Softworks Forum
Starsector => Suggestions => Topic started by: isara on December 20, 2021, 09:59:00 PM
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It's such a great game, which is why I don't want to see it gets broken by economic exploits.
Currently, it's way too easy to make money by simply trading commodities, well it's simply muling them from one colony to another,
there are two major problems to this, firstly it renders other means of earning money pointless, random quests, bounties, surveys suddenly loose their appeal completely.
secondly making too much money too fast totally ruins game progression.
I'd suggest rebalancing the commodity trading mechanics as well as buffing other means of making money,
1. making colonies with large price gap in commodities far away from each other, and the price data only showing nearby systems
2. increase income from surveys/bounties/random quests, surveys that are far away needs higher reward;
bounties/random quests needs reward/difficulty scaling based on your fleet strength, it would be amazing if there's varied difficulties like normal/hard/legendary,
right now the reward is just too little, sometimes it can not even cover the supply&fuel cost,
it'd be nice if there's also varied rewards other than credits.
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They aren't exploits, it's just the game. Play it how you will. Or fail how you will. But artificially forcing extra distance to compensate for extra money from shortages strikes me as... both short-sighted and unrealistic. Making knowledge of price vs. distance is a more interesting suggestion, but since player doesn't have option to sit in the bar and drink (ie, time doesn't pass when at port), it's moot since player can't wait for more info about cost differences from colonies that are further away; in-game explanation are comm relays being ansibles, basically. Increasing survey payout per distance also interesting, but also kinda moot since basically all factions are equidistant from edges of sector due to being concentrated in core (what, an extra 10K because survey mission is from Luddic Church instead of the slightly closer Hegemony?). Bounty scaling is definitely weird, payouts seem to assume perfect victories, so no extra money for prize ships; this prolly could use some love (but player gets rep for killing bounty target, so kinda balances out since more difficult to raise rep in vanilla vs. Nex/other mods).
And more varied rewards? Would you prefer payment in food or ore? Are the costs of the sale tariffs being considered, so player gets extra food/ore?
Play longer, and you'll realize that shortages are generally more organic, pirate activity etc. Heck, once player gets some cash and a decent fleet, they can start artificially inducing shortages with piracy! But even if player doesn't feel like raising the black and slitting some throats, all shortages inevitable end. So wait until 8 years into a run and player be broke as hell since fleet is expensive, lack of shortages to exploit, and fleet too expensive to run exploration missions (the solution is to store/sell ships to make fleet cheaper to run, then do exploration missions!).
I have also played this game enough to realize that shortages seem to be somewhat more common in early game, prolly to give baby player more opportunities. But by year 12, not necessarily as common...
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"They aren't exploits, it's just the game. Play it how you will. Or fail how you will."
I disagree, most modern games, if alive, would constantly release rebalancing patches to fix broken mechanics, by your logic rebalance shouldn't even be a thing.
"Bounty scaling is definitely weird"
When I have an end-game fleet, I don't want to get a bounty asking me to kill some guy with a few starter ships, I just want some challenge
"And more varied rewards? Would you prefer payment in food or ore? Are the costs of the sale tariffs being considered, so player gets extra food/ore?"
I agree it's not necessary, since everything can be converted to credits, but again, why most modern games have diversified rewards?
"Play longer, and you'll realize that shortages are generally more organic, pirate activity etc. Heck, once player gets some cash and a decent fleet, they can start artificially inducing shortages with piracy! But even if player doesn't feel like raising the black and slitting some throats, all shortages inevitable end. So wait until 8 years into a run and player be broke as hell since fleet is expensive, lack of shortages to exploit, and fleet too expensive to run exploration missions (the solution is to store/sell ships to make fleet cheaper to run, then do exploration missions!).
I have also played this game enough to realize that shortages seem to be somewhat more common in early game, prolly to give baby player more opportunities. But by year 12, not necessarily as common..."
That's the equivalent of saying you'll understand when you're older or you can enjoy life after you retire, I just can't agree with this mentality, what percentage of the player population of a game are veteran/hardcore players? 5%, 10%? The majority are casual players, and their gaming experience definitely matters, after all, it pretty much determines whether they're gonna stay to become a veteran or just quit after a few hours.
so instead of subjectively expressing our feelings, how about we get just a little bit more quantitative, can you explain to me how this is balanced:
on average each mercantile voyage takes me about 5 minutes, making approx 250k income, minus 20k base cost that's 230k profit/run, 46k/min, I'm not talking about the best case, I made 500k once, admittedly it's kinda boring if you do it constantly
at the same time, a bounty gives a 50~100k reward while takes on average 10 min to finish, because they tend to scatter in the outer reach of the core world,
since there's combat involved the base cost oftentimes goes beyond 50k, giving me 0~50k profit, 25k/run on average, 2.5k/min, good thing is you do get to play a lot of combat.
now let's talk about surveys, those are normally in the deepest space, more than twice the distance of a bounty run, the reward is generally around 90k, minus the base cost of 80k, you get about 10k profit/run, let's assume it also takes 10min to finish, that's 1k/min
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but again, why most modern games have diversified rewards?
They don't.
They either reward you with currency, progression, or something you would want to get with currency.
Also if you can't explain why someone does something, you can hardly then point to them and blindly say "well they do it!" as a supporting argument.
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"They aren't exploits, it's just the game. Play it how you will. Or fail how you will."
I disagree, most modern games, if alive, would constantly release rebalancing patches to fix broken mechanics, by your logic rebalance shouldn't even be a thing.
This game is still in pre-release. By a very small studio. So don't compare it to most "modern games," which by your stated definition are either some Paradox crap, Microsoft re-release of Halo (or Ubisoft/Call of Duty, or Activision-Blizzard/Warcraft or Diablo) or NBA 2k16 when publishers realized real life Steph Curry was dropping better stats than video game Steph Curry and had to literally "fix" their shooting algorithm so that the game was as good as real life. Plus, there is a difference between a player not understanding how a mechanic works and a literally broken mechanic (which means it either isn't working properly, or is unintentionally and improperly exploitable). If mechanic is working correctly and average player can't figure it out, that doesn't mean rebalance it. It means explain it better. Or at least consider your target audience, not all games are Roblox for children... but some ARE!
"Bounty scaling is definitely weird"
When I have an end-game fleet, I don't want to get a bounty asking me to kill some guy with a few starter ships, I just want some challenge
Well, admittedly it's hard to do research on this forum, search function sucks (seriously, Googling the forum plus a keyword is more efficient). But the reason game still drops puny bounties when player is nearing end-game is in case player gets soft game-over and basically has to start over. Just ask Alex. Or don't, since he has literally already confirmed this as the reason, Google it. But when I was referring to bounty scaling, I was more referring to this (specifically the Bounty Level hidden stat, which as far as I know hasn't changed):
https://starsector.fandom.com/wiki/Bounty
"And more varied rewards? Would you prefer payment in food or ore? Are the costs of the sale tariffs being considered, so player gets extra food/ore?"
I agree it's not necessary, since everything can be converted to credits, but again, why most modern games have diversified rewards?
I mean, I guess Alex can always add loot boxes and stupid cosmetics... oh wait, this ain't Fortnite, and, unlike Epic, can't afford to drop extraneous $$$ on cosmetics. That's what modders are for!
That's the equivalent of saying you'll understand when you're older or you can enjoy life after you retire, I just can't agree with this mentality, what percentage of the player population of a game are veteran/hardcore players? 5%, 10%? The majority are casual players, and their gaming experience definitely matters, after all, it pretty much determines whether they're gonna stay to become a veteran or just quit after a few hours.
I mean, there is an easy option for a reason... even if those darn casuals refuse to use it. Plus, game has an entire forced training wheels tutorial that isn't skippable. I hated having to waste a few hours when I first got game being forced to do tutorial, but having both enjoyed and suffered the nuances of this game since, I can authoritatively say that the forced tutorial barely scratches the surface of the game (although I dunno how much has maybe changed since, running Nex mod and tutorial seems to sometimes break game, and Nex mod is practically required since basically adds everything game doesn't have yet. Plus, pretty tedious to replay tutorial once a player knows how to play game).
so instead of subjectively expressing our feelings, how about we get just a little bit more quantitative, can you explain to me how this is balanced:
on average each mercantile voyage takes me about 5 minutes, making approx 250k income, minus 20k base cost that's 230k profit/run, 46k/min, I'm not talking about the best case, I made 500k once, admittedly it's kinda boring if you do it constantly
at the same time, a bounty gives a 50~100k reward while takes on average 10 min to finish, because they tend to scatter in the outer reach of the core world,
since there's combat involved the base cost oftentimes goes beyond 50k, giving me 0~50k profit, 25k/run on average, 2.5k/min, good thing is you do get to play a lot of combat.
now let's talk about surveys, those are normally in the deepest space, more than twice the distance of a bounty run, the reward is generally around 90k, minus the base cost of 80k, you get about 10k profit/run, let's assume it also takes 10min to finish, that's 1k/min
The answer is that it isn't balanced. On purpose. Trading on open markets with tariffs is an intentional act to degrade profitability of trade. Trade on black market either generates "heat" for player, or player has to sneak into port. Regarding bounties, player isn't obligated to do them, so why fly out to middle of nowhere when you can just wait for a closer target (unless player is also exploring out in middle of nowhere, basically). As for surveys, well, they have crazy long time limits... why do just one at a time? Game is kinda riddled with noob traps, some intentional, some unintentional that therefore might get fixed, or get kept since might alter normal gameplay in interesting ways. As for trading, it's much less profitable without shortages, plus game used to straight trumpet trade contracts, but that got shifted into contacts system in 0.95 and effectively neutered much of rush of hitting trade deadlines (be nice if contracts gets mostly dragged back out of contacts system, I barely visit half my contacts; seriously, where are the phones in this dystopia that has instantaneous interstellar communications?).
Edit:spelling, grammer, murder
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Trade may well be OP for moneymaking at present, especially with certain routes well-known to veteran players.
Though re. surveying missions, you can get a lot of exploration done in addition to the survey, you don't just pop over to the destination and back. Also no survey run should cost 80k to do if all you're doing is the one survey (as opposed to taking the whole warfleet out for a multi-constellation exploration run, which is still less efficient than trimming back to a specialized survey fleet).
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Trading was good since forever, since it's all reward and no risk. I would have made pirates target successful traders, but I'm not Alex.
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My problem with the economy is there are plenty of Black Markets to trade at without interference from patrols. There are at least three systems without any patrols, and few others with light patrol activity that it is easy to turn off transponder at the market and dock. And then there are the zombie pop-up bases in the fringe.
