ANNOUNCEMENT Fleet Carriers Update - Patch 3

[alexzk]

And just to bring this back on topic. ..This is directly related to how the game is trying to balance beginner easy-mode activities like mining. Something that would be trivial if the valuable things you mine (an activity which in of itself would be identical to how it's done now) can be put behind a hazard that makes that activity much harder / riskier to do ...thus justifying it's much higher value while automatically limiting it's participation.

It doesn't. It tries to make tritium everywhere and easy for deep Void explorers. It do that bad still. Takes about 1 hour to refuel 1 jump.
That shifted chances to meet proper rock and outcome per rock.
That made that crazy egg.
And that summarized to old design - no true demand and mode switch respawns (of anything, like mats too).
That complex lead to current situation.

I see 2 solutions, both include rollback of mining to pre-fc.
1. make tritium another color
2. make tritium minable by npc on board.
and 3rd was couple posts before.
Any way, all that require changing current game rules/design they don't want and keep doing "fixes".

 

[Darth Ender]

It doesn't. It tries to make tritium everywhere and easy for deep Void explorers. It do that bad still. Takes about 1 hour to refuel 1 jump.
That shifted chances to meet proper rock and outcome per rock.
That made that crazy egg.
And that summarized to old design - no true demand and mode switch respawns (of anything, like mats too).
That complex lead to current situation.

What doesn't? Nothing i mentioned relates to what you just stated. Since I was stating a way for the current unending balance issues to be resolved but fdev haven't ever implemented before but could and it would benefit not just this but other facets of the game without taking anything away.

I think what you're referring to is something they actually did do, which is just play with ratios within hot spots.

I see 2 solutions, both include rollback of mining to pre-fc.
1. make tritium another color
2. make tritium minable by npc on board.
and 3rd was couple posts before.
Any way, all that require changing current game rules/design they don't want and keep doing "fixes".

Real demand is a step in the right direction so I dont see how rolling that back is better for the game. Fixing respawn issues is not limited to mining and should have been addressed back in year 1. It's been a circumvention technique since then.

1. Sure, scanners should show different things as different colors / sounds etc. That should be no big deal.
2. At that point, why even bother mining it at all? Anything that the player can do passive, is something that would be better to just not exist.

Tritium's sole intention is to limit FC jumping. If it doesn't limit jumping it isn't doing it's job. If you aren't struggling or being limited by acquiring tritium then it's pointless and might as well not exist - assuming you're trying to move somewhere.

I dont have a problem with tritium at all in that sense. I think it's monumentally stupid to have the economy behave the way it does where a station sells tritium for a fraction of the price and then a couple days later will buy tritium for much higher prices. I think that's a flaw. Producers of tritium (those who sell at or below gal avg) should not ever buy tritium unless it's at a lower price than they will ever sell it for. That would hold for all producers of commodities. If we're going to keep the economy simplistic, then that simple rule will eliminate a lot of the simple abuse of fire sales that go on.

 

[alexzk]

2. At that point, why even bother mining it at all? Anything that the player can do passive, is something that would be better to just not exist.

You want to play micromanagement game. I want to play global strategy. I want to open "blueprint", draw scheme of fight, upload that to my NPC figher pilot and he will follow exact scheme by 1 button press (that would do easy thargoids kills).

Tritium's sole intention is to limit FC jumping.

Only it limits - distance prior visiting station again. Also binds owner to fc to make manual stupid reloads from cargo to tank.

I think in their design doc that is like - "while owner is docked on FC and waits 20 mins between jumps he do cqc, total online grows".
Well, it doesn't work had no single pop YET of cqc. I tried like 5 times. 3-4 hours today. Never saw it in fact.

...any way, will try to mine tomm single spots after patch. But it goes in such direction - I will park FC forever in bubble, or sell it. Because I have long waiting trip to "Abyss" since September. Hopped to use FC, but that is too far as I see. Not going to mine 120 hrs just to come back.

 

[MallowChunktanis]

Any news on the crash to desktop issue when attempting to gaze upon an arriving carrier?

 

[D.D.Hariman]

... or not, if - as is more likely - it's all hot air about what "should" be done that bears no relation to what could be done. But hey, I could be wrong and you're the greatest innovator in software development methodology of our age. If you are I will happily apologise and apply for a position at your new company to learn about it.

My point is that IF, the BETA players were doing ANYTHING in Private Groups, the private Group issue should have been apparent.
IF the BETA players were doing anything in WING, then the Wing issue should have become apparent .
IF the BETA players had been doing ANYTHING in the combination of PRIVATE GROUP and WING these issues should have become apparent.
Now I think, the issue is mostly affecting the PC players that play Private Group and Wing. Not hearing any complaints from hardly anyone else.

