News Hot Ships, hot modules, outfitting proposal

[Edward Lewis]

Greetings Commanders,

Yesterday afternoon we made a forum post in order to address concerns over recent changes to the outfitting of hot ships. For reference, you can see that post here.

After further investigating the matter ourselves, and reading through your feedback, we’ve decided that the proposed solution isn’t as complete or effective as it could be. We’re currently investigating a new proposal, and much like with the Kill Warrant Scanner changes, we’d like to get your feedback on it and engage in constructive and positive discussion with you.

We will be setting up a new section in the Focused Feedback Forum to discuss the proposal and what it addresses. We’ll communicate when the FFF thread goes live, but you can expect to see it sometime tomorrow. The following is a basic summary of the proposal:

• Hot ships can use outfitting everywhere except at ports where the ship has bounties or fines issued against it
• Modules can be taken from a hot ship and placed in storage if a cleaning fee is paid upfront (5% of the module’s cost)
• Clean modules can be fitted to a hot ship, becoming hot modules
• Bounties can be cleared by security contacts until a murder crime is committed, at which point Interstellar Factors must be used

Intermediate Changes

In the meantime, we will be reverting hot ships and outfitting back to how they worked in 3.0.2. This will mean that:

• Hot ships will be able to use outfitting everywhere except at ports where the ship has bounties or fines issued against it
• Modules can be taken from a hot ship and stored as hot modules
• Hot modules can be placed in hot ships
• Hot modules can be cleaned for a fee (5% of the module’s worth)
• Clean modules placed in a hot ship, becoming hot modules

This update mentioned above should be released early next week.

Once again, thanks for your continued support and feedback. The iteration and constructive discussion with the community helps us to develop the best version of Elite Dangerous that we’re all reaching to achieve.

 

[wakko151]

Why do you believe pirates need more punishment and less reward? Why is this a higher priority over other features people are demanding?

 

[Cmdr Esteban]

Greetings Commanders,

Yesterday afternoon we made a forum post in order to address concerns over recent changes to the outfitting of hot ships. For reference, you can see that post here.

After further investigating the matter ourselves, and reading through your feedback, we’ve decided that the proposed solution isn’t as complete or effective as it could be. We’re currently investigating a new proposal, and much like with the Kill Warrant Scanner changes, we’d like to get your feedback on it and engage in constructive and positive discussion with you.

We will be setting up a new section in the Focused Feedback Forum to discuss the proposal and what it addresses. We’ll communicate when the FFF thread goes live, but you can expect to see it sometime tomorrow. The following is a basic summary of the proposal:

• Hot ships can use outfitting everywhere except at ports where the ship has bounties or fines issued against it
• Modules can be taken from a hot ship and placed in storage if a cleaning fee is paid upfront (5% of the module’s cost)
• Clean modules can be fitted to a hot ship, becoming hot modules
• Bounties can be cleared by security contacts until a murder crime is committed, at which point Interstellar Factors must be used

Intermediate Changes

In the meantime, we will be reverting hot ships and outfitting back to how they worked in 3.0.2. This will mean that:

• Hot ships will be able to use outfitting everywhere except at ports where the ship has bounties or fines issued against it
• Modules can be taken from a hot ship and stored as hot modules
• Hot modules can be placed in hot ships
• Hot modules can be cleaned for a fee (5% of the module’s worth)
• Clean modules placed in a hot ship, becoming hot modules

This update mentioned above should be released early next week.

Once again, thanks for your continued support and feedback. The iteration and constructive discussion with the community helps us to develop the best version of Elite Dangerous that we’re all reaching to achieve.

Well, not exactly what I was personally hoping for (ie. a return to bounties being assigned to pilots, not ships), but much better than what we have presently.

Thanks Ed, good stuff.

 

[Valorin]

Thanks for the update.

 

[Martind Forlon]

''Bounties can be cleared by security contacts until a murder crime is committed, at which point Interstellar Factors must be used'' ... this really sounds good!

 

[Faded Glory]

The following is a basic summary of the proposal:

• Hot ships can use outfitting everywhere except at ports where the ship has bounties or fines issued against it
• Modules can be taken from a hot ship and placed in storage if a cleaning fee is paid upfront (5% of the module’s cost)
• Clean modules can be fitted to a hot ship, becoming hot modules
• Bounties can be cleared by security contacts until a murder crime is committed, at which point Interstellar Factors must be used

These seem like good changes, particularly the fourth one!

