The new SCO Drive and it's jump range...

[galahad2069]

It devalues what I have done as if it were nothing.
You can do better signing up to the game now.

Why not leave the SCO advantage as being only one thing, Super Cruise Boost?

My old laptop was quite expensive. Now that I have a new, much better one, does that devalue all the work I did for the money I had to pay for the old one back in the day?

 

[Aleks Zuno]

The only drawback I noticed so far is with the higher jump range, a bit more fuel is also used per jump but it's pretty negligible.

That is entirely due to the fastest-route Galaxy map plotting having a relatively finer granularity of target stars available! It gives more opportunity to choose targets which reach the maximum fuel per jump attribute of the Frame Shift Drive; in effect, having lower range (and thus fewer targets) forces the Galaxy map routes into being a lighter version of the economy route option.

I stumbled upon reading that originally due to making no sense directly—the maximum fuel per jump attribute being that which decides the derived range, such that "higher jump range" occurs via optimised mass versus actual starship mass and can not possibly increase the fuel per jump directly, short of the Deep Charge experimental effect of course.

 

[galahad2069]

Well, I've reached the conclusion that SCO should have to be an experimental effect instead of a new module.

Yeah, that would have been the best way to do it, most probably.

Or they could have just retrofitted all FSDs with SCO capability. There has always been a lot of different choices to be made (rates A to E , different module sizes, several blueprints and experimental effects), it wasn't absolutely necessary to make the SCO drives a whole new kind of module.

 

[vanFace]

Looks like the 5A SCO might be the first Pay2Win item that actually lives up to the name. Except if they offer it to the mere peasants too. Since it is such a strongly tempting money making opportunity, though, I guess it will stay behind ARX unlock.

 

[Shadowsnog]

Yeah, that would have been the best way to do it, most probably.

Or they could have just retrofitted all FSDs with SCO capability. There has always been a lot of different choices to be made (rates A to E , different module sizes, several blueprints and experimental effects), it wasn't absolutely necessary to make the SCO drives a whole new kind of module.

couldve been too many effects for just an experimental. especially when you want to tie to it some ships being better at handling it than others... the bowl of old fsds just might be too full of spaghetti...
if the lsd are that good then feel free to put them on every ship

 

[Nugstar]

And what's the problem with that? That's literally how technological progress works IRL. My new laptop is better than the old one in every aspect. In other words, the old one is obsolete now.

Hate to break it to you, but this aint real life, its a video game. The lore is no excuse for poor game design.

 

[Shadowsnog]

Hate to break it to you, but this aint real life, its a video game. The lore is no excuse for poor game design.

takes noes
adding new things to the game is now bad design

 

[Nugstar]

takes noes
adding new things to the game is now bad design

Adding new things that overpower old things is bad design.
Good design would be to have the SCO drive have a slightly lower jump range so you as a player have to choose between max jump range or SCO. Not both.

 

[Cmdr. Numa]

takes noes
adding new things to the game is now bad design

No, no one said that. Adding new things is a good thing - unless it makes old things completely obsolete. That is called power creep.

 

[M_Biscotti]

This is bad.

All the CG FSD that I worked hard for are for nothing.
All the engineering I did was for nothing.
Are they trying to make me mad...

I agree, stuff re-grinding is the worst progression. This is philosophy is a pure NIMBY in my game library.

 

[pFVD]

For all anyone knows, we'll get new CG FSD's with double engineering, or maybe a V2 FSD.

 

[Helmut Grokenberger]

Adding new things that overpower old things is bad design.
Good design would be to have the SCO drive have a slightly lower jump range so you as a player have to choose between max jump range or SCO. Not both.

why? Things are allowed to become better after a plethora of years, and the less good things get replaced and phased out. I know there are still people longing for the old system scanner, but at one point, a new one came out and replaced the older one.

Gamers have this weird sense of pride and being "invalidated" or "slapped in the face" because something becomes obsolete. The old drives did us good service for a long time, and now they might be replaced with something new. It doesn't mean your old drives don't work anymore, or that everything you did with the old drive is suddenly invalidated.

