Increased pay for commisions

[starfixer]

The pay for commissions are very low right now and it really lowers the incentive to be a knight or swashbuckler. Right now, commissions start out averaging around 30s to 70s per commission. When I defeate a ship early in the game, buring it along gives me 50s to 100s in salvage, not to mention all the cargo that can be traded for additional silver. Plus, later in the game, when I have over 100 rep and 10 rank, Im still only getting about 100s for commissions, while at that point salvages can easily be over 100 and carry over 50s in cargo. That means I have to travel for several months carrying signature infested cargo and lose rep that I can only get back by traveling another several months to get a pardon just so I can get less silver than defeating one ship. And thats with over 100 rep and 10 rank! Plus, forgetting about ship prices which can be upto 10,000s, repairing your ship from a battle alone can be 5,000s. This means even with high rank and rep, I have to do 50 commissions just to take care of the repairs. And that's not including all the rations and damage from accidents that I have to worry about for space travel. And then there are merchants which can make reported 5,000s per transaction.

Can you significantly increase commission pay as well as increase the rate of pay increase with rep and rank so that the knight and swashbuckler becomes a playable profession and so with a high enough rank and rep I can get a somewhat decent pay for commissions? I mean, Im not saying that you should make it so that starting commisions with base rep should give you as much profit as merchants (considdering historically merchants were always the wealthiest) but rather give enough that you can live and profit enough to get repairs, upgrades, and ships.

[grävling]

I'd like better pay, too, but my current Nathaniel Sveet is not having such a rotten time of it by not using broadsides, so there is much more to salvage. When we get to put a prize crew on ships we capture and send them in to be condemned, it will be worth it to make fatter merchantmen (right now it would just be frustrating when all the goods they have won't fit in your warship), and we can get wealthier this way.

[Cory Trese]

You think it should be rep and rank more than a flat base increase?

How far off do you think it is? 2X 5X 10X ?

[starfixer]

Jul 26, 2013 2:32:43 GMT -5 Cory Trese said:

You think it should be rep and rank more than a flat base increase?

How far off do you think it is? 2X 5X 10X ?

Id say about 5x, and also an increase based on rep and rank, in addition to the current flat base increase which also affects salvage values, trade and expenses. Also, similar to ST (and I'm bringing up ST again because I know how much you LOVE when I compare the two) maybe in addition to rank giving a general contract bonus, you could get an additional bonus for certain contract types at certain ranks. So maybe at rank 7, you get an additional passenger contract bonus: an increase in pay for passenger contracts (in addition to the normal pay increase with rank/rep) and special passenger contracts offered in addition to normal passenger contracts (special as in increased signature and distance than normal in return for a much higher than normal pay). At rank 12, you get an additional destroy contract bonus: in increase in pay for destroy contracts (in addition to the normal pay increase for rep/rank) and special destroy contracts offered in addition to normal destroy contracts (special as in increased chance of high enemy lv, special enemy AIs, chance of kraken encounter etc).

This is all just what I think would be nice though. You or other forum members might have different ideas to improve commissions.

[grävling]

I'd like it if buying luxury cabins as an upgrade meant that you got better paying passengers. If this already is happening, I would like it if the description of the upgrade mentioned that.

[starfixer]

Jul 26, 2013 3:25:39 GMT -5 grävling said:

I'd like it if buying luxury cabins as an upgrade meant that you got better paying passengers. If this already is happening, I would like it if the description of the upgrade mentioned that.

Oh that reminds me! Luxury cabins' description ends with and. I mean I get typos happen but certain things are just unacceptable

[baldielocks]

I wouldn't mind seeing an increase based on rep. Rank is applicable to a single nation. too easy to buy to rank 18. And squashes exploration.

Pay out bumps based on rep would be more flexible, and allow players to ally with a trading house. That part needs some exploration because of gun and boarding upgrades.

2k rep is fairly easy to obtain with nations. For the story line, the pay increases following the rep requirements would be an additional incentive.
Right now, with 6 play throughs, here are my average rep and cash.
2k rep, 5 years.
5k rep, 20 years.
8k rep, 50 years.
( rep grinding gets boring with no reward other than badges)

I average 3k gold per year. My 50 year Nathaniel game is at 175k, plus the 56k for the story.

25 years to get the 56k for the story. Plus ship, mods, repairs, and rank.

Imo, 25 years feels too long. The rep requirements feel too low. While pay out does increase with rep, it tops out around 2k (?). No incentive to go higher.
Multiplier of .5, with bumps at each 500 reps? Bonus for 1k, 5 k, 10k badges?

[grävling]

I haven't acheived this rep yet, but I feel the same.

I think we may need some treasure ships in the game. I want to capture one of the Spanish Treasure ships.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_treasure_fleet

(Of course this may be what the Pirate unfinished story line is about.)

