I would say I am the number one world authority on Indie money making at the moment.
I made some 3+bill solo trading. Then deleted all my characters and quit, because it was just too frustrating an indie.
I came back BECAUSE of missions allow you to log, have fun, log various ships and make money, and team up with players at no effort.
And again regrinded from sunburst power trading and doing missions. I like caps so I needed a lot of money. So I powertraded a LOT and I flew a lot of missions on 10 caps across all sorts of regions.
And since Disco was my quarantine outlet I've done that all in last couple months
Trading now as indie
- Routes are too long, you meet people less.
- The only very reliable ones with PoBs always stocked with waypoints lead through bugged waypoints and bugged gates (Scrap+Mill.Salvage)
=> Trading is pretty much just an rp instrument right now e.g. See here
Missions Cruiser missions are on par with trading now, and even on maxxed out heavy BS you die to high level cruisers from time to time. And need some skill to farm fast without dying and end up at 0 bars many times if you max profit to the edge. People complain about caps being bumped? Well that's what makes cruiser missions perfectly balanced now $/hr and effort wise and I would take them as an example of what works
Gunboat missions Have NO RISK of dying to on caps. Only skill is how fast you are at killing them, good at turret view and adding and hitting with prims and heavies along with switching to secondaries. There are also factions that only drop gunboats even at 4 million level 39 missions, and they are the most profitable missions in the game now by quite some margin.
Non-nomad BCR and Battleship missions Have a LARGE risk of dying solo, take a long time if you kite or use torpedo loadouts, and generally are bad money to effort solo. Except for nomad ones as you can sell what they drop for more money - That's why Delta is such a shitshow of teaming up heavy bs.
Conclusion
Trading should give more money BECAUSE it is boring imo.
At the same time, at least some AFK trading routes should be made more fun, shorter, directly connecting with more frequent interactions and workable with waypoints and gates. Think Bristol=>New London and back before the change. This is not the fault of the missions balance.
Gunboats need to give less money plain and simple, they give too much for the no risk+effort. Cruisers are just right now and cruiser missions should be a benchmark for cap missions balance.
And I'd buff BattleCruiser and Battleships drop money clearly (and nerf anti- nomad missions somehow -but I think there's a fix coming on the delta farming anyways on all sorts of caps.
Nerf remains prices is one, replace them with azurite gas for cloaks for example. And/OR make Delta FP only for zoners+indies)
