The Cobra Mk V has a wonderful cockpit view.
Mandalay too good for Exobiology and Exploration
- Thread starter Red Rocket
- Start date
I can't think of any reason to do that. Unless you want to go back to the good old times when traveling 400 kls took 10 minutes of nothing but staring at the blackness and a few stars.
The ship's sounds were cool, though.
See, this is the difference I just described. You can't stand waiting 10 minutes for covering such a distance? I totally can do that and enjoy it. Not always just staring at the emptiness, but reading something or browsing music by the side. One of the first things I did after coming out of the noob district was the trip to Proxima Centauri, even streaming it. People assumed I fell for the free Anaconda hoax, or did it for the mug, neither of which I had even heard of at the time. Most other people aren't that crazy, but that you can live it out here is why I love this space game.
I know what you mean, during long SC (or even exiting a planet's gravity for the nth time that day) I used to read a book, or mull the position in some other turn-based game, and was perfectly happy. But I did find it odd that I had to bring along other entertainment activities to an entertainment activity, I was a bit worried I might be on the slippery slope to enjoying cricket.
Double post
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100% agree , it's no longer exploration but a quick tick box which has become more of a feature over the years .
rootsrat
Volunteer Moderator
So... SCO breaks your immersion, but breaking off the game and going back to reality for 10 minutes browsing music does not?
Reminds me of 100% speedruns of the game The Witness. One of the puzzles requires staring at a 50-minute video. There is no way around it: If you look anywhere else, you fail the puzzle, and thus you can't go anywhere nor do anything else in the game for the entirety of the 50 minutes.
Some speedrunners, particularly when live-streaming, will speedrun a different game while waiting. In one speedrun the runner went to the grocery store while the video was running. Yes, the actual real-life grocery store.
During my first trip to Hutton in ancient year 2020, I cleaned my apartment. And still had enough time left to read a book before arriving.
On my second trip to Hutton during a holiday event a few years ago, before SCO was invented, I went and took a nap. Still had enough time left to make a large cup of tea and finish it before arriving.
And countless hours twiddling my thumbs waiting for my ship to clear the orbital cruise distance when departing from planetary surface...
SCO is a rather fine invention, indeed
And Mandalay is a fine ship; although I prefer Cobra V because it's even more fun to fly.
On my second trip to Hutton during a holiday event a few years ago, before SCO was invented, I went and took a nap. Still had enough time left to make a large cup of tea and finish it before arriving.
And countless hours twiddling my thumbs waiting for my ship to clear the orbital cruise distance when departing from planetary surface...
SCO is a rather fine invention, indeed
And Mandalay is a fine ship; although I prefer Cobra V because it's even more fun to fly.
No. That's equivalent to fiddling with the car stereo or something more modern while the car drives on automatic, still keeping an eye on it of course in case you need to navigate an obstacle.
Great answer and I see (and somewhat agree with) what you mean now. No journey (aside from a few notable exceptions) takes more than a couple of minutes now and I suppose that is a shame in some ways. I actually didn't mind the instability, heat generation and fuel consumption of the SCO on old ships and thought it was a decent compromise and, while I get that it's quite nice that the new ships have a USP, do think they could have balanced it better (i.e. reduced but not completely eradicated those downsides) so as not to make non-SCO completely redundant.
The Cobra Mk V has two thick pillars down the windscreen which always seem to catch the bright starshine.
(Yes, I know the Mandalay has a horizontal pillar across the top of the screen, but it's not so obvious.)
I love the look and feel of the older ships that I have been flying for years and very grateful for the new ships added.
New ships are truly needed to keep the game fresh and moving forward. These upgrades to ship functionality are also needed to cut down on waisted time playing just getting around no matter what your doing.
I would just like to see the older ships getting some upgrades so they not so obsolete.
Before the SCO drives were introduced I met a commander and started to doing a bunch of foot missions, communicating over voice, I now believe was a Fdev developer,
Typically doing these missions it was 3-4 minutes out 4-5 minutes on mission then 3-4 minutes back. During traveling out I mentioned the frustration in the long time just to get to the mission and most other games get you into the action much faster.
The reason I now believe he was a developer is as we left the station on our way to a mission we got attacked just outside, he got destroyed I got away and we then went into my PG and played for about 2 hours. I didn’t think much about it at the time, just a random ganker but after 7 years of playing I have never been attacked in front of a station’s entrance.
About 2-3 months later we got SCO drives.
New ships are truly needed to keep the game fresh and moving forward. These upgrades to ship functionality are also needed to cut down on waisted time playing just getting around no matter what your doing.
