Mission rewards and why they are not worth it vs Miners and why they are op

[jlehtone]

I'm doing the main quest now, in a 1500+ hour game, and I can say that at no point have I found those mission rewards either tempting or necessary beyond getting the initial pocket money together to buy my first miner.

High-star pilot seminars from generic missions?

[leoriq]

The issue is that missions do not scale very well.

This is not an issue, but the basis of capitalism, where the owner of tools of the trade reaps the profits as others are working for him.

[Imperial Good]

High-star pilot seminars from generic missions?

Those are needed?

This is not an issue, but the basis of capitalism, where the owner of tools of the trade reaps the profits as others are working for him.

Which is also the issue here. They should not bother offering you a satellite repair mission when you are at 30 reputation and own a huge fleet and set of factories. They should be offering you huge missions like "liberate X sector from Y faction" for hundreds of millions.

[Nort The Fragrent]

The good old days when you had to grind away, made the reward of getting your first ship built a real treat. One that you worked hard for. And thus took pride in your new ship.

This new, pour money at the player kills that first ship excitement. Now all things are thrown at the player, and you advance so flipping fast, the game has lost its challenge. It is all too fast too quick and you're a billion air in no time. The game might as well start with a couple of billion, and scrap the blue prints.
The money side of the game gives it a fake, sense of achievement. In fact there is no achievement, as it is so easy to advance. All you have to do is play for a short time and the universe is yours.

This new youth, have it all now, has killed this kind of game. Make the young struggle, make the game hard to advance. That way some one with a station has done well.

You can have a flipping shipyard in a very short time, and the game is effectively over by that time.

[leoriq]

Which is also the issue here. They should not bother offering you a satellite repair mission when you are at 30 reputation and own a huge fleet and set of factories. They should be offering you huge missions like "liberate X sector from Y faction" for hundreds of millions.

Who, do you think, are 'they', game-wise?

[leoriq]

The good old days when you had to grind away, made the reward of getting your first ship built a real treat.

I'm totally fine without the grind. Don't want to search for another hundred of Pharmaceutical Isolators, nothankyou.

And X series was easy about money since TC, or when you became able get builder missions without docking to stations, whichever came first.

[terodil]

Which is also the issue here. They should not bother offering you a satellite repair mission when you are at 30 reputation and own a huge fleet and set of factories. They should be offering you huge missions like "liberate X sector from Y faction" for hundreds of millions.

Who, do you think, are 'they', game-wise?

NPCs.

[dtpsprt]

Which is also the issue here. They should not bother offering you a satellite repair mission when you are at 30 reputation and own a huge fleet and set of factories. They should be offering you huge missions like "liberate X sector from Y faction" for hundreds of millions.

Who, do you think, are 'they', game-wise?

The dev's of course since they took no provision to "filter" or even readjust the rewards according to rank within the faction, which was a given in the original X series. For example with the lowest rank with a faction you'd get a reward of around 2,000 for each scanned asteroid, at the highest rank this would be 150,000 to 200,000... why this scaling is not followed I'm not sure to even want to know why.

[dtpsprt]

Which is also the issue here. They should not bother offering you a satellite repair mission when you are at 30 reputation and own a huge fleet and set of factories. They should be offering you huge missions like "liberate X sector from Y faction" for hundreds of millions.

Even when someone gets a this stage things can happen that he'll need missions to fix damaged reputation. If the rewards are not scaled according to rank, how many "missions" should one have to have to get back to 30 from, say, 25?

IMHO many things are not thought of in X4 and they can be real game breakers at times.

[spankahontis]

Oh god no, don't nerf miners too.

If it is that easy to make money without any danger it needs to be reviewed do be more in line with other sources of income. Why fly dangerous fight missions for a couple of cents if you can make big money by sitting in your chair and letting your miners do the job? Or do you prefer that type of game? Maybe I am the exception, but I prefer well balanced and hard games

It's not that the miners are OP, they most certainly are not.
Nvidium mining is incredibly profitable, but it's also limited in scale; if they weren't then you'd have a point, 500k a run with a miner is ALLOT of credits.
But there are handicaps in your way to cheesing this exploit..
- Only certain trade stations will buy Nvidium off you, Teladi/Antigone/Hatikvah. There is no massive demand for Nvidium.
- Each Trade Station has limited storage capacity for Nvidium so as soon as you spam sell the Nvidium to full capacity?
- The Consumption rate for Nvidium on trade stations is so slow that you couldn't have more than 2 medium Miners per trade station before you dry up your customer base.

