Get Rid of the Limpet/Planetary Vehicle Hanger redux

[Agony_Aunt]

And everyone would, I'm sure, find this a vastly better solution to what we have, or even what have proposed right now.

Your optimism is off the scale

Replace a simple mechanism of buying limpets and replacing with the need to grind for materials to generate limpets? No thanks.

As an optional variant to generate more limpets, sure.

 

[Aashenfox]

Your optimism is off the scale

Replace a simple mechanism of buying limpets and replacing with the need to grind for materials to generate limpets? No thanks.

As an optional variant to generate more limpets, sure.

I agree with this. The minimal cost and plentiful supply barely warrants the coding effort. I support totally that they shouldn't take up cargo space and they should be ABLE to be created using synthesis (i.e. printed if you like), but that's a moot point now, as we have already been promised that.

To be completely honest, I'd do away with limpets altogether, as cargo or as craftable. You buy the limpet controller which can manufacture as many limpets on the spot as it can control. Simple, so if you have a three limpet controller, it will let you deploy three limpets and no more, until one dies, then you can deploy it again, instantly, no wait time, no craft time, no cargo, no purchase (except the controller, which you can mkae more expensive to compensate if you like). If you want something implemented, ensure that the complexity is low and the coding effort consummate, or you'll be peeing into the wind.

I'm all for making things better in video games, but adding complexity to solve a minor problem is a huge faux pas in development, as it should be.

 

[IndigoWyrd]

Personally, I'm a bit on the fence over this.

It's definitely a superior system but having some kind of self-contained "limpet generator" is also going to remove a lot of the design and planning that's currently required.
Instead, it'll just be a case of "bung a small limpet generator in an empty slot in case I ever need it".

I'd like to say some balance could be retained by making a basic limpet controller cheap and making a fancy limpet generator expensive but I doubt lack of credits is often much of a factor in people's buying decision.

It'll certainly be better, for me, to just be able to bung a heap of limpet generators in my mining T9 but I can't help thinking that some of the nuance and thought currently required will be lost.

Perhaps the limpet generators could be made to use valuable engineering materials which could be better used elsewhere?
That might force people to think carefully about using them.
That being the case, maybe it'd be desirable to make the limpet generator so it could also control pre-purchased limpets like a regular controller?
You fit 3 limpet generators and stock up with regular limpets.
You go mining/scavenging/pirating and burn though all your stock of limpets and then you can use engineering materials to generate a few new ones and finish collecting your haul.

The Limpet Controller IS the "limpet generator". You still have the same planning that goes into outfitting a mining ship, and there's little to no planning beyond Outfitting after that.
The only difference here is, you don't have to leave the station with your cargo hold full of limpets. Once you arrive where you're planning to mine, you pick your rock, and... let's look at it like this:

https://coriolis.edcd.io/outfit/typ...==.Aw18eQ==..EweloBhA2AWNhQKYEMDmAbJIQEYIFA==

Looking at this hypothetical T-9 miner, 400 tons of cargo space, 2 collectors, 1 prospector.
As it stands right now, to make use of this, you'd have to take at least 200 tons if not a full 400 tons of limpets to set off and mine, which would then cut your jump range down.

What I propose is that the cargo load of limpets be eliminated, so you have empty cargo bays when you depart. Once you've arrived, picked your target rock, you fire a Prospector Limpet, just as you would now.
The Prospector Contoller produces 2 at a time, so you pick a second rock, fire a prospector at it.
The Prospector Controller has now expended it's first charge of limpets, and takes a minute to reload.
You take that time to see what the prospectors report and decide if either of these are what you want to mine.
Perhaps the first one is, so you fire up the mining lasers and start dicing the rock.
You then need some Collectors out there, so you start firing them off.
The first Collector Controller produces 3 limpets, the second produces 2, so you've got 5 of them buzzing around, picking up bits and pieces while the Collector Controllers reload.

Now your refinery is filling up, and popping nice, pre-packaged cargo canisters into your hold, slowly filling up that empty 400 tons of space, that would have been filled with limpets to the point of possibly having to jettison them as your refinery churns out cargo faster than you are expending limpets.

