Forums » Suggestions
Alternate playstyles should be more rewarding
It seems to me that trading weapons is a very reliable, safe and effective source of making credits. Other play styles such as Deneb/Hive/Unrats do not come close at all. Hive/unrat drops are RNG, and need demand in order to sell. Deneb has no drops, and some quirks with the scaling reward/last hit result in destroying larger ships not paying out a lot. Combat in general demands much more player attention than trading, which I can do while watching something in the background or waiting for Claude to finish up. There's also commodity trading which pays a little too less compared to weapons.
I'm not proposing they should all just pay equal or more than weapons trading, but their payouts could be maybe 3x'd? For example a large Deneb skirmish could pay ~500k instead of 165k, killing enemies could pay maybe 10-15k vs 5k it does right now. Getting a hit in on a HAC/Connie should suffice for the credit/XP payout. They could also drop some capital ship parts, maybe 1 in 5? Hive mission payouts could be scaled similarly too.
Some commodity item base prices and their profits should also be increased. They pay roughly 1/6th of weapon trading profits for equal volume. This could be slightly bumped, and their sell price decay could be tuned to match weapons. Increasing base price also makes pirating more rewarding.
I know some of these systems might either have ongoing reworks, or will be reworked in future. I know trade will at some point be dynamic, but I feel bumping payouts for combat works as a decent solution for the time being. There could also be concerns with abuse, where people sign up and don't participate for the rewards, but the multi-box restriction should probably mitigate it.
I'm not proposing they should all just pay equal or more than weapons trading, but their payouts could be maybe 3x'd? For example a large Deneb skirmish could pay ~500k instead of 165k, killing enemies could pay maybe 10-15k vs 5k it does right now. Getting a hit in on a HAC/Connie should suffice for the credit/XP payout. They could also drop some capital ship parts, maybe 1 in 5? Hive mission payouts could be scaled similarly too.
Some commodity item base prices and their profits should also be increased. They pay roughly 1/6th of weapon trading profits for equal volume. This could be slightly bumped, and their sell price decay could be tuned to match weapons. Increasing base price also makes pirating more rewarding.
I know some of these systems might either have ongoing reworks, or will be reworked in future. I know trade will at some point be dynamic, but I feel bumping payouts for combat works as a decent solution for the time being. There could also be concerns with abuse, where people sign up and don't participate for the rewards, but the multi-box restriction should probably mitigate it.
Also some of this might be ignorance, since I haven't played in a while. However to put things in perspective, I have been trading intensely for 2 days now and have made almost 150m from it. I think short of killing leviathans aggressively and selling their drops to players, no other activity would have made this much.
I'm pretty happy with the rewards in Deneb, the only thing I'd like to see added would be a onetime reward for breaking shields on capships that scales with the shield's difficulty, for the sake of shitting out a number 10k,20k,30k, and 50k respectively relative to the capship in question's difficulty.
Destroying turrets could also yield a small 1k~5k bonus, beyond that anyone that spends an appreciable amount of time up there blowing stuff up already makes really good credits (granted they're not buying fancier spaceboats everytime they die)
What deneb/geira need more than anything would be a capship dock on the respective safe side of the deneb borders to incentivise capship pilots to sink credits to return to the battle faster.
As far as making money weapons trading as far as I'm concerned it's too rewarding the margins are absurd and despite the fact the price scaling is agressive at some stations it's easy to get around by just doing.
Commodity trading rewards with trade xp which on top of credits, when you run good routes it's arguably better than weapons trading because you avoid turning your spaceboat into something that maneuvers akin to a wrecking ball.
Ultimately the problem isn't that activities aren't rewarding enough it's mostly that weapons trading is arguably busted and in need of adjustment.
Destroying turrets could also yield a small 1k~5k bonus, beyond that anyone that spends an appreciable amount of time up there blowing stuff up already makes really good credits (granted they're not buying fancier spaceboats everytime they die)
What deneb/geira need more than anything would be a capship dock on the respective safe side of the deneb borders to incentivise capship pilots to sink credits to return to the battle faster.
As far as making money weapons trading as far as I'm concerned it's too rewarding the margins are absurd and despite the fact the price scaling is agressive at some stations it's easy to get around by just doing.
Commodity trading rewards with trade xp which on top of credits, when you run good routes it's arguably better than weapons trading because you avoid turning your spaceboat into something that maneuvers akin to a wrecking ball.
Ultimately the problem isn't that activities aren't rewarding enough it's mostly that weapons trading is arguably busted and in need of adjustment.
I don't disagree that weapons trading is busted, but suggesting lowering their profits at this point would be too controversial since that changes the status quo too much. It would also probably cause some credit deflation, making people who have already profited from it even richer.