Other minerals gives you a slow steady revenue, but were talking peanuts per Miner, you'd need allot of miners to make it worth it; by then you're considering building your first station.

I think the problem lies in the missions to be honest, sometimes you get a good one worth some money, but 95% of missions, from Assassination, to transport missions have no cash incentive and I go straight to crystal mining at the start of my playthrough cause that's where the big bucks are at the start of the game.

Mining is balanced, it's the missions that's the problem, too little cash for too much effort. Missions need a serious rebalance!

There is no sense of accomplishment when I buy a larger ship, money pours in way to fast even without miners or traders. Seems like every ship bails out way 2 easy now. Atleast in X3 i had to work for things.

Then they introduced the Stock Market to Terran Conflict and I could become a billionaire in a matter of hours.

[jlehtone]

High-star pilot seminars from generic missions?

Those are needed?

Frankly, I have no idea. They just looked like something that might be desired by someone.


What do I know? I get ludicrous* amounts of credits from missions.


* Relative, subjective estimate based on comparison to income in the very first X-game that I did play (obviously knowing nothing at the time).
I do know that I sound like an X3 post: "I have a massive Complex" that turns out to be a whopping 10 station complex, which in the eyes of 1000+ construct builders look not "massive".

[aard00]

High-star pilot seminars from generic missions?

Those are needed?

Frankly, I have no idea. They just looked like something that might be desired by someone.

Definitely not needed. Apart from being very poorly thought out in my view (Hello? A pilot can't walk into the store and buy his own darned seminar?? After I've just hired him for oooh, anything from 50k and way on up into the millions? Won't invest in his own career development? Hello? He doesn't know how to point his ship and fly through a hoop unless he has x stars??), the whole pilot skill thing is still completely broken. Never really worked in my game as far as I can tell: I only have one auto trader left of the sum total of 2 I bought and 1500 hours later he's still at 2 star. Gave up on that side of the game

[alt3rn1ty]

High-star pilot seminars from generic missions?

Those are needed?

Personally I have yet to see any seminar above 1 star, not a single one since my new game start back in April just after purchasing Split Vendetta.

Do people who manage to get above 1 star seminars use SETA?

Personally I tried SETA once for about ten minutes, and one of my OOS fleet of Destroyers (5 Ody and 5 Rattlesnake) plugging up a gate into a Xenon sector, started losing a few. If I dont use SETA (I went back to a save just prior to losing them) that Fleet is standing its ground protecting a position very successfully against all who come through including I and K at the same time .. So I have reverted to never using SETA. Its a very slow game to build up, but the amount of calculations lost by the game engine due to time rate being advanced costs me some bad losses for my current economy.

So I wonder if people get better random appearance of higher value Seminars if they are using SETA.

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With regard to the topic, personally I would not like to see Miners nerfed, they are the main ingredient to keeping my current 3 stations profitable.

Mission rewards could definitely use some love though.

[dtpsprt]

Personally I have yet to see any seminar above 1 star, not a single one since my new game start back in April just after purchasing Split Vendetta.

Do people who manage to get above 1 star seminars use SETA?

You get 2 and 3 star seminars from guild missions (ANT and TEL). Also some (rare indeed) 4 and 5 star pilots from war missions.

You are right, considering that a miner's chance to get over 2 1/2 stars is next to zero they are just bearable as they are. They could use boosting (in achieving stars at least) not nerfing....

[humility925]

I question you, had you ever flow miners ship before? What you do when miners ship is all you had and pirate or enemie coming to get you, there is no jump drive, and highway is too far, or no where in sentor? What about Personal trading ship?

No, they are not overpower, if anything, it's under power, at least come to human player playing slow ship that had no jumpdrive to get out of danger zone when pirate come up.

X-2 and X-3 got it right for personal trading at least, mining ok, but not that great in that game, but it's was at least fun, reasonable gameplay because mostly jump drive and sat to see station cost, buy and sell, race vs other a.i trader, even your own trader for fun, ability to get out of way from pirate or enemies,

This game is bad for personal trading and even personal miner, crystal mining was fun, not because making huge money but keep busy before they nerfed whole crystal to be very few, rare, small, and worthless in long term game (who want to spent many hours to find crystal and only make few little money out of many hours seaching, it's worthless gameplay, it's was fine before they nerfed, because you often see more rare crystal, more buck and in turn motive to do that but now you can't in latest version, less busy, more seaching, less money, it's bored. People only do it if easy to reach in short of time in real time in most big buck, it's was fun, now it's not because nerfed. Nerfed do not make game better, often it's make gameplay worse,

Why you think miner is overpower? Maybe because many other thing are nerfed or do need improve and make better but didn't that make seem miner look good, no miner is not overpower, and need improved and buff in fact, but mostly for personal slow ship need buff to deal with threat, because this game didn't had jump drive, meaning gave figher or higher power combat ship "I win button because slow ship don't had ability to flee or get out of combat zone at all, not fair to non combat slow ship and not fun for those who want to fly trading ship or miner ship often, and not want to fly spilt ship, due roleplaying/gameplay enjoyment.

