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Game Discussion Levelling and Economy
1

Tier 1: 50,000 credit reward - 1,500 repair cost = 48,000 credit gain (Ship prices: 1-220,000 credits)

 

Tier 2: 70,000 credit reward - 20,000 repair cost = 50,000 credit gain (Ship prices: 620,000-1,260,000 credits)

 

Tier 3: 85,000 credit reward - 30,000 repair cost = 55,000 credit gain (Ship prices: 2,625,000-3,675,000 credits)

 

Tier 4: (Ship prices: 6,825,000-9,975,000 credits)

 

The repair costs for each tier increase so sharply that they consume whatever reward “bonus” the higher tiers get. Which means that unless I buy a premium ship that does not require repairs, I can expect my higher-tier ships to swallow any monetary bonuses I had hoped to gain.

 

I could literally sit in Tier 1 and grind just as efficiently towards Tier 4 as I could in Tier 3. In fact, since Tier 1 is much simpler and has fewer ace pilots, I stand a better chance of winning and recieving a bigger payment. Which means that at present it is more economical to grind the lower tiers to earn cash.

 

That’s not much incentive to move up the tiers. Also, take a look at those ship price ranges. If I can expect to earn an average of 50,000 credits per match no matter what tier I’m in, why bother trying to make it to tier 4 when it will literally take me 137 consecutive victories to afford just one of the lowest-grade tier 4 ships? If you consider that most players lose half of their matches, that number goes up to a total of 172 matches. And that’s a conservative estimate that assumes I’m only upgrading from a level 9 tier 3 ship.

 

With the ship tree rework of 0.8.0 it would take a grand total of 37,640,001 credits, or 753 consecutive victories, or 941 pvp matches to reach the highest level tier 4 ship from tier 1. And that is only if the player focuses on a single ship type, in only one nation, and never upgrades from the mk. I modules that come with the ships. This also assumes the player does not invest in any “dead-end” ship paths.

 

In conclusion, right now there is no point. There is no reason to grind to a higher tier, except that they get more modules to play with and some slightly different cosmetic designs.

2

Rank 8 now. My T3 Wolf costs 38,750 to repair.

 

Without any major failure on my part, I repair once every 2 matches. Sadly, that helps significantly.

3

I noticed this, too. Credit wise, it’s more efficient to do really well in T1 or T2 than it is to do poorly/average in T3+ due to the cost of ship repair. Likewise, the repair cost can make some strategies (covert ops suicide bomb) unfeasible/expensive w/o a premium ship.

 

Also, to be the most efficient, you’d use up your insurance b/f repairing your ships, but most folks do auto-repair for convenience.

 

However, some contracts can only be completed with ships of a certain Tier and reputation gain is also reduced if you play in a Tier below your current Faction reputation (e.g. you play T1 when you have access to R6 ships or T2 with access to T9 ships).

 

Taking into account license and premium ship bonuses, someone that plays well in T2 could get 100k credits and only spend > 5k on ammo /w 0 repairs. It gives incentives to purchase services/ships, but still doesn’t make gaining credits an incentive to go up a tier.

 

Regardless, it’s almost impossible to *lose* credits in a battle and that’s where the grinding comes in.

4

I agree. Having heard all of the complaints about T3 and the costs i have decided to just play T2 and max as much as i can out in the T2 section. Granted T3 might have a few better module’s to play with or fancier ships but i’m not going to sit and Grind my life away to become frustrated with the income made from a single match. I really hope the devs rework this. I could care less about a launcher failed glitch every once in a while, i could care less about the Unbalancing. I believe the WHOLE pricing system just need’s to be re-evaluated and reworked… or maybe russians are just that hardcore that they can play this 24/7 and barely gain anything -.- 

5

Technically you make money if you are in the top 3 all the time, regardless of deaths…

6

Rank 9, the end of t3, the ships are 48k to repair. I also clear about 150k per match though. You can also peruse the forums to find other topics on how to make and save credits. I wrote one, here is the link. Enjoy

 

[http://forum.star-conflict.com/index.php?/topic/19956-credits-and-your-bankroll-how-to-save-a-bundle/](< base_url >/index.php?/topic/19956-credits-and-your-bankroll-how-to-save-a-bundle/)

7

Technically you make money if you are in the top 3 all the time, regardless of deaths…

 

I don’t think this is true. If you die enough on all your ships to get the full repair, at R9, that’s 48k x 3 = 144k. I typically see 150k/match /w license if I do well, which means a non-license person is just clearing 100k.