Personally, for a tutorial I think that there is too much grinding. Something that stopped, with success at 5K, would be better. Then you could go off and do a Pirate tutorial, or a Knight tutorial or what have you. But I think that for a tutorial you want something that can be done in a few hours time.

[starfixer]

I think what I've noticed is that pay for commisions is more a flat bonus than a rep bonus as Cory said, to keep up with inflation. Ive also noticed as the game progresses, upgrades, repairs, ships and cargo become more expensive, so the increase pay in commisions isnt really an increase pay. The flat bonus to keep up with inflation + rep/rank bonus would allow commision pay to buy the same things with the same rep and buy more things with more rep.

Also, 2k for commisions and 8k rep? How in the world did you get so much rep? They don't have blockade or surveillance like in ST, so Im assuming you must have been finding and destroying enemy ships during solar wars and commerse radings for a long time. That's a pretty amazing accomplishment

And for the 2k for commisions. I don't know how long it took you to get that, but I'm assuming it must have taken a really, really long time. It shouldn't take 30 years just to get a high enough commission pay to survive and profit. And by then, everything else is probably so expensive that its more like 500s when adjusted to inflation.

[athios]

Jul 26, 2013 3:25:39 GMT -5 grävling said:

I'd like it if buying luxury cabins as an upgrade meant that you got better paying passengers. If this already is happening, I would like it if the description of the upgrade mentioned that.

Gourmet Gallery does specifically mention that it increases passenger pay. Since Luxury Cabins are also for passengers, it makes sense for it to have the same (stackable!) effect.

I haven't played long-term enough to know how it is late game, but I definitely feel that commission pay is very low, especially if you have no rank with a faction. Even at over 1k Rep (during Sveet campaign), the average commission pay for me was around 300s. That would mean over 130 successful contracts are necessary to raise 50k through commissions, which is ridiculous.

Another thing is that I think commission pay should be better difficulty-balanced. i.e. more pay for longer distance, more pay for kill/capture.

[baldielocks]

I stayed around map 1, 2 for pretty much the entire game. For Nathaniel, it's the best map. Grind commissions for towns, sell powder and shot from dunbeath and ruesgaard. I kill every ship I see that isn't ruesgaard.
Buy and save maps And journals. That's the big reward. Wait until you get a shortage rumor and a spy battle.

I may have confused the commission scale. My highest commission has been 2k. But the average is much lower, around 1.2k.

Thanks for the updates on the cabin effects. I haven't tried those yet. I'm trying to see if the loss of the other mods is worth it. Passenger commisions to a town are not all that common. Uncharted reef a little more

[athios]

That's part of the problem. Grinding really shouldn't be part of a tutorial as it could likely turn off new players.

[athios]

Oh wait, I just thought of something. I've been playing Sveet on hard or crazy. Is that why it's taking too long? Cos pay decreases with increasing difficulty level, right?

What difficulty are rest of you doing?

[grävling]

Jul 28, 2013 15:35:28 GMT -5 athios said:

Oh wait, I just thought of something. I've been playing Sveet on hard or crazy. Is that why it's taking too long? Cos pay decreases with increasing difficulty level, right?

What difficulty are rest of you doing?

I am doing Normal, which I started to check this exact question.

It is Aug 422 and I have 32,351s 98c in 15 years 310 days 12 hours of sailing.

I'm bored.

A story line that made you raise 50,000 might be a fun idea for somebody already sold on the game, but for a tutorial, 5K is long enough.

Make the tutorial end when you turn your son into stone. Then say that you can continue this story <over here> or else <play sandbox> or <start different tutorial>

[starfixer]

Jul 28, 2013 6:04:47 GMT -5 athios said:

Jul 26, 2013 3:25:39 GMT -5 grävling said:

I'd like it if buying luxury cabins as an upgrade meant that you got better paying passengers. If this already is happening, I would like it if the description of the upgrade mentioned that.

Gourmet Gallery does specifically mention that it increases passenger pay. Since Luxury Cabins are also for passengers, it makes sense for it to have the same (stackable!) effect.

I haven't played long-term enough to know how it is late game, but I definitely feel that commission pay is very low, especially if you have no rank with a faction. Even at over 1k Rep (during Sveet campaign), the average commission pay for me was around 300s. That would mean over 130 successful contracts are necessary to raise 50k through commissions, which is ridiculous.

Another thing is that I think commission pay should be better difficulty-balanced. i.e. more pay for longer distance, more pay for kill/capture.

Exactly, 1k rep is huge, and should be giving you high paying commissions, especially if you have high rank to go with it. And your not even including expenses for rations, repairs, ships, upgrades, promotions etc.

There is definitely more pay for bounty contracts, and I think slightly more for long distance as well. But I've never had a commission that required me to go through 6 seas or anything like that. The hardest commissions may require you to kill a bounty target 2 seas away. Anymore would be like a super commission. And considering those don't exist in AoP (yet), you won't notice more than a 75s increase with long distance contracts.