Black Market might as well be Open Market. There is no risk and consequences. Just drop the tariffs from all markets.
Same reason why I do not care about planting Commerce just for the shop. I go to the nearby zombie pirate base and dump vendor trash without the 30% tariff at my colony.
Bounties definitely need a higher reward, at least as much as those offered by contact bounties, if not more:
* If it is a challenge, you will likely lose ships, and restoring or replacing them will likely cost more than the bounty reward. In other words, flawless victory required unless player has Hull Restoration. Player wants or needs a godmode turkey shoot for the money, not a challenge that will rob them money. If I cannot safely fight bounties (because they level up faster than I do), then I will trade my way to power.
* Due to the above, it makes no sense narratively. Why would NPC bounty hunters try to fight bounties when the outcome will almost certainly result in heavy losses?
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Does OP know that bounties scale up as you do more of them? It sounds like they have never progressed past the starting bounties. You can get 300k+ multi capital ship bounties in the intel tab, and contacts can give 500k+ bounties after a while.
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I would have made pirates target successful traders, but I'm not Alex.
Same. I'm still hoping to add that to ruthless sector some day, or make a new mod for it. I'm also a big fan of how Jaghaimo made black markets only accessible when transponders are turned off in Starpocalypse.
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I would have made pirates target successful traders, but I'm not Alex.
I would love that. At some point the game nudges the player towards combat anyway and there's still an unclosed loophole of getting along with everyone and boringly profit.
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For the love of god stop asking for more punishments and nerfs, it's not trading and smuggling that need to be nerfed but other sources of income need to be more rewarding, this is what you should ask.
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I would have made pirates target successful traders, but I'm not Alex.
Same. I'm still hoping to add that to ruthless sector some day, or make a new mod for it. I'm also a big fan of how Jaghaimo made black markets only accessible when transponders are turned off in Starpocalypse.
FWIW, I've got some notes in this general direction, especially vis a vis smuggling and the risks (or lack of risks) inherent in it.
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For the love of god stop asking for more punishments and nerfs, it's not trading and smuggling that need to be nerfed but other sources of income need to be more rewarding, this is what you should ask.
Nope, nope, blood-eyed pirates sounds more fun.
I'm sorry that I can't relate to your problem, the game's just a joyride. Even if I agree in a sense, because I think balance is one of the most important aspect of a video game. However there are bigger issues with the economy model imo, that's why I read you post in the first place and diddling around with a sub-issue (?) may not be time best spent, furthermore fixing the economy in its core probably means a solution for you problem as well.
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For the love of god stop asking for more punishments and nerfs, it's not trading and smuggling that need to be nerfed but other sources of income need to be more rewarding, this is what you should ask.
I agree with this. Why fight if having challenging combat punishes the player (and NPCs that simulate it if they had limited resources like the player)? Fight is not challenging if the chance of flawless victory is high. In terms of combat, boring because player is a god is good because player is not punished, at least if playing as a god does not interest him.
I am not asking markets to be nerfed. Open Market is useful for the following:
* Market installing items in their industries.
* Buying items you need or want now and the other markets do not have them or do not have enough.
* Place to sell blueprints without empowering pirates. (I want pirates to be as weak as possible since they are a zombie faction.)
If none of the three conditions are met, I do not want to trade there (or Military Market). Black Markets for the win.
Sometimes, I visit bars for deals. If I get a good contact, I buy ships from them too.
Plus, who cares about patrols if the faction is an enemy (like pirates or indies after a sat bomb)? Just kill them (if not too close to the station) or run away.
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If you can never be punished, that mean none of your decisions mattered. Challenge is the essence of a good game, and being punished for bad decisions is necessary for those decisions to have meaning. Combat is much more rewarding (in terms of my enjoyment) than trade because you have to make good decisions to be successful.
Trade is mindless and presents no challenge. I also haven't really noticed trade being out of line in terms of reward this patch, but I also don't really do any trade beyond selling stuff I get from exploring.
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Its very possible to make extremely high amounts of money by trade, especially running heavy armaments to the luddic path during their continual shortages. For medium profit you often don't need to even leave a system when there is a shortage on a world and another without.
Having pirates actively hunt players that are using the black market in big deals sounds the way to go to me, especially as the game already tracks the profit from trades. Its "realistic" (you're stepping on their turf for crazy amount of cash) and it funnels those players towards combat like the other mechanics of the game. For scaling, it should probably barely apply at the lower levels: 10k in profit maybe gets a pair of D mod frigates sent after the player. But for serious money it should scale quickly and start to resemble the types of fleets that hunt the player when they do pirate drop/trading missions from contacts.
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If you can never be punished, that mean none of your decisions mattered. Challenge is the essence of a good game, and being punished for bad decisions is necessary for those decisions to have meaning. Combat is much more rewarding (in terms of my enjoyment) than trade because you have to make good decisions to be successful.
For me, that means run away from anything I cannot crush easily, and that is a lot when the enemy levels up faster than I do until I catch up by endgame. If I lose a ship for any reason, there goes my reward and more. Just like fighting level draining undead or horny devils for minor loot and xp, but losing a level if they hit you at least once. Or rust monster eats your metal armor, and you get scraps back. Basically, player needs to play very safe as if in a game with permadeath, and such safe slow play is often boring.
With combat is Starsector, there is almost no middle ground. Either player wins flawlessly and progresses a bit, or he takes a casualty or five and usually loses more money than he won.
Having pirates actively hunt players that are using the black market in big deals sounds the way to go to me, especially as the game already tracks the profit from trades. Its "realistic" (you're stepping on their turf for crazy amount of cash) and it funnels those players towards combat like the other mechanics of the game. For scaling, it should probably barely apply at the lower levels: 10k in profit maybe gets a pair of D mod frigates sent after the player. But for serious money it should scale quickly and start to resemble the types of fleets that hunt the player when they do pirate drop/trading missions from contacts.
That is only good early. What happens when the player becomes strong and can wipe them for more loot and xp?
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Pirate attention for trading on the open market (tariffs would be lower to make it viable - they don't need to be high, if there's another source of risk), faction attention for trading on the black market (or with pirates/pathers). Starting with random pirates/patrols trying to extort you, then inspect/annoy you more often, then you would get sent some fleets, then pirates would raid your colonies and factions would send mercenaries after you.
Ideally you would be able to use bar encounters or contacts to smooth those out somewhat. Raid a database to erase a couple of misdeeds from you account...
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Its very possible to make extremely high amounts of money by trade, especially running heavy armaments to the luddic path during their continual shortages. For medium profit you often don't need to even leave a system when there is a shortage on a world and another without.
Having pirates actively hunt players that are using the black market in big deals sounds the way to go to me, especially as the game already tracks the profit from trades. Its "realistic" (you're stepping on their turf for crazy amount of cash) and it funnels those players towards combat like the other mechanics of the game. For scaling, it should probably barely apply at the lower levels: 10k in profit maybe gets a pair of D mod frigates sent after the player. But for serious money it should scale quickly and start to resemble the types of fleets that hunt the player when they do pirate drop/trading missions from contacts.
Are those interception fleets that target you after getting the security code are fun? They are just annoying, trading has a similar curve to bounty hunting or AI core farming, there you turn profits in better ships/colonies too, do you want to be intercepted after every bounty you got?
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You have to fight bounties to get money from them. You don't have to fight anyone if you're trading.
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Pirate attention for trading on the open market (tariffs would be lower to make it viable - they don't need to be high, if there's another source of risk), faction attention for trading on the black market (or with pirates/pathers). Starting with random pirates/patrols trying to extort you, then inspect/annoy you more often, then you would get sent some fleets, then pirates would raid your colonies and factions would send mercenaries after you.
Shopping (at legal markets) should not send enemies after you. That would encourage player getting by with other means.
Are those interception fleets that target you after getting the security code are fun?
After playing few of those missions on their first release, I avoid those missions like the plague. They are less rewarding than the already stingy named bounties. Not doing a job for less than 100k when a hunter-killer revenge fleet equivalent to a 180k-200k bounty chases my fleet down.
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If you can never be punished, that mean none of your decisions mattered. Challenge is the essence of a good game, and being punished for bad decisions is necessary for those decisions to have meaning. Combat is much more rewarding (in terms of my enjoyment) than trade because you have to make good decisions to be successful.
For me, that means run away from anything I cannot crush easily, and that is a lot when the enemy levels up faster than I do until I catch up by endgame. If I lose a ship for any reason, there goes my reward and more. Just like fighting level draining undead or horny devils for minor loot and xp, but losing a level if they hit you at least once. Or rust monster eats your metal armor, and you get scraps back. Basically, player needs to play very safe as if in a game with permadeath, and such safe slow play is often boring.
With combat is Starsector, there is almost no middle ground. Either player wins flawlessly and progresses a bit, or he takes a casualty or five and usually loses more money than he won.
I understand the thought process, but being able to play safer is sort of just a feature of sandbox games. I really don't agree that you should just make the game super easy by having enormous rewards to solve it. That makes the game even more boring IMO, you end up in a situation where you win two bounties cleanly and have an endgame fleet and then the game is over. A better solution is to have external pressure to make money/progress (impending doom can work, or even some mundane as bounty requirements for commissions or something like that) so that you feel like you need to go for the bounties that are available, even if they are not super safe.
Also just making sure various income sources are balanced with one another in terms of ease and risk is important, which is the subject of the OP. I much prefer the risk-reward of current bounties to the risk-reward of current trade, so I think it should be balanced towards the bounties rather than the trade.
Also, you level up faster taking difficult fights, so your leveling problems may be related to your cautious play to some extent. I noticed a big difficulty spike at ~150k bounties, but once I got passed that, bounties felt totally fine for income IMO.
Having pirates actively hunt players that are using the black market in big deals sounds the way to go to me, especially as the game already tracks the profit from trades. Its "realistic" (you're stepping on their turf for crazy amount of cash) and it funnels those players towards combat like the other mechanics of the game. For scaling, it should probably barely apply at the lower levels: 10k in profit maybe gets a pair of D mod frigates sent after the player. But for serious money it should scale quickly and start to resemble the types of fleets that hunt the player when they do pirate drop/trading missions from contacts.
That is only good early. What happens when the player becomes strong and can wipe them for more loot and xp?
You get rewarded for having a strong fleet, and the investment you put into that. That doesn't seem bad. Same dynamic as exploring where early on, you're scared of the random fleets flying around, but later on, you're pretty happy to farm them for more supplies.
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Shopping (at legal markets) should not send enemies after you. That would encourage player getting by with other means.
Buying doesn't earn you money. Selling does.
