News Removal of 'UA Bombing'

[Jmanis]

It does strike me that the people who have not experienced UA bombing from either end are the ones most vocal in their support of this change. We have had more than 30 stations shut down, one of them 3 times. Playing as 31st or whatever century it is in game, space communists does seem to attract the attention of some people stuck with 20th Century mindsets. It took (I gather) a lot of dedication to shut a station down (without exploits) and remarkably little to fix one if players concerned actually wanted to fix the station. When there was a desire to fix a station, it gave great opportunities to work together. The balance was spot on.

My paranoid self sees this as a further attempt by FD to handicap the "gargantuan minor factions maintained by an handful of players" that was used as a quote prefacing the planned BGS changes. At a stroke, this has undone a massive part of the protection we had put in place to insulate our small player group against the coming changes. We have spent the last months steering our UA bombing enemies into shutting down the stations/systems that we wanted to be protected against BGS attacks in 3.3. For example on mothballed system that was needed 100-200+ transactions a day for a year has required 10 transactions in total since it was UA bombed two months ago.

For me, this is just another part of the strategic part of the game that has been stripped away. A massive shame.


This was fun

Where's DNA-Decay with his wanted poster >.>

I remember collecting lots of UA's to trial what the requirements were to affect a station, purely as an experiment to work out exactly how they worked. I also remember pulling my hair out heaps because my trial station just happened to be one which *couldn't* be UA bombed, owing to the fact it had no commodities market. But my second one shut down after 100. Then Jacques wanted to launch to Beagle Point, and I remember thinking "Well, we can't ride him there, so wouldn't it be cool if he had UA damage and then jumped, which would create an awesome unofficial community-style event to go ship Meta Alloys to Beagle Point in order to repair Jacques.

Sure enough, Jacques mis-jumped and arrived at now-Colonia, and sure enough, that mini-event is exactly what happened, because emergent content is good fun.

Unfortunately, I think FD neglected to expand on many things with the UA/TS behaviour. Again, so many abandoned storylines in the past, so as far as I'm concerned, this is just status-quo. FD have confirmed in posts around the place that carrying UAs did not increase the chance of getting hyperdicted, and Thargoids certainly were never explicitly targeting UA-bombed stations (Given they're sensors, surely they'd be detecting the human stations). Even when I got a bunch of Thargoid stuff including Sensors up to Colonia , nothing.

And the retcon happens because things like the below screenshot have disappeared without explanation or resolution:

Spoiler

We've also had no further progress on why they point to Merope, why Probes point to Merope 5C, or why our exploration-honk kicks off the EMP blast. But again, given other abandoned storylines, it's par for the course.

And that's unfortunately the fate of Thargoid Sensors, really. Instead of being the mechanism for what should've been some really interesting plot arcs, they just became a tool for players to indirectly attack other players. And while that was an interesting aspect, it's a downer that that is all that ever came of it.

Anyways... now that stations have been handwaviumed some immunity and the goods are considered legal, maybe we'll get some missions to collect this stuff, which should've been implemented as standard fare and not the Dock-at-obsidian-and-get-a-message stopgap we got.

 

[Screemonster]

And that's unfortunately the fate of Thargoid Sensors, really. Instead of being the mechanism for what should've been some really interesting plot arcs, they just became a tool for players to indirectly attack other players. And while that was an interesting aspect, it's a downer that that is all that ever came of it.

And that's about it. About my only interaction with UA/TSs outside of these big community events, and largely the interaction that most players and small groups have to deal with, has been nonsense like "those guys in that PVE group I joined wouldn't make me a mod on their discord so I'm going to UA bomb their station and kill their PMF's cop ships out of spite"
It's a shame about the interesting things going away, but I'm not going to mourn the loss of a means for salty children to throw a tantrum.

 

[Deareim]

And that's about it. About my only interaction with UA/TSs outside of these big community events, and largely the interaction that most players and small groups have to deal with, has been nonsense like "those guys in that PVE group I joined wouldn't make me a mod on their discord so I'm going to UA bomb their station and kill their PMF's cop ships out of spite"
It's a shame about the interesting things going away, but I'm not going to mourn the loss of a means for salty children to throw a tantrum.

Problem in this thread also is that bunch of guys are assuming Elite is the real life when it is just a game. UA bombing has never been a thing and was extremely to counter even before.

And there are some factions, big and very well known, that have used it against themselves to generate content for the overall community.

Some people in this thread don't crasp an inch of what it was in game.

 

[Ian Skippy]

UA bombing has never been a thing[...] Some people in this thread don't crasp an inch of what it was in game.

