Oh, men of little faith!
I love E:D But really?
- Thread starter GraXXoR
- Start date
The all-time high concurrent players on Steamcharts for Elite dangerous was 28,923. That's frankly a joke for any major title. Hell it's a joke for Indie games! Static or not, this player-base isn't large enough to not have micro-transactions or monthly subscriptions.
(Yes yes I know Steam isn't the only platform people use, still this speaks to the relative size for arguments sake)
People don't like ARX, I get it. I have a wonderful solution: Don't buy ARX.
there is a "thumbnail" option you know ....
There's been a few things I noted when browsing the store the last few weeks in order to figure out what to get next for my Cobra 5... packaged items seem to be back i.e. you have to buy a much more expensive pack to get access to specific skins (remember the old packs of 6 paints in a pack, but worse), as well as kits coming with much fewer parts now.
Not even sure why they still bother with the 400 Arx per week (I'm aware you can get 800 if you include Legacy, but barely anyone will take advantage of that) - especially since most activities that I engage in seem to not yield all that many Arx at all these days - I really struggle to reach the weekly threshold despite playing several hours a week.
No more Christmas freebies either.
I used to support and praise Frontier's generous (in comparison) 'micro'transaction model, even after they introduced Arx - which turned out to be exactly the way the moaners and complainers and whingers at the time predicted, by the way.
But at this point they seem to have gone over to the dark side for a good while. All that's left is to remove early access now.
![[VR] Mad Mike](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/27/27910.jpg?1553527108){kind=avatar}
i keep meaning to install legacy to try an experiment. i think i noticed you seem to gain a fair few arx by trading up and down materials with a materials trader.
am wondering if it would be worth logging into legacy, not playing it but just trading up and down all my materials to get 400 arx, at least until i exhasut my bags.
am wondering if it would be worth logging into legacy, not playing it but just trading up and down all my materials to get 400 arx, at least until i exhasut my bags.
There's definitely different things that earn different levels of Arx from my experience even between both clients. I played Legacy every now and then but it's become more difficult, perhaps also because they seem to have implemented a mechanism that offers diminishing returns if you perform the same activities (like buying/selling ships and modules at high prices). I don't have any real evidence though, just based on observing what my in-game activities would yield in either client.
PS - be careful with Legacy... it has working shadows that behave as they should and don't flicker, the planetary lighting works (Taygeta et al), no stuttering, and aliasing is less pronounced.... I always find it difficult to go back to live after I play it (which is why I stopped eventually).
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You missed me with this one. No matter what I do I always cap my weekly ARX. It just naturally happens without even thinking about it.
my take on it was mostly that the value of an individual ARX has demonstrably decreased significantly since launch, whilst the 400 hard cap had remained.
so now the suggestion is it is barely worth bothering with the 400, or 800 if using legacy "free"
and then with a side helping of if you do the same thing over and over - which one may have done to max out legacy arx ASAP had since stopped being as effective.
of course that was just my take, maybe i am reading too much into it. the 1st line however is objectively true.
whether the ARX comes slow or fast does depend on what you do. Colonisation for instance esp if using a fleet carrier earns barely anything at all.
so now the suggestion is it is barely worth bothering with the 400, or 800 if using legacy "free"
and then with a side helping of if you do the same thing over and over - which one may have done to max out legacy arx ASAP had since stopped being as effective.
of course that was just my take, maybe i am reading too much into it. the 1st line however is objectively true.
whether the ARX comes slow or fast does depend on what you do. Colonisation for instance esp if using a fleet carrier earns barely anything at all.
The neat thing about them is that they add a flat rate to the base shield strength (normal boosters add a multiplier), so the less pre-boost shield a ship has, the more you gain vs. a heavy-duty normal shield booster. And then add the resistances from normal boosters, and that 200 MJ flat boost becomes something like 600 effective MJ on a biweave build! All the while taking less power than an A-rated normal shield booster.
My bi-weave Cobra 5 has more than 4100 MJ thermal shield strength with 4 pips to SYS, and it regenerates fast. Perfect for scooping up black boxes and wreckage components at Powerplay signals while the wing of opforce NPC-s are lighting you up
It used to be the same for me but lately it's been extremely slow going. I do much less mission grinding though - in fact none at all - I did spend lots of time with PP2.0 early in the year (until I got bored of the hamsterwheel and unpledged), then moved on to Colonisation, got bored of that too.
