Recent haulage changes
Posted: Tue Aug 09, 2022 10:14 am
First of all, I want to make it clear that my comments and thoughts are my own and that I write this out of my own volition, and before passing judgment I urge you to read this to the end and spend some time with it before considering commenting on it.
Having seen chat the last couple of days and knowing the hatred that Coops has received about the haulage changes, I'm appalled by what I've seen, rather than players thinking about the wider view of why the changes were necessary, they get stuck on their own narrow reason why they hate the change so much. There are many with positive views on the changes too, but those are completely neglected and hidden by the amount of negativity from just a handful of players.
First of all, any game that has been around for as long as CE, requires some tweaking and balancing from time to time. CE is no different, and the fact is that CE hardly ever sees any balancing changes, but many are needed to make the game fair to everyone.
Haulage was originally designed when the game had just 3 galaxies to explore, Sphere, Forge, and Anvil, and ships with cargo upgrades at the time could only go up to about 1500 cargo. For the time, the system worked well, but then new galaxies were added NEI upgrades, Player made ships, and massive cargo systems.
So a system originally designed for moving cargo a max of about 600 distance with a max cargo of no more than 1500 and engines much smaller than the current ones, now became a system of being able to move 5k+ over distances more than 1200, and with better engines to get more fuel, tools like NEI to make the jumps easier. As one player has mentioned, he joined the game and managed to make it to level 180 in less than a year by just hauling.
Something had to be done, as haulage was clearly broken, Coops could off-course have choices to do the simple thing and slap 2 or 3 extra zeros on all the prices, but this meant everyone will have to start hauling to pay for everything, and combat pilots, for example, would be priced out of the game. So instead he decided to overhaul the haulage system to make it more like how the original system was designed, and more in line with passengers. At the same time, an original spin was given to haulage to make it a bit more of an interesting profession within the game. A lot of time has gone into thinking about how it would solve the issue by taking into account what we need to do to fix the CE economy and also to make it fair to everyone.
I know what a lot of you will say right now, but I can't do XYZ, my settlement is now not in a good location anymore... I've heard them all already, instead of players being so negatively about the game and being rude to Coops and staff, who have spent a lot of time thinking about how to make the system as fair as possible for everyone, try to look at the positive side of the change after all a lot of thought has gone into how to revamp it to something more exciting.
Now I fully understand that not everyone is happy with these changes, and while we don't ban players for criticizing the hard work Coops has put in, in the last couple of days the chat has been dominated by a handful of players being only negatively about the changes, and not talk about anything else anymore. To the point where anyone who supports the changes or just wants to chat with fellow CE players have been avoiding the chat because of all the negative in there. I just ask this of players, do you think it's worth destroying the chat because you feel like you have to go on and on about the changes day after day? Even for me, while I still read the chat, I don't engage anymore as it's always the same comments by a handful of players.
Lastly, I just want to point out the benefits of the distance limits:
Ashar was always designed to be an early game haulage service for players who don't really go outside of the first galaxy, and who have small cargo sizes. Off-course more established players can still use Ashar to reach the top rank (albeit it is going to take you a bit longer), but this store has been brought back to a more balanced service for younger captains.
For all other services, while the distance limit is not for everyone, I would like to remind you now that the list is fixed, if we didn't have the distance limit, or increase the distance massively, the longest haulage route would be far and few between because there are now so many destinations in range to populate the list, meaning finding long-distance cargo will go from visiting a handful of systems to an entire galaxy to fill up with enough cargo.
I'm not saying the new haulage changes are perfect, and some tweaks here and there will be made during the coming weeks as we see how players use the new system. But I'm asking players to please respect the fact that CE, unlike many other games, hardly ever see rebalancing changes, and when they are introduced they are important to fix a very broken area of the game (Even if not everyone feels it applies to you, please try to understand why the changes have been made. It's definitely not to punish you.). There is always a maximum effort being made to make the changes fair to players who only just started to players who have been around for the entire existence of CE.