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Having pirates actively hunt players that are using the black market in big deals sounds the way to go to me, especially as the game already tracks the profit from trades. Its "realistic" (you're stepping on their turf for crazy amount of cash) and it funnels those players towards combat like the other mechanics of the game. For scaling, it should probably barely apply at the lower levels: 10k in profit maybe gets a pair of D mod frigates sent after the player. But for serious money it should scale quickly and start to resemble the types of fleets that hunt the player when they do pirate drop/trading missions from contacts.
That is only good early. What happens when the player becomes strong and can wipe them for more loot and xp?
You get rewarded for having a strong fleet, and the investment you put into that. That doesn't seem bad. Same dynamic as exploring where early on, you're scared of the random fleets flying around, but later on, you're pretty happy to farm them for more supplies.
This is pretty much my thought as well. The trading is also imo much more of a problem with respect to game design in the early game because it lets you skip the entire early and midgame (and all the mechanics/gameplay there) and go straight to endgame... where players often report getting their butts kicked and having a bad time because they have no officers/skills and also no experience with fighting themselves. If the players need to get a mid sized combat fleet and be able to fight pirates to trade in big amounts, then they are well prepared to start their own colony and defend it or start doing mid sized bounties.
For late game trading, the solution is easy but unsatisfying: limit the size of shortages by the total credits that can be made rather than the economy size.
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"They aren't exploits, it's just the game. Play it how you will. Or fail how you will."
I disagree, most modern games, if alive, would constantly release rebalancing patches to fix broken mechanics, by your logic rebalance shouldn't even be a thing.
This game is still in pre-release. By a very small studio. So don't compare it to most "modern games," which by your stated definition are either some Paradox crap, Microsoft re-release of Halo (or Ubisoft/Call of Duty, or Activision-Blizzard/Warcraft or Diablo) or NBA 2k16 when publishers realized real life Steph Curry was dropping better stats than video game Steph Curry and had to literally "fix" their shooting algorithm so that the game was as good as real life. Plus, there is a difference between a player not understanding how a mechanic works and a literally broken mechanic (which means it either isn't working properly, or is unintentionally and improperly exploitable). If mechanic is working correctly and average player can't figure it out, that doesn't mean rebalance it. It means explain it better. Or at least consider your target audience, not all games are Roblox for children... but some ARE!
I can understand the "This game is still in pre-release. By a very small studio." part, the rest just contradicts my core values and I don't quite get what you're trying to convey, it also baffles me why you threw so many assumptions/imaginations in there.
Anyway I don't think the "mechanic is working correctly", nor is the mechanic so profound that I couldn't figure it out lol
"Bounty scaling is definitely weird"
When I have an end-game fleet, I don't want to get a bounty asking me to kill some guy with a few starter ships, I just want some challenge
Well, admittedly it's hard to do research on this forum, search function sucks (seriously, Googling the forum plus a keyword is more efficient). But the reason game still drops puny bounties when player is nearing end-game is in case player gets soft game-over and basically has to start over. Just ask Alex. Or don't, since he has literally already confirmed this as the reason, Google it. But when I was referring to bounty scaling, I was more referring to this (specifically the Bounty Level hidden stat, which as far as I know hasn't changed):
https://starsector.fandom.com/wiki/Bounty
thanks for the source on bounty, but I don't agree with spawning low-level bounties that don't scale with player's level/fleet/time elapsed, if bounty hunting becomes totally trivial/without challenge, then what's the point of doing it?
you said it yourself bounty is optional, if it's too hard for now then just skip it, I don't get it
"And more varied rewards? Would you prefer payment in food or ore? Are the costs of the sale tariffs being considered, so player gets extra food/ore?"
I agree it's not necessary, since everything can be converted to credits, but again, why most modern games have diversified rewards?
I mean, I guess Alex can always add loot boxes and stupid cosmetics... oh wait, this ain't Fortnite, and, unlike Epic, can't afford to drop extraneous $$$ on cosmetics. That's what modders are for!
lol, chill, it's not about me or my opinion, it's about the game, for those that have gone through the trouble to post in a FORUM, we all love the game, regardless of our background.
I admit this one is kinda trivial, you don't really need it, but occasionally getting ships or weapons as reward could be nice
That's the equivalent of saying you'll understand when you're older or you can enjoy life after you retire, I just can't agree with this mentality, what percentage of the player population of a game are veteran/hardcore players? 5%, 10%? The majority are casual players, and their gaming experience definitely matters, after all, it pretty much determines whether they're gonna stay to become a veteran or just quit after a few hours.
I mean, there is an easy option for a reason... even if those darn casuals refuse to use it. Plus, game has an entire forced training wheels tutorial that isn't skippable. I hated having to waste a few hours when I first got game being forced to do tutorial, but having both enjoyed and suffered the nuances of this game since, I can authoritatively say that the forced tutorial barely scratches the surface of the game (although I dunno how much has maybe changed since, running Nex mod and tutorial seems to sometimes break game, and Nex mod is practically required since basically adds everything game doesn't have yet. Plus, pretty tedious to replay tutorial once a player knows how to play game).
I don't think it's the game being too hard, on the contrary, the comodities trading exploits make the game way too easy, and ruins everything.
I could imagine the game giving me a hundred more hours of fun had I not discovered the exploits after only a few hours of game play.
Also statistically most people won't be dumping more than a hundred hours into a single-player game, or even a second play through,
so the first 100 hour of experience is absolutely vital to the game, if something ruins that first impression, majority of the players would just quit
so instead of subjectively expressing our feelings, how about we get just a little bit more quantitative, can you explain to me how this is balanced:
on average each mercantile voyage takes me about 5 minutes, making approx 250k income, minus 20k base cost that's 230k profit/run, 46k/min, I'm not talking about the best case, I made 500k once, admittedly it's kinda boring if you do it constantly
at the same time, a bounty gives a 50~100k reward while takes on average 10 min to finish, because they tend to scatter in the outer reach of the core world,
since there's combat involved the base cost oftentimes goes beyond 50k, giving me 0~50k profit, 25k/run on average, 2.5k/min, good thing is you do get to play a lot of combat.
now let's talk about surveys, those are normally in the deepest space, more than twice the distance of a bounty run, the reward is generally around 90k, minus the base cost of 80k, you get about 10k profit/run, let's assume it also takes 10min to finish, that's 1k/min
The answer is that it isn't balanced. On purpose. Trading on open markets with tariffs is an intentional act to degrade profitability of trade. Trade on black market either generates "heat" for player, or player has to sneak into port. Regarding bounties, player isn't obligated to do them, so why fly out to middle of nowhere when you can just wait for a closer target (unless player is also exploring out in middle of nowhere, basically). As for surveys, well, they have crazy long time limits... why do just one at a time? Game is kinda riddled with noob traps, some intentional, some unintentional that therefore might get fixed, or get kept since might alter normal gameplay in interesting ways. As for trading, it's much less profitable without shortages, plus game used to straight trumpet trade contracts, but that got shifted into contacts system in 0.95 and effectively neutered much of rush of hitting trade deadlines (be nice if contracts gets mostly dragged back out of contacts system, I barely visit half my contacts; seriously, where are the phones in this dystopia that has instantaneous interstellar communications?).
I don't think the "purpose" of having an unbalanced economic system is helpful to the game,
the "heat" generated on black market trading is so minimum it's neglectable compared to the enormous gain.
on bounty, I could wait for close by bounties to spawn, but that's rng, which makes it an unreliable source of money, and the reputation gain just doesn't offset the low reward.
about surveys, again, what's chance of getting 5 surveys perfectly spawned in close proximity?
You failed to convince me that this broken economic system has any benefit to the game.
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I'm glad it has brought some attention to the problem
Does OP know that bounties scale up as you do more of them? It sounds like they have never progressed past the starting bounties. You can get 300k+ multi capital ship bounties in the intel tab, and contacts can give 500k+ bounties after a while.
JFC, this is so bad, exactly what I was worried about. The commodity trading is so unbalanced, it completely ruins other aspects of the game, I didn't even try to do bounties after I discovered the exploit.
Thanks for the info, I'll try to do more bounties.
For the love of god stop asking for more punishments and nerfs, it's not trading and smuggling that need to be nerfed but other sources of income need to be more rewarding, this is what you should ask.
Nope, nope, blood-eyed pirates sounds more fun.
I'm sorry that I can't relate to your problem, the game's just a joyride. Even if I agree in a sense, because I think balance is one of the most important aspect of a video game. However there are bigger issues with the economy model imo, that's why I read you post in the first place and diddling around with a sub-issue (?) may not be time best spent, furthermore fixing the economy in its core probably means a solution for you problem as well.
I concur, balance is so important that, at least to me, determines whether I'm going to take the game seriously
If you can never be punished, that mean none of your decisions mattered. Challenge is the essence of a good game, and being punished for bad decisions is necessary for those decisions to have meaning. Combat is much more rewarding (in terms of my enjoyment) than trade because you have to make good decisions to be successful.
Trade is mindless and presents no challenge. I also haven't really noticed trade being out of line in terms of reward this patch, but I also don't really do any trade beyond selling stuff I get from exploring.
I couldn't agree more, since there's already a difficulty level you can choose
If a game lacks challenge, it also lacks appeal, players would probably stop playing it after the novelty wears off. It's part of human nature to constantly seek challenge.
Its very possible to make extremely high amounts of money by trade, especially running heavy armaments to the luddic path during their continual shortages. For medium profit you often don't need to even leave a system when there is a shortage on a world and another without.
Having pirates actively hunt players that are using the black market in big deals sounds the way to go to me, especially as the game already tracks the profit from trades. Its "realistic" (you're stepping on their turf for crazy amount of cash) and it funnels those players towards combat like the other mechanics of the game. For scaling, it should probably barely apply at the lower levels: 10k in profit maybe gets a pair of D mod frigates sent after the player. But for serious money it should scale quickly and start to resemble the types of fleets that hunt the player when they do pirate drop/trading missions from contacts.
very good input, right now trading is just way too broken, the profit nullifies all the minor negatives, while attempting other means of earning money could barely make ends meet
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If you can never be punished, that mean none of your decisions mattered. Challenge is the essence of a good game, and being punished for bad decisions is necessary for those decisions to have meaning. Combat is much more rewarding (in terms of my enjoyment) than trade because you have to make good decisions to be successful.
For me, that means run away from anything I cannot crush easily, and that is a lot when the enemy levels up faster than I do until I catch up by endgame. If I lose a ship for any reason, there goes my reward and more. Just like fighting level draining undead or horny devils for minor loot and xp, but losing a level if they hit you at least once. Or rust monster eats your metal armor, and you get scraps back. Basically, player needs to play very safe as if in a game with permadeath, and such safe slow play is often boring.
makes sense, there's fine line between having the right amount of challenge while still able to have fun, and too much challenge that the player has to be overly tentative, constantly feeling anxious about the outcome, and barely having the leisure to enjoy the game itself.
