Well all hunting eco (best dam/pec) does is allow you to spend less for getting a chance to loot the same stuff as spending more.
It might be small amount something like pec on small runs, but can be a huge difference on long runs.
I have run many, many, many, in the hundreds upon hundreds of hunting runs tracking hunting same mobs with different setups eco and uneco. I have come to my own personal conclusion, find the most eco way to kill that mob as possible. On average without a multiplier(global) it will make a difference. If you get a multiplier that's what brings that average eco hunt way up to profiting level.
Loot is in a sense dynamic and can not be tracked and predicted with 100% accuracy, but if you track enough of it you will find those loot swings people talk about, and how to better manage them to your advantage. Remember the game is balanced so there is no item you use eco or uneco that will give you TT+ returns on hunting that same mob all the time, if there was EU would not exist today. More realistically target 80-90% return and hunt mobs that drop items with markups to cover the losses on the tt returns.
Playing and praying for global's is a way to approach things but you will not succeed with that approach without a huge influx of cash into the game to fund losses until you get enough globals to profit and that may never happen as well, I don't have the funds to test this approach so it is one that I will not consider.
Data is knowledge and the more you collect the more successful you will be. Don't assume or speculate or plain out accept others theories of how things are done, use your own data which you know you collected and toiled over to make your own theories or to reinforce others theories and then work with that. But don't ignore others theories all together either because they may have some info in them that help you refine your own, even some of most wacko ones. Example, I really like the belief there is a MA loot santa stuffing items into mobs as gifts in loot, may seem stupid but I seriously hunt thousands and thousands of mobs not a single item then something happens, santa arrives and item after item drops non-stop from that mob, random number generators are not that bad to have this happen over and over on different mobs so the santa theory is something not to be ignored either.
This definitely is not a grab anything you want go hunt and expect to profit type of game, if you want to last you have to approach it slowly and carefully and do a lot of research. And approaching it as a penny pincher is not a bad approach and in the long run does cause you to save some ped over using very uneconomical hunting setups.
Just my 2 pec worth of ramblings and pretty sure there are many out there that read this and think it is moronic but it works for me and that's all that matters.
yep sure a LA is a business and no longer a game.