I don't get your points. yes you can run transport make decent cash but its not the only way to make decent cash.

you apparently have't done much mineing I have far from good skills and i can pull in 80u in ore in 30 min you mentioned titan mineing as your example so let me do the same tonight

mined titan fill a sequer ever 30 min takes 10 min to haul it to station. now given I now have two choices sell it raw which at current price is around 800k or refine it and sell that which sadly is only worth 665 with my refineing skills so I sell it raw.

i just made 800k in 40 min and thats just with a termis level 7 in mineing skills no advanced mineing skills t1 mod and virtuly no support skills can only run 2 med miners and 2 small due to accum.

I have seen miners with good skills fill a lithus is 20 min without breaking a sweat thats twice the profit in less the time so yea transport make you money but its not the only way or even the best.

lets look at combat did that tonight to just to farm kernals in about an hour i made 2 mil from plasma alone over 50 kernels and 45u in damaged moduels this is just on a t2 spawn if would recycle the mods and sell the kernals thats a pretty sizable amount of nic.

so i would say no transport are not ruining the econmy the only thing there doing is brining nic into it with no risk and no cost thats the only problem with them is inflation with no risk.

First, sorry for my english. ;)

I play since a couple of days and i feel the same like Antigone Psitalon does. Also started with a few friends. As the only one of us who does industry and harvesting i was excited of the possiblites this game - and in general the sandbox genre - has. As i discovered that doing lv 1 transport missions is the absolutly best, easyest and safest way to get redicioulus amounts of money, i was frustrated.

I see two main problems here:

There are no early-game markets
Usually, new industrials supplying the early-game market, more advanced players supplying the further developed areas or her own corp. That's some kind of economic circuit who depends on the principles of Gain, Offer and Need. Sadly, it's actually not working on the Beginner lands because a fighter (our consumer) as example can create two characters who instantly can do a large amount of money in short time with tiny investment of money. He has no need to buy cheap or maybe produce by himself (and become an industrialist).

Different playstyles
I understand why advanced players may say that nic are a minior thing and that all those guys who come to the game and think they can build a industry empire are noobs, but still there are people who enjoy different styles of playing this game and they should able to do so. That's the strength of the sandbox. It's actually not necessary to play a dedicated industrialist. And the lv 1 courier missions are a main reason for this.

There's always going to be one way in a game that's better for earning income than others, it's only natural. By how much is fair though, that's debatable. But I think Dev's have noted that they're working on changes to assignments at the moment, so we'll likely see a new situation crop up one way or another.

In regards to industry and newer players, well, they took titan ore off of Beta islands and stuck it on Alpha islands exclusively. That should in a way help newer players who are limited to Alpha islands. Granted, I'm sure most corps and established players have a decent stockpile so this change won't be evident right away. But sooner or later this change is going to trickle in to play and I think that will help open up more options for cashing in.

A big part though, at least to me, really falls on what you want to do with your time. I know courier missions are probably one of the best ways to earn easy NIC, but to be honest, I couldn't be arsed to do something that boring for any greater extent of time. And yes, I am a big Min-Maxer, but that doesn't mean I'm going to sacrifice my sanity for a couple extra bucks. I'd sooner go roam and see what I can find to kill. It keeps me engaged and entertained albeit being a bit less lucrative. As it is, anyone can do these assignments, so the market aspects that it has the potential to control is in a decent state of equilibrium right now.

Not poking sticks or fingers but I have seen Multiple Beta owning corps on Alpha islands ravaging the Titan ore spots... Thats not helping anything, and as stated in that other post about that.... Big Corps that are self sufficient will remain that... they will not buy titan when they can have "titan day"

But back on topic... yes a "noob" can earn vast amounts of nic per hour running transports... Some greedy ones will continue to do this and drain themselves out of the game. Others will move on to what makes them happy as stated above a toon that does mine and has EP spent in mining can make more nic per hour vs a transporter. Also a combat toon can make over 1 mill in one hour on just plasma (you must spend ep on your combat skills DPS) if you have a recylcing indy friend/alt you can farm a spot that has e-war mods and make even more from the espitium you recycle. I'll admit i got grinded out on transports trying to get my reputation back after I re-rolled. Thank god for squad accept missions and rep from my combat toon.

Even if they nerfed the payout of the transports or made a 3 round cap per 24hours on those missions people will still run them for the "easy Nic"

combat missions just suck - stop grinding the missions and just grind the plasma, and you can beat that mission runner eventually.

Seeing as how I am indeed learning about terrain, EW, and juking running these combat missions...You have just summed up Perpetuum. Good game, sir.

I'm also new but I am not new to sandboxes - like many around here, I'm from EVE but I'm also spent my time in EVE helping train new players - for over a year and a half, seeing roughly 300 or so new faces every month.  One thing I can tell you about new players is how they focus or don't focus on their careers based upon their introduction to the game.

