The biggest change with the widest impact: Increased player cap at approximately 100 players. This little blast from an almost forgotten past changes a lot. Almost everything in the PU is optimized for low player counts. The mission availability, the spawn rates, the difficulty and even the size of mission locations. The cargo system with both its low inventories and laughable profits. The size of profitable mining locations. All of that has been optimized over the last few years for a very small player count. The increased player numbers basically guarantee a dry spell if you are trying to do the missions provided by the game. Trade routes will be even less profitable than ever before and I do expect some very interesting competition for the mining locations especially on Lyria. In the PTU I already noticed that players with CS rarely travel alone anymore as player bounty hunters are in abundance and even small fights tend to quickly escalate into veritable battles as more and more players join the fight. Ultimately it shows you how small Stanton really is or rather how few spots are frequently visited.
The much anticipated wipe will only increase the click battle for the few well paid missions and the fight for resources will be fierce. Pirates and thieves are no longer limited to very few numbers to ensure availability of victims though I suppose well have a week before the pirate orgs have grinded enough money to have all the tools of their trade available. On the other hand, we should be on our toes from day one.
The events, especially Siege of Orison and Jumptown but probably also 9tails lockdown will run a lot in the first two weeks of the patch cycle as announced by CIG. Siege will probably be griefers paradise and even if not, during the last playtests there were still a lot of gamebraking bugs. From a monetary standpoint that event is not worth the invested time and the risk. If everything runs well and you are in an organized crew it can be quite enjoyable for a few rounds... If you want to make good money you use the time the event runs to do stuff that pays well.
And JT will be very interesting with the increased player count. I have no clue if anything less than 25 players will be enough to hold onto the location now. At least I dont think well see any large scale cooperation between random players happening anymore as the payout would be ridiculously low. Unfortunately there was no playtest with the increased player count so its just guesswork at this moment.
Cooking B(e)acon(s)
Disclaimer: This version is written while 3.17.2 is still in PTU. As of the last build before release all this holds true, so itll probably hold for the live release.
The money is in combat beacons. As of the evening of the 28th in the last build before live release it cost me 41 minutes to gain 1 million aUEC by chaining combat beacons. Combat beacons are always in deepspace and they come in 4 levels with different sublevels:
Low Threat pays between 2k and 40k with 1 to 3 enemies (Aurora, Mustang or Titan)
Medium Threat pays 25k to 100k with 1 to 4 enemies (same +Gladius, M50, Mantis, Vanguard, Cutlass Black, Valkyre, Caterpillar)
High Threat pays 85k to 220k with 3 to 6 enemies (same +Constellation, Hammerhead)
Critcal Threat pays 200k to 500k with up to 10 enemies, usually small fleets centered around an Idris-M with multiple HH and other escorts
The mission is usually the protection of a single ally who may or may not have additional escorts. Survival of the escorts is unimportant for the mission goal, survival of the ally is essential. That means, especially with high threat and critical threat beacons: no playing around. Come prepared, get as many enemies as possible to aggro on you and go straight for the kill.
There is a variation that happens occasionally where instead of a protection mission, you jump into a trap. In that case its easy. Just kill them all. Payout is still the same.
There are several glitches that seem to be tied to those missions: Enemies might not turn red. As almost all beacons are out of comm array range and you know which ships the enemy uses for a given beacon difficulty, just kill any you suspect. The protectee is usually marked by the mission marker or if not the quantum beacon.
Enemies might be untargetable. Several workarounds: turn your ship off and on. Get out and back into your pilots seat. Or blow past the beacon until your mission giver complains, then jump back. Any of these options should make the enemies targetable.
Mission beacons might not work at all, either you take a beacon and get the message "beacon no longer available" or there is no reaction at all once you click on the mission. No workaround there, wait for another one.
There also might be the occasional dry spell when no missions turn up. This might be a minute or two that you can use to restock or if it persists, its time for a new server.
As all players share the same mission pool it might happen that other players win the mobiglass war. If that happens its also time for a server change.
To milk combat beacons effectively we probably need between 2 and 5 players (no more, 3 was optimal, 4 good, 5 only if you have to carry someone) per planetary system with 2 or 3 small and one heavy fighter that hop from beacon to beacon only to congregate on the highly paid moderate threat and the high threat beacons.
As beacons are always in space and the AI is as stupid as ever, any light fighter will do, including starter ships. As with PVE bounties, going with all laser cannons is a good possibility and for the higher difficulty beacons actually a necessity. The heavy fighter for medium and high threat bounties should be either a full crew hurricane with a cannon/repeater layout or an all cannon (1S5+4S2) vanguard. A constellation or gods forbid a freelancer is also a possible choice. Test what works best and run with it. I for one cant wait to bring my buccaneer...
For more efficiency and to dissuade competition we might need a group of 15 to 20 players to get all available beacons in all 4 planetary systems.
I would also advise against taking critical threat beacons for the following reasons:
While the payout for the critical threat beacons might seem high at almost half a million aUEC, for the required work it actually quite low. You need the firepower to take down an Idris within two minutes, otherwise you risk losing your protectee, and you also have to contest with several hammerheads and other escorts at the same time. Going in with two Retaliators or a tally and a very potent escort is the best way to go about it and quite manpower intensive. Torpedo and missile shots have to be well coordinated to circumvent decoy drops and even missing a single shot might render the whole attempt a failure. Its very enjoyable, good training for fleet coordination but in no way a good use of time when you need money fast. The payout would have to be significantly higher, maybe more than 2 million, to be viable compared with the lower level beacons. If the spawn rate of those missions is high enough in the live release, capturing and using one Idris only on those missions might be an idea to test. As is having a force of heavy hitters, like two Retaliators and a heavy escort (redeemer) on standby to hop between the planets as those beacons pop up.