ANNOUNCEMENT Fleet Carriers Update - Patch 3

[Darth Ender]

It does exists. Just because last 2 DLC (or 3?) you still use same ships. And you still can use basic E modules and do things. On vertical progression each new tier trashes all content before, makes it obsolete. WoW/SWTOR/many more are bright example of vertical scale. New DLC = trash all, go try new raid to get best new. Repeat once a year.

It's not about being able to use the same things as new players but better. It's your argument that there exists a scale of being "better" at the game for these roles. Horizontal scale requires that there is a measurable and meaningful difference between player skill and reward even though the task is the same. That doesn't exist in Elite Dangerous. Newbs can rake in the most credits right off the bat effectively and no amount of player skill will net you signficantly better incomes as a veteran player. Whether it's exploring, trading, mining or anything else other than tasks that require engineered/guardian unlocks. There's no scale there, so horizontal scaling doesn't exist.

How would you separate the veteran "skill" from the newb in the existing roles? The developers originally set things up so that only players who knew how the bgs worked and explored around to create a list of stations and what they sold and bought and managed those different kinds of info would be able to take advantage of them the best. But then they created the 3rd party api and made it stupid simple for crowd sourced data mining .. circumventing your horizontal scale for trading and mining.

Exploring has absolutely zero scale between a newb and veteran and no means of creating a difference currently even without third party tools.

Combat farming like i said, has maybe a couple months at most difference.

What I'm talking about is not trashing old and getting new stuff. I'm talking about making expensive ships expensive to operate but not necessarily required to play the game or even do the more complicated / riskier tasks (they'd mostly be for showing off). Then create these more complicated / riskier tasks to fund those expensive ships in a way that doesn't require huge amounts of time like trying to fund them off the beginner tasks (current game mechanics) would. There's no infinite arms race going on there like you described.

 

[djadjok]

I don't like the issue tracker, so I'll report it here: I've visited 3 different crystalline shard sites on 3 planets in the HIP 36601 system. When you hit the spikes they fall on the ground as spikes, they don't turn into the relevant materials. Their description changes to indicate "ruthenium", "tellurium", etc but their form remains spiky. This makes them easier to hide behind things and become unreachable.

Epss.. I never visited specifically crystalline shard sites by myself, however I don't remember any other sites were "materials" do change visual shape after being detached from bio/geo... So, are you sure it is not "intended"?

 

[Dragotha]

Just like saying: If you want an FC, you have to go and mine. You won't get one by shooting Thargoids or by doing CZs. You simply won't! It just doesn't pay enough for you to ever afford an FC.

You can make enough exploring to afford an FC. It would take you a couple of months and the Lyr grind when you get back, but it is totally doable.

 

[M4RTH4]

There is but one answer to all of your what-ifs: TOUGH.

Quite the rude way to go about it, coming from a volunteer mod.

Again, what of those that are clean of the whole thing? Same deal, 'Tough?' They didn't cheat, so why would they have to suffer, as well?
And, as I've stated earlier, with all the assets aboard the carrier end up getting sold off anyway, for most that'd still be enough to buy another carrier twice over; Literally nothing would change: The rich stay rich, the poor get boned.

 

[EUS]

Can you? Let's take a few shall we?

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issues.frontierstore.net

Still broken

webapp

issues.frontierstore.net

Still broken

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issues.frontierstore.net

Still broken

I can't be bothered to go through my ones and find more for you. The confirming system is a terrible idea, especially when Elite bugs need 10 confirmations and the other games only need 3. And even more so when something like the Wolf Rayet one can be checked in two minutes by someone at Frontier, but would require 10 other people to visit some system in the middle of nowhere, then also somehow persuade a load more people to vote on the issue to make it deemed worthy enough to be fixed!

Not that obviously it makes any real difference anyway, because this was confirmed in November of last year, after only having two other people comment on it. And still nothing has been done to address it.

