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[TheMeInTeam]

Even if you find a perfect airless world with both ore types, that's still: Mining, Refining, Heavy Industry, Fuel Production... oh hey we're done here, and we didn't need a bonus industry slot at all.

Commerce, for the 50% boost to *all* income? High Command, to have a smaller chance of pirate disruptions?

Unfortunately, as it stands neither of these tend to be very useful by the time you can run it.  Even suboptimal colonies can make > 100k easily, and once you have a few of those, even supply hungry fleets are financially secured with cash to spare.

High command kills stuff in the same sector and immediately nearby the jump points in hyperspace, if it can. That tends to be only a small fraction of shipping disruptions IME, as long as I'm colonizing outer worlds rather than core worlds.  With Kanta's protection, your interests only get hit by opportunistic pirates.  For most outer worlds locations, that might be a problem if they have a base between your colony and the core worlds where shipments get inadvertently ganked...but for the most part, the pirates will leave you alone and there isn't much a high command will do for you.  I guess it could help in crises, but come on.  If you can win the fight to get the hypershunt online, you can easily face tank any of the crises head on...and none of the crises require this kind of support.  If you prepare for them, you only need to fight ~2 mercenaries from TT and maybe the PL blockade directly to be done with crises forever, and that's assuming you don't just raid PL and take the 5% kickback deal.

PL blockade is a little harder if you're at war with them, to be fair, but still easier than getting the tap online!

[Thaago]

The raiding quests that require marines are very hit and miss. Raiding soft targets pays well for how fast the player can do them (right there in the core) and its not hard to go transponder off to some worlds. Others that want hundreds or thousands of marines at major worlds with patrols... yeah not so much.

Comparing them to smuggling isn't fair imo; smuggling is currently way out of whack on the risk/reward scale compared to everything else!

Speaking of things desperately needing a balance pass: smuggling! It should force more combat, or more interaction with the game's stealth mechanics, or ideally both. My suggestions:

1) All black market trade requires transponder off or free port.
2) More patrols at minor ports.
3) After a few trades pirates "learn" that the player is smuggling lots of high value cargo, and start laying ambushes for them. Not quite revenge fleets in terms of relentless chasing, but lying in wait along the buy/sell trade route the player is using or at common destinations (Chalcedon for example). As the player ramps up their smuggling into the hundreds of thousands of millions, major factions take notice. Shipping hundreds of tons of heavy armaments (with no taxes!!!) is disruptive to sector stability after all...

[AcaMetis]

After a few trades pirates "learn" that the player is smuggling lots of high value cargo, and start laying ambushes for them. Not quite revenge fleets in terms of relentless chasing, but lying in wait along the buy/sell trade route the player is using or at common destinations (Chalcedon for example). As the player ramps up their smuggling into the hundreds of thousands of millions, major factions take notice. Shipping hundreds of tons of heavy armaments (with no taxes!!!) is disruptive to sector stability after all...

I'd still like to know why and how, in this scenario, the various trade fleets that openly broadcast their ETA, shipment and destination mysteriously don't get instantly ganked by whoever the moment they jump into hyperspace.

[GrayingGamer]

There should be some data mining of player activities in order to make informed adjustments of quest rewards. Collect basic gameplay behavior data from players (this isn't too much to ask, right? Opt-in, if we're really worried?) about which quests they're doing and which they aren't. Then every once in a while, adjust-up the rewards for quests that are just never being done, until enough players start deeming them worth their time. I get that it's a good thing that some activities are simply "better" than others, but some of these quests are too bad... to the point where it breaks immersion a bit, and it also discourages a player from participating in certain types of game content.

[Megas]

The raiding quests that require marines are very hit and miss. Raiding soft targets pays well for how fast the player can do them (right there in the core) and its not hard to go transponder off to some worlds. Others that want hundreds or thousands of marines at major worlds with patrols... yeah not so much.

It my case, my raid target was soft and easy to raid (no problem for my 200 or so marines I haul around for opportunistic raiding).  My gripe was with the revenge fleet afterwards.  After seeing that, I think "raid equals disguised intel bounty with less reward", and have avoided raid missions ever since because I do not want to fight a bounty fleet for nothing.  Makes me feel like a sucker taking the job (and me thinking the client wanted a hit job on a fleet but offered it as a raid instead so he can pay less money for the job).  If I want to bounty hunt, I should look at intel for bounties and hunt them, not fight revenge stalkers after doing seemingly easy odd jobs.