LOL. [haha]

 

[Ian Skippy]

It does strike me that the people who have not experienced UA bombing from either end are the ones most vocal in their support of this change. We have had more than 30 stations shut down, one of them 3 times. Playing as 31st or whatever century it is in game, space communists does seem to attract the attention of some people stuck with 20th Century mindsets. It took (I gather) a lot of dedication to shut a station down (without exploits) and remarkably little to fix one if players concerned actually wanted to fix the station. When there was a desire to fix a station, it gave great opportunities to work together. The balance was spot on.

My paranoid self sees this as a further attempt by FD to handicap the "gargantuan minor factions maintained by an handful of players" that was used as a quote prefacing the planned BGS changes. At a stroke, this has undone a massive part of the protection we had put in place to insulate our small player group against the coming changes. We have spent the last months steering our UA bombing enemies into shutting down the stations/systems that we wanted to be protected against BGS attacks in 3.3. For example on mothballed system that was needed 100-200+ transactions a day for a year has required 10 transactions in total since it was UA bombed two months ago.

For me, this is just another part of the strategic part of the game that has been stripped away. A massive shame.


This was fun

I think part of the issue is that UA bombing was relatively unknown to many, many players. In other words, they would just play the game and then be faced with a UA bombed station. That wouldn't be fun, it would just be confusing and irritating. It seems like a mechanic that was fun to a relatively small group of people but frustrating to a far larger group of people. I am all for something like that, but it has to be integrated far better into the game (deliberately taking out a station should logically be a major crime), with clear explanations and in a way that a tiny group of people couldn't negatively impact the experience of so many more people with such relative ease and absolutely no consequences.

 

[PiLhEaD]

Good.

 

[Goose4291]

It does strike me that the people who have not experienced UA bombing from either end are the ones most vocal in their support of this change. We have had more than 30 stations shut down, one of them 3 times. Playing as 31st or whatever century it is in game, space communists does seem to attract the attention of some people stuck with 20th Century mindsets. It took (I gather) a lot of dedication to shut a station down (without exploits) and remarkably little to fix one if players concerned actually wanted to fix the station. When there was a desire to fix a station, it gave great opportunities to work together. The balance was spot on.

My paranoid self sees this as a further attempt by FD to handicap the "gargantuan minor factions maintained by an handful of players" that was used as a quote prefacing the planned BGS changes. At a stroke, this has undone a massive part of the protection we had put in place to insulate our small player group against the coming changes. We have spent the last months steering our UA bombing enemies into shutting down the stations/systems that we wanted to be protected against BGS attacks in 3.3. For example on mothballed system that was needed 100-200+ transactions a day for a year has required 10 transactions in total since it was UA bombed two months ago.

For me, this is just another part of the strategic part of the game that has been stripped away. A massive shame.


This was fun

Have some rep. That was eloquently put.

The one thing that really bugged me about UA bombing as a discussion point was the hypocrisy of some of the people who were so vitriolically against it.

'ED BGS play is all about bucket filling for your faction' posters were the first to screech against the bucket filling of UA delivery vs. Meta alloy delivery, and 'all modes equal' type chanters would be the first to argue it should be confined to open only, or not affect their preferred game mode.

 

[Goose4291]

Where's DNA-Decay with his wanted poster >.>

Ask and you shall recieve

 

[Deareim]

LOL. [haha]

You made my point.

 

[SpocksOddSocks]

I remember collecting lots of UA's to trial what the requirements were to affect a station, purely as an experiment to work out exactly how they worked. I also remember pulling my hair out heaps because my trial station just happened to be one which *couldn't* be UA bombed, owing to the fact it had no commodities market. But my second one shut down after 100. Then Jacques wanted to launch to Beagle Point, and I remember thinking "Well, we can't ride him there, so wouldn't it be cool if he had UA damage and then jumped, which would create an awesome unofficial community-style event to go ship Meta Alloys to Beagle Point in order to repair Jacques.

I remember having fun trying to fugure out the reason your target system wasn't being affected back on one of the old Canonn threadnaughts. Later, seeing UA bombing all over the place just got boring.

But I'm on the side of thinking that, for at least story purposes, the immunity to the things should have come sooner. Sometime between 2.4 and 3.0, I'd say. When the Thargoids were becoming more known.

 

[Jmanis]

I remember having fun trying to fugure out the reason your target system wasn't being affected back on one of the old Canonn threadnaughts. Later, seeing UA bombing all over the place just got boring.

But I'm on the side of thinking that, for at least story purposes, the immunity to the things should have come sooner. Sometime between 2.4 and 3.0, I'd say. When the Thargoids were becoming more known.

Yup. UA effects should've happened to about a dozen stations or so, before an immunity was discovered, probably using some CG to achieve it. It was definitely fun working out how UA bombing worked, but then when it became "cool" it was also boring as.

But again... woulda, coulda, shoulda...

