Incursion Drops

Aias

The junk/cargo drops in incursions are very low compared to similar progression-level bashing areas. The cost of repairkits and destroyed astromechs means that at low levels you can struggle to break even if you take enough damage. Combined with the large amount of time it takes to actually fly to the area and back (and the high probability that someone else arrives with you), incursions aren't really worthwhile for earning marks. Most people can earn 3-5x in the same amount of time by bashing and with much less risk.

I suggest:

1. Increase the amount of marks earned by incursion drops so that players earn amounts similar to normal bashing. Don't decrease the costs of supplies, this adds a skill curve.

2. Increase the number of incursions spawned on the map or increase the number of mobs spawned per incursion so that having multiple people arrive at the same incursion isn't as much of a loss.

Slander

I haven't done a single incursion because of this. What little captaincy xp I have gained is all from refining gas (other than that one main quest) because I can cover the marks loss there with 15 minutes of hunting.

BeepBoop

I don't think it is accurate to say that bashing has less risk. I have never come close to losing my ship in easy incursions and still made a small profit.

Bashing has repair costs that are far higher than ship restocking costs, and cloning costs are at least on par.

That said, I still agree that something needs to change because it is really boring having to fly out to those incursions. 

Matlkael

Huh...on my end, I've made most of my marks off of incursions. That said, there's a tonne of little intricacies with ship bashing that might be unknown to new or casual captains.

For example, there's the optimum distance between your ship and your target for maximum damage, so you use less ammo overall (and less repairkits, since your target won't be able to hit you for long). The angle at which your target is attacking you matters, too (that's how astromechs are destroyed, I think). Certain incursion types are also easier, some seem to give more experience, others drop more valuable junk.

Kirin

Probes dropping are mostly useless. Change the probes to more sellable junk or selleable via market orders.

also things like astromechs cost a bit so costs do add up

Kestrel

Kirin said:

Probes dropping are mostly useless. Change the probes to more sellable junk or selleable via market orders.

also things like astromechs cost a bit so costs do add up

Change the probe drops to astromech/repairkit/battery drops. Three birds with one stone.

Matlkael

That seems like a massive over-correction. Incursions would end up being a massive marks faucet (and I'm saying this as someone who's dependent on incursions for mark income).

Silva

Eh, bashing definitely has higher rewards for the time spent from what I've seen. The time it takes to go from incursion to incursion is definitely longer than it takes to go from bashing spot to a totally different one on average, and the spawn rates are lower in incursions than respawn rates for bashing.

As for risk, it depends on the ship and type of incursion. With a Corvette, sure, I have pretty much 0 risk on easy incursions. But even if we argued that on a 10 ship easy incursion, each ship showed up every 30 seconds and you kill them immediately with 0 losses incurred, that's about 5 minutes to destroy a small incursion entirely. You get around 800 ~ 2000 marks, maximum I'd say from that, and I feel like I'm overestimating the mark rewards (though they do vary from types of incursions. Some may have more). The time it takes for ships to spawn, the ease to kill them, and the likelihood of having the incursion all to yourself are all factors you can't really account for an add variance to mark income, typically for the worse since I'm describing close to a best case scenario in a Corvette with dual cannons. Everything's harder and more costly time-wise with an Interceptor.

On the other hand, at level 20 ~ 30, I can bash up that number of marks in about 10 ~ 15 minutes, no problem. That's also consistent, with little variance in the time it takes to gather that many marks. At level 45, I earn 400 marks a minute, so in 5 minutes, I can earn about 2000 without needing to take time to fly back and forth, with competition in that bashing area. And I've never died bashing except to those pesky windmill drones the first time through (like everyone else T_T). To be fair, I've also never perished in an easy incursion even in an Interceptor (plenty of times trying my hand at Hard ones when they first showed up though...) But in the end, there's really no comparison in terms of rewards dealt between bashing and incursions in my mind. I easily earn 15k in a hour of casual bashing with breaks, and nowhere near that in a hour of incursions when you include flight time and the chance of not getting the ships to spawn or other people intruding.

That's not to say incursion money is terrible, but the variance is definitely higher. And the rewards from constant Hard incursions don't match up to even level 45 bashing for the same time commitment. I imagine that they'll make adjustments to incursion spawns and money as the economy settles here and there, but I can't really say that incursion money making is better than bashing in any way if you do both efficiently in the same time frame right now.

Arsentar

15k Marks in an hour... My mind has been shattered

Anonymous

He's exaggerating. No one makes 15k marks in an hour from bashing junk drops. You are not paying enough attention to how long you are actually bashing.

Silva

What? I literally went from 30k to 60k, and level 45 to 47 in two hours or so today. That's how I earned my Corvette in two days earlier this week, which is about 90k marks. Naturally, that's not all junk, I'm taking into consideration total money earned, so that also includes selling armour/weapon drops as well. I've also sold the three mods that dropped for me for decent prices each, but I'm not taking those into consideration since there's too much variance in mod drops to be considered for steady income gain.