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issues.frontierstore.net

And when they get tired of looking at the non-fixed bugs people have dutifully reported, confirmed, and voted on, they erase them, like they did not too long ago.
It's a beautiful system, no wonder they wanted to get rid of the bugs forum.

 

[alexzk]

It's not about being able to use the same things as new players but better. It's your argument that there exists a scale of being "better" at the game for these roles. Horizontal scale requires that there is a measurable and meaningful difference between player skill and reward even though the task is the same. That doesn't exist in Elite Dangerous. Newbs can rake in the most credits right off the bat effectively and no amount of player skill will net you signficantly better incomes as a veteran player. Whether it's exploring, trading, mining or anything else other than tasks that require engineered/guardian unlocks. There's no scale there, so horizontal scaling doesn't exist.

How would you separate the veteran "skill" from the newb in the existing roles? The developers originally set things up so that only players who knew how the bgs worked and explored around to create a list of stations and what they sold and bought and managed those different kinds of info would be able to take advantage of them the best. But then they created the 3rd party api and made it stupid simple for crowd sourced data mining .. circumventing your horizontal scale for trading and mining.

Exploring has absolutely zero scale between a newb and veteran and no means of creating a difference currently even without third party tools.

Combat farming like i said, has maybe a couple months at most difference.

What I'm talking about is not trashing old and getting new stuff. I'm talking about making expensive ships expensive to operate but not necessarily required to play the game or even do the more complicated / riskier tasks (they'd mostly be for showing off). Then create these more complicated / riskier tasks to fund those expensive ships in a way that doesn't require huge amounts of time like trying to fund them off the beginner tasks (current game mechanics) would. There's no infinite arms race going on there like you described.

What I'm talking about is not trashing old and getting new stuff. I'm talking about making expensive ships expensive to operate but not necessarily required to play the game or even do the more complicated / riskier tasks (they'd mostly be for showing off). Then create these more complicated / riskier tasks to fund those expensive ships in a way that doesn't require huge amounts of time like trying to fund them off the beginner tasks (current game mechanics) would. There's no infinite arms race going on there like you described.

This is vertical progression. You need to "grow up" to do more complex things to get better reward - pure vertical progression as I said. Next step will be forget (trash) old content because nobody cares, everybody get top danger ships. next step you will demand more ships even more harder. Circle locked - vertical game created.

Exploring has absolutely zero scale between a newb and veteran and no means of creating a difference currently even without third party tools.

You're wrong... took me about 1100000ly (I know, I'm slow) but today I figured how game works and what mass means. Now I can find ice rings in 10-15 minutes with minerals anywhere in galaxy without edsm. I'm sure I will learn some more during next million ly.

 

[Darth Ender]

This is vertical progression. You need to "grow up" to do more complex things to get better reward - pure vertical progression as I said. Next step will be forget (trash) old content because nobody cares, everybody get top danger ships. next step you will demand more ships even more harder. Circle locked - vertical game created.

not if the top danger ships are very expensive and would otherwise lock players into having to do high risk tasks often to fund using them. So everytime they're used, they'd accrue expensive costs. Using them for silly things would never be profitable. So players would still use the smaller, cheaper ships for those activities allowing them to be profitable in the more common tasks found throughout the game. Since the more riskier / skill based tasks would not be commonly available nor infinitely repeatable.

So yes, I could whip out the anaconda for some basic trade or basic bounty hunting or basic exploration, but doing so would bankrupt me in not a significant amount of time. I'd have to do those high risk activities. Players wont always want to do the risky stuff ...nor would they be able to always do the risky stuff. This retains the usefulness of mid tier and even low tier ships even for veteran players. And it keeps the beginner activities something even veteran players still actively do....in between their risky activities. They dont make much credits doing those non-risky activities, but it's not about making money ...those are fun downtimes in between the more stressful payday activities. Where dying is a real possibility and it's something they can hone skills doing with little potential cost.

 

[Martind Forlon]

With last official post for tomorrow's patch I'm really very interested if this craziness with mining as the only profit source (for many) will end tomorrow ... it could be good to start betts ...