1) All black market trade requires transponder off or free port.
2) More patrols at minor ports.
3) After a few trades pirates "learn" that the player is smuggling lots of high value cargo, and start laying ambushes for them. Not quite revenge fleets in terms of relentless chasing, but lying in wait along the buy/sell trade route the player is using or at common destinations (Chalcedon for example). As the player ramps up their smuggling into the hundreds of thousands of millions, major factions take notice. Shipping hundreds of tons of heavy armaments (with no taxes!!!) is disruptive to sector stability after all...

I already do #1 always.  I never ever want a non-zero chance of getting stopped by patrols, given the contraband I always haul around (AI cores, one of every item to see prices).  I know that is not what many people do, but for me, this would be no change for me.  If anything, no open trade allowed in black market stops me from accidentally selling something while transponder is on and I reload to undo that mistake.  I like to preserve the "none" chance, and if I sell openly, I lose it and I can never get it back.

For #2, need to add hostile fleets in systems without patrols.  Three of the core systems have no patrols whatsoever and the only threat are pirate fleets if the fleet is not big enough.  Also, pop-up bases out in the fringe have black markets too.

In previous releases when pirate bases spawned in a system adjacent to my colony system, I visit them to sell a bunch of junk at their black market (and buy a few of theirs if I want), before I raid and steal some of it back, then blow them up to remove "Pirate Activity" from my colonies.  After a while, they come back with more Pirate Activity.  (Now, thanks to Piracy Respite, not my problem, unless they steal my sensor relays and mess with my slipstream map.)

[Pushover]

Man, I have a lot of thoughts on how trade is simultaneously one of the more interesting systems while being one of the most frustrating. A few ideas regarding black market use:

• Have limits on tonnage being shipped into the black market, based on colony size/stability/free port status
• Have harsher punishments for greatly exceeding these limits, such as an investigation that causes more severe rep loss for major factions, or an enforcer fleets that tries to hunt down the player.
• Offer better terms for trading openly. 30% tariffs on imports and exports makes no sense as an economic policy across the sector and makes the open market something I only touch if I just need sheer quantity of goods. Trading to a shortage should be profitable over the open market.

Pretty much all or my early game is spent flying cargo around the sector in bulk, since any shortage represents anywhere from 20-200k in profits to be made with minimal effort and risk. Delivery missions are also insanely profitable since you deliver the goods and then can immediately pick up discounted surplus goods to turn it around I to more black market trading, meaning you can get a few hundred thousand from a delivery and then thousands more with the cheap good price.

The missions asking for the raids or bombardments need much better target choices. Sometimes in the early game where I have < 50 DP of ships I'll be asked to bombard/raid Chicomoztoc.

[Bungee_man]

Speaking of things desperately needing a balance pass: smuggling! It should force more combat, or more interaction with the game's stealth mechanics, or ideally both. My suggestions:

1) All black market trade requires transponder off or free port.
2) More patrols at minor ports.
3) After a few trades pirates "learn" that the player is smuggling lots of high value cargo, and start laying ambushes for them. Not quite revenge fleets in terms of relentless chasing, but lying in wait along the buy/sell trade route the player is using or at common destinations (Chalcedon for example). As the player ramps up their smuggling into the hundreds of thousands of millions, major factions take notice. Shipping hundreds of tons of heavy armaments (with no taxes!!!) is disruptive to sector stability after all...

That's a very good point, though that third point may be a bit ambitious (even if it'd be very cool). I remember proposing something a little simpler:

1) Pirate stations have no black markets, since they're already in the underworld. You have to pay their tarrifs, making the Kanta's Den routes less absurd.
2) Poor markets have price ceilings, even if they have shortages. Less restrictive for necessities like food, but you can't sell Chalcedon supplies for 300 credits.
3) Using the black market on high-stability planets requires coming in with transponder off. Prevents easy routes like buying volatiles from Umbra, selling on Sindria black market, and going back with supplies, none of which will be confiscated because they're a legal good.
4) Bring back rep penalties for trade with local enemies (usually pirates and pathers).