I would just like to see the older ships getting some upgrades so they not so obsolete.
Before the SCO drives were introduced I met a commander and started to doing a bunch of foot missions, communicating over voice, I now believe was a Fdev developer,
Typically doing these missions it was 3-4 minutes out 4-5 minutes on mission then 3-4 minutes back. During traveling out I mentioned the frustration in the long time just to get to the mission and most other games get you into the action much faster.
The reason I now believe he was a developer is as we left the station on our way to a mission we got attacked just outside, he got destroyed I got away and we then went into my PG and played for about 2 hours. I didn’t think much about it at the time, just a random ganker but after 7 years of playing I have never been attacked in front of a station’s entrance.
About 2-3 months later we got SCO drives.
If I'm doing carrier Exo I'd rather be in something smaller. The Mandalay is great, but there are better ships for landing in high rough terrain. As good as the Mandalay is, it still has a weak spot that encourages and allows other options.
The thing is, if for the sake of a thought experiment we ignored the SCO enchantment enhancement altogether, the Mandalay is still too good an exploration ship. Before it, pretty much every ship had some compromise to make: the Anaconda had the best jump range and all the internals, but was slow in supercruise and a pain at planetary flight, the Phantom and Asp were mostly good at everything but the best at nothing (although not so great at exobio in my opinion), DBX had scooping issues, and so on. Unfortunately, the concept of balance flew out the window with the Mandalay, as it's very good at everything exploration, not to mention being the best at some aspects. You aren't really giving up on anything.
There are still a few niches where other ships perform better than it, but all with pretty serious compromises. (For example, a Courier will beat a Mandalay at exobiology once you're at the planet, but it'll take it much longer to fly through the galaxy and get to said planet.)
The ship could have been decently balanced if all it had were the jump range (to be precise, the base hull mass) and the enhanced SCO, but not the overpowered supercruise handling, excellent thermals, strong base shield strength, internal slots, and so on. Frontier decided not to go this route though, probably because they wanted to make sure they'd sell it to as many explorers as they could.
Oh well. What's done is done, it's not like anyone is forced to sit in one, and besides, many screenshots going from "Asp Explorer in front of something" to "Mandalay in front of something" was still an improvement.
There are still a few niches where other ships perform better than it, but all with pretty serious compromises. (For example, a Courier will beat a Mandalay at exobiology once you're at the planet, but it'll take it much longer to fly through the galaxy and get to said planet.)
The ship could have been decently balanced if all it had were the jump range (to be precise, the base hull mass) and the enhanced SCO, but not the overpowered supercruise handling, excellent thermals, strong base shield strength, internal slots, and so on. Frontier decided not to go this route though, probably because they wanted to make sure they'd sell it to as many explorers as they could.
Oh well. What's done is done, it's not like anyone is forced to sit in one, and besides, many screenshots going from "Asp Explorer in front of something" to "Mandalay in front of something" was still an improvement.
No, I don't agree that the Mandalay is too good for exploration. There are other ships designed for other roles where they outperform the rest, yet there are still niches as mentioned by others. Not the case with SCO drives but this was a tangential discussion. (-edited for clarity)
The only thing I'd like them to change about the Mandy is mentioned here -
forums.frontier.co.uk
(or did they change it already? I'm not near mine just now to look, been glued to the Cutter for a while...)
The only thing I'd like them to change about the Mandy is mentioned here -
A tiny request for Mandalay
I got both prebuilts and absolutely love it, really well done. There is a tiny little thing I'd kindly ask to reconsider, whether the ZP logo in the bottom window is really necessary. I mean it doesn't obstruct much, just a little, but imagine using this window for the purpose it was made for...
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Cobra V for Fungoida in the Inner Orion Arm, otherwise the Mandy.
Asp for Nostalgia.
Asp for Nostalgia.
Fleet Carriers kind of ruined that already. Not the enormous size, but the 'civilization is far away, survive with AFMU and repa... what's that, a full service station 5 ly away, instead of the 30,000 ly back to the frontier of the bubble? Golly, I don't have to even try anymore!
It's not like we can get up and stretch our legs in the cockpit, oh look, another reason for ship interiors!
One could argue that every new ship with pre-sale for ARX was too good. And it makes sense when you think like a marketer: "If we want to sell those ships for money, they need to be better than everything else or no one will buy them."
Which points at the old problem of marketing interfering with game design, which has always resulted in terrible choices for the game and its overall health.
But, hey, money, we need that, you know?
Which points at the old problem of marketing interfering with game design, which has always resulted in terrible choices for the game and its overall health.
But, hey, money, we need that, you know?