Money making balance

[TheShooter36]

Reducing profitability (overall profitability across all activities) is out of options IMO. We have players with ridiculous amount of assets and if you do that you will put newer players at a severe disadvantage. Plus, I am sure no one would want a capital's price to be "a considerable worth that should be thought out a million times". Shoehorning people into snubs and watching them getting killed by 1 ace no matter what they do is not the way. Some people excel at capships for various reasons and its the fun part for them. Making the fun more difficult for them by slaving them into boring and obnoxious trade mechanics and routes in the name of a "food chain" will only have more negative effects. While profits from missions should be slightly toned down, making them below freighter runs as Champ suggested essentially nullifies the whole work done for the mission system.

They should be very slightly below ore profits or ores getting buffs to be above missions. Remember the higher end of profits you get from missions are ran by properly equipped caps in either extremely specialized loadout that leave them defenseless in pvp or in teams, which is a high initial investment, compared to a 5ker

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[Lythrilux]

I am mechanically rewarded for playing FL as a 3D space shooter. That's all that really matters in terms of the mission running vs trading/mining.

Not really. Champ's comment got me thinking about it.

Before missions were profitable we had trading as the sole truly independent source of cash, mining falling back as semi-independent (you can do it solo but it's less profitable). Both involving vulnerable ships travelling through several choke points until their destination, and thus the Trader-Pirate-Police-Rebel-Military food chain was there to shake up the activity of many factions of many different kinds. It also had some feedback mechanisms, as for the occasional consumable replenishment the source of cash was still the bottom of the food chain.

Now we have another independent source of cash for those at the top of said food chain, well equipped to deal with mission targets, and since it's profitable, they'll stick to missions, and leave the trading-induced food chain completely. The result is that the middle elements of the trading-induced food chain - pirates, police, perhaps rebels too - will receive less activity, because their sources of activity are dependent of preceding chain elements, but may not possess the hardware required for mission grinding.

Maybe your own enjoyment is all that really matters for you, but on the larger scale missions becoming profitable has an effect on all of us, and not necessarily a positive effect.

All those IDs can still get activity by engaging or interacting with people doing missions. Piracy on lanes will be diminished perhaps, but I don't think there's a single unlawful ID that won't be able to shoot people in their ZoI. There's no real argument for missions creating less activity than trading.

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[McNeo]

Have you thought about possibly making trading actually fun for the trader and not just a grinding exercise?

Fact is, in a trader, once you see a pirate you've already lost, unless you're within 15k of a docking point (maybe half that if the pirate is a gunboat). Your win condition as a trader is escape, nothing more. There's no fighting back, particularly in a 5k, and even battletransports and liners are at a disadvantage even though they've sacrificed cargo space in the hull and even more again to house however many guns they've got. This was purposely made the case a long time ago after a few incidents where a few very successful convoys reverse-pirated a gunboat or two in Omega-7.

The quality of the interaction is predictable and monotonous, as is the act of trading itself. Right now, the only way to trade is the afk variety. I don't decry people who want missions to remain profitable, in fact that's a symptom of just how mind-numbingly boring trading actually is. And I should know how boring and unengaging it is, because I trade for at least 7 hours a day on weekdays while I'm at work getting paid real money.

My ideal changes are:
Mining most profitable.
Then Missions
Then Trading
Then missions in a fighter (yes, I am aware that its not really possible to signpost to the player whether they'll have gunboats dropped on them or not).

And give transports a fair shake in PvP against pirates. I've ideas for that too, but I get the feeling that making transports actually viable in PvP in some way is not a popular idea. As far as I can see, there's a mentality of "since you can earn so much money in a transport, you should be a sitting duck in every player encounter". Right now, the current state of transports means I'll do everything in my power to avoid a player interaction, and I gather from the subject of this thread that that's undesirable behaviour for someone flying a transport. If I felt I had a chance to defend myself or even turn the tables, I'd not be so shy and I might even be a bit excited to meet a pirate, rather than just downright angry.

[Busy Miner]

Exactly, most traders shy away from player interaction because they don't pack weapons, or stronger shields, since that reduces cargo space. Get rid of that cargo space cost and trading and piracy will become more interesting.

[LuckyOne]

I can't say I agree with the above. Transports should be transports. Slow, unarmed and sitting ducks. Battletransports maybe could get a buff, so you trade off cargo space for better protection (Stegodon is a good example)

Big transports should organise in convoys for protection. They are supposed to be used by factions focusing on trading anyway...

I'd do the opposite in fact. Make 5kers have even more cargo 6-6.5k and generally less guns (the ones with 1-5 turrets are fine I guess), reduce speed a bit, and buff hull points significantly. Make them big, fat, juicy magnets for pirates. Sort of like the Spanish Gold convoys.

Then solo traders would use battletransports and min-maxing trade would include hiring escorts or running the "safer" routes.

The only problem are that "safer" routes don't exist in-game currently. Sure there are gunboat/cruiser NPC spawns around capital planets... but most of those routes are frankly trash.

In an ideal trading world you'd have

• local routes - common commodities, smaller profits, but big chance of friendly NPCs spawning to save you. Good prices for pirates to truck off goods to their main bases, but very risky to pirate
  
  
• inter-house routes. Basically what we have now with ores. Piracy should be encouraged on the fringes of lawful space with lawful NPC patrols almost non-existent, but medium chance of unfriendly NPCs that could act as a force multiplier for the pirate (you could have them equipped with good deshielders and CDs so they help pirates pirate without really weakening the pirated trader)
  
  
• alternative routes. These should have "special" cargo, like perishable commodities or freighter only dock points. Unlawful NPCs are common and can really hurt you.
  Min-maxing these would require knowing the right jump holes to use and the right ships that don't make your cargo perish before delivering it. You could basically have them balanced by making it impossible for slower transports to make it in time.
  