Some time later, you've exhausted the capacity of the Prospector controller, but you've also picked up more than enough Elements from those rocks to synthesize a recharge, so you recharge, and continue prospecting, until your supply of Collectors runs out from the smaller Controller - rinse and repeat.
You do the same a short time later with the larger collector, and continue to mine until your hold is full, and you set off to market to sell...

...and are promptly interdicted by NPC's, but that's another matter entirely.

And, if the Controllers are designed correctly, all mathed and balanced out, you find you expended a grand total of... 318 limpets to fill your hold. Slightly fewer than your total cargo capacity, but nothing outside the realm of an otherwise normal mining run.
Or perhaps the rocks were stingy, and find you actually expended 488 limpets - more than your capacity would have been, if it weren't for limpet synthesis, which we're getting anyways.

 

[Hedyn Brand]

Replace a simple mechanism of buying limpets and replacing with the need to grind for materials to generate limpets? No thanks.

Yeah, if the controller-factory holds 60 at a time then material hunting should only be for desperate times. Whatever the numbers of each material, it should simply fill the factory so you're good for another 60 when you can't be bothered to return to a station.

 

[Morbad]

I'd rather have the fighters work more like SRVs. It would make vastly more sense than having a module that magically spits out fifteen times as much mass as it's made of.

Indeed, the masses of the modules vs. the fighters strongly implies that fighter's weren't originally intended to be manufactured on the fly.

I don't like it. But then I don't like the 3d printed fighters, either. Or synthesis for that matter.

I agree.

I'm not opposed to the capability of manufacturing certain assets on the fly, but it should take much longer than it does and not violate fundamental principles like the conservation of mass/energy.

 

[Kaocraft]

Synthesis though... it's one of those "makes sense" sort of things. Consider - if you have enough carbon, Potassium nitrate and sulfur, you've got everything you need to make (synthesize) black powder. A bit of oxidized iron (rust) and powdered aluminum, and you've synthesized thermite.

Yeah. But instantaneously, weightlessly, volumelessly, you can make up to 24 missiles, each one the size of a human being. And you can synthesize AFMU ammo, which is raw material used to repair broken or damaged modules, including mass-heavy items like armor plating. And soon we'll be synthesizing 1 ton limpet drones, which will be super-weird, because this will be the 1st case where you can synthesize something which the game recognizes as taking up physical space and adding mass to your ship, so you'll literally be creating something out of nothing. Synthesis materials are also for some reason the only thing that stays with you after death/ship destruction, the rationale being that it's all in your "pockets" (although in retrospect that *had* to be a joke, right?).

I'm not really against gamey elements, per se; it's just that most of these things are at odds with the way the rest of the game works, and are very poorly thought out. It's not necessarily a question of realism or simulationism; although I *do* prefer if the devs err in that direction when in doubt; it's just that these elements feel like random, last-minute additions pulled out of some other game and just clamped on to this game, with no consideration given to how it fits.

 

[GG7]

I like this approach... Much like suggestions made regarding the Docking Computer and the Discovery Scanner. Having these often used modules/systems integrated into the ship systems as a default would go a long way to making the entire fleet easier to outfit for the more important things like weapons and special module types etc.

 

[S3B4ST13N]

1. Agree with the limpet thing.
2. I'd say get rid of the PVH completely though - feels .. fake .. then again, I'd say get rid of cargo racks as well. A ship should have a certain amount of hold space by default, and the player should be able to decide how to fill it up. Want an SRV? Sure, but it'll take up X amount of space in your hold, reducing your overall cargo space. Want some cargo as well? No problem, just buy what you need until your hold is filled up. Why game it with silly little cargo racks, and vehicle hangers and flight hangers and luxury cabins .. really? Luxury cabins are now stored in the cargo hold? No. Silly and gamey. A dolphin should come standard with cabins of various luxury, with the ability to upgrade those cabins; whilst still keeping a normal cargo hold size.

*wanders off ranting under his breath*

 

[Jenner]

Please do not double-post threads between the sub-forums.

Closing this a duplicate. See discussion here:
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...-of-the-Limpet-Planetary-Vehicle-Hanger-redux