Story events too far away for me to be any use (gameplay wise)

[tsh]

It's a shame that people seem to have completely missed the point of my thread, which was suggesting ways in which FRONTIER could solve this issue.

These people are blind to the fact that a non-trivial number of people who but the game will have given up before next year. Everyone who isn't playing in 2 weeks time is probably more than 1 potential sale lost next year.

All these lost sales mean the big future expansions rapidly start to be less likely to appear.

The issue isn't that it's hard to participate in the 'story', but that it is very easy to feel that the game has no sensible way for people to participate in the story. There are not enough leads to bridge the gap between where people start, and where the developers expect them to be.

Yes, it will probably be months before improvements can be implemented, but denying that they are valuable is just more likely to reduce the potential play base even more.

 

[Veridis]

Also, just throwing this out there, isn't our galaxy in the region of 100,000Ly across? To have these story events with a couple of hundred Ly in that scale is very close indeed......?

 

[bAdbUd]

This one I think is easier to use than the more fully functional one posted above. https://cmdr.club/routes/ Just put start/end and LY's you can jump and you're away.

Also what I do this I then set the Galaxy Map to the furthest point in that list to auto route it for me, then I don't have to keep manually doing it.

The auto route feature does take me to different places than the tool but the fuel consumption seems to be the same and often it's in less jumps. This will be because the auto route feature is worked out on the fly and there are multiple combinations of jumps that can be used to one destination or another.

Also a word of note, even though the auto route feature can work it out for up to 100 LY it won't do this immediately you have to wait for about a minute until the computer has figured out all the possible jumps it can make within 100 LY's, that's a hell of a lot of jumps.

It would be nice though that once the spider's web of route mapping has been calculated for say your Laden tonnage it could be saved, it isn't, also if you actually go in to System View and then go back to the Galaxy Map it gets reset and has to start again.

 

[zombieapocalypse]

I really enjoyed travelling to get to the story events. I undertook some exploring, took on missions heading in the right direction and indulged in some bounty hunting/piracy along the way (and did some sight seeing in Sol). Although I agree it seems a bit of an oversight having both stories in a similar area of space, maybe one of the stories could have been held nearer to the core systems.

 

[anikaiful]

Also a word of note, even though the auto route feature can work it out for up to 100 LY it won't do this immediately you have to wait for about a minute until the computer has figured out all the possible jumps it can make within 100 LY's, that's a hell of a lot of jumps.

YMMV, for me the route planning even for ~100LY distances is almost instant.

 

[Michael Brookes]

This is a fair point, some events will occur too far away for all players to participate. However once everything is up and running properly (we're still in the early days of the story driven content) we can widen the scope so that players have a greater chance of being involved. Naturally this won't always be the case, if you're off deep in the black then it's likely that there's nothing to happen.

Although you never know...

Michael

 

[Memnoch]

Also, just throwing this out there, isn't our galaxy in the region of 100,000Ly across? To have these story events with a couple of hundred Ly in that scale is very close indeed......?

Not sure what you mean? Why would you have a story based in a star system that is 1000's of LY from inhabited space? Systems affected by a story that FD are telling are likely to be within inhabited space as that is where the friction is likely to be, between the three main power blocs.

 

[Tihor]

This is a fair point, some events will occur too far away for all players to participate. However once everything is up and running properly (we're still in the early days of the story driven content) we can widen the scope so that players have a greater chance of being involved. Naturally this won't always be the case, if you're off deep in the black then it's likely that there's nothing to happen.

Although you never know...

Michael

THARGOIDS?????

 

[jadefriendly]

Also, just throwing this out there, isn't our galaxy in the region of 100,000Ly across? To have these story events with a couple of hundred Ly in that scale is very close indeed......?

human space only about 500LY across though
you'd think, with thousands of populated systems there would be more than one or two newsworthy things happening at any given time though right?

 

[Veridis]

Not sure what you mean? Why would you have a story based in a star system that is 1000's of LY from inhabited space? Systems affected by a story that FD are telling are likely to be within inhabited space as that is where the friction is likely to be, between the three main power blocs.

That's my point, They're not, They're close in the grand scheme of things.....

 

[Tinman]

THARGOIDS?????

SANTA CLAUS!?!?!?!?!

 

[Alric]

Funny. The OP included a good suggestion which would improve the game. Something that would not be hugely complicated to implement and works with the dynamic Galaxy FD have created to make interesting events spring
up and pull players in to local events. Something entiry consistent with the open ended procedural game that is Elite : Dangerous.

And everyone ignored it. And told him to grind his way to the hand crafted story. Grats on being so imaginative guys.

 

[Tinman]

Funny. The OP included a good suggestion which would improve the game. Something that would not be hugely complicated to implement and works with the dynamic Galaxy FD have created to make interesting events spring
up and pull players in to local events. Something entiry consistent with the open ended procedural game that is Elite : Dangerous.

And everyone ignored it. And told him to grind his way to the hand crafted story. Grats on being so imaginative guys.