I feel this system would make the trade much more interesting and interactive. AFK traders would choose local routes, team oriented people convoy trading and solo traders would try their luck in battle-transports or time-strained alternative routes.

Basically, a trade style for every flavour of trader.

[Lonely_Ghost]

I can't say I agree with the above. Transports should be transports. Slow, unarmed and sitting ducks. Battletransports maybe could get a buff, so you trade off cargo space for better protection (Stegodon is a good example)

Big transports should organise in convoys for protection. They are supposed to be used by factions focusing on trading anyway...

I'd do the opposite in fact. Make 5kers have even more cargo 6-6.5k and generally less guns (the ones with 1-5 turrets are fine I guess), reduce speed a bit, and buff hull points significantly. Make them big, fat, juicy magnets for pirates. Sort of like the Spanish Gold convoys.

Then solo traders would use battletransports and min-maxing trade would include hiring escorts or running the "safer" routes.

The only problem are that "safer" routes don't exist in-game currently. Sure there are gunboat/cruiser NPC spawns around capital planets... but most of those routes are frankly trash.

In an ideal trading world you'd have

• local routes - common commodities, smaller profits, but big chance of friendly NPCs spawning to save you. Good prices for pirates to truck off goods to their main bases, but very risky to pirate
  
  
• inter-house routes. Basically what we have now with ores. Piracy should be encouraged on the fringes of lawful space with lawful NPC patrols almost non-existent, but medium chance of unfriendly NPCs that could act as a force multiplier for the pirate (you could have them equipped with good deshielders and CDs so they help pirates pirate without really weakening the pirated trader)
  
  
• alternative routes. These should have "special" cargo, like perishable commodities or freighter only dock points. Unlawful NPCs are common and can really hurt you.
  Min-maxing these would require knowing the right jump holes to use and the right ships that don't make your cargo perish before delivering it. You could basically have them balanced by making it impossible for slower transports to make it in time.
  

I feel this system would make the trade much more interesting and interactive. AFK traders would choose local routes, team oriented people convoy trading and solo traders would try their luck in battle-transports or time-strained alternative routes.

Basically, a trade style for every flavour of trader.

Unfortunately... every idea with convoys/escorts crashes into not so big numbers of players. It's rly has to be organised nearly in an event manner, to have several transports and at least 2-3 snubs. And honestly, comparing this activity with solo powertrading, you shall have slightly smaller profit. In terms of fun... I guess you rly can't compare escorting activity with conn/PVE missions. So the convoys are rly more of RP oriented trading factions.

There are still Delta Nom-Nom Safari other things to do it game, which would attract people, rather than forming convoys.

So, I guess, for those ppl who are not hard-core RPers, when you've got BS and 95% of your activity is to do missions- you can scrap your trader.


Well, again, it's my own opinion, but I still think, that money making in this game should be excluded from balance. With all my respect to the community, developers of the mod and game itself, it's golden age already in history. All the stuff in game should be easily accessible, without much of a grinding, so people wont be frustrated with need to grind to make all those shiny CAU VIIIed Battlecruisers and have fun of actually participating in game activity. PVE/PVP and so on...

[LuckyOne]

I don't think player numbers are a problem. People will team up when it's beneficial for them to do so (think Omicron Delta)

Right now the best strategy for earning money in Disco is semi-afk powertrading. I think this devalues time of all people who spend their time grinding missions, hunting bounties or pirating.

Sure, maybe the income should be increased across the board or a zero dropped from all the in-game prices but IMHO actively playing the game, especially in cooperation with others should always be rewarded more than mindless F2-F3 ing.

[Haste]

Reminder that making everything more profitable means fewer hours required to get to a level of wealth where you never need to log in to make money ever again.

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[Groshyr]

Turn things into grinding simulator means turning the game from place of getting fun to another Euro Truck Simulator but this time without gameplay making it a bit funnier

[Charo]

Reducing profitability (overall profitability across all activities) is out of options IMO. We have players with ridiculous amount of assets and if you do that you will put newer players at a severe disadvantage. Plus, I am sure no one would want a capital's price to be "a considerable worth that should be thought out a million times". Shoehorning people into snubs and watching them getting killed by 1 ace no matter what they do is not the way. Some people excel at capships for various reasons and its the fun part for them. Making the fun more difficult for them by slaving them into boring and obnoxious trade mechanics and routes in the name of a "food chain" will only have more negative effects. While profits from missions should be slightly toned down, making them below freighter runs as Champ suggested essentially nullifies the whole work done for the mission system.

Turn things into grinding simulator means turning the game from place of getting fun to another Euro Truck Simulator but this time without gameplay making it a bit funnier

I'm gonna parrot these two points. idk why it's established people, usually with money to throw around, talking about how people with no money need to dump more meaningless time into the game for cash. People are using Delta missions as an example as to why missions need to be nerfed while most other places missions make less than ore trading. I run anti-GB missions in a BC on a station that spawns missions 15k away and I save my pilots to sell somewhere for higher later, but I still make less than ore trading in my 5k. It's already a long, boring grind just to afford anything, but it's still more fun than ore trading. Just for the hell of it I did a round trip with ore the other day, and tbh if money grinding was nerfed to needing 20-30 hours (?????) for a fully kitted battleship I would straight up not play. Like, there's a reason why I don't play EVE or MMOs, because I want to get to the fun without spending half my life staring at the ass end of a Stork.

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