Just amounts to tweaking some numbers in intuitive ways.

[BigBrainEnergy]

3) Using the black market on high-stability planets requires coming in with transponder off. Prevents easy routes like buying volatiles from Umbra, selling on Sindria black market, and going back with supplies, none of which will be confiscated because they're a legal good.

This makes a lot of sense but the question is, where is the cutoff?

One way of doing it would be to have black market suspicion scale with stability, so you get less suspicion from black market trade on lower stability planets. At stability 0 you get no suspicion, and at stability 10 you can no longer access the black market with transponder on.

This would necessitate showing a planet's stability in the trade menu. Hovering over it could also provide a tooltip that explains black market suspicion, and how stability affects it.

[Toxcity]

I'm more a fan of softer penalties (like larger reputation hit) than just cutting off access to the black market when you have a transponder on. Especially with certain ships and weapons being faction specific. Even with a commission, it's not uncommon to not find everything for a capable build outside the black market.

[Bungee_man]

I'm more a fan of softer penalties (like larger reputation hit) than just cutting off access to the black market when you have a transponder on. Especially with certain ships and weapons being faction specific. Even with a commission, it's not uncommon to not find everything for a capable build outside the black market.

At present, faction-specific gear is just a non-factor; a mechanic that doesn't really do much. You go to the market, you eat the suspicion, and maybe you get -5 rep from a patrol later, but the weapon itself is legal so they take nothing.  Even if you don't want to sneak in, you can get a contact with nanoforge time, steal the blueprints yourself, get reputation high enough to access the military market, or just explore and probably end up finding it out there.

I would put the cutoff for black market access with transponder on at around seven. Smuggling cleverly to low-importance markets is still easy, but big payoffs like Chicomoztoc, or goofy trade routes like Sindria-Umbra require some degree of effort.

[Princess of Evil]

You would be surprised at how much easier it is to sneak into anything big.

[Megas]

You would be surprised at how much easier it is to sneak into anything big.

True.  Get profile about 100 or less, and player can sneak into just about anything most of the time.  Rarely, player gets unlucky in that some nearby patrol fires off a sensor burst and then player needs to run and shake them off.  But most of the time, a fleet with low profile can squeeze between two, maybe three, patrols orbiting the market.  Does not matter how big the fleet is as long as profile is low enough.  I had thirty ship fleet with under 100 profile sneaking into markets before it gets raided into the ground for their blueprints.  But before I raid, I visit the black market to find anything worth buying, then I raid for the goodies.

[BigBrainEnergy]

If there is something that *desperately* needs balancing, it has to be the gryphon. Missile spam gryphon is still pretty ridiculous. This may be a problem inherent to harpoons and squalls, but it doesn't seem to present a serious balance issue when they are used anywhere else. I haven't seen anyone go out of their way to demonstrate such a problem, at least.

How would one re-balance the gryphon without ruining it? It seems fair as a support ship in mixed fleet compositions, but presents an issue when you spam mostly gryphons. Well, how about giving it a built-in escort package, and reducing its OP by 15? Basically forcing it to pay for a hullmod that missile-spam doesn't want, while it could get value out of it in a more normal fleet composition.

[Killer of Fate]

If there is something that *desperately* needs balancing, it has to be the gryphon. Missile spam gryphon is still pretty ridiculous. This may be a problem inherent to harpoons and squalls, but it doesn't seem to present a serious balance issue when they are used anywhere else. I haven't seen anyone go out of their way to demonstrate such a problem, at least.

How would one re-balance the gryphon without ruining it? It seems fair as a support ship in mixed fleet compositions, but presents an issue when you spam mostly gryphons. Well, how about giving it a built-in escort package, and reducing its OP by 15? Basically forcing it to pay for a hullmod that missile-spam doesn't want, while it could get value out of it in a more normal fleet composition.

raise its DP to cost to 25

[BigBrainEnergy]

raise its DP to cost to 25

That would hit the missile spam, but then is it worth 25 dp outside of those fleets? Maybe raise it to 25 dp and give it a free hullmod like ballistic rangefinder or escort package while staying at 140 op. In missile spam it would be worse, but for other fleets it's a tradeoff. I do like that better than reducing the op because it feels starved at 125. You could also just raise the flux stats instead of adding a hullmod.