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Having pirates actively hunt players that are using the black market in big deals sounds the way to go to me, especially as the game already tracks the profit from trades. Its "realistic" (you're stepping on their turf for crazy amount of cash) and it funnels those players towards combat like the other mechanics of the game. For scaling, it should probably barely apply at the lower levels: 10k in profit maybe gets a pair of D mod frigates sent after the player. But for serious money it should scale quickly and start to resemble the types of fleets that hunt the player when they do pirate drop/trading missions from contacts.
That is only good early. What happens when the player becomes strong and can wipe them for more loot and xp?
You get rewarded for having a strong fleet, and the investment you put into that. That doesn't seem bad. Same dynamic as exploring where early on, you're scared of the random fleets flying around, but later on, you're pretty happy to farm them for more supplies.
This is pretty much my thought as well. The trading is also imo much more of a problem with respect to game design in the early game because it lets you skip the entire early and midgame (and all the mechanics/gameplay there) and go straight to endgame... where players often report getting their butts kicked and having a bad time because they have no officers/skills and also no experience with fighting themselves. If the players need to get a mid sized combat fleet and be able to fight pirates to trade in big amounts, then they are well prepared to start their own colony and defend it or start doing mid sized bounties.
For late game trading, the solution is easy but unsatisfying: limit the size of shortages by the total credits that can be made rather than the economy size.
you nailed it, that matches my experience, I discovered the trading exploits a few hours into the game, spent all my savings on a large cargo ship, 1~2 hours later I'm looking at a few million credits, so I bought myself a late-game fleet. where's my late-early and mid-game at lol?
I felt so empty, the sense of progression is ruined. I could only imagine how many good things I've missed in the game...but that's what you get when you over accelerate the process, it's like winning the lottery then losing all the motivation in life, but I digress.
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Pirate attention for trading on the open market (tariffs would be lower to make it viable - they don't need to be high, if there's another source of risk), faction attention for trading on the black market (or with pirates/pathers). Starting with random pirates/patrols trying to extort you, then inspect/annoy you more often, then you would get sent some fleets, then pirates would raid your colonies and factions would send mercenaries after you.
Ideally you would be able to use bar encounters or contacts to smooth those out somewhat. Raid a database to erase a couple of misdeeds from you account...
This seems much more reasonable, why would pirates be mad that you were dropping stuff on black markets? I mean, pirates literally buy off the black market, you are selling basically to them by using it. Plus, gives a very good reason to either makes tariffs dynamic, significantly lower them, or drop them entirely!
This game is still in pre-release. By a very small studio. So don't compare it to most "modern games," which by your stated definition are either some Paradox crap, Microsoft re-release of Halo (or Ubisoft/Call of Duty, or Activision-Blizzard/Warcraft or Diablo) or NBA 2k16 when publishers realized real life Steph Curry was dropping better stats than video game Steph Curry and had to literally "fix" their shooting algorithm so that the game was as good as real life. Plus, there is a difference between a player not understanding how a mechanic works and a literally broken mechanic (which means it either isn't working properly, or is unintentionally and improperly exploitable). If mechanic is working correctly and average player can't figure it out, that doesn't mean rebalance it. It means explain it better. Or at least consider your target audience, not all games are Roblox for children... but some ARE!
I can understand the "This game is still in pre-release. By a very small studio." part, the rest just contradicts my core values and I don't quite get what you're trying to convey, it also baffles me why you threw so many assumptions/imaginations in there.
Anyway I don't think the "mechanic is working correctly", nor is the mechanic so profound that I couldn't figure it out lol
Look, your core values are your prerogative. As is self-education. And those weren't assumptions/imaginations, they are straight examples. You said, "most modern games, if alive." I listed a decent array of "most modern games, if alive." Not literally every game currently available, but a decent cross-section of more popular games (heck, even threw Roblox in!). My bad, didn't mention Minecraft (which, incidentally, also came from a small game studio but got bought out by the evil empire Microsoft, which is why I didn't mention it).
thanks for the source on bounty, but I don't agree with spawning low-level bounties that don't scale with player's level/fleet/time elapsed, if bounty hunting becomes totally trivial/without challenge, then what's the point of doing it?
you said it yourself bounty is optional, if it's too hard for now then just skip it, I don't get it
It means do it (the game system) later. When you understand it. Not the first time a game teases a more advanced portion of game early, though admittedly learning curve in this game is kinda brutal, so kinda disingenuous. But that's what small bounties are for (well, that and starting over after soft game-over).
I mean, I guess Alex can always add loot boxes and stupid cosmetics... oh wait, this ain't Fortnite, and, unlike Epic, can't afford to drop extraneous $$$ on cosmetics. That's what modders are for!
lol, chill, it's not about me or my opinion, it's about the game, for those that have gone through the trouble to post in a FORUM, we all love the game, regardless of our background.
I admit this one is kinda trivial, you don't really need it, but occasionally getting ships or weapons as reward could be nice
I had actually considered that for about two seconds when drafting my response, but then realized by second 3 that unless player is getting either better ships or better weapons for below-market price upon mission completion, then it's just another noob trap. Just take the reward money and go buy the ships yourself. Now, finding said ships are the issue, but that one mod is so helpful for doing so that it's practically a mandatory utility mod (I mean, mod author has put much love into it, but as many have already stated, some mods are made to be obsoleted by the mod's functionality just being added to vanilla game).
I mean, there is an easy option for a reason... even if those darn casuals refuse to use it. Plus, game has an entire forced training wheels tutorial that isn't skippable. I hated having to waste a few hours when I first got game being forced to do tutorial, but having both enjoyed and suffered the nuances of this game since, I can authoritatively say that the forced tutorial barely scratches the surface of the game (although I dunno how much has maybe changed since, running Nex mod and tutorial seems to sometimes break game, and Nex mod is practically required since basically adds everything game doesn't have yet. Plus, pretty tedious to replay tutorial once a player knows how to play game).
I don't think it's the game being too hard, on the contrary, the comodities trading exploits make the game way too easy, and ruins everything.
I could imagine the game giving me a hundred more hours of fun had I not discovered the exploits after only a few hours of game play.
Also statistically most people won't be dumping more than a hundred hours into a single-player game, or even a second play through,
so the first 100 hour of experience is absolutely vital to the game, if something ruins that first impression, majority of the players would just quit
If you don't think the game is too hard and trading ruins it, then you haven't bothered with much combat yet. But maybe a warning for new players that the "easy" option is available could be helpful. Or just annoy new gamers. I dunno. But you have to realize this game isn't a trade simulator, it just has a surprisingly complex economic system underpinning it (and even more surprising when a player learns of certain compromises made under the game's hood that make no sense!). I happen to enjoy that aspect, and so firmly fall into the camp of MOAR ECON I literally ran a poll in an attempt to measure the appetite of the player base for more commodities or not (very surprising outcome, although admittedly small sample size). So perhaps I'm biased in my opinion. But sounds like you have the same issue...
The answer is that it isn't balanced. On purpose. Trading on open markets with tariffs is an intentional act to degrade profitability of trade. Trade on black market either generates "heat" for player, or player has to sneak into port. Regarding bounties, player isn't obligated to do them, so why fly out to middle of nowhere when you can just wait for a closer target (unless player is also exploring out in middle of nowhere, basically). As for surveys, well, they have crazy long time limits... why do just one at a time? Game is kinda riddled with noob traps, some intentional, some unintentional that therefore might get fixed, or get kept since might alter normal gameplay in interesting ways. As for trading, it's much less profitable without shortages, plus game used to straight trumpet trade contracts, but that got shifted into contacts system in 0.95 and effectively neutered much of rush of hitting trade deadlines (be nice if contracts gets mostly dragged back out of contacts system, I barely visit half my contacts; seriously, where are the phones in this dystopia that has instantaneous interstellar communications?).
I don't think the "purpose" of having an unbalanced economic system is helpful to the game,
the "heat" generated on black market trading is so minimum it's neglectable compared to the enormous gain.
on bounty, I could wait for close by bounties to spawn, but that's rng, which makes it an unreliable source of money, and the reputation gain just doesn't offset the low reward.
about surveys, again, what's chance of getting 5 surveys perfectly spawned in close proximity?
You failed to convince me that this broken economic system has any benefit to the game.
Look, I didn't out and say it because I figured I would give you the chance to figure it out on your own, but the purpose of the unbalanced system is to force player to eventually explore sector edges, then either do colonies or storyline (ideally both). And the "heat" generated can really cut into a player's rep, which in vanilla is much harder to balance (at least compared to Nex). So too much time spent on the black market can lead to rep spiral loss, really puts player in the dog house. And again, didn't want to straight spell it out, but survey missions are essentially generated upon player coming into range of a comm relay. Per comm relay. So just fly to the next system and pick up another survey mission that is either near the first one, or is in between core and first mission. Are you starting to appreciate the nuances of this game, now that I have more or less drawn you a diagram?
But I agree with my first linked post, dropping or eliminating tariffs and having player generate pirate "heat" for using open market seems a much more reasonable compromise than arbitrarily high tariffs. Just prolly needs some sort of in-game explanation for player so they know why they are getting penalized for too much trade...
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... but the purpose of the unbalanced system ...
If we're talking about massive smuggling income from selling stuff to the Pathers, particularly heavy weapons, and even more particularly, in Chalcedon, then that's just too much income-wise and I understand where the OP is coming from - if you do that to start with for early credits, that could mess up your transition to the later stages of the game unless you know exactly what to do with those credits, and e.g. how "not doing bounties" keeps them low-level, and so on.
That aside, black market trade being more profitable is of course intentional, but it's not exactly the same thing as these types of specific repeatable, high-income case.
As is self-education.
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I had actually considered that for about two seconds when drafting my response, but then realized by second 3
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Look, I didn't out and say it because I figured I would give you the chance to figure it out on your own
This kind of stuff can come across as rude and patronizing; please try to be more considerate of that. I'd like to keep the forum a welcoming place, and doubly so for new members.
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Pirate attention for trading on the open market (tariffs would be lower to make it viable - they don't need to be high, if there's another source of risk), faction attention for trading on the black market (or with pirates/pathers). Starting with random pirates/patrols trying to extort you, then inspect/annoy you more often, then you would get sent some fleets, then pirates would raid your colonies and factions would send mercenaries after you.
Ideally you would be able to use bar encounters or contacts to smooth those out somewhat. Raid a database to erase a couple of misdeeds from you account...