Not having to trek to IF for misdemeanor crimes will be a good QoL change.

 

[Namsel]

"Bounties can be cleared by security contacts until a murder crime is committed, at which point Interstellar Factors must be used"

Oh, finally! Thank you!

 

[[VR] Goooost]

Locking out services isn't the path to better gameplay. Ditch that idea entirely, and make it about docking clearance instead.

When you have a bounty, you have the option of bribing the station authority, who will grant you temporary access. So you can dock and access all the services, but you only have 10 minutes before you are automatically detected and arrested. This could come with some cosmetic changes- have a spotlight that follows every ship through the mailslot normally, and when bribed, have it turn off. The station authority could send a message saying simply, "Run silent. 10 minutes. Pad 12." I think that at anarchy stations, you need to add debris fields and really kick those lights into full gear. Maybe not even require docking permission. Play an alternate message that is contrary to the default one when you approach a federation star port. Make the anarchy ones a ton scarier.

When you want more time to dock, or bribing is too pricey, you can use the new megaship interactions on a regular star port to gain docking privileges. Scan the station, find a node, attach a limpet, and submit a request. Watch as it flickers from denied to granted. When you're landed, the Mission hud will glitch out the way it does on a damaged station, but you will have full access.

When you have a fine, your only punishment should be that you cant cash out any bounties, bonds, cartographics or intel with the station authority until they are paid off first. But also consider imposing a clear time limit after which it turns into a bounty.

Hot ships don't require cleaning. The bounty is still for you the pilot, but the ship clearly identifies you. Just like going to the paint shop in GTA, you can change ships and get off the hook, but even the slightest offense in your new ship blows the whole case wide open again.

But most importantly, none of these changes work unless you make crime pay. Make it worth the trouble. You could even have a special type of pirate currency that revolves around notoriety instead of actual credits. Illegal modifications, private star ports, the whole works.

 

[Schlack]

Thanks for the update Ed. Can i suggest that when you have all the kinks in the C&P system worked out that you work up an infographic to describe the crime and bounty flow. I've been trying to keep up and am getting increasingly confused!

Although i must say that because of notoriety I have become a model pilot in and around stations and my trigger discipline has improved significantly!

 

[oscarolim]

All of it sounds good

 

[Muffindrake]

NPCs ignore power plant damage
NPCS ignore power plant damage
NPCs ignore power plant damage

Look, more than half of what I do in this game is pirating NPCs, because there is _some_ risk and _some_ difficulty involved, since NPCs will not conveniently vanish from existence or lose connection.

Now, since the earliest 3.0 Beta, NPCs have been ignoring the fact that their power plant is shot down to 0% and no longer shut down any modules or more importantly, stop their ship in space to allow for effective pirating (this was a mechanic present since 1.4) and later with NPCs of higher combat rank rebooting their power plant to regain control to some degree.

So far, the following things have happened, in order:

- through some fashion, NPCs have started ignoring power plant damage/low power since the earliest 3.0 Beta (it's been months now)
- this went undocumented in the patch notes
- the issue was put on the "known issues" list by QA a month after being reported
- 3.0 went live with this game-breaking, priority-fix-worthy problem still present
- military/private courier service NPCs carrying a small amount of high value cargo went live
- complete and utter radio silence from the developer team about the problem

Because of this bug the only NPCs worth pirating at all are those exact courier services, eliminating close to 99% of the variety of prey that a pirate can encounter, given that most other NPCs individual cargo value is far below that and you're now no longer able to loot multiple hundreds. Given their high-damage nature, you are now also required to run full shield tanks, given that it's now impossible to spill cargo into one location, rather than have it strewn across multiple cubic kilometres of an instance.

The way this discrepancy has been publicly handled so far is extremely infuriating to say the least.

 

[Djtarjan]

NPCs ignore power plant damage
NPCS ignore power plant damage
NPCs ignore power plant damage

Look, more than half of what I do in this game is pirating NPCs, because there is _some_ risk and _some_ difficulty involved, since NPCs will not conveniently vanish from existence or lose connection.

