Nav Beacon Discussion - How to make Beacons relevant and engaging!

[WhatGravitas]

I still think adding jump range for beacon-to-beacon jumps is the simplest. That way, you don't need additional interface options to choose whether you want to do a beacon jump or not - you just jump near a beacon and get the benefit. This also means the beacons become relevant, draw traffic and solves the problem with long-haul tours with non-stripped ships some have. It's basically the same way roads work. Useful but trivial to not use by literally just stepping off them.

1. Beef up system security presence in nav beacons, perhaps by a lot (lower security systems have much weaker ships, perhaps mostly Fighters, but the numbers are high enough to make getting scanned nearly inevitable)

I think that'd also be a great use for the new assets they produced for CQC. High security systems could have one of the new stations situated here as "border station" and come with the usual no-fire zone (and the retaliation coming with it). That would really differentiate systems, too. You jump in and see... nothing? Frontier or anarchy system. Some police and fighters patrolling? Regular system. Security station? Huh, big system, you immediately know it's going to have high police presence throughout.

 

[edgar]

Excellent suggestion. We always are ready to welcome more players in Mobius

Is this sort of comment really necessary? Seems designed to get the thread arguing about the game modes, rather than the OP.

The OP does not mention anything relating to the game modes at all, the purpose of the thread appears to be from the desire to add verisimilitude to the nav beacons by giving them a believable reason to exist!

Really no need for mode-panic knee jerk reactions is there?

 

[Space Pigeon]

I can only imagine what kind of carnage that would result into when there's a new CG.

 

[Zeta Legion]

I can only imagine what kind of carnage that would result into when there's a new CG.

Can't possibly be any worse than the Hutton Mug.

 

[Snarfbuckle]

Forcing players into the Nav Beacon seems like a bad idea to me on a lot of levels ("griefing" made more effective, encouraging players who otherwise prefer open to move to solo or group, added time sync, etc).

If the design were up to me, and the goal was to encourage use of the Nav Beacons, this is what I'd do:

1. Beef up system security presence in nav beacons, perhaps by a lot (lower security systems have much weaker ships, perhaps mostly Fighters, but the numbers are high enough to make getting scanned nearly inevitable)
2. Slight increase in the probability that System Security will interdict players that are not Allied
3. If a player drops into the nav beacon AND gets scanned there, completely prevent any system security interdictions on that player while they remain in-system (until they dock).

Now you don't have to drop into the nav beacon, but there is a clear motivation to do so IF you can afford to get scanned and you aren't well enough liked by the controlling faction to avoid interdiction.

Other things could potentially be added to nav beacons as well, like the ability for allied players to pick up missions from ships there.

At any rate, I think it would be far better to make Nav Beacons more attractive to a broader range of professions than it would to just force everyone to go there. Few people enjoy being forced to do a thing they never had to do before, but give them a reason to do that thing and most people end up happy.

Exactly, in order to make Nav Beacons even VIABLE for a well, more or less forced landing zone or at least INITIAL landing zone in a system it needs to be;

-Safe
-Attractive
-Interesting
-Fun

But here is also something we could ADD to it all.

HACKING Nav Beacons.

Less secure systems or at least those with lower population will have less security.

Hacking a Nav Beacon could change the "friendly" interdiction into an ACTUAL interdiction, trying to suck ships in.

Sure, it would be close to impossible in Riedquat or Lave simply due to the factions in control and large population that they want it nice and quiet so the security will be good there.

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I can only imagine what kind of carnage that would result into when there's a new CG.

Depends on the receiving system.

An outback system with little security would indeed favor blockades - but at least it would be possible to have a proper blockade instead of a chase.

Larger more secure systems would not take a liking to a group of ships randomly attacking incoming ships.

 

[KaizoMK]

Um, can a moderator please change the title of this thread to "Nav Beacon Discussion - How to make Beacons relevant and engaging!" To reflect the direction and purpose of this discussion better? A lot of people are assuming things about the developed concept based on the original thread title.

Also, thanks for keeping this thread going and bringing great points to the table - wish a dev would check this out and perhaps comment...

Here's another idea! CG's could have npc blockades that stop and/or attack players that accepted the CG.

 

[Mephane]

The suggestion I made earlier in the thread (which has been added to the OP) addresses this very issue. Getting dropped to the Nav Beacon would only happen if you travel away from the star - you stay in SC if you hang near to the star for scooping and for onward transit to hyperspace.

Wait, you arrive in SC and somehow magically drop out because you point towards a planet and accelerate? How does that even make remotely sense? It's bad enough that ships interdicting you magically teleport you backward away from your destination, now the nav beacon should do that always, automatically? And just to enforce a bottleneck for everyone to go through?

I prefer my FSD freedom over magical space bottlenecks, thank you.

 

[Genar-Hofoen]

Wait, you arrive in SC and somehow magically drop out because you point towards a planet and accelerate? How does that even make remotely sense?

Answer: It doesn't.