 

[alexzk]

not if the top danger ships are very expensive and would otherwise lock players into having to do high risk tasks often to fund using them. So everytime they're used, they'd accrue expensive costs. Using them for silly things would never be profitable. So players would still use the smaller, cheaper ships for those activities allowing them to be profitable in the more common tasks found throughout the game. Since the more riskier / skill based tasks would not be commonly available nor infinitely repeatable.

So yes, I could whip out the anaconda for some basic trade or basic bounty hunting or basic exploration, but doing so would bankrupt me in not a significant amount of time. I'd have to do those high risk activities. Players wont always want to do the risky stuff ...nor would they be able to always do the risky stuff. This retains the usefulness of mid tier and even low tier ships even for veteran players. And it keeps the beginner activities something even veteran players still actively do....in between their risky activities. They dont make much credits doing those non-risky activities, but it's not about making money ...those are fun downtimes in between the more stressful payday activities. Where dying is a real possibility and it's something they can hone skills doing with little potential cost.

So do you complain about risk absence? I.e. game about frontiers / wild west become too civilized? Well, that how humanity grows ...yeh, frontiers end soon and fast.
Play CQC I stay in queue for "flag capture" 5 hours already. There is pure fight I think...never had a chance to get into.

P.S. your proposed ships will end frontiers era even faster.
P.P.S Try FA-off using mouse and keyboard only.

 

[payperheirplain]

sorry what? nerfed, sure, but removed gains? i can only think of one instance of that which was the removal of tainted module modifications created with the g1-5 exploit. which was as blatant as it can get. regarding gold rushes, there have been exploits on around a quarterly basis for 6 years already. what have they removed?



i'd say pass the popcorn but ... save it, it aint gonna happen.

The fix, not nerf because it was in fact a bug that was being exploited and knowingly so, where they removed the credits and if the credit balance couldn't cover the reduction sold the last modules and ships players had bought regardless of if they had been engineered, was the Rockforth Fertilizer Exploit earlier this year. Players were able to sit in one station, buy the product for a low price and immediately sell it back to the station for a high price effectively making billions an hour for literally just exploiting the market. They never left the pad, never had to leave the station, nothing. Literally just cycle between the buy and sell tabs of commodities. The demand never dropped either so the buy price stayed high.

The response was justified and the forums were full of people crying about it because their exploit "was just part of the game mechanics" when in reality it was painfully obvious it was just a bug and that it absolutely was going to get patched. There is a line in TOS that essentially says if you are aware of a bug you are obligated to report it to Fdev. You can't post on the forums saying "I know of a bug but I refuse to tell you about it." So by exploiting the bug but not reporting it everyone who participated in that exploit, which was not a "gold rush" because that implies it was legitimate, got their accounts credit balance reduced back to where it was before the exploit and lost all ships and modules purchased with ill gotten gains.

The odds of the Eggsploit being trackable as easily by the logs will need to wait to be seen.From what the players can see in the logs there isn't a whole lot that explicitly makes it obvious if you are doing mapped mining, an exploit that is supported by game design and still requires actual work with no way to fix it without also screwing up hotspots, or if you were eggsploiting given that both can net you similar amounts of material in the same time frame. If it was tracked via sale of the material there is no way to know, other than tracking where you docked, if you were simply coming in with a load from the rings or perhaps coming off your carrier and unloading your cargo repeatedly. Obviously, Fdev likely has a way to track things that the end user can't see from the client side since they would also likely have server transactions they can check, but that would require a lot of effort. Can they figure out who did it? Absolutely. Is it worth the time and effort after such a long period where the first patch didn't work? Probably not.

Since the first patch didn't fix it, there isn't really a good reason to go back once you do get a fix and nerf everyone. If it was fixed within 48-72 hours like the Rockforth exploit was, then it would be an easier task to manage.

So TLDR: Yes- Rockforth Fertilizer exploiters lost their credits and anything they purchased with them. Some wound up negative from their start due to their ships being sold to cover costs and ship hulls don't sell at 100% purchase price.