Now, since the earliest 3.0 Beta, NPCs have been ignoring the fact that their power plant is shot down to 0% and no longer shut down any modules or more importantly, stop their ship in space to allow for effective pirating (this was a mechanic present since 1.4) and later with NPCs of higher combat rank rebooting their power plant to regain control to some degree.

So far, the following things have happened, in order:

- through some fashion, NPCs have started ignoring power plant damage/low power since the earliest 3.0 Beta (it's been months now)
- this went undocumented in the patch notes
- the issue was put on the "known issues" list by QA a month after being reported
- 3.0 went live with this game-breaking, priority-fix-worthy problem still present
- military/private courier service NPCs carrying a small amount of high value cargo went live
- complete and utter radio silence from the developer team about the problem

Because of this bug the only NPCs worth pirating at all are those exact courier services, eliminating close to 99% of the variety of prey that a pirate can encounter, given that most other NPCs individual cargo value is far below that and you're now no longer able to loot multiple hundreds. Given their high-damage nature, you are now also required to run full shield tanks, given that it's now impossible to spill cargo into one location, rather than have it strewn across multiple cubic kilometres of an instance.

The way this discrepancy has been publicly handled so far is extremely infuriating to say the least.

Yes Npc ignoring powerplant damage is really painful trying to pirate something.. and should be fixed wery fast i really really hope its coming soon.

 

[Capn Murica]

• Hot ships can use outfitting everywhere except at ports where the ship has bounties or fines issued against it
• Modules can be taken from a hot ship and placed in storage if a cleaning fee is paid upfront (5% of the module’s cost)
• Clean modules can be fitted to a hot ship, becoming hot modules
• Bounties can be cleared by security contacts until a murder crime is committed, at which point Interstellar Factors must be used

Hey Ed, This is a good start! However, I would argue for a couple changes to the 2nd bullet.

• With the 5% cleaning fee, getting a 200cr bounty means an expensive module would cost MILLIONS of credits to clean! The cleaning fee should be based on the value of the BOUNTY, not the value of the MODULE.

The equation should be something like this: cleaning_fee = (module_value / total_value) * bounty_value. Maybe add a coefficient up front to balance as necessary, but my point is, the cleaning cost should be proportional to the value of the criminal's ship and the size of the bounty.

• Anarchy systems should not have any cleaning fee associated with storing/swapping Hot Modules. This would be friendly to the Lore and give career criminals a way to continue their operations by hiding in Anarchy systems.

 

[Capn Murica]

NPCs ignore power plant damage
NPCS ignore power plant damage
NPCs ignore power plant damage

This.
This.
This.

 

[Titus Balls]

Greetings Commanders,

Yesterday afternoon we made a forum post in order to address concerns over recent changes to the outfitting of hot ships. For reference, you can see that post here.

After further investigating the matter ourselves, and reading through your feedback, we’ve decided that the proposed solution isn’t as complete or effective as it could be. We’re currently investigating a new proposal, and much like with the Kill Warrant Scanner changes, we’d like to get your feedback on it and engage in constructive and positive discussion with you.

We will be setting up a new section in the Focused Feedback Forum to discuss the proposal and what it addresses. We’ll communicate when the FFF thread goes live, but you can expect to see it sometime tomorrow. The following is a basic summary of the proposal:

• Hot ships can use outfitting everywhere except at ports where the ship has bounties or fines issued against it

Provided this is superpower wide, I'd agree. If you commit a crime in Federal space, I'd expect an APB to be put out for me. Imperial Alliance and Independent space won't care. Outfitting should always be available in Anarchy systems though.

• Modules can be taken from a hot ship and placed in storage if a cleaning fee is paid upfront (5% of the module’s cost)
• Clean modules can be fitted to a hot ship, becoming hot modules

This seems sensible to me.

• Bounties can be cleared by security contacts until a murder crime is committed, at which point Interstellar Factors must be used

It seems like a good balance, as essentially unless you are pirating clean NPC targets to death most crimes committed will actually be accidents, so these should be easier to clear.

Intermediate Changes

In the meantime, we will be reverting hot ships and outfitting back to how they worked in 3.0.2. This will mean that:

• Hot ships will be able to use outfitting everywhere except at ports where the ship has bounties or fines issued against it
• Modules can be taken from a hot ship and stored as hot modules
• Hot modules can be placed in hot ships
• Hot modules can be cleaned for a fee (5% of the module’s worth)
• Clean modules placed in a hot ship, becoming hot modules

This update mentioned above should be released early next week.