This seems much more reasonable, why would pirates be mad that you were dropping stuff on black markets? I mean, pirates literally buy off the black market, you are selling basically to them by using it. Plus, gives a very good reason to either makes tariffs dynamic, significantly lower them, or drop them entirely!
This game is still in pre-release. By a very small studio. So don't compare it to most "modern games," which by your stated definition are either some Paradox crap, Microsoft re-release of Halo (or Ubisoft/Call of Duty, or Activision-Blizzard/Warcraft or Diablo) or NBA 2k16 when publishers realized real life Steph Curry was dropping better stats than video game Steph Curry and had to literally "fix" their shooting algorithm so that the game was as good as real life. Plus, there is a difference between a player not understanding how a mechanic works and a literally broken mechanic (which means it either isn't working properly, or is unintentionally and improperly exploitable). If mechanic is working correctly and average player can't figure it out, that doesn't mean rebalance it. It means explain it better. Or at least consider your target audience, not all games are Roblox for children... but some ARE!
I can understand the "This game is still in pre-release. By a very small studio." part, the rest just contradicts my core values and I don't quite get what you're trying to convey, it also baffles me why you threw so many assumptions/imaginations in there.
Anyway I don't think the "mechanic is working correctly", nor is the mechanic so profound that I couldn't figure it out lol
Look, your core values are your prerogative. As is self-education. And those weren't assumptions/imaginations, they are straight examples. You said, "most modern games, if alive." I listed a decent array of "most modern games, if alive." Not literally every game currently available, but a decent cross-section of more popular games (heck, even threw Roblox in!). My bad, didn't mention Minecraft (which, incidentally, also came from a small game studio but got bought out by the evil empire Microsoft, which is why I didn't mention it).
thanks for the source on bounty, but I don't agree with spawning low-level bounties that don't scale with player's level/fleet/time elapsed, if bounty hunting becomes totally trivial/without challenge, then what's the point of doing it?
you said it yourself bounty is optional, if it's too hard for now then just skip it, I don't get it
It means do it (the game system) later. When you understand it. Not the first time a game teases a more advanced portion of game early, though admittedly learning curve in this game is kinda brutal, so kinda disingenuous. But that's what small bounties are for (well, that and starting over after soft game-over).
I mean, I guess Alex can always add loot boxes and stupid cosmetics... oh wait, this ain't Fortnite, and, unlike Epic, can't afford to drop extraneous $$$ on cosmetics. That's what modders are for!
lol, chill, it's not about me or my opinion, it's about the game, for those that have gone through the trouble to post in a FORUM, we all love the game, regardless of our background.
I admit this one is kinda trivial, you don't really need it, but occasionally getting ships or weapons as reward could be nice
I had actually considered that for about two seconds when drafting my response, but then realized by second 3 that unless player is getting either better ships or better weapons for below-market price upon mission completion, then it's just another noob trap. Just take the reward money and go buy the ships yourself. Now, finding said ships are the issue, but that one mod is so helpful for doing so that it's practically a mandatory utility mod (I mean, mod author has put much love into it, but as many have already stated, some mods are made to be obsoleted by the mod's functionality just being added to vanilla game).
I mean, there is an easy option for a reason... even if those darn casuals refuse to use it. Plus, game has an entire forced training wheels tutorial that isn't skippable. I hated having to waste a few hours when I first got game being forced to do tutorial, but having both enjoyed and suffered the nuances of this game since, I can authoritatively say that the forced tutorial barely scratches the surface of the game (although I dunno how much has maybe changed since, running Nex mod and tutorial seems to sometimes break game, and Nex mod is practically required since basically adds everything game doesn't have yet. Plus, pretty tedious to replay tutorial once a player knows how to play game).
I don't think it's the game being too hard, on the contrary, the comodities trading exploits make the game way too easy, and ruins everything.
I could imagine the game giving me a hundred more hours of fun had I not discovered the exploits after only a few hours of game play.
Also statistically most people won't be dumping more than a hundred hours into a single-player game, or even a second play through,
so the first 100 hour of experience is absolutely vital to the game, if something ruins that first impression, majority of the players would just quit
If you don't think the game is too hard and trading ruins it, then you haven't bothered with much combat yet. But maybe a warning for new players that the "easy" option is available could be helpful. Or just annoy new gamers. I dunno. But you have to realize this game isn't a trade simulator, it just has a surprisingly complex economic system underpinning it (and even more surprising when a player learns of certain compromises made under the game's hood that make no sense!). I happen to enjoy that aspect, and so firmly fall into the camp of MOAR ECON I literally ran a poll in an attempt to measure the appetite of the player base for more commodities or not (very surprising outcome, although admittedly small sample size). So perhaps I'm biased in my opinion. But sounds like you have the same issue...
The answer is that it isn't balanced. On purpose. Trading on open markets with tariffs is an intentional act to degrade profitability of trade. Trade on black market either generates "heat" for player, or player has to sneak into port. Regarding bounties, player isn't obligated to do them, so why fly out to middle of nowhere when you can just wait for a closer target (unless player is also exploring out in middle of nowhere, basically). As for surveys, well, they have crazy long time limits... why do just one at a time? Game is kinda riddled with noob traps, some intentional, some unintentional that therefore might get fixed, or get kept since might alter normal gameplay in interesting ways. As for trading, it's much less profitable without shortages, plus game used to straight trumpet trade contracts, but that got shifted into contacts system in 0.95 and effectively neutered much of rush of hitting trade deadlines (be nice if contracts gets mostly dragged back out of contacts system, I barely visit half my contacts; seriously, where are the phones in this dystopia that has instantaneous interstellar communications?).
I don't think the "purpose" of having an unbalanced economic system is helpful to the game,
the "heat" generated on black market trading is so minimum it's neglectable compared to the enormous gain.
on bounty, I could wait for close by bounties to spawn, but that's rng, which makes it an unreliable source of money, and the reputation gain just doesn't offset the low reward.
about surveys, again, what's chance of getting 5 surveys perfectly spawned in close proximity?
You failed to convince me that this broken economic system has any benefit to the game.
Look, I didn't out and say it because I figured I would give you the chance to figure it out on your own, but the purpose of the unbalanced system is to force player to eventually explore sector edges, then either do colonies or storyline (ideally both). And the "heat" generated can really cut into a player's rep, which in vanilla is much harder to balance (at least compared to Nex). So too much time spent on the black market can lead to rep spiral loss, really puts player in the dog house. And again, didn't want to straight spell it out, but survey missions are essentially generated upon player coming into range of a comm relay. Per comm relay. So just fly to the next system and pick up another survey mission that is either near the first one, or is in between core and first mission. Are you starting to appreciate the nuances of this game, now that I have more or less drawn you a diagram?
But I agree with my first linked post, dropping or eliminating tariffs and having player generate pirate "heat" for using open market seems a much more reasonable compromise than arbitrarily high tariffs. Just prolly needs some sort of in-game explanation for player so they know why they are getting penalized for too much trade...
hmmm...it almost felt like you're trying to tell people how to play the game, and how they should feel about certain aspects of the game.
Hey, I respect that you might be a veteran player of this game, and you seem to have a decent knowledge of it, but I honestly don't agree with your view on the game, what I care about is my first 100 hours of gaming experience,
you can sit there and tell all the tales of your 10000+ hours of gameplay, no one has the right to silence you or anything, but what you can't do is make people care about/agree with what you have to say, so why standing on that pedestal all the time
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Why would pirates be mad that you were dropping stuff on black markets? I mean, pirates literally buy off the black market, you are selling basically to them by using it.
Scenario 1: Revenge -> Pirate is also trying to sell the same goods as you, only to discover their buyers all already bought from you, and they are stuck with much less profit. They come after you to get revenge for stealing their business, or to get back the money they should have made.
Scenario 2:Greed -> Pirate hears someone just sold a fortunes worth of goods on the market, and is now LOADED sitting in orbit. An easy target they know will have lots of money to steal.
Seems totally reasonable to have some local pirates coming after you if you dump a bunch of stuff on the black market IMO.
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And beyond individual actors, gangs/organized crime are extremely territorial - its not just about the current deal, its also about future deals.
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I understand the thought process, but being able to play safer is sort of just a feature of sandbox games. I really don't agree that you should just make the game super easy by having enormous rewards to solve it. That makes the game even more boring IMO, you end up in a situation where you win two bounties cleanly and have an endgame fleet and then the game is over. A better solution is to have external pressure to make money/progress (impending doom can work, or even some mundane as bounty requirements for commissions or something like that) so that you feel like you need to go for the bounties that are available, even if they are not super safe.
Also just making sure various income sources are balanced with one another in terms of ease and risk is important, which is the subject of the OP. I much prefer the risk-reward of current bounties to the risk-reward of current trade, so I think it should be balanced towards the bounties rather than the trade.
Also, you level up faster taking difficult fights, so your leveling problems may be related to your cautious play to some extent. I noticed a big difficulty spike at ~150k bounties, but once I got passed that, bounties felt totally fine for income IMO.
I do not think making rewards higher is enormous when player's ships are expected to die. If player can win flawlessly easily, the fight was not a challenge, and even then, if by some chance a ship dies because your AI ship screwed up badly in a fight that should have been flawless, then the fight was likely effectively a loss (of money). A challenging fight is one where player's ships are likely to die, with chance of flawless victory being less than 50%.
In more recent releases, I find that if I try to fight 150k bounties or "challenging" fights before I am ready (like having of fleet no better than theirs), my fleet wipes or takes so many casualties that I end up with a weaker fleet after the fight, the start of a death spiral. And when I do break the 150k barrier, it will not be long before I hit another huge spike at the 200k-250k+ barrier, while I am still stuck with a fleet that just barely got comfortable tackling a 150k-180k fleet.
To me, named bounties are something to do only with the player can crush them comfortably. Otherwise, there are better sources of income that are either less risky or pay more. Still, named bounties against fleets are not the worst. That goes to bar missions that send a revenge fleet for a job worth 50k-80k, with station bounties as a runner-up (50k to go against something equivalent to at least 150k bounty fleet? No thanks!)
I used the word "level" loosely. By level, I mean primarily fleet size and quality, not actually character level so much. Basically, higher level is a combination of more ships and things that make the ships stronger (like having s-mods, the best weapons, and high-level officers). The loot destruction from rust monster is a more apt comparison than level drain from undead. I do not want to fight a bounty with several cruisers (150k bounty) while my best ship is a destroyer or starter Apogee with mining blaster, and they have more and better officers than mine. Similarly, I do not want to fight a bounty with three or more capitals while I do not have a capital or more of my own, especially if they have superior officer power.