Except for the Executive Producer of the game you mean?

 

[Ulysses_W]

Play 2 days (max!!!) Jump in an hauler, make some mission, buy an FSD and travell 100 LY in 15 min max...

Good advice.

Accept for this bit...

..plz stop crying. ...

There was no need for it.

 

[SharkH]

These people are blind to the fact that a non-trivial number of people who but the game will have given up before next year. Everyone who isn't playing in 2 weeks time is probably more than 1 potential sale lost next year.

All these lost sales mean the big future expansions rapidly start to be less likely to appear.

The issue isn't that it's hard to participate in the 'story', but that it is very easy to feel that the game has no sensible way for people to participate in the story. There are not enough leads to bridge the gap between where people start, and where the developers expect them to be.

Yes, it will probably be months before improvements can be implemented, but denying that they are valuable is just more likely to reduce the potential play base even more.

So there should be an instant travel to the story events or there should be story events happening everywhere across the galaxy? I can't see how else this could be solved without the need of traveling "longer" distances.

But seriously I think both of the option would be ridicilous. You can't except events happening everywhere... this game is not "Galaxy Wars 3300" ...there are perimeter regions with goverments don't care about the empire nor federation so if you are interested in the story event its obvious you have to travel to those regions where they are "dominating". Beside I could travel hundreds of light years in a short time with my rookie ship when my total assets was around 200k . I don't see issue here. Maybe after a while the story will expand further and there will be more events happening . Its just the beginning.

 

[SentineI]

But it's so easy to "solve" on your own. Doesn't need more than 300 Cr investment even.

I'm afraid I don't see how a fuel scoop solves anything. It still takes 50 jumps.

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Get yourself a cobra and 150 LY will not be a big deal.

Well, duh. I'm working towards that. But what about all the people who don't have one?

What can Frontier do? I suggested making it easier to find "local" star systems with (automatic) events happening in them, but listing them in GalNet at each station.

 

[SentineI]

Maybe Frontier could place starter systems a little close to the initial story events?

Thank you! You are the very first person here to actually make a useful suggestion about what Frontier could do.

I mean, I'm sure they have SOME reason for sticking new players in the middle of nowhere, but I can't think what... and is it really that important?

 

[gazzareth]

The route planner doesn't go anything like that far, so I'll have to manually fly there, and I could finding myself stuck in a "dead end" that requires me to back-track a long way. (e.g. There is a star just 9 Ly away (slightly beyond my jump range) that require 10 jumps in a circle to get to!) I don't understand why long distance planning should be so hard to program, as I've written an "A-star" search algorithm before & it doesn't need much memory or CPU time (and you can even reduce memory & CPU usage with a little trick, at the expense of slightly worse routes).

My little Eagle with a standard FSD is only capable of an 8 Ly jump at max, but it's unlikely stars will be exactly 8 Ly away. So I'm more likely to make 4-6 Ly jumps on average. That's 23 or 33 jumps, assuming I can fly in a straight line without any back-tracking (unlikely), with at least 3 stops for fuel (better say 6 to avoid the risk of running out of fuel miles from anywhere). More likely I'll have to fly in a wiggly line & back-track a bit, so I guess about double the number of 'perfect' jumps, meaning about 50 jumps with 12 refuelling stops.

With you on the route planner part - the problem (at least as I see it) is that the route planner is currently linked to the spiders web, so as it goes out from your current location it needs to do exponentially more calculations. Since it is fairly recent into the game hopefully FD will separate it out and allow it to work independently - and even perhaps set your own range on the spiders web so it doesn't just slow things down. In the interim there are 3rd party planners out there which you can use to make your route - then just plug in a destination about half way into ED, fly it and then set your end destination. I actually just manually looked for a star system about half way on a 170ly route and that worked fine as well.

That said 8ly range is quite short for that sort of hop, even with fuel scooping it will take forever (as you point out) - perhaps as things go on we will see more items of local news as Michael suggests, although if you are looking for massed players then the global stuff will be where it is at !!!

G

 

[jadefriendly]

Thank you! You are the very first person here to actually make a useful suggestion about what Frontier could do.

I mean, I'm sure they have SOME reason for sticking new players in the middle of nowhere, but I can't think what... and is it really that important?

stop them all instantly getting shot to pieces by other players in crowded, popular systems?

 

[SentineI]

This one I think is easier to use than the more fully functional one posted above. https://cmdr.club/routes/ Just put start/end and LY's you can jump and you're away.

Also what I do this I then set the Galaxy Map to the furthest point in that list to auto route it for me, then I don't have to keep manually doing it.

OK, thanks. It's not ideal, but it at least sounds workable. Quite why they can't do this in-game I do not know (route-finding is not an unsolved computer science problem!).

Also a word of note, even though the auto route feature can work it out for up to 100 LY it won't do this immediately you have to wait for about a minute until the computer has figured out all the possible jumps it can make within 100 LY's, that's a hell of a lot of jumps.

You are talking about the in-game route finder? OK, thanks for the time, I will test that.