Devs, have you actually played the game lately? Take a few escort missions, please.

This suggestion is very simple: take a decimal place of every escort mission credit reward. I can go one WH and get 400,000 credits; going three yields 720,000. When PvPing in B8, I take one that's heading through B8 every time I go to repair/reload. I usually get between 30-75% of the route credit just by returning to B8: free money.

This is too stupid to be allowed to continue.

to much scotch last night lecter? there's already a topic on this that turned into a flame war when the same thing was suggested. anyways yeah i agree. or make it so that if you die on the escort missions you don't get paid either way free money sucks.

I'm less concerned about the B8 abuse than the size of the numbers. If you want to get 20-30k for "running" a voy while you're in B8, I say knock yerself out; 200-300k is a whole different matter.

Heh. I've been bitchin up that tree for over 2 years Dr.. Its all going to go away soon(tm) all we need is the finished economy....

or make it so that if you die on the escort missions you don't get paid either way free money sucks.

that statement right there is what "turned it into a flame war". In fact, it wasn't a flame war... it was a bunch of people trying to reasonably argue against such a stupid idea.

But back on topic: escorts need re-working of goals/objectives/etc. a simple nerfing of payout isn't what's needed. Case and point: if you couldn't earn that money off escorts, would you play the game as much as you do? Or would you get bored when you couldn't earn enough money doing what you like?

That last paragraph is why the devs left the escorts as they are. To encourage players who just want to fight to continue playing. Alternative methods of making enough credits to play is part of the planned redux. Unfortunately, none of them are currently visible with the possible exception of hive skirmish, where you can make enough credits to play infinitely while seeing a slow steady growth to your bankroll. Its nowhere near there for the border war, unless you just do border patrol.

I agree that the payouts for grey escorts are too high, but I would suggest the xp and standing awarded is too low.

To be honest I think that the long awaited faction redux is the key to all this; there should be consequences for failing to escort and consequences for attacking a voy .

So, short term fix as suggested by Dr L, followed by a long term rationalisation of the whole thing.

The idea that you can kill bots in an "unmonitored" nation space sector and gain standing with that nation is inconsistent with being able to kill their voys and steal their cargo in an "unmonitored" sector without losing faction. Killing the escorter in the employ of the nation or faction anywhere in space should have have similar consequences to killing a voy, namely a standing loss.

Either have monitored or unmonitored space, stop having two types of unmonitored space. soon (tm)

I got killed 3 times on my last escort! How dare you say I shouldn't get paid!!

However, i should point out I was trying to get the nation border turrets to shoot my teradon as I escorted it as I was bored and wanted to see if I could get the teradon to take on the border….Getting killed in the process :D

Yes I agree, this is ridiculous, for long trips I can see 100k being worthy but I made 1 million in 2 trips, 650k to versasi from Sedina and 350k going back to Sedina

Kinda crazy!

Escort rewards are based on the cargo inside the convoy (which is why you get paid slightly less if I blow up some of your ships, it's basically like solving this problem with clean in clear action in what we players are allowed to do... one neutrally charged subatomic particle at a time, if I do say so myself). Before convoys carried bulk of one item, the contents of a moth were usually around 100-200k of assorted goods; which is perfectly reasonable. Nowadays, you can crack open a moth in a convoy with no escort within range and find Sedina Chocolates in bulk worth 1,000,000cr+ (depending on where you are) per moth or you could work your way up to a 99.5% hull value repair bill of a corvult (around 75,000cr) taking out three moths guarded by two sun+gat WTDs and the broadside of a Teradon and be rewarded with 120 x Free Power Cells.

Bring back assorted goods in moths, bring back the consistency of convoy value, bring back escorts that make sense. Simple as that. Oh yeah, unrats too! I loved wing humping those little guys' mauds...

-Chaakin Tockoa

CT, regardless of whether there's variation in the value of a given voy, or in how easy one is to pirate, the rewards for all convoys are entirely too high for what's involved.

Period, end of story. Knock em down a decimal place and move on.