SZ too profitable

[le_souriceau]

I not 100% following developer talks/comments (maybe missed something in Discord or here), but I wonder, if there is any better plan for SZ?

Its obviously now too profitable -- veterans, using behemoth laser ships, farming it relentlessly, to extent, when they get comparable (and I will not be suprised -- more) money in same time, then players embarking on journeys beyond (with at least some risks).

How this makes any gameplay sense?

Recently I was doing some testing and with mid-tier laser miner (by far not most efficient model) I was making around 600 K/hour worth of ore. Probably some people earning much more, with better ships and farming plan.

I have 2 ideas to handle it:

a) disable mining lasers/asteroid towing in SZ, so real newbies can still make decent money by some pickaxe work, while farmers forced out;
b) leave only smallest asteroids in SZ and disperse them greatly, so at least farming will be much less efficient (less favourable for newbies);

+ additionaly make stations jobs a bit more profitable, so they are more viable option for complete beginers to save up some penny;

I think it will be fair, that if people want to risk nothing (only hoard assets), they also will get much lesser rewards/slower progression. Currently its completly broken.

 

[Foraven]

No, the real problem isn't that players can make more money in the safe zone, it's the fact there is very low demand for the more advanced ores found outside. Charodium is one of the most used ore currently and it's mainly found in the safe zone so players can make a lot of cash while there is no better way to get it.

Ore distribution need some rebalance.

 

[Molchane]

Disabling mining lasers is a really good idea imo, it solves the problem of having top tier ships generating insane money in an environment with 0 risk while still allowing new/broke players to make money and learn the game. When I first started I was pick axing all day but the moment I bought a new ship that was much faster than the default laborer I was out of the safe zone, I had moved past safe zone before I even had a mining laser so I don't think newer players will be impacted by this change.

 

[J.D.]

i think once capital ships come out, with all those siege mechanics, this will change. Capital ships need alloys. The mechanics in the works require ore outside the safe zone. hopefully this will fix the issue among other things.

 

[Tomasz]

Whether players can make more or less money in SZ is completely irrelevant.Credits are only numbers that have no meaning unless there is some use for it.
And right now there is nothing to do outside of SF other than just mining and getting credits.
Once there are things to do outside SF less players wil ldo mining in SF , and probably mining in general.
This is outlook of Devs as they were answering similar post elsewhere.
Things need to be added to the game outside SF- this is core of the issue about state of game.

 

[Vanidar]

i think once capital ships come out, with all those siege mechanics, this will change. Capital ships need alloys. The mechanics in the works require ore outside the safe zone. hopefully this will fix the issue among other things.

Capital ships need alloys and it'll be a new money sink. Things that will stop this from being as effective as you hope:

1. Most people can easily see civilian capital ships are by far the safer and almost-as-good investment as military capital ships. Once these are invested in by most clans, demand will die down since they, by definition, can never be destroyed
2. If people end up using the "military" capital ship, without underlying motivation to war and fight, I don't see why people would risk these just to sponsor everyone else's WoW battleground-esque fun for the day.

Hopefully demand goes up for outside SZ ore, because yes, it is a massive problem when the most efficient ore mining in the game is 100% safe.

Whether players can make more or less money in SZ is completely irrelevant.Credits are only numbers that have no meaning unless there is some use for it.

No, it *does* matter whether or not players can make the most money from within a safezone or not. Saying it doesn't matter until there's "something to do with it" is simply kicking the can down the road. If the ore with the best ROI is inside of a safezone, then there's no compelling reason for anyone to leave it, both for those people that would prefer to and those who don't care either way. Do you feel that a risk/reward balance is "completely irrelevant"?

 

[Tomasz]

Yea credits are irrelevant.All you can do with credits is get bigger ship to collect credits faster.Tweaking numbers to shift playerbase to collect it 100 km further away isn;t going to add anything to actual gameplay.

 

[Molchane]

i think once capital ships come out, with all those siege mechanics, this will change. Capital ships need alloys. The mechanics in the works require ore outside the safe zone. hopefully this will fix the issue among other things.

I'm hoping capital ships are really the fix people are saying it will be I'm hoping it doesn't use safe zone ores at all but all we can do is speculate about that.

Whether players can make more or less money in SZ is completely irrelevant.Credits are only numbers that have no meaning unless there is some use for it.
And right now there is nothing to do outside of SF other than just mining and getting credits.

Right now watching your credits number go up is one of the few things to do, it's essentially like 1 of 3 things you can do right now and to say it has no meaning is kinda like saying video games have no meaning: you're 100% right but we are here to play the game.

Yea credits are irrelevant.All you can do with credits is get bigger ship to collect credits faster.Tweaking numbers to shift playerbase to collect it 100 km further away isn;t going to add anything to actual gameplay.