I guess my playstyle is more "loose" now by engaging in CGs (light touch, usually end up in the 75% bracket) and do some bits and bobs like engineering, buying/selling ships and outfitting them etc. Nothing too focused. Maybe that's the problem. But it was already slowing down during the PP2.0 days tbh.
I only had a temporary interest in my Arx balance, as I wanted to get a second skin for my Cobra 5 (already purchased MNB when I got the ship, begrudgingly as MNB isn't worth 10k Arx but it still looks better than the default lame-blue paintjob), ideally without buying more Arx packs.
Then the recent sale came up - Gold/Chrome were discounted for other ships but not the Cobra 5 of course. I had about 8,200 Arx last week, and a few options:
1. Purchase 5,000 Arx for 3.49EUR, buy either Gold or Chrome for the Cobra 5, and be left with a residual amount I can't use for anything (the joys of artificial currencies)
2. Continue to save up on free Arx, which would've taken me at least another month or two based on my current earning rates. Risk being that Frontier would remove these from the store again eventually by the time I got the 10k together
3. Buy the (inferior, or so I thought) Golden/Chromed skins for the Cobra 5 instead at a discounted 7,000 Arx - I already have those on various ships unlike Gold/Chrome
4. Buy the Gold/Chrome skin at the discounted 7,000 for any other ship
I ended up with 4), got Chrome for my Cobra 3 instead, and created a post ranting about the quality. Happy I didn't go for the other options (3 would've been ok also in hindsight).
All quite pathetic isn't it considering all this drama is for a single reflective(ish) skin eh. My balance is down to 1,500 therefore pretty useless and as such I once again no longer care about my weekly Arx as pretty much all ship related store items are way out of reach unless I get my wallet out (which I won't).
Fin.
Sorry. Send me an invoice for the screen burnout and I'll take care of it.
The question I have for you is how fast? At the moment with my two thermal resistant shield boosters and one resistance augmented shield booster, my thermal resistant class 4 bi-weave rebuilds from collapse in 61 seconds with four pips to SYS. What sort of comparative shield rebuild time could I expect with say, one class 4 guardian shield reinforcement installed in addition to the above (or without the boosters if that helps)… if we were sitting in a pub roughly estimating on the back of a beer coaster?
I know I could run it through EDSY, but this seems rather more fun.
It'll add about a minute.
IMO guardian shield boosters are a waste of a slot most of the time. One exception would be if you're going for a very specific amount of shield strength to deal with a specific scenario. For example if you take a high threat pirate assassination mission where you'll be fighting a heavily engineered FDL + 3 Vultures. Once you do enough of those missions you'll get used to how quickly they break your shield. Maybe you need just a little more MJ for the shield to not break during that specific fight.
Otherwise if you have a shield tank build then the shield reinforcement isn't going to add much. And if you're going to for high-resistance low-raw-strength build (most small-medium ships) then that extra shield strength is running counter to your build.
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Yeah I think my issue is that having a multirole build in a small ship, I’m limited in slots which I need for other things (cargo), so I’m more inclined to rely on traditional boosters in utility slots. I also don’t want to increase my shield regeneration/rebuild time if I can help it.
Yep. And if you look at 4D GSRP it only adds 182 MJ to shields. Why use up a module slot when you can just boost out of the fight for a few seconds to regain that 182 MJ with pure regeneration.
I use GSRP a lot on ships with low shield values (federal, chief/challenger, vipers), few utility slots, and that can achieve a healthy hull value with few HRPs. It usually means trading a couple thousand hull value to bump absolute shield value from a few hundred to around 1k. I’ll take longer recharge rates on shields that drop way less often over a chunk of hull value that won’t regenerate. It also gives the ability to use the smallest shield possible, freeing up larger slots a better return on GSRP, MRP, or HRP. This is all for pve combat builds.
Edit:
Challenger with beefy hull:
https://s.orbis.zone/qUTR
Same build but dropped 3 military slot HRP in favor of GSRP:
s.orbis.zone
Went from ~4k hull, ~350 shield, 48 sec recovery to ~2k hull, ~900 shield, 121 sec recovery. Both great ships capable of surviving a lot, and I left a size 6 empty on each, so either could bump up hull, shield, or add bank. GSRP just open otherwise not available shield tank options for a range of ships.