Who chooses to stay or go, generally do so within the first couple of weeks and having the top source of income being running circles between bases is not exciting nor all that interesting to new players.  (Nor is shooting rocks with lasers for many in EVE - few join that game looking to be miners yet that profession is a healthy portion of the population.)

In EVE I tend to recommend them getting into mission running - combat missions - at the start.  This gets  them thinking and focusing on doing and taking damage.  Not on climbing into an industrial to make enough to operate and spending their time trying to "build up capital" in a non-combat fashion.

For industrialist focused players, the current layout is awesome.  For those that wish to find more combat oriented play later - PvE or PvP - income based upon combat is a superior incentive to keep pushing in those directions instead of focusing on other "peripheral" areas of a game that won't necessarily lead them to where many would like to see them going.

Similar to EVE; this game is earn in PvE, spend in PvP.  Focusing them AWAY from combat early on won't attract nor keep those who will be spending on replacements and no replacements = market glut which is bad for industrialist types as well.

As such, an adjustment that favors increased income for combat early on will have them working nav, fittings, weapons, defenses, so on and so forth - not industrial mechs and figuring out how quickly they can get between teleports, terminals and outposts without getting shot at.

"Balanced" more - not necessarily favoring but hearing "been playing 3 days and making 1.5-2 mill/hr"... That's a hell of a lot more than someone struggling to do T2/T3L's is going to make and "teaming up" - that reduces the income they might make trying combat so let's run circles between safe-bases...

Not good.

tl;dr: If you want to see more PvP players then get them income using weapons and being shot at from the start.  Not "wasting days" running circles between safe bases, in stripped down mechs, while training non-combat oriented skills as the best income option - balance it out better.

The guys killing npcs making 250k an hour are farming the wrong spawns. You can bring in at least 1mil an hour on plasma alone by yourself.

Try better spawns.

I will admit.  On my first spec was for the transport mission farming.  I was averaging 50k per minute.  Pretty sure nothing out there comes close to that for a character less than a month old.  I respeced to combat because it is more fun, but damn... I sure do miss that easy NIC.

I agree that the courier missions are have way better income for the new player than other activities (some people say artifact scanning is good, but I am not sure what the NIC/hour is).  Courier missions, as pointed out above, is that they are very consistent in the income, really easy to side-train into, have no competition, and are extremely boring.

I think that we all agree that no other mission up to an and including lvl2's (and lvl3's? I haven't done those) provides a similar income.  Other activities do, but not missions.  Therefore, the missions are not balanced well.  The only reason right now to do lvl2's is for standing gains.

I gave my alt Nav 6, Industrial robots 4, parallel assignments 4, with lots of EP still remaining from the initial 20k.  He easily pulls 1m from lvl1's in a LWF sequer.  From the profits I bought a T4 LWF and now it is bringing in even more.  But with the highways, a T4 is not really necessary.  You regularly arrive before the "molecular instability" runs out and have to wait.

My main is a week old and specced purely in combat, with no EP in unrelated areas.  I finally found the optimal spawn for me, that has my guns pretty much firing non-stop.  In a T3-guns, triple-tuning assault  bot I am now pulling in > 1m/hour (hard to judge how to value the dropped mods), if noone comes to contest the spawn.  I have no idea where the "easy 2 mil/hour" for a new character.  Maybe if  I was a month old or was in a Mech, but not right now.  While I get similar income (and finally have more fun), I am not getting standings.

So, something needs to be done about the courier missions or at least their balance against other missions.  If I was a game designer, I would try to make the payouts dynamic based on # of missions run.  But a simple tweak to the numbers might be ok, as well.

So the issue may not necessarily be the couriers, but the combat missions.  As they're being adjusted (or so I heard) perhaps best to wait for this.  ATM yes as combat I farm for plasma -- you need to find the right spawns, bring friends.  2 combat bots and a hauler = 4mil NIC in 3hrs-ish in liquid capital and stuff to put on the open market (I'm clueless on the value of that, as the hauler is dealing with it).  With the market being shaken up so badly, I know it is hard for the normal combat-oriented type to re-adjust thought (I certainly had to blink twice) but invest in buy-orders instead of biting the bullet and buying those rediculously overpriced assault bots and the market will HAVE to restabilize; if they're not making money selling them at outrageous prices, they have to lower the prices or sell them to the orders for their 'quick cash' too.

Edit: P.S.  You have been invaded by evil capitalist pig-dogs

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I play MMOs. I need a signature which is deep, thought provoking, and devours bandwidth with the voracity of rabid weasels. It is also, by nature, vaguely sad with a tinge of my obvious internal, unfathomable loneliness. Like this,   , but at 1.3megs packed into 2 by 6 inches. ANIMATED.

This coming from the same guy laughing in TS about how much money he's making (for the corp of course) from dual box transport looping.