No, and some even take their kids out of school to go on holiday then so they can pay less.
I believe that CG's have lost their way
- Thread starter SlickPBW
- Start date
The funny thing about the current Trailblazer related CG is that though quite a number of people will be using the Panther MK2 to haul - the ships that will reap the greatest benefit (from the upgraded cargo racks) will be vessels like the T8 and the Krait Phantom.
So anything beyond 50 percentile will just mainly be about bragging rights imo. I certainly don't feel motivated to buy the Panther just for this
So anything beyond 50 percentile will just mainly be about bragging rights imo. I certainly don't feel motivated to buy the Panther just for this
The main benefits are with the ships with the highest tonnage for their pad size, so the Cobra V, the T8 and the Panther. Of course it's nice in every ship, but those are the ships that will push the boundary of what was possible so far in a single haul for their pad size.The funny thing about the current Trailblazer related CG is that though quite a number of people will be using the Panther MK2 to haul - the ships that will reap the greatest benefit (from the upgraded cargo racks) will be vessels like the T8 and the Krait Phantom.
So anything beyond 50 percentile will just mainly be about bragging rights imo. I certainly don't feel motivated to buy the Panther just for this
what i would like to know as im starting to run the cg for a while,has the no fire zone been removed from the station,i am flying in solo just now and just as im approaching the letter box come under attack by must be npc. station does start to defend by then im through with about 30% hull damage.flying no shields just now on the panther.
No-shields is bad idea. My carrier can take off 10% of the my shield shooting NPC pirates when I sit on deck
but once inside the no fire zone you never used to get attacked in solo,open is a different matter because of live players,shields just take up space on a hauler,hull should take the damage from a npc as you evade. and ive just had the same thing happen on a pick up so its not just the cg station.
Personally I don't recall any CGs where hitting top tier was the real goal. That's probably how they were intended, something like you need X tonnes to build this station so less is a failure in some way and there's no point to gathering more so end the CG automatically if you hit T5.
Frontier then immediately changed their minds because they seemingly don't want to deal with the possibility of CGs failing. I can only think of a handful that have failed over years, and none of them convincingly looked like Frontier intended it as a possible outcome. Many more have had Frontier swoop in to "adjust" the CG and prevent failure, at which point the CG becomes an extended cutscene. Many congratulations on succeeding in the initiative, CMDRs, even if we had to rig it so hard it would succeed with 100% of the playerbase trying to stop it.
And now that the actual participation of the CG doesn't really matter, they don't want the cutscene to end early either.
Overall I agree with you, though. CGs are long due a rework and it's honestly remarkable how well they've done given how basic a mechanic they are. There's a ton of potential there for an actual feature to take advantage of.
War CGs should take advantage of already existing BGS mechanics. I previously would have said this-would be the easiest change to make, but Frontier have broken the BGS so much recently it would be a bit awkward when the entire CG crashes.
Trade CGs are boring IMO but could assign actual targets and value to different commodities, instead of everyone just picking the single easiest commodity.
Exploration CGs at minimum need a way to target actual regions.
These are just repurposing CGs, ideally throw out the entire thing and redo it to allow multiple activities but I doubt that'll ever happen.
Most of all, though, CGs really need strong narrative support. The CGs of the Azimuth Saga were just as janky as we have now (though significantly better than before, they used mega-ships rather than randomly picking ports!), but people paid attention to them because they felt like they mattered. Even when they were just a glorified cutscene. Just bring back GalNet and I'll stop whining, Frontier.
cheers never thought that way.07
No worries, I've had station PP security shooting at me on a few Titanium runs, have been ignoring them since they just lightly dent the shields. Not a time to go AFK for a cup of tea though
I still find it jarring that the station welcomes you as an old friend but then they and all the system police stand around chatting and chewing their Snickers bars while a PP security ship openly tries to obliterate you right in front of them.
I've had few shield generator attack alerts going through the toaster rack.
I fully agree with this. Personally I've never been a fan of putting all the activity into a single CG, as it creates very unrealistic numbers such as a 10000 population system somehow having a billion pirates or conflict zone NPCs killed in a week and also means the CG cannot fail at all.
Splitting the CG on different ones per commodity is a great idea, there'd be room to allow community impact. And then having an impact for each done.
Definitely. But it feels incomplete when the unique rewards are just at the "at least 1" and top 75% tiers. Why not provide even more racks for people at higher tiers? There's a decal reward - in the past they've done decal rewards that are different based on how well you did. So shinier decals for higher brackets. Since there's been no mention I assume it'll be the same decal for everyone.
They could be transparent about why they didn't if it's the case - I see a very strong point for making all the rewards easy this time because there'd be a pay-to-win factor for the early release Panther hauling 50% more per trip.
It will be very interesting to see how it ends up. CGs frequently seem to experiment with something, however minor it is (either in the reward structure, or in the mechanics such as the PPCZs around stations), and this time it'll be "at least 1" + top 75%, which is easy enough to entice people into trying for both.
Ugh, I hope we don't get many complaints about that when the solution is to fit a shield
. Because of this happening in the Powerplay 2 preview it feels like we ended up with a very tame version that limited NPC aggression to Strongholds (and even then it's still hard to find the Power police). This also heavily affected how well you can undermine a system, since you don't get attacked it also made it much harder to find enemies to shoot.
Wait we’re gonna get shot at for doing something they want us to do when delivering much needed supplies ???