 

[Darth Ender]

So do you complain about risk absence? I.e. game about frontiers / wild west become too civilized? Well, that how humanity grows ...yeh, frontiers end soon and fast.
Play CQC I stay in queue for "flag capture" 5 hours already. There is pure fight I think...never had a chance to get into.

Everyone should because the game is 100% safe and still trying to justify paying traders and explorers and miners and even bounty hunters a wage that scales. It doesn't matter if civilization would make things safer, if we're going to argue that the game is accurately simulating the galaxy at a civilized time, then it should accurate simulate the economy of such a civilization ....basically all commodities are the cost of hydrogen fuel to transport them since there is nearly an infinite supply of everything since getting to places is insanely fast for huge distances and there's no risk to the transporter. That would go for mining too, since even though it would take a single miner longer to get the same amount of diamonds as something more common, there are billions of miners and they all know where the diamonds are and there are hundreds of trillions of tons of them in range of any given station.

That's a boring stupid game. I'm not even suggesting that risk be tied to combat alone. There should be ..and needs to be, environmental hazards in the game to justify paying for exploration ..to justify for trading ...to justify the lack of humanity's expansion throughout the galaxy as fast as ships can travel.

 

[alexzk]

Everyone should because the game is 100% safe and still trying to justify paying traders and explorers and miners and even bounty hunters a wage that scales. It doesn't matter if civilization would make things safer, if we're going to argue that the game is accurately simulating the galaxy at a civilized time, then it should accurate simulate the economy of such a civilization ....basically all commodities are the cost of hydrogen fuel to transport them since there is nearly an infinite supply of everything since getting to places is insanely fast for huge distances and there's no risk to the transporter. That would go for mining too, since even though it would take a single miner longer to get the same amount of diamonds as something more common, there are billions of miners and they all know where the diamonds are and there are hundreds of trillions of tons of them in range of any given station.

That's a boring stupid game. I'm not even suggesting that risk be tied to combat alone. There should be ..and needs to be, environmental hazards in the game to justify paying for exploration ..to justify for trading ...to justify the lack of humanity's expansion throughout the galaxy as fast as ships can travel.

See, you write different things now
Yes, flying/hitting you random rocks would be fun ... as ability to launch rocks to orbits out of rings, i.e. somebody throws rock from ring (pirate?) and rock hits traders on the lane 1 hour later
Still, space is huge. You can't demand that launched rock hits somebody 1 min later. To fly 400ls rock needs a week...

 

[Darth Ender]

See, you write different things now
Yes, flying/hitting you random rocks would be fun ... as ability to launch rocks to orbits out of rings, i.e. somebody throws rock from ring (pirate?) and rock hits traders on the lane 1 hour later

No, i've been pretty consistent in what should be fixed the entire time. I never predicated risk on npc opponents. Risk can and should come from the environment itself first and foremost so it impacts all roles and not just those in the bubble in populated systems. Whether it's implemented in the form of radiation zones around certain planets and stars and even entire systems or hazardous dust in roid fields or active systems with other dangers... or even hyperspace dangers ... There are various ways at fdev's disposal to ramp up the skill needed and the risk involved with activities and implement them in a way that allows the existing low risk activities to still exist but make these other ones not something you simply opt-into and can avoid like the thargoid war.

 

[D7]

I know this is off subject but, can anyone tell me how to us eddb.io to find bodies in deep space with a certain raw material? For example, if I select Ni (Nickel) and set Ref system as Colonia I get a long, long, very long, list of bodies going out 40 light years. But, If I set the Ref system as Chreesuia NI-Z c27-5 way out in deep space where I have my FC, I get only bodies in that one Ref. system. I know there are a lot of systems around Chreesuia NI-Z c27-5 under 40 lys with discovered materials because I have discovered them myself months ago. It seems like eddb only works to find raws around the two bubbles..... Is there a better alternative to eddb?

