Congratulations on reaching beta status! Took a break from playing but since you have quite a few changes added I decided to test some of them out.
Thank you!
Jobs are a bit rough not sure if I am in a bad cluster of systems or not but they all require me to travel across the whole galaxy to extremely dangerous locations. Not exactly easy for the reward amount but it seems close to impossible to complete some of them without a ton of upgrades which cost a ton compared to the rewards. Possible end game I'm sure but the grind to get there looks meh.
Job rewards are calculated correctly, but the abundance of "travel across whole galaxy" deals is depressing, you're right. This is going to be addressed.
Just a few thoughts using the account I had from alpha.opic=1261310.msg13502193#msg13502193 date=1452400274]
Currently can't do much but mine, refine and run from pirates which isn't too bad. And at the moment copper is plentiful with some rare spikes of some higher ores which puts me at roughly 100 satoshi per 5 min mining run with 2 lasers depending on the system if I get all copper. Its not terrible but everything feels so terribly expensive.
As announced, yeah, the ratios for everything are going to be tuned to make progression more smooth. Right now it's more of a plateau thing. The "problem" we have is that once you get to certain levels, there's no going back (ships and equipment don't break down, skills don't go down), and your earnings improve drastically. So we try to delay those shifts with some grind.
Some players have figured out ways to be most effective during the "mostly copper" phase, though, with a bit of crafting and sector-jumping.
And I have one hint for everyone: cooperation is key to success in this game. Be it marketplace or squad-forming to hunt pirates together, the scales will be tipped to your favor if you do it with other people. Trying to do everything by yourself will always be harder.