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The point is that if you make so much money that you can replace multiple ships after a fight and still make a large profit, then when you win flawlessly, you will make an insane profit. You will still probably want to take the easy fights with massive payouts over the difficult fights where you will take loses and maybe not even get more money compared to the easy ones. It just massively speeds up the progression without fixing anything. The goal should be to make the money reward valuable enough for a fleet that could comfortably beat the bounty, not to make the bounty profitable for any fleet that could conceivably beat it.
I agree that you generally cannot be expecting to take loses and still make a profit, but you will still be trying to find the limit of what you can do, so that you can get the most money. As long as the game gives the player difficulty options (contacts are a good way of doing this), then the player can pick the level of risk they are willing to take. Personally, I think named bounties should be eliminated entirely, and contacts should be the only way to get bounties (preferably with some changes to make it easier to get military contacts as well) but that's just my opinion.
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If named bounties stay, I like them to be uplifted to contact bounty level. At least they are more reasonable.
The point is that if you make so much money that you can replace multiple ships after a fight and still make a large profit
The large reward should anticipate likely casualties and give enough to replace ships and maybe a little bonus to offset the time wasted going to the bounties (instead of doing yet more safe trade runs). It stinks that I get only 300k from a multi-capital bounty but replacing a single capital and nothing else lost in battle costs about twice that much.
As long as the game gives the player difficulty options
That is the problem with named bounties. Once they reach the next level, they ALL do aside from the rare 50k one.
It just massively speeds up the progression without fixing anything.
Meanwhile, the enemy levels up at lightning speed. They too need a massive nerf, or at least offer a variety instead of leveling-up every named bounty faster than the player can keep up.
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The enemy leveling issues are why I say get rid of named bounties. With contacts, the enemies only level as fast as you want them to, and bounty payouts can be balanced purely around difficulty, with no concern for player scaling. I would probably make the contact scaling a bit more incremental as well in that case. Contacts theoretically eliminate all of the scaling issues that have plagued the named bounty system for several patches.
I think your issues are with the bounty scaling and not with the rewards.
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Bounty scaling is part of it, but it should pay at least as much as their biggest ship, which contact bounties do, but named bounties beyond the lowest level do not. If I fight a bounty with ten capitals, I want to be able to pay for at least one capital with the reward. A contact bounty will do that (and against a non-elite fleet size roughly equivalent to 200k-250k named bounty), but a named one will not.
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For what it's worth, the capital spam seems more toned down a bit this patch. Lots more 3-5 capital bounties. Those feel pretty worth 300k to me.
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hmmm...it almost felt like you're trying to tell people how to play the game, and how they should feel about certain aspects of the game.
Hey, I respect that you might be a veteran player of this game, and you seem to have a decent knowledge of it, but I honestly don't agree with your view on the game, what I care about is my first 100 hours of gaming experience,
you can sit there and tell all the tales of your 10000+ hours of gameplay, no one has the right to silence you or anything, but what you can't do is make people care about/agree with what you have to say, so why standing on that pedestal all the time
Look, I'm not trying to be a **** (although I admit some of my responses have been more prickly than others), but from my perspective you appear to engaging in the equivalent of someone learning how to play chess who complains about how the horsey moves. Not a perfect analogy, but you get the idea. I'm mostly attempting to tell you that pretty much every veteran player has to relearn parts of the game with every update anyway, but not necessarily relearn the whole game. Nor would I classify myself as a vet, if you click on my forum name and look at my forum stats, you can see that my account is (barely) less than a year old. However, I have played enough to accept that game is in flux, but no need to necessarily ditch something unless it is truly broken (which may appear contradictory to my recent statements regarding the SP/hull mod exclusion debate, until one realizes that my initial post was pointing out that IMO OP was proposing exceptions to exceptions).
But your first 100 hours of gameplay? I'll quote my initial response to you:
They aren't exploits, it's just the game. Play it how you will. Or fail how you will.
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Why would pirates be mad that you were dropping stuff on black markets? I mean, pirates literally buy off the black market, you are selling basically to them by using it.
Scenario 1: Revenge -> Pirate is also trying to sell the same goods as you, only to discover their buyers all already bought from you, and they are stuck with much less profit. They come after you to get revenge for stealing their business, or to get back the money they should have made.
Scenario 2:Greed -> Pirate hears someone just sold a fortunes worth of goods on the market, and is now LOADED sitting in orbit. An easy target they know will have lots of money to steal.
Seems totally reasonable to have some local pirates coming after you if you dump a bunch of stuff on the black market IMO.
Imma drop a second post to keep this separate from previous one. Re:
Scenario 1:Possibly, if anything one would think that doing too much black market sales would result in player getting ripped off while buying/selling (as in, a pop-up window tells you that since player was making mad sales on black market but didn't have enough marines, so player suddenly has less in the inventory cuz they got ripped off). Basically the black market equivalent of "heat" from normal market. But, yeah, maybe you annoying a local gang too.
Scenario 2: See Scenario 1; alternatively, game could spawn a pirate fleet to go after player if player makes too much from black market sales, but game would clearly have to explain to player that they flew too close to sun...
And beyond individual actors, gangs/organized crime are extremely territorial - its not just about the current deal, its also about future deals.
Regarding repeat business, some of the local gangs would maybe prefer the repeat business. Not like heavy weapons gonna move themselves! Main issue I guess is that pirates are more a quasi-faction (like indies and luddic path) than a real faction like Heg, League, Church, TT.
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If named bounties stay, I like them to be uplifted to contact bounty level. At least they are more reasonable.
The point is that if you make so much money that you can replace multiple ships after a fight and still make a large profit
The large reward should anticipate likely casualties and give enough to replace ships and maybe a little bonus to offset the time wasted going to the bounties (instead of doing yet more safe trade runs). It stinks that I get only 300k from a multi-capital bounty but replacing a single capital and nothing else lost in battle costs about twice that much.
But losing a capital in a 300k bounty fight means that something went horribly, horribly wrong far beyond what can normally be expected. Small ships get lost protecting the big ships if things go bad, but actually losing a capital is rare unless the player just gets stomped. Even then, recovering a capital with a few D mods doesn't mean that it has 0 value: its more like 80% value left, so the actual lost capital isn't 300k.
...
It just massively speeds up the progression without fixing anything.
Meanwhile, the enemy levels up at lightning speed. They too need a massive nerf, or at least offer a variety instead of leveling-up every named bounty faster than the player can keep up.
This would make me sad... bounties in general level up pretty slowly, with a couple of 'spikes' in difficulty that happen.
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Yeah, you can still use a ship with some D-mods till it accumulates even more D-mods (say 3-5), then restore it if it's S-modded or throw it out if it isn't.
Restoring a ship with two D-mods once is much cheaper than restoring the same ship with one D-mod twice, so you want to space our restoration cycles anyway.
On rewards for flawless and non-flawless victories, maybe crib an idea from MechWarrior 5:
Bounties come with insurance (although in that game they're optional and have an opportunity cost vs. taking cash/salvage rewards instead).
So you don't get hyper-rewarded for Flawless Victory, while if you do take mild damage it gets paid for. If you take a lot of damage (i.e. you done messed up), it still hurts but not as much as it otherwise would.
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I only skimmed the last couple pages so maybe this was mentioned but:
Why not add another story point option for bounties where if you lose a lot of ships you can go back to the mission poster/contact and talk to them about how you successfully took out their target but there was unexpected difficulties that they didn't mention (handwavium, storypoint stuff- 'oh you didn't tell me their loadout was that dangerous I figured they'd have equipped something more standard!'). That way the player has a safety net if they're willing to use a storypoint (I mean they're supposed to be 'keep the campaign going or do something cool' things, right?) and the disparity between perfection and losses doesn't have to become more extreme.
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Why not add another story point option for bounties where if you lose a lot of ships you can go back to the mission poster/contact and talk to them about how you successfully took out their target but there was unexpected difficulties that they didn't mention (handwavium, storypoint stuff- 'oh you didn't tell me their loadout was that dangerous I figured they'd have equipped something more standard!'). That way the player has a safety net if they're willing to use a storypoint (I mean they're supposed to be 'keep the campaign going or do something cool' things, right?) and the disparity between perfection and losses doesn't have to become more extreme.
This seems a reasonable solution, plus more reason to justify SP use!
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But losing a capital in a 300k bounty fight means that something went horribly, horribly wrong far beyond what can normally be expected. Small ships get lost protecting the big ships if things go bad, but actually losing a capital is rare unless the player just gets stomped. Even then, recovering a capital with a few D mods doesn't mean that it has 0 value: its more like 80% value left, so the actual lost capital isn't 300k.
No, a fleet that can wipe out an endgame bounty fleet like that is overpowered, and the fight was not much of a challenge, not if a capital causality was in doubt. Player who finally reaches the pinnacle at endgame can construct a fleet that can wipe out any named bounty flawlessly and reliably. At that point, it is expected for those fights to be flawless, or a minor casualty at worst.
But player who has not progressed quite that far (does not have as many ships, has not reached max level, and ditto for his officers) but needs to fight a somewhat superior fleet because bounties progressed faster than he did (or go home and do more trade runs to catch up), winning without any casualties is not a given, even for capitals.
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But losing a capital in a 300k bounty fight means that something went horribly, horribly wrong far beyond what can normally be expected. Small ships get lost protecting the big ships if things go bad, but actually losing a capital is rare unless the player just gets stomped. Even then, recovering a capital with a few D mods doesn't mean that it has 0 value: its more like 80% value left, so the actual lost capital isn't 300k.
No, a fleet that can wipe out an endgame bounty fleet like that is overpowered, and the fight was not much of a challenge, not if a capital causality was in doubt. Player who finally reaches the pinnacle at endgame can construct a fleet that can wipe out any named bounty flawlessly and reliably. At that point, it is expected for those fights to be flawless, or a minor casualty at worst.
But player who has not progressed quite that far (does not have as many ships, has not reached max level, and ditto for his officers) but needs to fight a somewhat superior fleet because bounties progressed faster than he did (or go home and do more trade runs to catch up), winning without any casualties is not a given, even for capitals.
The entire scenario you described is purely a consequence of the bounty scaling mechanics, and can be solved by fixing or eliminating those. That is much preferable to having enormous payouts that totally unbalance endgame just to make it so a weak fleet can maybe feel good about fighting the bounties and losing a bunch of stuff.
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You know, if you want people to limit how much they use the Black Market you could simply apply the same system mods/blueprints use on it to credits.
As in pirates will learn and start to use blueprints sold on the Black Market, by the same token if you spend/make lots of credits on the Black Market the Pirates will the much better equipped because they're getting rich off you helping them smuggle. Have the game keep track of a percentage of all credits exchanged on the Black Market by the player and allow pirates to use that to buy more/better ships. Plenty of mods give pirates better selections too, so excessive Black Market trading will give them lots of strong fleets.