@galahad2069 's computer comparison kind of nails it. My old computers were good, my new ones are better. Doesn't mean I replace every computer in my house with a new one every time a new generation comes out.

 

[galahad2069]

Hate to break it to you, but this aint real life, its a video game. The lore is no excuse for poor game design.

Thank you CMDR for your kindness to have broken it for me in your eternal wisdom. Were it not for you, I probably would never have guessed ED was a video game.

Of course it's a game, but that does not mean that nothing in the game can resemble how things work in real life.

Things like ingame FSD tech can be changed, that isn't necessarily bad game design, as long as it's equally accessible for all players and not some unique module locked behind a pay wall or some one-time ingame event (CG multicannons say hello).

 

[Helmut Grokenberger]

I agree, stuff re-grinding is the worst progression. This is philosophy is a pure NIMBY in my game library.

Nobody forces you to "regrind". The smart decision would be to replace old FSDs with new ones where needed over time, and keep the old ones running as long as they are sufficient.

Except if one is one of those Jumpaconda deciples who can't sleep at night unless all ships have their jump range minmaxed.

 

[Helmut Grokenberger]

Also keep in mind that Frontier have effectively announced a significant reduction in material costs for engineering. We don't know if it's really coming, neither do we know when, but it's supposed to be in our future.

 

[vanFace]

Nobody forces you to "regrind".

Indeed. With the new philosophy, you can also opt for paying to skip the grind, which is commonly seen as a good thing here, right? In the end, this will help to keep the game running.

 

[Shurimal]

There has always been a lot of different choices to be made (rates A to E , different module sizes, several blueprints and experimental effects), it wasn't absolutely necessary to make the SCO drives a whole new kind of module.

Introduce SCO drives of all sizes and grades above D together with engineering them.

Phase out non-SCO drives above grade D, remove them for outfitting everywhere.

If technically possible, offer the owners of legacy grade C+ engineered FSD-s a like-for-like trade-in at Felicity's base. Otherwise, let them be as-is historical curios.

There, problem solved, everyone lives happily ever after, salt generators remain safely turned off

 

[Helmut Grokenberger]

Indeed. With the new philosophy, you can also opt for paying to skip the grind, which is commonly seen as a good thing here, right? In the end, this will help to keep the game running.

I know you're trying to twist my words to make a sarcastic statement, but anyway: Some posters above make it sound like once the A-rated SCOs are released, you have to immediately refit your entire fleet with them. Which is pretty much not neccessary and very unwise to do.

 

[M_Biscotti]

Nobody forces you to "regrind". The smart decision would be to replace old FSDs with new ones where needed over time, and keep the old ones running as long as they are sufficient.

This is the main design goal of power creep (quite all MMOs), force the players to grind new stuff by making previous one obsolete. Elite being a pure grind game, adding more would be a really bad idea. IRL old stuff are not sold any more, they're replaced.

Except if one is one of those Jumpaconda deciples who can't sleep at night unless all ships have their jump range minmaxed.

jumpconda is META, I can't wait to see what the paid one will include

Indeed. With the new philosophy, you can also opt for paying to skip the grind, which is commonly seen as a good thing here, right? In the end, this will help to keep the game running.

This, is called P2W. Pay or spent insane amount of time. I've played "free" parts of 3 games like this, Aion 4, Neverwinter and Shop Titans. I don't think Elite would survive for very long using that model.

 

[Helmut Grokenberger]

This is the main design goal of power creep (quite all MMOs), force the players to grind new stuff by making previous one obsolete. Elite being a pure grind game, adding more would be a really bad idea. IRL old stuff are not sold any more, they're replaced.

As with a lot of the other "grind", this is a self made problem. You're free to just not play the power creep game; while maybe having an A-rated SCO drive on a few of my ships might be nice, you can be sure that I will not rush to replace all my FSDs the minute new SCOs come out.