Edit:
Challenger with beefy hull:
https://s.orbis.zone/qUTR
Same build but dropped 3 military slot HRP in favor of GSRP:
Coriolis EDCD Edition
A ship builder, outfitting and comparison tool for Elite Dangerous
s.orbis.zone
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Dunno if this might be controversial be I reckon the best use of GSRPs is as a direct replacement/alternative for SCBs.
SCBs use a lot of power so, on a big ship, you probably won't have enough power to supply all your SCBs and you'll need to enable/disable them as required, they generate a heap of heat so you're probably going to have a HSL fitted (instead of a SB) in a utility slot and you've got to control all that while you're in combat... where you're likely to get hit while activating an SCB and, thus, reduce it's effectiveness.
Instead, just bin the SCBs, replace them with GSRPs and you've got a beefier shield all the time, with no oversight required.
Used to have a 7A prismatic shield on my Corvette (~5,500mj of shield) with 4x 5A SCBs and, even with an 8A PP, I could only enable the SCBs one at a time and they didn't do a great job of restoring my shield.
And, let's not forget, by itself that shield would take something like 45 minutes to recharge so once the SCBs are gone you're probably going to have to make do with a 50% shield by rebooting.
Replaced the prismatic shield with a 7C bi-weave, supported by 4x 5H GSRPs and I now have a 4,500mj shield than requires no faffing around enabling/disabling modules and deploying heat-sinks while recharging and will recharge in 6 minutes.
Can honestly say that, for PvE, I've never even come close to losing the bi-weave shield on my 'vette where I used to spend all my time pumping SCBs into the prismatic to keep it charged.
Yikes. That is an issue then , because as much as ED had a good player boost from Ascension and then Trailblazers, there are now three issues which means that is going to be hard to repeat for 2025/6:
- FDev have still not figured out the "Don't Repeat Yourself" software development principle so every one of these major releases is pathfinding instead of reusing code. The tell here is things like not having builds show up with a full mission experience, and then when they did partially fix that in a hotfix, it still doesn't work for builds 2 onwards.
This means every one of these is lots of novel work for core developers (not asset artists etc).
- FDev never stick the landing. This time around Trailblazers has caused the wider community to forget there are still unfixed holes in PP 2.0 but it also broke BGS, so even the small number of players taking PP 2.0 seriously in terms of RP are now screwed.
- "Beta" language around Trailblazers is not going to save them unless they actually fix the issues. As I alluded to above, somehow with PP 2.0 the studio got away with simply not fixing some things. Trailblazers is different. The core game is now broken, for example the judder issue. Building beyond simple Outposts doesn't work properly. The YouTubers have them by the short and curlies.
If the secret feature turns up before Trailblazers fixes turn up, I really do not think it is going to sell licenses. People will be asking for their money back when they find out the major 2024/5 features are broken, even if the 2026 feature is fundamentally amazing.
EDIT: It seems I manifested a massive bugfix release!
Elite Dangerous | Trailblazers Update 3 - Wednesday April 30
Greetings Commanders, We will be releasing The Trailblazers Update 3 on Wednesday April 30. This update features a number of improvements to Colonisation economies and Powerplay merits, alongside a range of other fixes and improvements. Release Schedule (All times in UTC) 5AM - Servers...
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To be honest, rebuild and 50-100% recharge times are completely irrelevant to me. All that matters in the way and for the purposes I build my biweave PvE ships is recharge rate (in MJ/s) and effective shield strength after resistances.
Design goal for me is to have enough shield strength so it never goes down under normal circumstances when fighting up to 4 opponents at a time (RES sites, PP signals, compromized nav beacons, CZ-s) and have fast recharge rate to have as many MJ restored as possible during the lulls in combat. And have enough hull and module protection that if the shield does break, I have enough resilience to either finish off the last opponent or disengage and recover in supercruise/put enough distance that I can do a standstill reboot before the enemy catches up.
Here's my current C5 build that I use for general BGS/missions, Powerplay, salvage and bounty hunting:
Around 1500 hull HP-s, 3D MRP and 707 MJ raw shield with than ~50% resistances all around. There has been only one occasion that the shield came close to breaking while fighting a wing of high level NPC-s. Usually the recharge is enough (helped by the C5-s mobility)—even with an undersized biweave—that I start and finish a 1v1 PvE fight with same shield % left. Unless I decide to go for a ram or two