Moving the playerbase outside of the safezone to make credits more effectively will actually add a lot to the game. These ships will now be at risk, pirates can pirate and shipbuilders can sell more ships. It should force a rise in ore prices simply because less ore will be farmed from either crashing or travel time and more ships will be built. That just means more money for miners who sell the ore.

I've been thinking making mining lasers only work outside the safezone is an amazing solution to the mass safezone farming that doesn't hurt new players and I really hope the devs make that change.

 

[Daddystu]

The recent update added new asteroids to the SZ. Loads of Charodium it seems. So yes, agree far too profitable currently.

 

[Bestcoaster]

i've been internally calling this the 'charodium trap'.... there's little economic reason to leave the safezone, it's just a better and safer and easier use of your time to mine charodium en masse. These sz profits are entirely supported by massive direct-to-NPC sales and not participation in the player economy. You can't fix this by lowering NPC prices because then you are just screwing new players ability to make money.

Ships getting destroyed won't fix this either. it's not like there's any lack of demand for charodium. charodium is needed in massive quantities for all ships. supply just vastly overwhelms that high demand owing to the safe zone mega miners. If demand picks up to the point of actually increasing charodium prices that will.....encourage people to mine more charodium. Thus the Charodium Trap.

i like the idea of disabling or limiting mining lasers in the SZ. It has some problems.... but it seems like the fairest solution. Right now SZ is not just a risk:reward problem but a straight reward problem.

 

[DankHoneyOil]

i like the idea of disabling or limiting mining lasers in the SZ. It has some problems.... but it seems like the fairest solution. Right now SZ is not just a risk:reward problem but a straight reward problem.

I hate this idea. It's supposed to even things out for newbies. But vets with 1000 crate ships arent the only one using the laser in SZ. A newbies first upgrade is something like the trifin with 54 crates and lasers, now you are going to slow down newbie progression because they can't use lasers until they can come up with a ship worth traveling the distance out of SZ (54 crates is not worth flying that far).

 

[Daddystu]

I hate this idea. It's supposed to even things out for newbies. But vets with 1000 crate ships arent the only one using the laser in SZ. A newbies first upgrade is something like the trifin with 54 crates and lasers, now you are going to slow down newbie progression because they can't use lasers until they can come up with a ship worth traveling the distance out of SZ (54 crates is not worth flying that far).

In future perhaps a one way travel route out of the safe zone could be implemented. Once you leave - you cant return.

 

[FrostyFrost]

Disable SZ - there are plenty games that are similar that dont have safe zones and playes quickly band with others for help or learn how to avoid others.
Scatter the stations around the planet rather than in one cluster to reduce piracy and increase dependency on group play.
Increase functionality of player stations so they can function the same as the origin stations.
Reduce size of SZ roid as well as density

Civilian capital ships is going to bring its own kind of problems as they are effectively going to be current day mobile stations with no way to capture or remove it without setting up a 24h blockade and will never need to be replaced even when you decide to jump next to a pirate station and mine there indefinitely.

 

[Foraven]

Thinking about it, what we truly need to make it worthwhile to leave the safe zone is more common larger asteroids right outside the SZ. If we can get SZ like resources in larger chunks right outside the SZ, it would be worth our time and risk to go outside to get it. Small asteroids should be all you can get in the SZ (easy to manage with pickaxe but a waste of time for lasers). Making larger rocks more abundant as you venture deeper into the belt would make it much more interesting for miners with large ships than the millions of small ones we have right now.

 

[DemonicSanil]

I don't think the SZ is too profitable. The bigger problem is that the other zones, especially zone 3 and 4, are not valuable enough. Let me explain.

While the smaller ships are often quite cheap and easy to replace, say a laborer II, anything in the medium class and beyond can get very expensive very quick. Expensive ships mean that players own less of them and will treat them more carefully. It also makes it more frustrating to lose them to an asteroid, a pirate or a griefer (ragequits). Keep in mind: a ship may be just pixels, but it also equals real life time spent to get it, and time is precious. My basic assumption is: The harder people have to grind for their ships, the less they want to lose them and the more careful they will fly. Make it easyer to replace ships, and people may engage in riskier behavior. That'd be especially good for the PvP - community. Also more shipwrecks would mean there's more to do for scrap mechanics. So a profitable SZ is totally fine in my opinion. Make it easy to advance for newbies and to recover for people who lost their ships.

BUT

I agree that there has to be a reason to leave the SZ. Better ores that cost more and are needed for non-basic modules are in theory a good enough reason. But then a trip afar must be worth more than doing SZ - mining for the same amount of time in the same ship. In practice Karnite sold for less than 5k last time I checked, which is especially bad. Arcanium and Kutonium are a little better with about 15k, but still not worth the time and risk. One mining trip takes about 5 or more hours just to cross the distance, and even if you make it to zone 4: it's mostly bastium. That's honestly a design choice that I find strange, to say the least. I would very much appreciate if the amount of rare ores in zone 4 would be boosted, and their base value substancially raised. For as long as ships are very valuable and the other places provide less money than the SZ, I get why many prefer to stay near origin.