More precisely, I earn about 70 marks per mob I bash, and each one takes about 12 seconds to kill. That's 350 marks a minute assuming I always have something to hit adjacent to me. That gets augmented by item drops, so it's on average, around 400 a minute. Ten minutes is 4000, so while taking breaks, I earn 15k in a hour no problem. There are places that literally always have something for me to hit near me - if I had tougher competition, naturally this wouldn't be attainable, but earning money also means being efficient with hunting and knowing where to hunt.

I definitely know how long I'm bashing for. I have way too many things to do to not keep track of my time spent on Starmourn haha

Oh, it probably helps that I started off as a B.E.A.S.T. though. The hunting has always been smooth, that I'll admit probably helped a huge bit. I also have the lesson package, so having access to SUIT ROUTING early naturally made the early levels far easier. The difference between having routing and not having it for damage is absolutely huge

Matlkael

I make maybe 1k marks per hour Engineer has been a great, great change!

Anonymous

Silva said:

What? I literally went from 30k to 60k, and level 45 to 47 in two hours or so today. That's how I earned my Corvette in two days earlier this week, which is about 90k marks. Naturally, that's not all junk, I'm taking into consideration total money earned, so that also includes selling armour/weapon drops as well. I've also sold the three mods that dropped for me for decent prices each, but I'm not taking those into consideration since there's too much variance in mod drops to be considered for steady income gain.

More precisely, I earn about 70 marks per mob I bash, and each one takes about 12 seconds to kill. That's 350 marks a minute assuming I always have something to hit adjacent to me. That gets augmented by item drops, so it's on average, around 400 a minute. Ten minutes is 4000, so while taking breaks, I earn 15k in a hour no problem. There are places that literally always have something for me to hit near me - if I had tougher competition, naturally this wouldn't be attainable, but earning money also means being efficient with hunting and knowing where to hunt.

What zone are you bashing?

If what you say is true, Beast is still completely broken. I just timed myself killing mobs slightly under my level (I am near your XP rankings) and was averaging 15 seconds to kill (no healing, one stim would add another 3 seconds). Also my friend who is level 67, earns about 10k an hour in junk at his level, assuming Thait is completely empty (it usually isn't). My other friend who is 75 is 5-15k an hour depending on complexity. In mid 40's, 15k seems incorrect.

BeepBoop

Man, you are bashing faster than I am at level 75 and my costs are much higher.

Silva

Well, I'll try bashing for a hour and see how my Marks change. I have time stamps and here's the start of my marks. 

https://ada-young.appspot.com/pastebin/AO03vn3e

Maruna

May wish to show an entire, unedited log of your bashing, if you want it to actually be believable. It's pretty simple to fake a start/end log.

setConsoleBufferSize("main", 5000000, 1000)

If your buffer size isn't long enough to handle that. Because yeah, I highly doubt 15k marks an hour as well. At least not an average net, anyway. Mods / RNG gear drops can easily inflate the amount you make in a single hour. Mods shouldn't be included in averaged totals considering their prices are pretty ridiculous right now.

Silva

That's a fair point, but I didn't think about that and I'm too tired to actually keep bashing lol. Here's the halfway point. I got a little less on the marks per kill, closer to 50ish to the 70 that I remember at level 45. Maybe the level/mark depreciation already started hitting or something, but still around 7.2k. Less than I purported earlier for sure, but decent. Anyhow, I'm heading to bed cause it's 1:22 lol

https://ada-young.appspot.com/pastebin/OwYECJVe

I did get a lot of drops, but I always feel like I get a lot of drops. I once thought that B.E.A.S.T.s might be bugged in that regard since we have more weapon options, but I heard that was debunked somewhere.

Yalau

I'm beast and I definitely don't hunt that fast!

Minei

Could part of the problem be that atm we get supplies from the shipforge? I think the intent is for players to make repairkits and such and sell them at lower prices but still high enough to make a profit. 

Rkansas

Also, I thing @Tecton said somewhere that the ships in incursions are not suppose to be dropping probes at all. I can get around 1.5k marks an hour at level 25, but I don't have a lot of abilities in my class since I haven't spent hardly any rl money. Total, from bought credits with rl money and ones I bought in-game, I had 30 credits that I didn't get from leveling. So I can't take on two mobs in the same room, so it slows me down having to heal between each one.

BeepBoop

Two mobs at the same time don't become any more viable with lessons or levels. 

Maruna

Starmourn is probably the only game where lessons don't matter all that much for hunting. Once you have your hunting attack unlocked, you're pretty good to go. Your damage scales with your weapon, not with lessons invested like other games.

Only thing that's far down that helps hunting a lot, is Victoryrush in Skirmishing, and even that's not really needed.

Kestrel

Maruna said:

Starmourn is probably the only game where lessons don't matter all that much for hunting. Once you have your hunting attack unlocked, you're pretty good to go. Your damage scales with your weapon, not with lessons invested like other games.