As for the Tariffs, I've always thought those should be dynamic to whatever your reputation with the faction is. Are they Suspicious of you? Expect 30-40% as you have to spent extra money on bribes just to get them to talk to you. Friendly or Cooperative? Maybe 10-15% as the officials go out of their way to help you.
I do know that if Alex does to the "Black Market's hidden if you've got your transponder on" thing, I hope he creates bar encounters letting you gain temporary access for a limited time with it still on. Like bribing or overhearing a pirate in a bar for the BM's location, but it'll only be there a week before it moves to avoid security sweeps (ie after the bar encounter, player has a week of in game time where they can access the market with a transponder on).
As for trading itself, I'll say I enjoy trading. Maybe I'm in the minority but I do like deciding my space trucker routes and trying to decide which cargo is worth hauling. Plus I spend a lot on Agents in Nexerelin to smooth over various faction relations to prevent the sector from exploding.
Edit: While we're on the subject of pirates, two things I never understood about them. Why do they have normal markets in their ports? Shouldn't there only be a Black Market? Also how can you commission with them, I always thought they were a collective moniker for a (at best) loosely associated band of violent individuals. Seems like it should be a constantly hostile faction (if one that probably won't attack you if you've got your transponder off. Probably).
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I thought pirates DO start to blueprints you sell on black market after a period of time and colony items... So it can be risky to sell those on black market unless your trying to buff pirate fleets.
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I thought pirates DO start to blueprints you sell on black market after a period of time and colony items... So it can be risky to sell those on black market unless your trying to buff pirate fleets.
They do, I'm just proposing that they should also benefit from the credits spent on the black market.
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not sure what the dev's official take/plan on economic rebalancing is,
IMO if a game with this much depth can promise a good first 100 hour experience(it's gonna be another 100 hours, and another, if the first one is enjoyable), it has no doubt in my mind it's gonna blow up,
however, if players can spot major exploits/obviously unbalanced mechanics very early into the game, it's gonna hurt a lot
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not sure what the dev's official take/plan on economic balancing is,
IMO if a game with this much depth can promise a good first 100 hour experience, it has no doubt in my mind it's gonna blow up,
however, if players can spot major exploits/obviously unbalanced mechanics very early into the game, it's gonna hurt a lot
Ah, finally, consensus. I think that the more optimal solution would unfortunately be to just make tutorial longer, even though new players would hate that even more. Problem is that there prolly is no optimal solution; otherwise dev is basically just making player otherwise sit through a bunch of warnings and suggestions to use easy mode first that will get ignored anyways...
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One issue I foresee with making trading more obnoxious: How will this impact selling stuff I get through exploring? I'm already at the point where I reflexively ditch the tens of thousands of Ore I find on occasion without looking back. I don't want to get to the point where I leave crates worth of Heavy Armaments just floating in space because I either can't dump them off without getting jumped by half the Sector's pirates (which would make the part where every AI trader seems to openly broadcast their port of origin, time of departure and destination without finding waves of pirates waiting for them in hyperspace highly questionable), or it's too much of a time investment to do so because I have to sneak into a dozen ports with my transponder off just to dump stuff off piecemeal, because no market will buy more than a few units at once.
If trade (well, smuggling, really, actual trade is never useful with it's tariffs) gets overnerfed it's just going to end up in the same position that every mission that ends up sending 200K bounty fleets your way are currently: Not worth the effort, and avoided at all costs as a result. Buff the missions, the contacts, the bounties, the exploration, make all of that stuff actually worthwhile without deadly caveats and then see where smuggling stands in comparison. If it still needs adjustments, so be it, but I'm not sure about comparing/nerfing it when it's competition is dragging along balls and chains.
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not sure what the dev's official take/plan on economic balancing is,
IMO if a game with this much depth can promise a good first 100 hour experience, it has no doubt in my mind it's gonna blow up,
however, if players can spot major exploits/obviously unbalanced mechanics very early into the game, it's gonna hurt a lot
Ah, finally, consensus. I think that the more optimal solution would unfortunately be to just make tutorial longer, even though new players would hate that even more. Problem is that there prolly is no optimal solution; otherwise dev is basically just making player otherwise sit through a bunch of warnings and suggestions to use easy mode first that will get ignored anyways...
I mean, having better tutorial is always welcomed, but I don't think the game is that difficult to play or understand, just fix the exploits, or simply hide them/delay the accessibility to them until late-game will do.
Under no circumstance should a game ruin players' sense of progression, it's vital
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I mean, having better tutorial is always welcomed, but I don't think the game is that difficult to play or understand, just fix the exploits, or simply hide them/delay the accessibility to them until late-game will do.
Well, there goes the consensus. They aren't exploits, they are edge cases for underlying econ system (mostly Chalcedeon). But I don't see any reason why most peeps would play the tediously boring trade runs until their eyes bleed (unless it's a meme thing or just masochism). And this is from someone who gets a kick out the econ system (although it was more the trade contracts I referenced that got dropped/hidden I found enjoyable, rushing to hit shortages less interesting). But hide them/delay accessibility? This isn't a single track game. Less Legend of Zelda, more Kenshi...
Under no circumstance should a game ruin players' sense of progression, it's vital
Ridiculous, any arbitrary player's sense of progression is relative. What you see as progress I see as boring... and vice versa.
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Trading is fine as is. (If somewhat dull.)
It's black markets that upset everything.
Taking away the universal access to black markets is the first thing that comes to mind.
Pirate controlled markets would be the only places the player would always have access to the black market.
Otherwise, they'd only have access if they were hostile to that specific faction. Or had some other (potentially story or contact based) means to do so.
This would require the failsafe of always having <x> of something to be moved to the open market though.
Which may or may not be desireable...
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Taking away the universal access to black markets is the first thing that comes to mind.
Pirate controlled markets would be the only places the player would always have access to the black market.
Otherwise, they'd only have access if they were hostile to that specific faction. Or had some other (potentially story or contact based) means to do so.
This would require the failsafe of always having <x> of something to be moved to the open market though.
Which may or may not be desireable...
Maybe optimal solution is just crank heat from black market even higher, but allow same market/colony contacts to reduce some of "super heat" (although new players will at some point learn that heat can be balanced by also trading on open market). Or perhaps gating black market behind having a pirate contact, but that seems unnecessarily restrictive...
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The entire scenario you described is purely a consequence of the bounty scaling mechanics, and can be solved by fixing or eliminating those. That is much preferable to having enormous payouts that totally unbalance endgame just to make it so a weak fleet can maybe feel good about fighting the bounties and losing a bunch of stuff.
Contact bounties pay about double of roughly equivalent named bounties, and they are more reasonable. Are contact bounties unbalanced?
It is not just player progression, but also world aesthetics too. (Not unlike empty mounts being the norm for optimized loadouts bothering people like me.) With named rewards that low, no two named bounties (one of them being a generic bounty hunter fleet after the other) should try to fight each other. The victor would be hopelessly ruined.
* * *
Taking away the universal access to black markets is the first thing that comes to mind.
Pirate controlled markets would be the only places the player would always have access to the black market.
Otherwise, they'd only have access if they were hostile to that specific faction. Or had some other (potentially story or contact based) means to do so.
No problem. Most of my black market trades are already at pirate stations in part because I raid them at nearly every opportunity after I trade. Not to mention the zombie bases out in the fringe that make convenient pit stops.
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(Not unlike empty mounts being the norm for optimized loadouts bothering people like me.)
Not just you, I dropped a mini-rant about that on another thread less than 12 hours ago about same issue. That is a huge noob trap since newer players usually don't have a good grasp of flux level maintenance (ie, stamina conservation).
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I would have made pirates target successful traders, but I'm not Alex.
Same. I'm still hoping to add that to ruthless sector some day, or make a new mod for it. I'm also a big fan of how Jaghaimo made black markets only accessible when transponders are turned off in Starpocalypse.
FWIW, I've got some notes in this general direction, especially vis a vis smuggling and the risks (or lack of risks) inherent in it.
One thing that could work is to have a more stringent black market activity limit.
That is, if you buy/sell things on the black market you have a hard limit in proportion to your transactions when your transponder is on. Say… 10% of total. So if you buy/sell 900k credits of goods in the regular market you can buy/sell 100k credits of goods on the black market.
This gives two methods of smuggling.
1) come in without your transponder off (no one ever knew you were there!)
2) come in with enough regular goods to make it look like you’re an honest trader.
This way it would be more reasonable to smuggle to some of the larger planets(especially missions if this transponder limitation were carried over). If you fail the suspicion trigger you get a rep loss and the goods are confiscated and you pay a fine. With no way to avoid this since your fleet gets locked in the hangar until you comply. (Edit: rather than having a “suspicion meter” that updates after you perform a trade have a “probability of being discovered” popup when you make a trade on the black market (option to cancel)
Other solutions involve
1) specific customs fleets such that other fleets do not scan cargo/hunt down ships that have transponders off unless an act of piracy has occurred (and will ignore you if you can be positively identified as not the pirate)
2) customs interactions upon entering a system/planet that allow you to declare your goods (illegal or otherwise) and have those goods be dealt with or sealed/tracked.
That is, suppose you land on a planet and you have food and illegal drugs. You go through customs and say “I took the illegal drugs from a pirate and am turning them in” (lose drugs gain rep) or “yea I have these illegal drugs but am not importing them” (keep drugs but unable to access black market due to guards stationed at your ship to make sure you leave with them and will check manifests of everything you do)
This could do well with a third class of good (regulated[or military] rather than illegal. Which would be rep limited and double tariff traded or some such, which would also make it harder for places to shortage themselves by being too effective policing their own illegal goods)
Customs interactions on planets could also allow you to bribe your way onto a planet and so develop a more… more proper interaction between pirate and the independents.
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Not just you, I dropped a mini-rant about that on another thread less than 12 hours ago about same issue. That is a huge noob trap since newer players usually don't have a good grasp of flux level maintenance (ie, stamina conservation).
Though it is now, filling all mounts was not "a noob trap" in all releases. In releases between 0.54a and 0.7.2a, when skills were strong, speed hullmods were stronger, and some exploits were not yet removed (like vent spam and fading shots with hard flux), it was possible to fill every mount and slaughter things like a god of war. Flux management back then was not a big deal for the player who could vent spam quickly. Beginning at 0.8, when much weaker skills, more cowardly AI, and exploit removal came, filling every mount became a bad idea (although it took a while before I adapted).
