View source for Talk:Pilot/@comment-2003:DB:F70F:D6E2:A94A:602A:D0B7:92BC-20200123161428

The fact that these take a PROFIT SHARE irritates me to no end (esp. in addition to hiring costs).

Those are my EMPLOYEES, not my PARTNERS, so HOW THE F are they entitled to a share in profits??? - they should be paid in WAGES that are due per time interval, and additional per-trip bonuses, maybe; even a per-engagement bonus would make sense, and a "shot down enemies" bonus also. It should be up to you, the player, to balance cost vs. benefit here, when either having them as your guard (trading etc.) or your wingmen in mercanary works.
Above all, the share they take is insane; a 20% share for 3 pilots to pilot your fighters (if you have the hangar installed) would take an accumulative share of 60% - that's the lions share!

Who ever thought of this system must be a moron; as could be said about many many game mechanics and balance decisions (like the totally scanted risk-vs-reward "balance" this game has)

I'd understand if they took a share of BOUNTY VOUCHERS (=> a bonus relative to the voucher directly paid upon earning of voucher); that would make sense; even a large share for that! - or atleast give us some tool for negotiating their contract; like mechwarrior 5, for instance, where you allocate points upon different areas; e.g. bounty vouchers, profits, etc. -- the number of negotiation-points being dependent on fame/reputation (yours), rank (yours vs. theirs), affiliation, state/background (NPCs with criminal background may take less for an opportunity; NPCs from anarchy systems may be less afraid of dangers, i.e. take less), ongoing contracts (maybe tie in contracts having signed already into negotiations, in such a way, that their share for new contracts automatically goes up; i.e. you give them tasks that have not been negotiated for, so you pay double; others you can tie in individually), danger (esp. when taking on contracts above your rank; contracts in dangerous areas) etc. etc. etc.; but still, give us some better rate!

It would even be fun to have pilots for additional ships (not fighters!) of mine, flying with me in some sort of private convoy (even better: tie in some risk when hiring dubious cheap pilots with questionable reputation; as they might steal your ship, leaving you to warrant a bounty for those to get them back - at a later time in a damaged, or even stripped condition); though that would only work in single player/group sessions, as it would unbalance the game even further in open (players with large funds vs. others).

Alternatively (or even in addition to that last point), if there was some story to it (i.e. if this was a completely different game) I could actually see myself having an [NPC] partner that I am somewhat connected to (but this game just shows the middle finger to story-telling and interactive lore; power-play is only a sad fill-in for that; everything this game has is build around the design concept of lazyness; like having the almighty RNG govern pretty much everything in mission "design"); if that partner would grant me additional bonuses, like a bigger payout (/contract volume), access to additional opportunities (missions), contacts, etc. But this game has none of that; NONE! - wide as an ocean (or galaxy, for that matter) deep as a puddle...

This game was being advertised to me as having some interactive feature to it; like an economy that is influenced by players actions. But I see none of that. Otherwise, the price for painite would plummet into nothingness and a great recession (like spain when the conquistadores brought home copious amounts of gold, destabilizing their economy) would grip the surrounding systems.
Likewise there is no real sense of trading alltogether, as missions grant payouts many, many times that of actual trading, being obscenely disproportional (often paying 10 times and more what the good in question is worth. wtf???). -- and it pushes the player towards goods, that would have the receiving stations drown in raw material and useless noble metals, while starving to death in lack of food and water (the lack of differentiation between different cargo also doesn't help here. How is it, that a ton of Uranium and a ton of grain take up the same amount of cargo space? - how can I have radioactive and toxic materials be in the same cargo hold as food??).
Likewise, these developers have no idea of sensible profit shares, and when such a share actually makes any sense to begin with.
Likewise they have no sense of scale and speeds (100 times the speed of light? - b****, please! ... and spacetime around me does not get warped by that?? -- SERIOUSLY???)
Likewise they have no sense of free space, and what it would do to ship design (you think the Anaconda is huge? - that's a very, VERY pedestrian perspective. A society that completely lives in zero-g, doing all their constructing under these conditions, would build much, MUCH bigger ships for huge hauls; ships to big to fit through those tiny entrances, but would have to dog outside of bigger stations. Which would make trade actually viable... like food and water hauling actually making sense again)

One's gotta be really, really ignorant, not to see all these nonsensical "design decisions". Suspense of disbelieve really takes a toll on one's intelligence here; like "beating your head with a brick, until you silenced all doubts" level of straining...

/rant over