OMG, just noticed that I haven't posted in this thread yet!

... what's this about again?

Oh yeah. Nothing more to say on this subject - just wondering if this will be the second to last post.

This pretty much, all it does is cause inflation, if you were relying however on doing combat missions for nic, or just farming plasma your kind of screwed, as your income is relatively fixed on the drop rate, as the price doesnt change.  Id rather see something besides nic dropped from hauler missions.  How about a faction store, where you can buy ammo etc, and get CT's or something for higher tier or something equivelant items.  Stuff that can open new facets to production, rather than just pure raw inflation causing nic.  I mean if your wondering why waspish price more than doubled in the last two weeks, its because the noobs driving in circles can afford it.  The guys that dont want to drive in circles are feeling the pressure.  I know this is all a noobs problem, thanks beta guys for your 10 cents on the issue.  Most of the noobs will not be properly fitting, or driving a riveler mk2, or going out and group mining epriton just to get rolled by a 30 man CIR heavy gang on beta.

I know from experience that hauler missions are nice easy nic, but at a moderate gain level, unless your one of those lineage 2 style grind gamers *shudders*.  personally I only did them to raise my standings to get less ganked on production taxes, and refine rates.  I would personally rather have something besides nic and standings tho, and 30 ammo. I would also rather do the courier missions from outpost to outpost, that are higher level, but they just pay crap and take too long, and were laid out poorly, so you cant circuit them at all.  Its refreshing to see the occasional faction / hauler spawn roll by while your out climbing over hill and dale doing an outpost mission, knowing if your not careful you could easily lose your sequer.

TLDR: A quick and easy fix that would help noobies, is raise combat mission payout, by 3xish.  Raise price of npc buy order of plasma, double.  quadruple and add more higher level missions from outpost to outpost transport.  Raise standings gains from outpost to outpost significantly as well.   May seem like alot but in the end it will balance it out until you guys can build a better system at its core.

Edit: Props to the devs, on buffing noob level mining mechs, thats a step in the right direction to encouraging noobs to do something besides run around in circles, and build up the economy, rather than go the easy route.

Increasing NIC/hour for missions would bring more diversity for pve, which is good.  People just farm plasma for NIC now and do missions for ammo and standings, but combat is crap for standings.

i think we should fix courier missions by allowing suicide ganking.

We all have to realize that 'balanced' doesn't neccesarily mean 'the same'.

All it takes to run transport missions is investing EP into industrial robot 4, about 7200 EP for dedicated combat sparks and less for industrialist.

This makes transport open to basically all characters, while combat missions are closed to industrialists.

Which is more 'balanced', the best paying missions open to all players, or the best paying missions only available to a certain class?

There will always be something that pays 'the best', I believe it's balanced now where that 'best' is accessable to all players. While I'm not against reducing travel and making the combat pay a little better, it should never be 'the best' payout.

I don't think the emphasis is entirely fair. I can do about 1.6-1.7m per hour solo ratting on inner alpha islands, and I'm certain I could do more if properly fitted for it. It's not quite as much as transports, but it's not a massive gap. As far as mining and harvesting goes, if the market won't bear price increases on raw materials due to the opportunity cost of not running transports, more people need to make the rational decision, and run transports.

Personally I suspect that the market will bear price increases. Looking at the cost of commodities for a kain vs the cost of a kain, I see an 80-100% markup. I understand that CTs won't always be 100+%, and that producing the CT in the first place is an extra cost, but those alone can't account for such a discrepancy unless people are consistently running mech CTs all the way down to the minimum material ratio. If mechs are selling at the listed price (and I suspect they are, since there isn't much movement in said price), manufacturers are making a killing due to the low price of materials*.

Since raw material demand is fairly consistent (only so many robots get blown up and need replacing each day), if prices are low, the problem is actually an oversupply of raw materials. Too many people gathering instead of running transports, shooting themselves in the foot.

The only issue here is how much currency the devs want in the market. Do they want to devalue insurance payouts relative to the cost of a robot, encouraging cautious play, or do they want to bring insurance payments closer to the cost of replacing the lost robot, encouraging more beta activity? If they want more beta activity, they need to reduce inflation caused by assignment payments, if they want less, they need to increase assignment payouts.