 

[Athan]

My first thought on the OP's idea? HELL NO. It's just creating an artificial bottleneck that certain player types would love (due to being a target rich environment) and pretty much everyone else would loathe. You may as well just say "Hey, FD, just take Open Play out as an option" so far as a majority of the player base would be concerned. If you're going to point out how it only matters in the destination system then I'll reply with "why bother then?". You're giving the nefarious types no option to intercept ships in a less well patrolled system on the way.

More calmly... why would a ship be pulled into a very small volume of space no matter its vector away from the star when it crosses the 20LS/whatever boundary ? Just how powerful is this Nav Beacon device?

I'll note that I do think FD missed a trick with not requiring jumps be to a Nav Beacon (which I'd set a few hundred LS away from the main star, not near it, yes that means travelling before fuel scooping), and having a proper exploration system involving scanning/sending probes for unknown systems. If it seems like I just contradicted myself there, well, the mechanism I'd prefer is the Nav Beacon is only approximate, you'd drop out with a random distance range from it and position based on the direction to/from your origin system. It would NOT be creating a shooting gallery, the arrival points would be too spread out.

 

[Bran Tse Mallory]

Wait, you arrive in SC and somehow magically drop out because you point towards a planet and accelerate? How does that even make remotely sense?

Well it is either down to magic pixies or thargoids - you get to choose! Sorry couldn't resist!

Despite what i said earlier this is just going to lead to complaints about having to jump back into SC. It provides a breeding ground for gankers, a ready supply of free stuff for pirates and poor moderators like Mr Maynard will get grey hair much quicker than he may be doing now.

Imagine this type of post every day, multiple times...

I jumped into the Bhotho system last night to take the 2 tons of fish to a station. After I arrived at the nav beacon I was jumped by several ships. How is this right?

This was the most polite version I could type without getting banned for a long time!

 

[Zeta Legion]

Wait, you arrive in SC and somehow magically drop out because you point towards a planet and accelerate? How does that even make remotely sense? It's bad enough that ships interdicting you magically teleport you backward away from your destination, now the nav beacon should do that always, automatically? And just to enforce a bottleneck for everyone to go through?

I prefer my FSD freedom over magical space bottlenecks, thank you.

A very large and powerful FSDI tether obviously...

And how would you make nav beacons interesting? Currently they serve no purpose. They don't have to work as described in the OP, that's just their opinion. They can be completely optional but should have value beyond being that place where you wait for pirates to spawn.

 

[Armour]

I've been banging on about the uselessness of nav beacons on these forums for a little while.

My suggestion is that nav beacons should exist near to all stellar POIs (i.e. not ones on planet surfaces, so stations, outposts, RESs and the like) in well-established systems (i.e. inhabited ones).

You should be able to "hop" between beacons. A hop would be a mini hyperspace jump. Hops would be more risky than long jumps, would entail more wear and tear on engines, and use more fuel than supercruise - but hops would be far quicker (obviously). The shorter the hop, the higher the risk of a misjump (instadeath), wear and tear, and higher fuel-per-mile. Convenience has to come at a cost.

Nav beacons would have limited no-fire zones in respectable systems. The distance between the nav beacon NFZ and the ones around POIs would be far enough to allow piracy to still exist in high-security systems, albeit with a smaller window of opportunity. The police would regularly patrol the jump networks in such systems, so smugglers would probably have to travel in supercruise within them to have a chance of avoiding security scans. The jump networks would be optional, so you could ignore them and supercruise everywhere if you wanted, at a cost of longer travel times but with the benefit of less fuel consumption and lower repair costs.

In low-security areas, the beacons would have a good chance of having pirates camping out there, so traders would probably supercruise around anyway, unless they wanted to risk getting robbed for the sake of a few minutes off their travel time.

Nav beacons could be stolen and moved by criminals (you could call such beacons "compromised", even). Temporary nav beacons could be placed near combat zones to facilitate the arrival of reinforcements.

Pirate outposts and other criminal POIs could be off the grid, away from the jump networks, so that they require pilots to seek them out and travel there the hard way.

I'm sure there are many flaws in this suggestion, and I can't see the developers ever implementing it now (a missed opportunity in my opinion) so have at it - pick it to pieces!

 

[Snarfbuckle]

More calmly... why would a ship be pulled into a very small volume of space no matter its vector away from the star when it crosses the 20LS/whatever boundary ? Just how powerful is this Nav Beacon device?

1: The nav computer is initially "locked" on the nav beacon as a safety measure to ensure that you do not land in the sun

2: This would only apply when jumping INTO the system, not when being in close proximity to it.

3: The nav beacon "beacon/interdiction/flight assist" thingy is working in tandem with your onboard nav computer so you have to fight that one too.

Using nav beacons would also make sense since our nav computers apparently have some kind of "System DRM" that blocks us from entering select systems and would not that be something the powers that be has installed in nav beacons to keep track on the population.

 

[wstephenson]

An alternative in-system system of fast travel via microjumps was the original design, before Supercruise was implemented:

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=5669 (DDA forum archive)

I'm all for introducing gameplay reasons to visit Nav beacons (the topic has been discussed several times over the years, but making them a chokepoint has been dismissed by Sandro -

I don't really want to make nav-beacons (or anything else) an artificial choke point for hyperspace jumps.