What I would like to see is something like Ordnance Expertise giving bonuses for filling in mounts. Current Ordnance Expertise gives flux per OP spent on weapons. Would like to see something similar, but by filling in mounts, not necessarily by spending OP.
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What I would like to see is something like Ordnance Expertise giving bonuses for filling in mounts. Current Ordnance Expertise gives flux per OP spent on weapons. Would like to see something similar, but by filling in mounts, not necessarily by spending OP.
That seems a reasonable suggestion, at least on its face.
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Something like original Ordnance Expertise 10 giving OP discounts on weapons (-1/-2/-4), although at least in skill form, that would seem like an utter mess trying to work with skill reassignment. 0 OP single missiles with old Missile Specialization 10 were fun.
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Hmm, I don't really think leaving mounts empty is a new player trap. While some of the optimal loadouts for some of the ships leave weapon mounts empty, there are good loadouts for every ship that use every mount. Its much more of a noob trap to not have good dissipation (*) or have a range booster installed on cruisers and caps, but thats part of learning the game.
* I was going to say maxed vents, except that there are enough ways to boost dissipation now that this is no longer required for a small but non-negligeable number of ships! And then there are others where you want maxed vents and the hullmod :D
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Under no circumstance should a game ruin players' sense of progression, it's vital
Ridiculous, any arbitrary player's sense of progression is relative. What you see as progress I see as boring... and vice versa.
You can stop playing that it's relative/subjective card, since it was me who explicitly asked you to justify how smuggling is balanced in a quantitative case, in the first place.
so instead of subjectively expressing our feelings, how about we get just a little bit more quantitative, can you explain to me how this is balanced:
on average each mercantile voyage takes me about 5 minutes, making approx 250k income, minus 20k base cost that's 230k profit/run, 46k/min, I'm not talking about the best case, I made 500k once, admittedly it's kinda boring if you do it constantly
at the same time, a bounty gives a 50~100k reward while takes on average 10 min to finish, because they tend to scatter in the outer reach of the core world,
since there's combat involved the base cost oftentimes goes beyond 50k, giving me 0~50k profit, 25k/run on average, 2.5k/min, good thing is you do get to play a lot of combat.
now let's talk about surveys, those are normally in the deepest space, more than twice the distance of a bounty run, the reward is generally around 90k, minus the base cost of 80k, you get about 10k profit/run, let's assume it also takes 10min to finish, that's 1k/min
And you couldn't, you bit around the bush, in fact it's you who's been talking about personal feelings lol.
So tell me, how's allowing a player able to fast track to late-game fleet in just 2 hours not exploits? and how is it not ruining progression?
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Under no circumstance should a game ruin players' sense of progression, it's vital
Ridiculous, any arbitrary player's sense of progression is relative. What you see as progress I see as boring... and vice versa.
You can stop playing that it's relative/subjective card, since it was me who explicitly asked you to justify how smuggling is balanced in a quantitative case, in the first place.
so instead of subjectively expressing our feelings, how about we get just a little bit more quantitative, can you explain to me how this is balanced:
on average each mercantile voyage takes me about 5 minutes, making approx 250k income, minus 20k base cost that's 230k profit/run, 46k/min, I'm not talking about the best case, I made 500k once, admittedly it's kinda boring if you do it constantly
at the same time, a bounty gives a 50~100k reward while takes on average 10 min to finish, because they tend to scatter in the outer reach of the core world,
since there's combat involved the base cost oftentimes goes beyond 50k, giving me 0~50k profit, 25k/run on average, 2.5k/min, good thing is you do get to play a lot of combat.
now let's talk about surveys, those are normally in the deepest space, more than twice the distance of a bounty run, the reward is generally around 90k, minus the base cost of 80k, you get about 10k profit/run, let's assume it also takes 10min to finish, that's 1k/min
And you couldn't, you bit around the bush, in fact it's you who's been talking about personal feelings lol.
So tell me, how's allowing a player able to fast track to late-game fleet in just 2 hours not exploits? and how is it not ruining progression?
And I told you it was deliberately unbalanced in order to "encourage" player to smuggle. I dunno, perhaps we will continue to agree/disagree until Alex locks this thread. But I gotta say, no offense, you kinda appearing to be deliberately obtuse...
As for ruining progression, congrats, you found an edge case and exploited it (for I'm sure a very dull few hours trading back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, BACK AND FORTH). But tell me, have you found the Galatian Academy yet...?
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Under no circumstance should a game ruin players' sense of progression, it's vital
Ridiculous, any arbitrary player's sense of progression is relative. What you see as progress I see as boring... and vice versa.
You can stop playing that it's relative/subjective card, since it was me who explicitly asked you to justify how smuggling is balanced in a quantitative case, in the first place.
so instead of subjectively expressing our feelings, how about we get just a little bit more quantitative, can you explain to me how this is balanced:
on average each mercantile voyage takes me about 5 minutes, making approx 250k income, minus 20k base cost that's 230k profit/run, 46k/min, I'm not talking about the best case, I made 500k once, admittedly it's kinda boring if you do it constantly
at the same time, a bounty gives a 50~100k reward while takes on average 10 min to finish, because they tend to scatter in the outer reach of the core world,
since there's combat involved the base cost oftentimes goes beyond 50k, giving me 0~50k profit, 25k/run on average, 2.5k/min, good thing is you do get to play a lot of combat.
now let's talk about surveys, those are normally in the deepest space, more than twice the distance of a bounty run, the reward is generally around 90k, minus the base cost of 80k, you get about 10k profit/run, let's assume it also takes 10min to finish, that's 1k/min
And you couldn't, you bit around the bush, in fact it's you who's been talking about personal feelings lol.
So tell me, how's allowing a player able to fast track to late-game fleet in just 2 hours not exploits? and how is it not ruining progression?
And I told you it was deliberately unbalanced in order to "encourage" player to smuggle. I dunno, perhaps we will continue to agree/disagree until Alex locks this thread. But I gotta say, no offense, you kinda appearing to be deliberately obtuse...
As for ruining progression, congrats, you found an edge case and exploited it (for I'm sure a very dull few hours trading back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, BACK AND FORTH). But tell me, have you found the Galatian Academy yet...?
I've stated many times before in this thread, it's all about the game, yet there's always someone who gets personal immediately when others disagree.
It doesn't bother me that someone talks as if he's a guru, that's if he can get his logic straight, yet he couldn't explain an obvious counterexample.
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I've stated many times before in this thread, it's all about the game, yet there's always someone who gets personal immediately when others disagree.
It doesn't bother me if someone acts like a guru if he can get his logic straight, yet he couldn't explain an obvious counterexample.
A simple no would have sufficed. And Galatian Academy is part of game. As for why I bit around the bush
, well, it was in an attempt to not ruin the game further for you. Same reason why they are generally referred to as [REDACTED] and not Remnant. Tool. But since you have consummately avoided actually answering anything, I have come to the conclusions that you are just trolling at this point...
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I've stated many times before in this thread, it's all about the game, yet there's always someone who gets personal immediately when others disagree.
It doesn't bother me if someone acts like a guru if he can get his logic straight, yet he couldn't explain an obvious counterexample.
A simple no would have sufficed. And Galatian Academy is part of game. As for why I bit around the bush
, well, it was in an attempt to not ruin the game further for you. Same reason why they are generally referred to as [REDACTED] and not Remnant. Tool. But since you have consummately avoided actually answering anything, I have come to the conclusions that you are just trolling at this point...
I'm just glad the thread has brought attention to the smuggling exploits, and many people shared their opinions, I pretty much gathered enough information now.
Oh lawd...I couldn't care less about you...it's about the game
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I would have made pirates target successful traders, but I'm not Alex.
Same. I'm still hoping to add that to ruthless sector some day, or make a new mod for it. I'm also a big fan of how Jaghaimo made black markets only accessible when transponders are turned off in Starpocalypse.
FWIW, I've got some notes in this general direction, especially vis a vis smuggling and the risks (or lack of risks) inherent in it.
One thing that could work is to have a more stringent black market activity limit.
That is, if you buy/sell things on the black market you have a hard limit in proportion to your transactions when your transponder is on. Say… 10% of total. So if you buy/sell 900k credits of goods in the regular market you can buy/sell 100k credits of goods on the black market.
This gives two methods of smuggling.
1) come in without your transponder off (no one ever knew you were there!)
2) come in with enough regular goods to make it look like you’re an honest trader.
This way it would be more reasonable to smuggle to some of the larger planets(especially missions if this transponder limitation were carried over). If you fail the suspicion trigger you get a rep loss and the goods are confiscated and you pay a fine. With no way to avoid this since your fleet gets locked in the hangar until you comply. (Edit: rather than having a “suspicion meter” that updates after you perform a trade have a “probability of being discovered” popup when you make a trade on the black market (option to cancel)
Other solutions involve
1) specific customs fleets such that other fleets do not scan cargo/hunt down ships that have transponders off unless an act of piracy has occurred (and will ignore you if you can be positively identified as not the pirate)
2) customs interactions upon entering a system/planet that allow you to declare your goods (illegal or otherwise) and have those goods be dealt with or sealed/tracked.
That is, suppose you land on a planet and you have food and illegal drugs. You go through customs and say “I took the illegal drugs from a pirate and am turning them in” (lose drugs gain rep) or “yea I have these illegal drugs but am not importing them” (keep drugs but unable to access black market due to guards stationed at your ship to make sure you leave with them and will check manifests of everything you do)
This could do well with a third class of good (regulated[or military] rather than illegal. Which would be rep limited and double tariff traded or some such, which would also make it harder for places to shortage themselves by being too effective policing their own illegal goods)
Customs interactions on planets could also allow you to bribe your way onto a planet and so develop a more… more proper interaction between pirate and the independents.
definitely, smuggling needs to generate more heat.
I agree with making smuggling very high reward, compared to blue-collar bounty hunting/surveying, but it needs to be balanced by high risk, currently in the game, there's almost no real risk of smuggling to most colonies. I'm not quite sure what's the solution though, I feel like I'm just too early into the game.
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I'm just glad the thread has brought attention to the smuggling exploits, and many people shared their opinions, I pretty much gathered enough information now.
Oh lawd...I couldn't care less about you...it's about the game
They just an edge case in game you exploited, for which shortages are generally temporary EXCEPT basically Chalcedeon (and Epiphany to a lesser degree, but that's kinda the nature of luddic path). Since you keep failing to understand that, I have to assume you are being obtuse. Hence trolling. After all, if you didn't care about me, why keep prodding me about being the "guru?" And clearly you care, since you won't shut up about it...
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Well there HAD been some decent discussion going on in this thread, but its devolved into bickering. I'm locking this before it turns nastier.