I think that reducing assignment rewards is fairly dangerous at this stage, since the market price for materials for a mech is actually very close to the insurance payout if it gets blown up. If you're producing robots right now, you're really only risking your insurance deposit and whatever modules you have fitted when you deploy one. As more NIC enters the market though, that gap will grow to the point where you are actually risking some part of the value of your robot too. Of course you also need to consider that as people move out of the newbie stage and begin to pvp more, demand for robots and thus the materials required to build them will increase. At some point I would expect to see them lower assignment rewards, but right now it doesn't seem like a good idea.

Summary - If someone is not making enough money mining, they should do something else. Irrational behaviour is the problem, not assignment rewards.

*Come to think of it, I haven't seen much movement in raw material prices, but t4 small mags doubled in price over the course of two days, so perhaps the problem is actually a lack of competition in manufacturing, rather than a commodity glut. Not enough purchasers for materials, too many purchasers for finished goods.

Guys like you ruined lowsec and nullsec.

It was NEVER a problem, that you can't make FAR more money in low/null ... the behavior of the inhabitants was the problem!

"look, 1 month old guy with his poor T1 fittet Destroyer !!! GANG HIM WITH 20 T2 offizer fittet vets !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111111111111111"

^THIS destroyed low/null !

If YOU would have been a little bit more friendly ("hey dude, you are totaly wrong here, better take your feet and run ... we give you 30 seconds") low/null wouldn't be as dead as it is now!

.. and all your *** BOTs + moon go RMT suckers !
Gogo eastern rusian maffia, gogo NC (trillions of ISK was made but not enough left after RMT to defend the regions ROFL LOL KKTHXBYE).

But hey, wasn't it Mitani who just said: "we have enough rich idiot as custumers, let's sell them golden Scorps for $10.000,- via new curence" ... the same Mitani who RMT for years now?

PS: and hell ... I wouldn't move to Beta even if I could make 1000 times more money their as I just do not like it. I come home from work and like to relax with some friends shoting little drones and NOTHING will make me move to PvP ever!
Even more as I know that all I will see their are little kiddys e-peening with 20v1 kills "PWNED YOU SUCKER".

Beta ganger = Fox Terrier ... *** loud but no skill behind the WUFF WUFF
Once they are alone they run like little chickens *g*.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrF01LpSxyQ

The fact, that YOU don't understand, that YOUR behavior kills all Beta fun (and all low/nullsec fun) makes me happy when you leave!

First you gangbang anybody who like to try Beta 20v1 ... and now you whine like a little girly, that noone want to try Beta anymore?

Little girly grow up and get some brain!

It's not CCP nor ACK who have to "fix" beta/lowsec ... it's YOU !!!
- Do NOT gang every noob in his Arke 20v1 as soon as he spawn.
- Try a little bit fair play with even out numbers in fights.
- TALK to corpless players who enter Beta AND DON'T INSTA POP THEM!

Beta NIC is fine ... inhabitants FAIL => FIX INHABITANTS

PS: the two important parts for any player vis player is respect and fair play.
YOU don't have any respect and no fair play ... and so you don't deserve any respect or fair play!

There's this impression that just because an area allows PVP that you have to kill anything and everything in that area. I see posts about roamers going out and shooting anything that's not in their squad, which is large but not too powerful, and L2P if your out in pvp land alone or with only a few players.

So what you are left with Islands of PVP areas void of any activies other than roaming, simply because the risk of doing anything else is near 100% and the reward is close to 0.

The knee-jerk reaction, try to force players into beta so gankers can have more targets, or the equally bad lure targets in with expectations of high reward so they can be ganked.

The previous solution was, add moar space, current suggesion is make bigger spaces. The only thing accomplished was to make the roaming groups have to cover more area, get more frustrated, and even more likely to simply blow up anything they see out of sheer bordeom.

Now bored pvp players are trolling the forums trying to get people's dander up so their internet feel bads are bruised and maybe they will come over to beta to defend thier honor.

