Let's compare
currently existing gameplay activities in SC and ED:
1) Trading: (including in-game trading App, including possibility to send credits to other players).
- In both games the process is the same. The only difference is that in SC there is in-game trading App, including possibility to send credits to other players. But bugs are more frequent still. Kinda "on par".
2) Mining:
- In ED only in-space activity, with for variations which differe only by type of QTE minigames (lasers, abrasion blasters, SSM, seismic charges).
- In SC can occur in space (both from ship and via EVA), on planet surfaces (again, from ship and via EVA), in caves on legs. But process is represented by only two QTE minigames.
Week ago i'd say "on par", but... yesterday the thing, about which CMDRs were dreaming all these years, was introduced in SC - wheeled vehicle with manipulator arm for medium-sized deposits mining on planets surfaces, which fits into cargoholds of medium ships.
So, ED is "behind", at least until we will get (will we?) mining SRVs in Odyssey.
3) PVE combat pew-pew missions.
- ED is ahead for ship-to-ship combat due to lack of balance and unfinished damage model in SC yet.
- But on the contrary, there is no combative ships boarding in ED, no seamless switching from ship-to-ship to FPS gun / hand-combat. Part of this will appear in ED with Odyssey, but only on planets. Without boarding / shooting inside ships, without ships hijacking.
Also, ED still lacks any ship-to-ship combat conditions except open space. In SC, combat in atmosphere introduces significant differentiation to ships.
(blue lines are lift forces, red lines are drag forces, affecting the ship at the moment).
Well, let's say "on par" on the average.
4) PVE delivery missions.
- In ED source/destination are always clones of the same space station or surface port, only colors differ a bit due to star light. Process is very monotonuous, without any variations - you just get line of text about goods in cargo, undock, jump, fly, dock. Maximum variety is an accidental NPC interdiction attempt.
- In SC each destination is visually unique, highly detailed and semi-hand-crafted. In gameplay terms there is also much more variety in SC, for example you can land your ship a bit awkwardly, so you'll not be able to get / jump onto the ramp because it's too high above the ground, and will need to do some trick to get into ship, like place a few boxes to jump onto ramp from them.
All in all, ED is behind.
5) PVE "investigation" missions.
- In ED you are asked to fly to the marker, pickup blackbox, fedex it back. Again, very monotonously.
- In SC there are following variations for these missions:
Fly to crashsite (sometimes on planet surface, sometimes in space), EVA from ship, and
- search among derbis / parts of ship hull for crew bodies, to identify them
- find blackbox, bring it to your ship, fedex it to contractor
Navigate to some Cave, go into it, and locate missing human in it (simulatneously you can do some hand mining, meet other players who are mining, or bounty hunting, etc)
All in all, ED is a bit behind here.
6) PVE "blackops" missions.
- In ED you are asked to: interdict NPC ship attack it and steal goods, or scan beacon in the settlement using SRV, or disable power generator / kill drones in settlement
- In SC you are asked to: assault the bunker blow away or evade its air defence go inside and kill NPC in FPS combat, or interdict NPC ship kill escort in ship-to-ship combat then board interdicted ship, go inside and kill targets / free hostages / free prisoners
Currently, to my mind, on par.
7) PVP.
- In ED you can go to Open, and get ganked, or try to gank somebody, in just a few "populated" systems like SD. Your foe can combat-log, can switch to Solo, and except 3-5 "populated" systems, the chances to meet other player are negligible. PVP is limited to ship-to-ship combat, you cannot kill Cutter owner before his shields go down
- In SC you can:
Just try to gank random players
Take missions to bounty hunt players with crimestat (then you even get marker to their location)
Take missions to assassinate lawful players if you have max crimestat (again, you get marker to location of player)
Rob other players, for example miners or traders (but remember - you get crimestat and play bountyhunters will come after you)
PVP is all-way, you can kill owner of that big dreadful ship just with a single gunshot, when it goes away from his ship ramp
You can even knockout player in safe zone, and drag him out to your ship and kidnap, for example
ED is far behind here.
8) Crime and punishment.
- In ED there are just ATR ships in some systems (which still cannot prevent griefing/ganking), negligible payout which criminal player must pay when he dies (yes, negligible, show me PVPer with Cutter, who doesn't have 10-15 billions "just for expenses"). Also, upon death, criminal player is teleported to detention center, which means that he has to waste 5-10 minutes on getting from it back to his ship. There is no gameplay at all in getting from detention center - just jump-jump-ump.
- In SC there is PRISON, to which criminal player gets when he dies. In Prison, criminal player has to stay, depending on number/severity of crimes, for Hours or even Days of REAL time, if he does this in offline/AFK. But he can shorten this time drastically - down to 1-3 hours, if he will
Work Grind in the prison to redeem his guilt. Really, he can mine rocks in prison mines hardly, and donate it to prison complex for free, thus significantly decreasing imprisonment time. But it will still take at least 15 - 120 minutes depending on crimes. And of course he can try to escape... If he has friends outside with ship, who are ready to put at risk their ship, and their freedom.
And what is the most interesting - in the ED, despite all those ATRs, detention centers, etc - griefers and gankers still freely kill lawful players just "for fun" anywhere they want in Open. So crime and punishment mechanics in ED is still total failure. It doesn't work.
In SC, the Prison works great! All the griefing, pad ramming, killing "for fun" - everything just vanished in thin air completely! I can freely and safely fly outside of no-fire zones in noobship around some tough guy player, who could evaporate me with single shot. And he does NOT do it. Just because that 5-seconds "fun" doesn't worth hours in prison. But he still goes with his thug life, doing for example lawful players assassination missions. Because those have fun, profit and RP which balances risk of imprisonment.
So, in terms of crime and punishment mechanics, ED is far, far behind SC even right now.
Finally, all in all, in gameplay terms, even with the current single system, SC is a bit ahead of ED atm.
Only during free flight weeks, or if you have weak hardware. With good hardware, even in-game bugs like clipping are very seldom, like one per 3-4 hours of gameplay. Crashes are once per few days.
Quantum travel in SC is brief - 5-6 minutes at max for longest routes, and during it player can walk across the ship (without any issues, see above about clipping bugs), browse/sort/accept contracts, or just go AFK for a few minutes to "strain legs" (c). Ship will arrive the destination and stop on its own.
On the contrary, in ED player HAS to sit and wait during whole supercruise flight time (which can often go far beyond 5 minutes), staring into blackness. Because destination can be obscured for supercruise assistant, because ship can be interdicted and killed by TASTY CARGO, because if player enables supercruise assistant then flight time doubles... And of course no possibility to walk across ship/check missions during supercruising.
And did i mention beauty and details?
![[Diplomacy] Carnegie](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/123/123809.jpg?1553527149){kind=avatar}
