Loving the glitching Covas when near the Thargoid's systems.
Whether this is intentional or not (bug?) - please keep it as it totally adds to the immersion of a 'new' EMP type threat from them.
Can't understand why some have complained about this in this thread.
Also looking forward to 5 EAX MC's on my Krait - I have the 5th one with normal MC currently as it must do SOME damage, eh?
I probably won't need it as I only do Scouts and my Krait does them in 3-4 secs then I run when interceptors appear and come back into the instance to restart on Scouts again.
Fix the COVAS cutting out during engagements with Thargoids around frame shift anomalies: the textures for the anomalies themselves sometimes bug out, so that they look like grey checkerboards; as stands, this is very frustrating, as the ship voice gives crucial feedback/callouts and AX combat is one of the most demanding combats where such information is vital and many systems must be managed at once; I can't believe this is a feature; I think it is a bug insofar as the "distortion" effect of one anomaly gets multiplied by 5x or 10x, causing the whole audio system to crap out from competing inputs; I don't see why Thargoid EWAR would target just my synthetic ship voice, tbh, from a lore perspective. There is no immersion to be had here when the immersive sound effect just stops playing after a minute and you spend the rest of your hour-and-a-half-long combat sortie in relative silence, straining your eyes for "ENERGY SURGE DETECTED" and "CAUSTIC DAMAGE REMOVED" in your right hand panel, while also trying to hit a pin-point target that is the heart with fixed weapons. Anybody claiming this is a good thing hasn't flown enough multi-goid scenarios where every drop of info you can glean from the HUD and ship counts.
Evacuation cargo missions in Alert and Invasion systems need consolidation, or the mission limit needs to be increased 100%: Why can't these factions just give me a single lot of 30 escape pods to evac instead of 7 missions of 4-6 pods each? I get you're trying to indicate there's a lesser volume of casualties in zones of lesser fighting, but it's tedious and leaves my cargo hold on a cutter empty most of the time, which is annoying at best; the increased number of missions also means more interdictions, which are always just annoying time sinks; submit and boost away, and lose another minute on the run
Also: Who the heck wants influence with a random neutral faction? Or 14 units of HN shock mounts? We're only doing this for the credits, reputation gains for major factions, the engineering mats, and stats on INARA for nos. of refugees evaced. Either put the reputation and mats rewards in the same place for each mission every time, so we don't keep mis-clicking when turning in 20 missions back-to-back-to-back, or get rid of the trash-tier rewards.
I doubt the CMs let alone the devs are going to read this, but please for the love of Jaques, fix the terrible short range on the Xeno Scanner.
It's very useless for multicrew xeno hunting since the ship has to practically kiss the thargoid for the scan to work, and the pilot is not allowed access to it so they have something to do while the gunner focuses on pew pew.
I doubt the CMs let alone the devs are going to read this, but please for the love of Jaques, fix the terrible short range on the Xeno Scanner.
It's very useless for multicrew xeno hunting since the ship has to practically kiss the thargoid for the scan to work, and the pilot is not allowed access to it so they have something to do while the gunner focuses on pew pew.
We're aware of a number of things already, ranging from the specifics of AX combat such as the Xeno-Scanner range of 500m being too short given the instant hostility
I doubt the CMs let alone the devs are going to read this, but please for the love of Jaques, fix the terrible short range on the Xeno Scanner.
It's very useless for multicrew xeno hunting since the ship has to practically kiss the thargoid for the scan to work, and the pilot is not allowed access to it so they have something to do while the gunner focuses on pew pew.
Bruce, will the next livestream bookend this feedback with Mr Ds input / views? One of the most contentious things about the last feedback session was it kind of had no conclusion, making a number of people develop visual tics because it kind of outwardly went nowhere.
While not directly related to the Thargoid War, there is a long running issue that is now showing itself with many more AX pilots. The problem with thargoid kills not being recorded in the journal when fighting in wings. We are able to get the combat bond payout fine, and I believe participation in a kill is counted toward ranking progress but the kill is not recorded in the journal and so doesn't reflect in the codex or 3rd party apps like Inara. It would be great to get this sorted out, finally.
Hopefully you saw my post too? I played the other day and every single CZ instance failed to finish and had broken interceptor spawning (stuck). I won't be playing this week because it was so frustrating.
Please fix the bug where the very first limpet deployed in a session of gameplay fails to inherit your ship's momentum.
Nothing like frantically running from scouts to decontaminate yourself from caustic, and the limpet simply "plops" out of the cargo bay and immediately falls far behind the ship with no hope of ever catching up (and you've only got a size 1 controller so you can't deploy another until it expires).