 

[alexzk]

No, i've been pretty consistent in what should be fixed the entire time. I never predicated risk on npc opponents. Risk can and should come from the environment itself first and foremost so it impacts all roles and not just those in the bubble in populated systems. Whether it's implemented in the form of radiation zones around certain planets and stars and even entire systems or hazardous dust in roid fields or active systems with other dangers... or even hyperspace dangers ... There are various ways at fdev's disposal to ramp up the skill needed and the risk involved with activities and implement them in a way that allows the existing low risk activities to still exist but make these other ones not something you simply opt-into and can avoid like the thargoid war.

Problem is, we break known physics laws. We move FTL. This means, all dangers we know aren't dangers in common sense as you can escape even BH. All that hazard zones will be a joke.

 

[alexzk]

I know this is off subject but, can anyone tell me how to us eddb.io to find bodies in deep space with a certain raw material? For example, if I select Ni (Nickel) and set Ref system as Colonia I get a long, long, very long, list of bodies going out 40 light years. But, If I set the Ref system as Chreesuia NI-Z c27-5 way out in deep space where I have my FC, I get only bodies in that one Ref. system. I know there are a lot of systems around Chreesuia NI-Z c27-5 under 40 lys with discovered materials because I have discovered them myself months ago. It seems like eddb only works to find raws around the two bubbles..... Is there a better alternative to eddb?

All those bases work with already visited systems by somebody. They cover 0.01% of galaxy.
If you use FC and have miner, fastest way to refill all - go do laser mining of tritium/ltd. Takes 2-3 evenings to have all mats full.

 

[D7]

All those bases work with already visited systems by somebody. They cover 0.01% of galaxy.
If you use FC and have miner, fastest way to refill all - go do laser mining of tritium/ltd. Takes 2-3 evenings to have all mats full.

What? How is mining tritium out near the perimeter 30,000+ LY from anything going to get me polonium?

- And I am someone... who has discovered planets around my remote location but, that doen't help eddb look them up...

 

[Darth Ender]

Problem is, we break known physics laws. We move FTL. This means, all dangers we know aren't dangers in common sense as you can escape even BH. All that hazard zones will be a joke.

The only role you do in supercruise is explore, all others dont ..so those hazards would impact them.

For supercruise / ftl ...we have new supercruise / ftl hazards that can be created because hyperspace is whatever we want it to be since it's not real. Perhaps there are hyperspace anomalies that occur for whatever reason we want to imagine. Perhaps there are hyperspace reactions to certain levels of travel (yes, that's something stolen from startrek). There are literally an infinite number of ways you can add hazards to hyperspace travel since we're not limited by known observed physics there.

 

[alexzk]

What? How is mining tritium out near the perimeter 30,000+ LY from anything going to get me polonium?

Any mats except 2-3 exact names will drop on ANY laser mining with a chance. Also there are 2-3 mats wich drop ONLY on laser mining.
If you have 3 lasers and 15 limpets it will take 2-3 evenings to make ALL mats full just doing any rocks. Preffer "high mats" though. High mats spawn upto 6 mats per rock. Low mats spawn 0-1.

 

[Rat Catcher]

That's a boring stupid game

But is the one we have, though - from a personal perspective I find it not at all boring, but have only been playing for 32 months
(As I see you have, potentially, been playing much longer than I)

here are various ways at fdev's disposal to ramp up the skill needed and the risk involved with activities and implement them in a way that allows the existing low risk activities to still exist but make these other ones not something you simply opt-into and can avoid like the thargoid war.

Personally, I play the game to relax and just have fun... Most of the time I'll play alone in PG (as that permits my friends to join in) and have plenty of 'risk' presented by my activities. As the players I mix with are of similar ability (apart from the squadron my main account is a member of) to my own the challenge presented by the game is 'just right' - I can understand that much better players are bored spitless but that is the nature of the game we have.

I'm not against the suggestions in principle, just that the application of such refinements would need far more attention to detail than currently exists in the game to work as intended