TODAY? WOOHOO!!!! Time to spend some $$$
(This is what excitement about a hyped game update looks like, Frontier. Maybe you should try it sometime.)
(This is what excitement about a hyped game update looks like, Frontier. Maybe you should try it sometime.)
Odyssey has slowed me down a lot, with more landable planets & more things to do (salad hunting) the opportunity to find something to do (other than fast travel) is greater than any point since exploration changed in 3.3. I used to hunt for geo/bio stuff before 3.3, it occupied a lot of my time but really it was too hard to reasonably expect most explorers to focus on it. Salad Hunting (and geo hunting too) are much better balanced now - not too easy, not too hard.
If I had it my way, an explorer could spend +20hours exploring a single system. Not just traveling between planets. Doing actual activities. Mapping planets, exobiology, geology, setting up experiments, investigating readings of 'life signs', investigating any peculiar or unusual signals, unexplained artifacts, locating optimal locations for settlements, mining... the list goes on and on and on. And ideally, one discovery should lead to several more things to investigate... and so on... making exploring a system open ended with increasing rewards with additional effort. Instead of reduced rewards with more effort and encouraging cmdrs to leave as soon as possible, and encouraging other explorers to immediately skip systems already visited.
A little bit of investigation should open up more opportunities... opening up more and more. That's how actual science and exploration works. One discovery leads to 5 more and so on.
ED has a great foundation to build on. I wish they would build on it. A foundation is supposed to be solid, not requiring 95% of development effort focused on overhauling existing features that count as the foundation.
If they really wanted to simulate how vast space is you could just make it so you run elite and get to Mars in a few years, and maybe if you keep it going for the rest of your life you make it to where the Voyagers are now, or a little past. I don't see how crossing an entire galaxy in a weekend vs 70 years gives any sense of the bigness of space that's meaningful. there's nothing about jump distances or supercruise speeds that are linked to reality in any way or that are possible at least as we understand the universe now. Travel times are arbitrary and we make up for an incomprehensibly vast galaxy by jumping incomprehensibly far distances to get to new systems and traveling at incomprehensively fast speeds in supercruise to get to our destinations once we arrive. I don't see a way in a game to get a true sense of the vastness of space and still have anything that's remotely playable.
Well I gotta say it X4 is a brilliant game and well worth a look for anyone who wants to just fly around and enjoy space, FDEV are gonna have to pull out a lot of stops if they dont want to be left behind by other games that have done the walking around and interacting already. NMS and X4 shows that it can be done yeah sometimes its not 100% BUT it can be done very nicely.
Its about time the next updates started to give the player base the most anticipated features of the last few years, the ones that keep rearing up every so often things like ship interiors etc.
Its about time the next updates started to give the player base the most anticipated features of the last few years, the ones that keep rearing up every so often things like ship interiors etc.
Fleet carriers killed group expeditions, nothing like being far out there in the black in a DBX with only one SRV, trying to get to the next group meetup and low on mats one slip and you are dead.Travel doesn't necessarily have to be slow. But it could be a bit more challenging. Our ships pretty much face no challenge from the environment. Having hull degrade slowly due to radiation (especially for shield less builds), adding material requirements to repairs, and similar challenges, would mean more planning would be required for ensuring long distance exploration success.
The material needs shouldn't be nuts like they are in games like NMS. But right now the only things that make it feel like we are far away when we are, well, far away, are the limitations of the jump drives.
S
They removed the danger eith fleet carriers.
Before that we had 1000ly max plotting range and we explored
They removed the danger eith fleet carriers.
Before that we had 1000ly max plotting range and we explored
20,000ly, that was increased many years before Fleet Carriers came out.....or were you using economic plotting the entire time? In fact using some tricks I have plotted 64kly routes;
As i usually fly a sidey or rarely a Cobra i always use the fuel stars plotting20,000ly, that was increased many years before Fleet Carriers came out.....or were you using economic plotting the entire time? In fact using some tricks I have plotted 64kly routes;
Which doesn’t affect the distance the plots can be made to reach, merely the variety of stars the route visits.As i usually fly a sidey or rarely a Cobra i always use the fuel stars plotting
I had a hard time playing, when I first started. My Sidewinder would not jump to another system, as they were too far. One example of why I was glad of engineering.
After over 50 weeks of play time, I make credits to help new guys.
I don't fight thargoids as they don't interest me. I mine almost continuously. Occasionally I do a HazRez for a break.
All the exploration I did only found me a range on Pomeche. Every other system I explored to become Elite II was brown balls.
A lot of players are lucky I guess.
My two bits but do agree with a lot of the complaints about the game.
I am currently waiting for a new S.T.A.L.K.E.R. if they ever make one.
This was a dream of mine, too. Perhaps 20+ is a bit much, but if there would be so much interesting to do, GREAT!
The point is not to make players stay for 20+ hours in each system, but to give them the opportunity to star for 20+ hours in every system.
Having said that, I once spent 6 days on a single planet flying around it mapping volcanic and biological features when that was the only way to find them, but I may be unusual in that regard.