So no, if anything miners ship and noncombat ship need buff or had ability to deal with theat like had a jump drive while combat ship do not had jump drive (in all balance, I guess)

So mission reward kind of need to be useful, but miners isn't overpower, unless you had try solo (no wingman, early game or poor to afford wingman) personal flying miner/trading ship with pirate or enemies happen chase you out of no where while there is no help near by, because I had tried that, it's no fun at all, but in x-2 and x-3 is fun to do personal trading ship, no matter how slow ship is, even you racing, you had sat nearby station to see selling/buying at good pirces, and jump here and there, sometime you win, sometime you lose to a.i, and you always safe to get out of way from enemies who want to harm you, as long you had enough energy cell to cover jump drive, it's was very fun.

But not this game, it's wasn't fun to play miner and trading, because no jump drive, even to get out of way from combat ship who seek harm you, you are forever doom, once enemies chase you,
slow ship/trading/miner ship are bad and "I lose button" when come to enemies combat seek you and chase you down, unless you lucky to near of highway, but it's no fun, even you reload game, travel back in time before enemies chase you. I don't need to reload at all in x-2 and x-3 because ability to get out of danger zone thank to jump drive. But this game don't gave any ability to slow ship force on trading and miner a fighting chance vs combat ship, single and few more shield don't help, and noncombat suppose good sneaking, stealth, fast, outrun, only use weapon if need to be, but not this game, this game don't had it for non combat slow ship because game developers forgot and didn't forced on personal trading/miner ship like x2 and x3, Now x4 is good for combat ship, but not good for trading and miner at least for personal flying those ship's role of trading and miners. It's suck hard, and bad gameplay for personal trading and mining, it's wasn't good as x-2 and x-3

[leoriq]

I question you, had you ever flow miners ship before? What you do when miners ship is all you had and pirate or enemie coming to get you, there is no jump drive, and highway is too far, or no where in sentor? What about Personal trading ship?

I press the accelerator and fly away at 700+ m/s. Because Alligator.

[jlehtone]

@humility925: Some repetition does help conveying a message, but too many repeats have reverse eefect, just like in game overt repetitive tasks have negative label: "grind".

@leoriq: When I saw Alligator I thought: "Oh, Miners are clearly faster than Traders. Makes sense."
Apparently the other factions do not have that as prominent as the Split.

Even with the slower ships there are engine options, although with associated cost, and both Boost and Travel Drive for making a dash.
The NPC are less prone to boost&travel, but tend to chase at cruise speed.
Obviously one has to hit the (weak) turbo before the foes are close.

I'm more prone* to get shot to pieces in a large combat vessel, for its boost is weak and the Travel mode is slow to load.


*Skewed statistics. Having briefly served as intern for a NPC Refinery in the middle of Argon Prime hardly counts as good data point about the life in Miner/Trader.

[leoriq]

@leoriq: When I saw Alligator I thought: "Oh, Miners are clearly faster than Traders. Makes sense."
Apparently the other factions do not have that as prominent as the Split.

When miners ship is all I had, as was stipulated in the question I answered, it is Alligator.

[Slashman]

I dunno I think miners are in the right place. A huge fat target for the enemy. You could of course assign warships to protect them, but that's a waste of money.

In X4 miners are basically disposable...hence the cheap price.

If you insist on making that your player ship...assign some heavy hitters to protect it...or use an Alligator!

[jlehtone]

The wall of text had (emphasis mine):

not fun for those who want to fly trading ship or miner ship often, and not want to fly spilt ship, due roleplaying/gameplay enjoyment.

I can understand "no Y for roleplay".
It is harder to see the rationale of "I will not fly the (only) fast ship because I want to enjoy the gameplay, but I can't enjoy the gameplay in slower ship".


We have seen both "miners are OP" and "miners are weak" opinions in this thread. Doesn't that put them on the ballpark?

Or would you prefer the "I don't use miners so you should remove them from the game" approach?