 

[Greebo]

I don't think the SZ is too profitable. The bigger problem is that the other zones, especially zone 3 and 4, are not valuable enough. Let me explain.

While the smaller ships are often quite cheap and easy to replace, say a laborer II, anything in the medium class and beyond can get very expensive very quick. Expensive ships mean that players own less of them and will treat them more carefully. It also makes it more frustrating to lose them to an asteroid, a pirate or a griefer (ragequits). Keep in mind: a ship may be just pixels, but it also equals real life time spent to get it, and time is precious. My basic assumption is: The harder people have to grind for their ships, the less they want to lose them and the more careful they will fly. Make it easyer to replace ships, and people may engage in riskier behavior. That'd be especially good for the PvP - community. Also more shipwrecks would mean there's more to do for scrap mechanics. So a profitable SZ is totally fine in my opinion. Make it easy to advance for newbies and to recover for people who lost their ships.

BUT

I agree that there has to be a reason to leave the SZ. Better ores that cost more and are needed for non-basic modules are in theory a good enough reason. But then a trip afar must be worth more than doing SZ - mining for the same amount of time in the same ship. In practice Karnite sold for less than 5k last time I checked, which is especially bad. Arcanium and Kutonium are a little better with about 15k, but still not worth the time and risk. One mining trip takes about 5 or more hours just to cross the distance, and even if you make it to zone 4: it's mostly bastium. That's honestly a design choice that I find strange, to say the least. I would very much appreciate if the amount of rare ores in zone 4 would be boosted, and their base value substancially raised. For as long as ships are very valuable and the other places provide less money than the SZ, I get why many prefer to stay near origin.

I think perhaps the SZ should have generally smaller rocks than non-safe zone. This would still be viable for newbies to build their first ships, but less so for massive miners and ore-catchers to take huge rocks for profit.

 

[Legacyyy]

I not 100% following developer talks/comments (maybe missed something in Discord or here), but I wonder, if there is any better plan for SZ?

Its obviously now too profitable -- veterans, using behemoth laser ships, farming it relentlessly, to extent, when they get comparable (and I will not be suprised -- more) money in same time, then players embarking on journeys beyond (with at least some risks).

How this makes any gameplay sense?

Recently I was doing some testing and with mid-tier laser miner (by far not most efficient model) I was making around 600 K/hour worth of ore. Probably some people earning much more, with better ships and farming plan.

I have 2 ideas to handle it:

a) disable mining lasers/asteroid towing in SZ, so real newbies can still make decent money by some pickaxe work, while farmers forced out;
b) leave only smallest asteroids in SZ and disperse them greatly, so at least farming will be much less efficient (less favourable for newbies);

+ additionaly make stations jobs a bit more profitable, so they are more viable option for complete beginers to save up some penny;

I think it will be fair, that if people want to risk nothing (only hoard assets), they also will get much lesser rewards/slower progression. Currently its completly broken.

I think as more of the game play loop is implemented that the safe zone mining could stay as it is and would be one of the least profitable forms of mining. Based on the naming of Alloys, which I'm assuming will be relatively valuable will take some of the more rare materials while cloud harvesting requires a station with heavy power supplies so either solar or large gens which will also require more rare ores. There will also be an economy shift id have to imagine once "production lines" are implemented. Also the inclusion of civilian capital ships would allow for the mass transportation of ores that only spawn at certain moons back to origin or any other station for that matter making venturing out far very profitable if you have the means to get there

 

[DemonicSanil]

I think perhaps the SZ should have generally smaller rocks than non-safe zone. This would still be viable for newbies to build their first ships, but less so for massive miners and ore-catchers to take huge rocks for profit.

Nah. That approach is basically forcing people out of the SZ out of necessity, and a kind of nerf that further limits resources and assets for newer players. It's not like you'd find bigger rocks in the SZ anyways, most of them are gone.
For a game striving to be fun and engaging I would always prefer it to lure me somewhere with a carrot instead of forcing me to go there with a stick.

 

[Foraven]

Nah. That approach is basically forcing people out of the SZ out of necessity, and a kind of nerf that further limits resources and assets for newer players. It's not like you'd find bigger rocks in the SZ anyways, most of them are gone.
For a game striving to be fun and engaging I would always prefer it to lure me somewhere with a carrot instead of forcing me to go there with a stick.

And the carrot could be more common larger rocks outside the SZ. Right now when I leave the SZ I can go very far before I start to see larger asteroids, if they were more common that would make it much more profitable for me to go out there. But they really should change the ore distribution so whatever we can find in the SZ we can find in much larger quantities deeper in the belt. Big asteroids means less travelling around to fill our haul thus far less time wasting. That would be a big incentive to go out there...

 

[Daddystu]

Found some very large safe zone roids tonight. Must be filling about 50 crates alone maybe more.