The current play area is spread out across an entire galaxy, so opportunities for engagement are also spread out over the galaxy. If, for instance, a game maker decided their game was just going to take place in a single system they could probably fit all the game play features in that system that we have in the entire galaxy, hundreds or thousands of asteroid bases, thousands of settlements on planets in stead of 4 or 5, localised economies for small areas on planets etc, maybe light speed as the fastest travel speed possible, but if you increase the size of the play field that means the same set of features possible for engagement need to be spread out, and that's a problem because the play area of the galaxy is essentially infinite as far as a single player is concerned.
Procedural generation should make that 20+ hours possible, but it still creates the issue that there is a limited amount of "different" engagement opportunities in the galaxy, and by that I mean once you have seen space molluscs 30 or 40 times do you really want to just go look at some more. So the challenge is rather more difficult and that is providing 20+ hours of, not necessarily unique but varied content per system so that you don't get bored going down for the 200th time just to find more pumpkins, which you knew were what you would find because that's what you find on airless planets around this type of star in this region.
A lot more to do in the black is my dream as well, but a lot more of just the same stuff would be problematic!
If that happens, I will be back to the game. Unfortunately, as the game is already in maintenance mode and I don’t see any new gameplay coming. The thagoid war proved it with by refurbishing existing gameplay loops
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That's marketing.
Sell less than much.
Always be vague like politicians so no one can complain afterwards.
Sell less than much.
Always be vague like politicians so no one can complain afterwards.
Why not?
Fair play is long gone.
Even the strange change in elite ranks totally destroyed my motivation.
Even the strange change in elite ranks totally destroyed my motivation.
This is why thinking of Elite as a sim more than a game helps, a game should be fair life isn’t.
I had reached triple Elite before the expansion to level 5 so while that didn’t demotivate me it didn’t inspire me to put in any effort to get the rank for its own sake rather than just do what I wanted to do.
The addition of the Odyssey ranks was a bit different I was quite enthusiastic about reaching Elite in Exobiology but my interest in the new foot soldier one is almost as low as my interest in CQC. The recent debacle with Exobiology payments and rank thresholds certainly dimmed my enthusiasm for a while but I am mostly over that and am proceeding towards getting Elite in that as well, but again I see no reason to put extra effort in to get the extra ranks.
I remember figuring this out, and then not long after, it was changed to "straight line method", which made Supercruise pretty boring.^^^
Pretty much this.
When Supercruise was introduced, the “slope” (for lack of a better term) of the effects of mass lock was steeper, which resulted in systems having terrain: corridors where travel was faster, volumes were speeds dropped precipitously, and most importantly if you could successfully “thread the needle” at your destination, “six seconds” out could be truly be about six seconds. Between the possibility of blacking out due to extreme maneuvers, inflicting expensive damage to your ship if you cut things too close, and losing valuable time due to having to do an actual loop of shame by being too timid, gravity braking was IMO a gloriously fun ride.
Especially since the sound design team went all out, and it sounded like your ship was about to fall apart due to the stress, while your engines whined in protest. “Orbital Glide” is the toned down version of it.
However, the “wisdom” of the Alpha forums at that time had reduced Supercruise travel to “Keep your throttle in the blue zone, and point straight at your destination,” which was the slowest way to reach your destination. The “ten second” rule hadn’t been invented yet, let alone the “six second” rule, which meant that the majority of players were experiencing long travel times (longer than today), while those of us who had learned how things worked were zipping around the place even faster than we do today. Combined with the lower top speed when traveling to distant secondary stars, and there were a lot of complaints about travel times… most of which were self inflicted.
So Frontier increased the top speed to 2001 times the speed of light (good) but also flattened the “slope” of the effects of mass lock. This made the “slow and straight” crowd happy, because they were getting there faster than before. Those of us who understood the system found our travel times increased. Thanks to the “eye of the needle” moving below of the surface of most worlds, the “best” approach to a station became what used to a technique to recover from a failed gravity braking attempt, and the few seconds gained during transit was tiny compared to the tens of seconds lost due to losing the stronger braking effect.
Still, while much diminished, Supercruise is still the best FTL flight model on the market IMO. And the latest Buckyball Race, the Empire Hustle, starts in 7 hours, and everyone’s welcome!
The Buckyball Racing Club presents: The Empire Hustle 8th - 16th April 3309 (Swift Sixteen Championship, Race 1)
The Buckyball Racing Club Is proud to present The Empire Hustle 8th April 3309-16th April 3309 Hosted by Commander Sulu As part of the Magic 8-Ball 2 Swift Sixteen series of events Please use Horizons 4.0 if possible. (Although it is not strictly essential for most races) Welcome to the...forums.frontier.co.uk
The affects of gravity were awesome. Flying past planets at high C's and then having a serious gravity pull towards the planet freaked me the hell out the first time.
Kinda funny, the original Elite got me because it was so damn easy to die, and I found docking the most dangerous thing in the galaxy.
While docking was safer in ED, there was certainly enough danger that death was a very real threat, and it truly is the "struggling to survive" parts of the game that are the most fun. Thinking back, there are so many things in Elite that should have been brought to ED - like system stability/government style having a serious affect on security.
PvP piracy should be near impossible in the safest systems, with an armada of police ships appearing within seconds of an interdiction. And a suitably thin profit margin.
Anarchy systems should be piracy havens, with those able to run the gauntlet getting handsomely rewarded for their efforts. Ahhh... risk and reward. What a concept.
Z...
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