Please let us know what you think about anything from the smaller details to the grand scheme, both the good and the bad. It's important for us to know what's going well so we can continue down those paths as well as what needs improvement more urgent reconsideration.
Many Commanders are starting to get an idea of where the immediate future is heading.... escalation seems to be inevitable.
The Great Old ones are soon to arrive.
Currently there are no options or any plans to investigate inter-species communication, which seems reasonable given our current circumstances...
Advocates have continued to repair the Kingfisher in hopes we can bring it back online. Unfortunately there isn't a single organization in the galaxy which is interested in bridging the gap between our two languages, despite many player groups advocating for such research.
On the grand scheme as a Peace advocate I've felt extremely left out of the current situation. The rescue stuff is fun but gets rather tedious and predictable after a while. We will continue to save as many lives as possible, but gameplay wise we are sorta strung out. I tried my hardest not to assume and stay isolated, and instead get involved with the community. Majority of my conversations default to:
"Until we see something in-game, all of this is speculation."
I really am hoping that somewhere in the future we can meet a hive of the Thargoids that is adverse to war, and understands our multi-faceted species. Some people can be real jerks (Project Seraph), but we aren't all the same. The reason why in-game support is minimal for peace is because a lot people are driven by in-game options. It seems like things get incorporated into narrative when a large portion of the player base supports it, but there is a paradox here in my opinion.
Since no in-game options exist, there isn't widespread support, for this reason... the options will never be created.
Narrative is extremely impactful to those who RP, but not everyone plays this way. Many people play Elite and have no care for such stuff, they want to go hog wild and be a warrior... which is fair and reasonable. I used to do the same, but got obsessed with the narrative itself after how well the Azimuth Saga was done in-game.
Without a proper gameplay loop to have, we are sorta confined to community posts & personal narrative.|
TL;DR
Peace advocates are desperate to research inter-species communications.
As Dr. Elias Pope once said, standing onboard the Kingfisher:
"If only we had a sign our efforts meant something."
Personally, I'm not interested in the Thargoid battle at all.
So I think it's a shame that the focus is now on this gameplay.
I have different expectations from the game, but that's a personal thing.
Not a balancing / gameplay thing... but I'm a casual (and disabled) player, and I'd love if there was a little bit more hand-holding within the game on where to start with this Thargoid War business.
What you guys have with Community Goals is great. I can sign up for a CG from anywhere, it points me in the right direction, and it's really easy to see everything that I need to from within the game itself. If I want to put in a bit more effort I can pop onto the forums or Inara and make use of those community resources, but they're an optional extra. With the Thargoid War, it feels like relying on those community resources - to know where to focus your efforts, etc - is a mandatory first step. I'm sure those communities are great, but if I decide that I'm in the mood to dip my toe in and see what this Thargoid War fuss is about, the last thing I want to be doing is rummaging around outside of the game doing homework before I even start.
Having something similar to the Community Goal implementation - sign up from anywhere, it guides you to where you need to be, etc - might help remove that hurdle from players like myself. It could literally be a Community Goal to deliver supplies to one of the Megaships. It could fill the narrative role of the Pilots Federation or the major factions "taking charge" and aiming the community's efforts via CG for that week/cycle. It could just be a simple Fly To Megaship X mission that completes when you get there (I feel like the tutorial had something similar to this?). I feel like casual players like me will have a much easier time - and be much more likely to take part - if you dangle something shiny in front of us.
I appreciate this is a bit cheeky and slightly off-topic but ...
On next week's episode of Lave Radio (Tuesday 24th at 20:30 UTC) we're going to try and have a "phone in" style show on this topic and would love to hear your thoughts on the Thargoid war.
How are you enjoying it so far?
What do you think could be improved?
Are you not taking part at all and if not, why not?
To join us in the orange sidewinder, make sure you're in our discord (http://discord.io/LaveRadio) and join the On Air stage when the show starts, or if you'd prefer, let us know your thoughts via an email to info@laveradio.com and we can discuss them on Tuesdays show!
this was the best change ever for me! I got sooo bored in Elite. No challenging enemies (I never dared Thargoids back then however) and trading etc was not really my thing. Got to a point where all enemies were too easy and any available goals did not feel important. Odyssey was also great and tough (but also ran out of content there).
All that changed with this Thargoid invasion and made me come back when I read about it by coincidence. Finally it feels there is a real threat! After all, each system and its stations one by one can get lost to them if you do not interfere! Not just some single orbital somewhere at the edge of the bubble that needs repairs. No, a real threat to the entire galaxy/game! And better yet, I can participate in different ways (preferred way combat of course) against very tough enemies and make a difference thanks to those progress bars on the galaxy map. I can see how my contributions make a difference and can help defending the galaxy! Heck, we can even try to retake systems and it seems extremely dangerous!