 

[Schlack]

Ask and you shall recieve

lol Ed Lewis!

 

[Phazon Xenomorph]

I remember having fun trying to fugure out the reason your target system wasn't being affected back on one of the old Canonn threadnaughts. Later, seeing UA bombing all over the place just got boring.

But I'm on the side of thinking that, for at least story purposes, the immunity to the things should have come sooner. Sometime between 2.4 and 3.0, I'd say. When the Thargoids were becoming more known.

And how exactly did they get immunity? We've already seen that lore wise once we shoot up the barnacle sites they are pretty much ruined. So realistically there's a very very very very finite amount of the stuff and with the handful of moons that it's been discovered on, not enough to provide immunity. We can't grow the stuff ourselves as that's a Thargoid secret (we still aren't 100% sure what the Thargoid is doing at a Barnacle, refueling? restocking? something else to trigger an evolution to a stronger Interceptor?) and anything human made is outright vulnerable to the stuff, Guardian sites aren't that widespread either and suffer the same consequence (plus we haven't seen Guardian tech outside of weapons good for Thargoids, just look how fast they trash the Guardian-based SLF). So the handwavium immunity is on a huge scale cause Frontier has no clue what they are doing.

Saying a handful of important stations or Powerplay stations systems (like Lembava, or the commonly used Diaguandri's Ray Gateway) or Jameson Memorial would make sense, same with Obsidian Orbital as it's the heart of Anti-Thargoid beach-heads (and any systems near it) became immune due to stockpiling Meta Alloys from the known sources would make more sense. Complete immunity for every station in the Galaxy? That's some hardcore right there and Frontier knows it.

 

[Fenyl]

As I see by recent changes and backing out of "open only" PP, maybe FD should get rid of Open mode if they want to limit player interactions to minimum? Instead of creating clear rules on how to counteract the effects of UA bombing they decide to erase yet another way for players to fight. But let's all hold our hands and dance kumbaya in this PC friendly galaxy.

 

[an93lofdeath]

Any CMDR in this forum thread that has argued against OOPP because it takes gameplay away from solo CMDRs, that are now saying that the removal of this gameplay from all CMDRs is great are hypocrites. At least be consistent with your arguments.

 

[Factabulous]

I think part of the issue is that UA bombing was relatively unknown to many, many players. In other words, they would just play the game and then be faced with a UA bombed station. That wouldn't be fun, it would just be confusing and irritating. It seems like a mechanic that was fun to a relatively small group of people but frustrating to a far larger group of people. I am all for something like that, but it has to be integrated far better into the game (deliberately taking out a station should logically be a major crime), with clear explanations and in a way that a tiny group of people couldn't negatively impact the experience of so many more people with such relative ease and absolutely no consequences.

You could replace UA Bombing with BGS in that entire paragraph. Or AX defence (which will be 'inflicted' on the majority from Q4). Having variety of gameplay will always annoy those who aren't get involved, but they make the game universe live for people involved and really help promote group gameplay.

 

[who?]

I think they could have made this more interesting, instead of simply removing it (not that I'm complaining either way, it didn't really affect me).

They could have simply changed the numbers, so it takes more UAs to shut a station down, and fewer meta-alloys to fix and/or pre-emptively protect.

Since UAs are - effectively - weapons, they could/should have have made it harder to sneak anywhere carrying one, and scaled up the response if caught, such that ATR is called in to stop you. Would certainly spice things up! Risk/reward.

 

[Winterwalker]

Saying a handful of important stations or Powerplay stations systems (like Lembava, or the commonly used Diaguandri's Ray Gateway) or Jameson Memorial would make sense, same with Obsidian Orbital as it's the heart of Anti-Thargoid beach-heads (and any systems near it) became immune due to stockpiling Meta Alloys from the known sources would make more sense. Complete immunity for every station in the Galaxy? That's some hardcore right there and Frontier knows it.

That may be but the add of Thargoid Incursions changes things a bit. One of those + a UA bomb might cripple a station for good. UA bombs could decay but that would have to tick quite quickly, otherwise the BGS stays borked.

If UA bombing is your thing then what you should be looking for is ways to trigger and support Thargoid Incursions imo. UA's are Thargoid technology weapons effectively, after all.

 

[Goose4291]

lol Ed Lewis!

Yep.. it was a golden age of fun emergent gameplay, primarily carried out loudly in open by the perps.

Good times.

 

[Jmanis]

Yep.. it was a golden age of fun emergent gameplay, primarily carried out loudly in open by the perps.

Good times.

Flying around Jacques in Open with this (which I deliberately turned into a bounty) on my head certainly had me bricking... particularly since the 20-odd UAs I'd have on board with no CRCRs in the game yet meant my ship was literally falling to bits.