I see them more as crossroads, meeting points, interesting places to visit (I also happen to enjoy hanging around them - especially if I've a ship kill mission).

Our long term solution is to get NPC ships in super cruise, get interdiction moved from a random "gotcha" event to a ship based combat tactic, and get frame shift scanning/following working.

The plan is that these elements combined will make a significant difference to the act of super cruising, turning it away from a "delay" and towards "game play". It's an important goal as well - fundamentally super cruise constitutes the main component of journeys, and journeys are a a core component of what Elite is.

Instead, nav-beacons should be considered just one more interesting place to visit.

I proposed making nav-beacon arrival the default, but allow manual jump-plotting (subject to other risks) for the paranoid or more criminal members of the pilots' federation:

By default HS jumps should drop you near Nav Beacons. These are the space equivalent of a well-lit highway and should be almost as immune to spawn camping as stations are, by virtue of authority presence. They offer a safe route for risk-averse traders. However, the game already plans a 'manual' hyperspace jump plotting mechanism for the exploration of uncharted/uninhabited/dark system. This option should always be usable by someone who wants to jump in as far as possible from the nearest Nav Beacon to travel through the system without meeting anyone. Smugglers/Pirates/Spies/Paranoid Couriers etc though will have to plot their jumps carefully to avoid sundiving.

 

[edgar]

Wait, you arrive in SC and somehow magically drop out because you point towards a planet and accelerate? How does that even make remotely sense?

It just doesn't matter at this point how it works from in-universe technological lore perspective though - let FD make up the handwavium in-house if/when they decide this is a desired feature.

Personally I can happily tolerate a "wide area interdictor field device" or something, much more than I can tolerate the current pointlessness of the nav beacons in their present placeholder form - and the suggestions in the OP also open the door for more interesting player and NPC interactions following from this.

Sure it will add something of a time sink - but so will several other allegedly planned future features, such as the manual repair of one's ship via EVA (rather than just "click Repair"), or the physical loading of cargo into your ship's cargo racks (rather than just "click Buy"), but I would still like to see the added depth these features will bring to the future game, as I will value the depth more than I currently value the rapidity by which I currently undertake these tasks.

 

[shambles1980]

just remove nav beacons.
they are a silly place that npcs go to get killed which is stupid.

forcing people to drop in when they arrive or cross a magical barrier will just add time to travel which will lead to long haull short time missions and fail on scan missions being abandoned.
1 fix that breaks 2 things is not a fix.

 

[Armour]

An alternative in-system system of fast travel via microjumps was the original design, before Supercruise was implemented

I don't see why both can't co-exist. Each would have risks and benefits. I think Sandro is 100% wrong on this.

 

[Genar-Hofoen]

It just doesn't matter at this point how it works from in-universe technological lore perspective though - let FD make up the handwavium in-house if/when they decide this is a desired feature.

Personally I can happily tolerate a "wide area interdictor field device" or something, much more than I can tolerate the current pointlessness of the nav beacons in their present placeholder form - and the suggestions in the OP also open the door for more interesting player and NPC interactions following from this.

Sure it will add something of a time sink - but so will several other allegedly planned future features, such as the manual repair of one's ship via EVA (rather than just "click Repair"), or the physical loading of cargo into your ship's cargo racks (rather than just "click Buy"), but I would still like to see the added depth these features will bring to the future game, as I will value the depth more than I currently value the rapidity by which I currently undertake these tasks.

One of those activities sounds like genuine fun - the "interdictor field device" doesn't

 

[GunnerBill]

Has it been mentioned but:

You could include a basic resupply/refuel station in normal space at nav beacons.

This would encourage thru trade to stop.

Perhaps cmdrs/npcs preferring this to roasting themselves with a tedious scoopathon or of course not all stars are scoopable.

Mini jumps were mentioned, how about jump gates ala Privateer II to specific destinations for a fee?

Wanna go to Hutton in 2 seconds?
10000cr pls!
--------------
If the jump fee could somehow reflect market forces even better and better still be dependent on your rep with the local faction.

Is there a CG at the destination... treble the jump fee.

Control of the gates themselves can be subject to contest.

 

[Fox White]

Beacons would be a nice place for missions to take advantage of at the very least such as

Meet our informant and retrieve his information packet at the nav beacon.

So and so Pirate was just spotted at nav beacon you have x minutes to get there and kill him

Our startup company sent out my idiot brother on a trade run and he ran out of fuel. He is at the nav beacon could you go pick him up and fill his tank?

Our daughter was kidnapped and her kidnappers are demanding the ransom at the nav beacon could you drop off the credits. (Option of course to give the money or keep it and take the kidnapped victim by force)

Rebellion x needs some weapons/slaves/drugs/illegal thing smuggled into/out of the system drop them off at the nav Beacon with our guy that gives you the code word.

Could be done with so many more missions but I think the idea is made. I wouldnt think it would be to much work but then again the anaconda has all those paintjob files and no downloads in the store.