This message addresses only the "10% reduction in resale proceeds for used modules". An earlier response asked the question "From a game design perspective, what is the driver for this change?" I think that's a great question. FDev has been really clear before: It's their game, and they're going to make it into what they want it to be. So... leaving aside "verisimilitude", what's the purpose for the change?
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My answer: "
Greatly reduce the impact of MinMax on gameplay." Minmaxing per-mission is a very common gameplay style for quite a few players. For any given mission (the next 15 minutes or the next 4 hours), they want to select the best ship-frame, load it with the best possible combination of modules for that mission, kick the mission's a%$e, pick another mission, lather-rinse-repeat. For a subset of missions (based on type or spatial location), the best shipframe is a specialist (e.g. Vulture, Type 9) and little or no module variance is required to be "optimal". For the majority of missions, the best shipframe is one of the "multirole" birds, and the optimal build varies wildly from mission to mission.
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Near as I can tell, FDev's goal is to raise the price of minmax re-spec high enough that it s
trongly encourages "compromise" play. It will be sufficiently expensive to re-spec a multirole ship to a "no compromises" build for a specific mission that
players will instead choose a compromise build for their multirole ship and learn to make it work. If that is indeed their goal, then
they will never introduce "module storage" into the game, unless swapping modules from storage into and out of ships has a similar cost as sell/buy; that would defeat their goal of making per-mission minmax non-viable.
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There are some negative side-effects of the mechanism they've chose to achieve their goal, but they can be solved.
- Incremental improvements in build are discouraged. This is fixed by offering a "trade-up discount" that exactly matches the reduction in resale value. It would only apply when the new module is an increase in performance/capability (measured appropriately for the module type) over the old module. Alternatively, it only applies when either grade increases within a class (e.g. 3D to 3C) or class increases (3A to 4D).
- Certain build-out changes can only be evaluated by flying the ship. This is fixed by allowing a player to enter a "simulator" from the outfitting screen which lets the player fly the proposed ship. The game already has a simulator within the role-played universe; newly-minted pilots are told to "use the combat simulator to learn to fly". In-role, the experienced pilot is simply ushered into a simulator pod wherein he or she can play through exactly the same scenarios used in pilot school training, but with something a bit more exciting than a stock Sidewinder.
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Adding these two additional mechanisms cancels the undesired effects of the 10% mechanism, leaving only the effect the game designers appear to want, i.e. eliminate minmax in favor of compromise. The trade-up discount is easy. The simulator might be difficult to tie directly into the outfitting screen; it might be easier to achieve the same result by updating the actual combat simulator (reachable from the main game loader) to have an outfitting screen.
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To those who say "But I want to play the game MY WAY, and my way means min/max", I say "too darn bad. FDev has been clear; it's their game." I hate PvP with a burning passion, but I have no choice; FDev has made it clear that non-consensual PvP is part of their game. Sure, I can play in solo, if I don't mind eliminating a large number of other game possibilities. Just as surely, dedicated minmaxers can grind out the credits to have multiple Anacondas fitted out for specific roles, or they can forbear from selecting missions for which they don't have optimal ships.
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I can sling a spreadsheet as well as the next person. I know how to minmax, and I've done it in other games. I actually think FDev has the right idea here, rewarding gameplay that embraces compromise and discouraging gameplay that focuses on extreme specialization.