I don't want to pvp in beta, but I would like to go there to do business. But it's impossible to develop trade routes simply because there's no punishment nor consequence for the roaming 'bandits'. It's not like they are even out there trying to disrupt the enemy's supply lines, they probably aren't at war with the outpost owner, they just want to blow s-hit up. That kind of PVP, needs to have some kind of game conseqence, like being unable to teleport back into syndicate protected Islands. If you want to pirate, you have to live on beta. Now you have a reason for players to live on beta, because they have to if they play the pirate game. And that's a plus for the traders too, because now they have to trade with us, which means we can negotiate passage with them.

This is where the war dec comes in. It doesn't give you any special alpha powers, it simply means that you can kill members of that corp without getting neg. syndicate rep. And obviously a couple non-war kills isn't going to make you a pirate, so you can still gank the occasional player or transporter with a trial of epitron and NIC falling out of their sequars.

There would have to be more to it, but you get the general idea. If every player is an open target with no consequences, then you're going to get the situation where only the sharks go there, no one wants to live there, and there's no risk/reward/troll that is going to convince the remaing player base to set foot there.

Nex had the quote, but I'm not singling out any corp - that quote just fit the attitutde I was describing.

Again, there's nothing wrong with just wanting to pew pew. And I actually don't mean to use pirate as a 4 letter word, because 62nd does some pirating, they also allow you the chance to ransom yourself.

I can see the other side, 4 hours of running around looking for something to pew pew, when you see a non-blue show up it's too tempting to just kill it.

Too few targets on beta is the problem, but the players that will go to beta in the current state are already there. More players didn't seem to change that, and the quality of the PVP seems to have convinced some not to return.

There will be no "targets of opportunity" on Beta until the Developers give a reason for players like Arga to make the effort and build some business relationship with territory owners. Coming to trade for high-quality gear below market price? Coming to sell particular ore thats overpriced compared to Alpha market? Possibilities are endless, but the reason needs to be there, and that reason for people like Arga is NIC and the risk vs reward equation.

There we go back again to the Beta corps; why allow a neutral to enter your territory instead of simply blowing him up? There is absolutely no reason not to blow up that neutral, in fact there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to even PM him and ask him to state his business before blowing him up. In fact, the only reason to allow a neutral to temporarily enter your territory before you blow him up, is to be able to teabag his little mechanoid corpse.

TL;DR

Territory is quite simply too hard to control for the population in-game. Too much effort involved, for far too little gain. A corp can be completely self-sufficient in Alpha operating at full production capacity, while doing either a weekly or a daily Beta epriton operation.

Thats why 5/6 Beta islands are sitting quite plainly empty apart from some ninja-ops.

Read up to here.

It is NOT the Developers who need to to somethink. There are enough reasons.

But there is one point which negates them all -> YOU ... you = actual gangbank KOS Rambos

YOU made Beta to riski to go there. Want more people on Beta? Change YOUR playstyle!

The DEVs could do just one thing and that's "make one trip rewarding enough to cover the lose of a bot". ~250.000 NIC for one trip in a hauler.

This would lead to the point, where YOU exploid it by 100% and become super rich.
As soon as you are super rich, other want to go to Beta even LESS as you with all your NIC can affort to lose 100 T4 Heavy Mech MK2 peer day while they can't.

Makeing Beta more rewarding == absolut 100% FAIL!
(It just would lead into mass-BOTing the rewards like the NC and Rusian mafia do it in EvE).

Make Beta more save == way to go!
(Check CVA and Providence ... they have no problem with "not enough people in 00").

And not the DEVs have to do it. YOU have to do it as the one who live there!

Stop whining at the board ... start fair play, get some respect and get right of you stupid brainless KOS behavior !!!

PS:
- no attack of defensless and lonely mechs/bots as long as they don't attack
- if you see a gang of 5 small bots ... don't engage with 20 assaults as long as they don't attack
- do NOT NEVER EVER teleport camp
- make the main route between teleport and station SAVE

As long as you attack even unfitted Arces piloted by 7 day old Agents ... you deserve to be alone on your shiny iseland!