Police are just about stuff like murder or serious stuff like parking offences, PP is political so they stay safely out of it.No worries, I've had station PP security shooting at me on a few Titanium runs, have been ignoring them since they just lightly dent the shields. Not a time to go AFK for a cup of tea though
I still find it jarring that the station welcomes you as an old friend but then they and all the system police stand around chatting and chewing their Snickers bars while a PP security ship openly tries to obliterate you right in front of them.
This isn't a bad idea, but framing around "CGs should just get removed" makes it challenging to agree with the post.
Most likely one of the Powerplay idiot NPCs dropping mines that have zero effect on the power security cop chasing said NPC that most loudly announced their presence with a nonsensical line as they politely queue up to enter a port in “enemy” territory. The station guns target those mines now and then but might also hit a ship entering the mail slot in the process.
I generally just roll my eyes and don’t bother asking for an apology or to have the damage covered because of human stupidity and politics.
What I don't like is this endless series of CG back to back, each one with unique rewards.
I feel like I HAVE to partecipate, in order to get those modules, and I'm not really doing what I'd really enjoy doing.
(please notice that I have very limited time)
I feel like I HAVE to partecipate, in order to get those modules, and I'm not really doing what I'd really enjoy doing.
(please notice that I have very limited time)
Yet you aknowledge that you don't have to. You can walk away, I have from plenty of CGs. A single tonne will get a pair of the racks.
The difficult bit with trying to ignore CGs to get on with the game is the forums, it helps if you can not visit the dedicated forum and not read threads with CG in the title.
Unfortunately we on the forums are an undisciplined bunch and will drop spoilers all over the place so avoidance isn’t easy.
And yet it's still the way I'd describe it.
That suggestion is "A start". The "final concept" would have that literally be the "CG". No success tiers. No participation rewards. Nothing. It's literally "Here's a thing" and the wont from the community and the sense of shared purpose, with hygiene provided by the game being actually well designed should be enough.
And it's the bold bit that prevents this. FD's totally botched design of the economy and reward mechanisms actively prevents the community from getting behind any collaborative occasion without the trappings of "We'll boost the profits of the necessary items to insane levels plus throw a few hundred million your way for sneezing at the CG, plus if you even just throw 1t at it during, we'll throw some unique engineered modules at you too".
It's exactly the same design pattern for PP2 (which adds almost nothing new activity-wise)... it's just a glorified reward layer on otherwise normal activities, because without it, nobody would do it thanks to the botched economic and reward layers in the game.
Why are we getting uniquely pre-engineered cargo racks out of this CG? That shouldn't be a reward because we happened to do this CG right now... it should be in the tech broker[1], and we get access to it by paying a per-module cost including a Rep cost, because we gained a bunch of Rep to spend from helping Brewer Corporation build a bunch of things for them. Or maybe we don't want that, so we can cash Rep for credits or similar. Same same for Powerplay, we shouldn't even need to join PP in order to get access to PP module rewards. Tech broker should again hold them, and if they were facitonalised again... access to a Prismatic should again have material/credit/rep cost, with relevant rep being obtained from helping the Empire, and in particular, helping the Empire in Aisling's domain, in ways that benefit her. And Aisling herself (or at least her reps) is a T2 NPC with more complex interactions available.
In other words, when a "Combat CG" runs, the incentive shouldn't be because FD slap lipstick on a pig in the form of tiered participation rewards and one-shot modules to whoever handed in the most bonds (a completely absurd mechanic in light of the BGS)... success should be measured because the relevant faction was supported and won the war using those mechanics, and through the reputation and organic (and balanced!) rewards obtained through that activity by simply helping them out which curries favour to then access those rewards.
Then FD literally need to do nothing. They want to draw attention to a war and get people to rally behind it? They inject something and drop a galnet article. No lipstick. People go do it because the rewards are inherent, and the activity something people want to achieve.
That's why the Thargoid War mechanically worked. It was a cause which interested lots of people, the rewards were inherent, and the outcomes dynamic. All FD needed to do was make sure things were balanced and working.
Squint a bit though, and there's still room for CGs... but in a totally different form... actual Community Goals. Trailblazers has resulted in a bunch of people going "I wish i could pay NPCs to do it!"... which is dumb (and OT, so don't really want to debate that opinion). Instead, I should be able to drop a "community goal" to reimburse everyone an extra, say, 10k, for every tonne of good delivered, paid out of my FC (or hey, i hear Vanguards have a bank....) account. And in the course of helping that effort, that will benefit some faction/power/whatever organically because that's the way the game's designed to work... and so as well as some extra bank, you've curried favour along the way with the Federation and Hudson, letting you get access to comparable rewards .
In other words, the credit/module rewards should come from the fact you helped that faction/power/superpower and they appreciate that by-default, not because you participated in that CG between dates X and Y and happened to drop a tonne or two of goods to it.
All the mechanics exist to support this. FD are just too afraid to use them, relying on the crutch of CGs where they can control every single aspect of it, a-la the tired old FE2/FFE design. They need to go, because they have no place anymore. The activities FD inject should be things people do because of that shared sense of community and purpose like so many insist... and if people won't because "the rewards suck", then that's a problem with the core game design, not something to be bandaided with the current CG mechanics.
[1] The system designed to be a literal "personal narrative" activity as you venture around the galaxy.