Rather than being completely negative about the changes, think of how with a few tweaks it could be even better and suggest that instead of just slamming the changes into the ground.
Having seen chat the last couple of days and knowing the hatred that Coops has received about the haulage changes, I'm appalled by what I've seen, rather than players thinking about the wider view of why the changes were necessary, they get stuck on their own narrow reason why they hate the change so much. There are many with positive views on the changes too, but those are completely neglected and hidden by the amount of negativity from just a handful of players.
First of all, any game that has been around for as long as CE, requires some tweaking and balancing from time to time. CE is no different, and the fact is that CE hardly ever sees any balancing changes, but many are needed to make the game fair to everyone.
Haulage was originally designed when the game had just 3 galaxies to explore, Sphere, Forge, and Anvil, and ships with cargo upgrades at the time could only go up to about 1500 cargo. For the time, the system worked well, but then new galaxies were added NEI upgrades, Player made ships, and massive cargo systems.
So a system originally designed for moving cargo a max of about 600 distance with a max cargo of no more than 1500 and engines much smaller than the current ones, now became a system of being able to move 5k+ over distances more than 1200, and with better engines to get more fuel, tools like NEI to make the jumps easier. As one player has mentioned, he joined the game and managed to make it to level 180 in less than a year by just hauling.
Something had to be done, as haulage was clearly broken, Coops could off-course have choices to do the simple thing and slap 2 or 3 extra zeros on all the prices, but this meant everyone will have to start hauling to pay for everything, and combat pilots, for example, would be priced out of the game. So instead he decided to overhaul the haulage system to make it more like how the original system was designed, and more in line with passengers. At the same time, an original spin was given to haulage to make it a bit more of an interesting profession within the game. A lot of time has gone into thinking about how it would solve the issue by taking into account what we need to do to fix the CE economy and also to make it fair to everyone.
I know what a lot of you will say right now, but I can't do XYZ, my settlement is now not in a good location anymore... I've heard them all already, instead of players being so negatively about the game and being rude to Coops and staff, who have spent a lot of time thinking about how to make the system as fair as possible for everyone, try to look at the positive side of the change after all a lot of thought has gone into how to revamp it to something more exciting.
Now I fully understand that not everyone is happy with these changes, and while we don't ban players for criticizing the hard work Coops has put in, in the last couple of days the chat has been dominated by a handful of players being only negatively about the changes, and not talk about anything else anymore. To the point where anyone who supports the changes or just wants to chat with fellow CE players have been avoiding the chat because of all the negative in there. I just ask this of players, do you think it's worth destroying the chat because you feel like you have to go on and on about the changes day after day? Even for me, while I still read the chat, I don't engage anymore as it's always the same comments by a handful of players.
Lastly, I just want to point out the benefits of the distance limits:
Ashar was always designed to be an early game haulage service for players who don't really go outside of the first galaxy, and who have small cargo sizes. Off-course more established players can still use Ashar to reach the top rank (albeit it is going to take you a bit longer), but this store has been brought back to a more balanced service for younger captains.
For all other services, while the distance limit is not for everyone, I would like to remind you now that the list is fixed, if we didn't have the distance limit, or increase the distance massively, the longest haulage route would be far and few between because there are now so many destinations in range to populate the list, meaning finding long-distance cargo will go from visiting a handful of systems to an entire galaxy to fill up with enough cargo.
I'm not saying the new haulage changes are perfect, and some tweaks here and there will be made during the coming weeks as we see how players use the new system. But I'm asking players to please respect the fact that CE, unlike many other games, hardly ever see rebalancing changes, and when they are introduced they are important to fix a very broken area of the game (Even if not everyone feels it applies to you, please try to understand why the changes have been made. It's definitely not to punish you.). There is always a maximum effort being made to make the changes fair to players who only just started to players who have been around for the entire existence of CE.
Rather than being completely negative about the changes, think of how with a few tweaks it could be even better and suggest that instead of just slamming the changes into the ground.