Lame. But seriously the "criminal underground" side of the game, is criminally under developed.
New ship: Panther Clipper
- Thread starter Rubbernuke
- Start date
Please god, make today and tomorrow go by faster, so we finally have facts and the nonsense stops....
3000t, max speed of 600 without engineering, 70ly jump range. TRUST lmao
as if the presence of facts has ever stopped the nonsense...
the nonsense never stops, it just swaps between topics - and is enjoyed by those who have managed to retain a functioning sense of both humour and irony!
FDEV on stream tomorrow: "We have decided to not release the Panther, as we could impossibly satisfy the expectations of our players. The next ship will be the Sidewinder MK II instead."
It will be a typically bland ship, anything else said here is in fun.
It will satisfy those who only wish to see incremental change in ships, of that I feel certain.
Oh that would be a dream.
Then P2P ships would be Monsters with over 100Ly jump range, 600 speed and a Super Boost just short of Warp Speed.
Looking forward to their Bull-Ship about the PC2 Tomorrow
I really wish developers could get this right. It's not just FDEV. Starfield was bad at it too and other RPG's. They tell you that you can be a "bad guy" or whatever you want, but the legal system is so comically designed that it's almost impossible. It's like a child designed them.
Imagine turning on your telly and hearing this report lol. Apparently though this is a good "crime and punishment" system for video game developers.
It also takes away from the sense of scale a little. The civilized bubble is large. Yet there are systems that are unoccupied within it, that are "unexplored" within the data systems of civilization. You'd think there would be thriving underground network taking advantage of the plethora of places to hide away across the vastness of the galaxy.
If they’re hiding that far underground, then why would everyone know about them?
"Everyone" wouldn't necessarily. But maybe those who reach very high levels of notoriety receive an invite, or a contact, etc. There's lots of creative potential for how to handle it.
The Mandalay was the first new exploration ship released in many many years. So it was probably going to be a hit anyway, just because of that. However as far as the ship itself, it is SO good on so many levels. First ship with the new SCO drive, come on, everyone wanted to get their hands on that. Beyond just judging it by jump range alone, bone stock with the crappy modules the thing flies like it's fully engineered. The handling is unbelievable! It's Supercruise handling is doubly-good. It's basically impossible to "loop of shame" this thing and if you do, it takes like 2 seconds to turn around. The Anaconda is a wallowing space whale in SC.
You've said I'm under and overestimating things to make my case? I think you're definitely underselling just how good the Mandalay is to make yours if I may be so bold.
Of course, I wouldn't claim it would get NO purchases unless it met X stat.
Accepting your napkin math for arguments sake....you may thumb your nose at a 4% difference in profits. The people running these companies and those on their board of investors, would throw their mothers off a train for 4% gains. I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the profit motive if I were you.
This is completely hypothetical and I don't know how you can state this with such high confidence.
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After the Python II and the Type-8, you mean?
Sure, it's a good ship in many respects (and agreed that the Anaconda is a terrible explorer if you care about doing anything in the systems you visit), but that just makes the point that a single headline number doesn't make or break whether a ship is "good enough" to get sales.
Maybe the Panther will have 1000t capacity but also - unlike either the T-9 or Cutter - be able to turn corners.
Maybe it'll only have a 900t capacity but also a class 8 FSD so it can move that cargo long distances at a much higher rate than the other two.
Maybe it'll have a 2500t capacity but not actually be able to dock on large pads, so you have to load and unload it 80-100t at a time with a small pad shuttle. (designed-for-purpose shuttle with 150t capacity sold separately as Autumn's ship, of course)
The cargo capacity of the Panther isn't the only thing that determines whether it succeeds or not.
If Frontier were that into (marginal and short-term) profit over any other considerations about what would be good for the game, I think we'd be seeing rather more than the fairly incremental Mandalay / Type-8 / Python 2 / Corsair designs we've already seen. And it's only revenue, not profit, until they've established that it doesn't cost them more in developer time to fix any resulting balance issues that turn out to be too important to ignore.
Also if Frontier were that into the profit motive, what they would be doing is feature-freezing Elite Dangerous so that they had more developers available for their much higher ROI management sims. They already spend way more on it than its ROI justifies in a coldly financial sense. (And that's fine with me, of course, I'm an ED player not a shareholder)
"The real figure is less than a quarter of the theoretical ceiling I had to make some utterly absurd assumptions to get" does not seem particularly unlikely to me. The relevant number here isn't the total sales of the Panther Clipper, it's the difference in sales between the PC-1000t and PC-1500t alternatives.
If Frontier think they can get 90% of the sales with 10% of the balancing issues [1] at 1000t, that's a much better deal.
[1] Or forget balance, Frontier often do, just the basics of "not having to implement a size 9 internal only to discover that there are hardcoded 8s everywhere" could make keeping it smaller a more cost-effective idea. Profit = revenue - expenditure.
"In other news - a drug dealer walked into a burger shack, was recognized instantly by 20 people, who all gunned him down for his crimes."
Some of us can only imagine NOT hearing stuff like this every morning...
Some of us can only imagine NOT hearing stuff like this every morning...
There wasn't a sudden overwhelming demand for a new medium class exploration ship. Or a medium cargo ship. Or a new medium combat-oriented ship.
There IS overwhelming sudden demand for a new extra-large hauler due to Trailblazers. I think this just renders the comparisons to the other new ships moot, because those ships didn't have the expectations placed upon this one due to the evolutionary pressures added to the hauling profession.
That's true, but doesn't necessarily mean that the level of power creep Frontier introduces with the Panther and the level of power creep people trying to build T3 stations solo want will be in any way aligned. Players might want to be able to build systems twice as fast, but that doesn't mean that Frontier wants that to happen.
That's only from our perspective.
When FDev launched Trailblazers, they already knew they were working on the Panther, and knew roughly what the loadout would be and what other advantages it might have over the other Large cargo ships. (SCO, handling, etc.) It's not a sudden change or surprise on their side of things.
You should assume that the Panther fits into the already existing Trailblazers mould, not that it breaks it.
There is also going to be a time when most people are generally sick of colonization. It might even have already happened.
There are a number of quantity limitations for hauling where a large ship with 1000+ tons of space isn’t automatically the best option. Bulk taxes. Outposts under infrastructure failure. Weird out of the way settlements with surprisingly good demand prices.
I’m also discovering colonization situations where building the largest ports isn’t always the best way to go.
There are a number of quantity limitations for hauling where a large ship with 1000+ tons of space isn’t automatically the best option. Bulk taxes. Outposts under infrastructure failure. Weird out of the way settlements with surprisingly good demand prices.
I’m also discovering colonization situations where building the largest ports isn’t always the best way to go.