Only thing that's far down that helps hunting a lot, is Victoryrush in Skirmishing, and even that's not really needed.

Bolded part: has this been confirmed?

Squeakums

Yes, Tecton has said so a few times in different threads. I don't have a link to it, but I'll second that I've seen that written by a dev. 

Edit: I actually tried finding a mention of this and on a simple search couldn't. I don't think I'm spreading any incorrect information here, but I couldn't find a source for these claims (other than testing it personally like @Maruna mentions below)

Maruna

Kestrel said:

Maruna said:

Starmourn is probably the only game where lessons don't matter all that much for hunting. Once you have your hunting attack unlocked, you're pretty good to go. Your damage scales with your weapon, not with lessons invested like other games.

Only thing that's far down that helps hunting a lot, is Victoryrush in Skirmishing, and even that's not really needed.

Bolded part: has this been confirmed?

You can... Already test it yourself? Test an attack with 50 lessons learned, versus the same attack with 300 lessons learned. Even at that small amount of lessons, you'd still see an increase in damage (aside from the slight variations that attacks seem to generally have). Across says... 15 attacks, the average will be the same.Meanwhile  test an attack with a weapon that has 3000 power versus a weapon that has 4000 power and even on the first hit you'll see a noticeable increase in damage.

But yes, they have said it before.

Kestrel

Maruna said:

Kestrel said:

Maruna said:

Starmourn is probably the only game where lessons don't matter all that much for hunting. Once you have your hunting attack unlocked, you're pretty good to go. Your damage scales with your weapon, not with lessons invested like other games.

Only thing that's far down that helps hunting a lot, is Victoryrush in Skirmishing, and even that's not really needed.

Bolded part: has this been confirmed?

You can... Already test it yourself? Test an attack with 50 lessons learned, versus the same attack with 300 lessons learned. Even at that small amount of lessons, you'd still see an increase in damage (aside from the slight variations that attacks seem to generally have). Across says... 15 attacks, the average will be the same.Meanwhile  test an attack with a weapon that has 3000 power versus a weapon that has 4000 power and even on the first hit you'll see a noticeable increase in damage.

But yes, they have said it before.

You’re assuming I have the lessons to spend in order to test this. 

Maruna

Kestrel said:

Maruna said:

Kestrel said:

Maruna said:

Starmourn is probably the only game where lessons don't matter all that much for hunting. Once you have your hunting attack unlocked, you're pretty good to go. Your damage scales with your weapon, not with lessons invested like other games.

Only thing that's far down that helps hunting a lot, is Victoryrush in Skirmishing, and even that's not really needed.

Bolded part: has this been confirmed?

You can... Already test it yourself? Test an attack with 50 lessons learned, versus the same attack with 300 lessons learned. Even at that small amount of lessons, you'd still see an increase in damage (aside from the slight variations that attacks seem to generally have). Across says... 15 attacks, the average will be the same.Meanwhile  test an attack with a weapon that has 3000 power versus a weapon that has 4000 power and even on the first hit you'll see a noticeable increase in damage.

But yes, they have said it before.

You’re assuming I have the lessons to spend in order to test this. 

You have more than 300 lessons before even hitting level 15... If you haven't done that, I'd question what you've been doing in the game.

Kestrel

Maruna said:

Kestrel said:

Maruna said:

Kestrel said:

Maruna said:

Starmourn is probably the only game where lessons don't matter all that much for hunting. Once you have your hunting attack unlocked, you're pretty good to go. Your damage scales with your weapon, not with lessons invested like other games.

Only thing that's far down that helps hunting a lot, is Victoryrush in Skirmishing, and even that's not really needed.

Bolded part: has this been confirmed?

You can... Already test it yourself? Test an attack with 50 lessons learned, versus the same attack with 300 lessons learned. Even at that small amount of lessons, you'd still see an increase in damage (aside from the slight variations that attacks seem to generally have). Across says... 15 attacks, the average will be the same.Meanwhile  test an attack with a weapon that has 3000 power versus a weapon that has 4000 power and even on the first hit you'll see a noticeable increase in damage.

But yes, they have said it before.

You’re assuming I have the lessons to spend in order to test this. 

You have more than 300 lessons before even hitting level 15... If you haven't done that, I'd question what you've been doing in the game.

Yes, lessons which are now gone as I’ve levelled up, meaning I do not have the means of accurately comparing the damage of my attacks, currently, with and without a significant lesson investment and with all other factors — such as level and equipment — equal.

If this line of thinking wasn't obvious to you, I'd question what you've been doing with your brain.

Squeakums

Regardless. Some of us have tested it upon buying lesson packages, and trans-ing a skill doesn't give more damage to attacks. 

Indi

Tecton has definitely said this several times.
And you could test with your lessons by quitting class, rejoining the same class, and respending your lessons.

Indi

Tecton has definitely said this several times.
And you could test with your lessons by quitting class, rejoining the same class, and respending your lessons.