 

I’ve been trying Censored’s repair strategy and it definitely works…except I’ve been playing more conservatively and have been dying a lot less and thus not getting as much benefit from the strategy. But I have been playing all tanky/survival ships. I think if you fly interceptor/ships that die a lot you’ll get more mileage from the strategy.

 

What I haven’t figured out is how much ship % you lose when you die (if it’s flat % or based on how much dmg you took/how you died, etc.) to calculate how much it costs per death. Mostly I just need to start taking records of this.

 

I have noted (for me), flying all R9’s in T3 PvE seems to net the most credits (always top 4 if you complete the mission) for 300k+ credits (/w license) and a guaranteed loot (usually T4 military, which sell 30-50k credits) /w no deaths. However, if you have a bad group and die on the first part of the mission, you have repair fees with no credits :(.

8

you get 4 lives per full repair.

9

It doesn’t change the mechanic that the ship and consumables cost increases far faster then the average battle reward.  At T1/2 you are looking at four matches to buy blue gear and perhaps six for a new ship.  By T3 you are looking at 13 games for a new piece of equipment and 73 games for a new ship.  In addition the high end of synergy at t3 takes 40-60 games just to complete one of the higher ranks, and you have 10 ranks in total.  

 

So assuming an average game length of 20 minutes, you are playing 24 hours to get a rank 9 ship from rank 8.  To fully kit it with blues will take an additional 165 games and 55 hours of gameplay.  

 

Of course PVE can shorten this somewhat since once you have a good engineer or guard you can farm it fairly quickly for 250k credits and the random green in about the same time as a full (i.e. not rofl stomp) pvp match.  

The downside of PVE is that the recent changes have made it difficult to complete without a high end kitted team.  If you have a R7 ship with white gear, the reward drops in half since you won’t complete the end stages nearly as often.  

 

This means that the optimum game strategy currently is to farm PVE as much as you can, skip any intervening levels of ships till you hit the max rank and sub-faction rank.  Then dump your horde into climbing to the top tier, outfitting the ship in blues and grinding PVE again for the next tier while grinding sub-faction with PVP in your maxed out ship.  This seems very reminiscent of WoW in the early days where good PvE gear made it easier to grind PVP.  

For us it just makes the game exceptionally boring, as we spend way too much time with rote dungeon crawls or as the punching bag in PVP.  

 

I would suggest the Devs abandon the idea of tier gear, where players are rewarded with a 10% improved version if they put real money or significant extra time in, and instead have sub faction gear unlock new and interesting flavors of the same gear.  Much like the old Raid torpedo made it faster or the Tech torpedo had a larger explosion radius.  Make the sub-factions indicate a specialty, instead of a mandatory grind.

 

I mean, we have faction, sub faction, synergy and credits.  While much of it overlaps you essentially have four grinds going on in this game and most result in incremental improvements that are almost imperceptible.  

10

I have noted (for me), flying all R9’s in T3 PvE seems to net the most credits (always top 4 if you complete the mission) for 300k+ credits (/w license) and a guaranteed loot (usually T4 military, which sell 30-50k credits) /w no deaths. However, if you have a bad group and die on the first part of the mission, you have repair fees with no credits :(.

T3 PvE dont exist, you get matched into T4 and unless you are matched with a very good group, doing T4 PvE takes ages.

 

ill just keep farming T3 for fun, thats why i play after all.

11

T3 PvE dont exist, you get matched into T4 and unless you are matched with a very good group, doing T4 PvE takes ages.

 

ill just keep farming T3 for fun, thats why i play after all.

Takes 5 minutes, minimum.

12

I don’t think this is true. If you die enough on all your ships to get the full repair, at R9, that’s 48k x 3 = 144k. I typically see 150k/match /w license if I do well, which means a non-license person is just clearing 100k.

 

That sort of income can be consistently obtained in T2 as well.