The Thargoid battles are just right: they feel like a big challenge and are tough (up to deadly, quite a learning curve), but doable. The higher interceptors cannot be soloed apparently which is great (there always got to be something tougher waiting in case you ever make it there by yourself or as team). As a nice side bonus, it is very profitable. Gives me the feeling it is a tough challenge but rewarded accordingly. Even allowed me to get a fleet carrier which I never considered to achieve.
I was so happy and got so hooked and still am. Made me contribute to the game by buying the biggest ARX package available to support this development! I hope the AX CZ bugs get ironed out soon as in open it is hard to get an instance to reset.
Keep up the great work!
I hope this real threat will stay around for a much longer time in the game and even escalate somehow!! It already feels like a war, not some local conflicts that heal themselves after a while.
P.S.: I would spend much more ARX if you could actually rotate your ship in game (does not work in the normal livery menu in a starport).
I've been fighting in the Thargoid War almost every week since it dropped (except this past one since enemy BGS operators are messing with my home). I had gone from never shooting a Thargoid to easily being able to solo Cyclops and with some effort Basilisks. So far loving it, but also over time feeling a bit burned out. Here are some things I think would help! (Mostly tactical level QoL things)
*Disable crimes reporting in AX CZs: As others have detailed, it can be daunting when a random with their crime reporting turned on strays into your line of fire and forces you to pay off the fine in a different system. Really no reason for this since there's even some fluff alert when entering AX CZs about a "System Authority Link Error"; crimes reporting should be off by default here.
*Docking considerations: Most AX CMDRs I see in Open are relying on docking at the station/port for repairs rather than limpets as in classic AX builds. This makes sense since it's faster and limpets can be lost through malfunctioning cargo hatches. It would be nice if ships with deployed SLFs could dock while the SLFs are deployed, even if only for AX zones or Anarchy states in general. It would also be nice if there was an upper time limit to how long a CMDR could stay docked at the smaller Outposts before being force-launched; it only takes a single CMDR loitering the Medium pad of an outpost to hamper the progress of that instance.
*AX Missions rebalancing: They're either easily doable "Hunt 80 Scouts" that pay out less than a million Cr or very epic "Kill 8 Basilisks/Medusas/Hydras", the latter of which pays well and is doable for very experienced AX CMDRs in a group, but I've never completed one or heard of any CMDRs I know doing so. Some intermediate skill level missions would be nice (e.g "Kill 9 Cyclops", which I never see on the board). Currently in my experience it is easier to grind Materials via rescue hauling and Credits via AX combat, so some rewards parity between the activities might be a nice incentive to switch up activities from time to time and provide a sense of personal progress as we accumulate both Cr and Materials.
*Interceptor panic shields rebalance: As humanity gets stronger weapons capable of instagibbing the weaker Interceptors, it would make sense to investigate how often they can deploy their "panic" shields. A Hydra or Medusa being able to redeploy its panic shield within ~30s of it depleting might be reasonable because of their strong power, but a weakened Cyclops or Basilisk shouldn't be able to for example. In other words, give Interceptors a cooldown on panic shield redeployment and this could be scaled with how much "capacitor" or power each Interceptor model has. I also suspect we'll be seeing new Thargoids in the future, so this line of balancing could be extended to them.
*Instancing and related bugs: these cause Thargoids to be invisible/invulnerable or completed instances to be held open infinitely and so slow system progress. Perhaps a more dynamically "looping" model for CZs would be helpful for this? I've noticed welcome changes to even regular human wars with Update 14 (ships more dynamically entering/leaving the battlespace), so I can tell the dev team is really cooking something up!
Thank you for the fun game, keep it up and can't wait to see what new content and stories we'll see for 3309!
I can't get to Maia without being insta-killed by the inscrutably hostile, mystical magical "unknown" and its mysterious trope swarm. Trying to get one piece of alloy for an engineer cost me a quarter of my money. I hate the war.
Why deleting posts? Who gave you the right to decide what is the feedback and what is not? What makes you think that the opinions expressed here are not worthy of being heard by the developers?
The feedback was that to survive hyperdictions, the player has to boost lots with fa off until they can high-wake onwards. Shame that was considered to be not worthy of passing on and got deleted. Have a nice day.
It can be tough to be a moderator, sometimes you are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Perhaps the intention of this thread has not been communicated well enough. A post clarifying what is & isn't okay from Bruce would be of significant benefit & the contents of that post added to the OP for extra clarity, particularly considering the banter early in this thread.
I think this would need to be made extremely clear and reiterated by the OP regularly so that our valued volunteer moderators are not given an excessive amount of pressure dealing with official FDev business.