Once again, thanks for your continued support and feedback. The iteration and constructive discussion with the community helps us to develop the best version of Elite Dangerous that we’re all reaching to achieve.

Thanks Ed and FD.

 

[Tactical Tree]

Greetings Commanders,

Yesterday afternoon we made a forum post in order to address concerns over recent changes to the outfitting of hot ships. For reference, you can see that post here.

After further investigating the matter ourselves, and reading through your feedback, we’ve decided that the proposed solution isn’t as complete or effective as it could be. We’re currently investigating a new proposal, and much like with the Kill Warrant Scanner changes, we’d like to get your feedback on it and engage in constructive and positive discussion with you.

We will be setting up a new section in the Focused Feedback Forum to discuss the proposal and what it addresses. We’ll communicate when the FFF thread goes live, but you can expect to see it sometime tomorrow. The following is a basic summary of the proposal:

• Hot ships can use outfitting everywhere except at ports where the ship has bounties or fines issued against it
• Modules can be taken from a hot ship and placed in storage if a cleaning fee is paid upfront (5% of the module’s cost)
• Clean modules can be fitted to a hot ship, becoming hot modules
• Bounties can be cleared by security contacts until a murder crime is committed, at which point Interstellar Factors must be used

Intermediate Changes

In the meantime, we will be reverting hot ships and outfitting back to how they worked in 3.0.2. This will mean that:

• Hot ships will be able to use outfitting everywhere except at ports where the ship has bounties or fines issued against it
• Modules can be taken from a hot ship and stored as hot modules
• Hot modules can be placed in hot ships
• Hot modules can be cleaned for a fee (5% of the module’s worth)
• Clean modules placed in a hot ship, becoming hot modules

This update mentioned above should be released early next week.

Once again, thanks for your continued support and feedback. The iteration and constructive discussion with the community helps us to develop the best version of Elite Dangerous that we’re all reaching to achieve.

Funny that the cleaning fee clearly really wasn't a problem and 3.0.2 was, for the most part (I still hate notoriety for PvE, but I think it's a problem with detecting murder rather than C&P system itself), done exactly as people expected it to be. 3.0.3 will change only cleaning fee being paid upfront, and being able to pay "small" bounties at contacts (Which is great!)

I think if we known the intent behind these (or future) changes, we could comment better about them. Because 3.0.3 seems like totally out of line of what new C&P was supposed to be, and we have no clue what was the reason for it. Just my 2 cents.

 

[Capn Murica]

Why do you believe pirates need more punishment and less reward? Why is this a higher priority over other features people are demanding?

Agreed. Most of C&P makes sense and is FAIR to criminals, except for the excessive module cleaning fees, which somehow extend to ALL star systems, not just the bounty system.

As for rewards, please, just speed up collector limpets and make cargo collected by limpets invulnerable to my own ship. Let me hatch-break and grab loot on the run.

 

[Gutser]

All this development time. It's sad if you calculate. We could have so much more if development don't try to fulfil every care bears wet dream. Give judgement/bounty to players and focus on legs or planets with atmosphere.

 

[Mostly Awol]

Hey Ed, This is a good start! However, I would argue for a couple changes to the 2nd bullet.

• With the 5% cleaning fee, getting a 200cr bounty means an expensive module would cost MILLIONS of credits to clean! The cleaning fee should be based on the value of the BOUNTY, not the value of the MODULE.

The equation should be something like this: cleaning_fee = (module_value / total_value) * bounty_value. Maybe add a coefficient up front to balance as necessary, but my point is, the cleaning cost should be proportional to the value of the criminal's ship and the size of the bounty.

• Anarchy systems should not have any cleaning fee associated with storing/swapping Hot Modules. This would be friendly to the Lore and give career criminals a way to continue their operations by hiding in Anarchy systems.

But you now can pay off that 200 bounty in the Security Contact page first. 200 is too low to be from a murder type of bounty.

 

[Capn Murica]

But you now can pay off that 200 bounty in the Security Contact page first. 200 is too low to be from a murder type of bounty.

The 200cr is an example value. The point is, an otherwise small bounty inflates into an enormous cleaning fee. Making the fee a flat 5% of the module value is ham-fisted and needs nuance.