SO. Either the BETA players are PVP OPEN PLAY people,, OR any complaints the DEVS received about any issues for the players in Wing in Private Groups were simply ignored..

I offered a solution.
Roll the game back and put the FC's back into BETA and recruit one of the PG/WING players to play the BETA. If the roll back had happened in the 1st 24 hours almost no one would have lost anything. Likely too late now..

I am willing to join the BETA testing in PG and Wing to see if this is a "scale issue" or just very sloppy programming or even sloppier not acquiring enough server capacity or allocating it properly.

Since the FC update i have never ONCE been able to log in without getting an error and then having to sit there at the main menu for 5-20 minutes as game make multiple attempts to get connected to the game servers.

 

[Darth Ender]

You want to play micromanagement game. I want to play global strategy. I want to open "blueprint", draw scheme of fight, upload that to my NPC figher pilot and he will follow exact scheme by 1 button press (that would do easy thargoids kills).

That's nothing like elite though. That's more like stellaris or X4/X3. I'm not suggesting micromanagement, I'm suggesting a better way to manage what elite already forces player to manage and has always forced players to manage throughout the various versions.

Only it limits - distance prior visiting station again. Also binds owner to fc to make manual stupid reloads from cargo to tank.

I think in their design doc that is like - "while owner is docked on FC and waits 20 mins between jumps he do cqc, total online grows".
Well, it doesn't work had no single pop YET of cqc. I tried like 5 times. 3-4 hours today. Never saw it in fact.

...any way, will try to mine tomm single spots after path. But it goes in such direction - I will park FC forever in bubble, or sell it. Because I have long waiting trip to "Abyss" since September. Hopped to use FC, but that is too far as I see. Not going to mine 120 hrs just to come back.

If it is being a pain to deal with then it's working as intended. If it forces you to have to return to a station to easily replenish ..then you've limited travel by 50% of a theoretical max on top of cost. If a player chooses that vs mining then you've limited travel absolute distance as well since you'd never be able to stray too far from stations.

Mining Tritium doesn't take that long anyway. Even if it takes you 2-4 hours to mine enough tritium for another 100-200 ly's. The only role that needs to be satisfied is exploration out in the black and exploration requires you actually explore, not hop-skip your way across the galaxy an half a day. It takes days of in-game time to map the systems around you every 100 ly and that's still skipping a bunch. 2-4 hours is a drop in the bucket. Doing something the wrong way doesn't need to be viable.

The disparity between how much tritium matters to those out in the black vs in the bubble can be managed by just increasing the cost in the bubble to 5-10x its cost and then eliminate any tritium hotspots to 1000ly around the bubble. Tritium can be thought as having been tapped out around civilized space in high concentrations. If fdev bit the free credits issues in the butt early on ...then maybe we could say this would fix things... But as it stands, pretty much anyone with carrier is so rich now that no cost on anything matters to them. So there is no hope of fixing this balance issue without destroying the intended purpose of things being gathered directly instead of purchased.

 

[alexzk]

Mining Tritium doesn't take that long anyway. Even if it takes you 2-4 hours to mine enough tritium for another 100-200 ly's. The only role that needs to be satisfied is exploration out in the black and exploration requires you actually explore, not hop-skip your way across the galaxy an half a day. It takes days of in-game time to map the systems around you every 100 ly and that's still skipping a bunch. 2-4 hours is a drop in the bucket. Doing something the wrong way doesn't need to be viable.

If you sit in GB and have a place to explore in California, will you go there 1st or will keep getting samples on each your footstep during the way?
...also FCs itself move slower then Anaconda. I schedule jump 500ly, then jump there on Conda doing FSS on the way. IF it was no planets to map by DSS during those jumps, I arrive at worse 30s prior carrier, with NS boost on the way I get 10 mins faster.
That is slow enough already.

P.S. Actually got a bit compromising idea. Put carrier with repair only enabled somewhere near ETA Carina, where good NS way starts. From there you can go any region in less then 1 week. Because those last 10000ly to bubble are really slow on normal ship.

 

[Frankymole]

They fixed the ship transfer notification bug, that was nice.

Oh, what was that?

 

[Darth Ender]

If you sit in GB and have a place to explore in California, will you go there 1st or will keep getting samples on each your footstep during the way?
...also FCs itself move slower then Anaconda. I schedule jump 500ly, then jump there on Conda doing FSS on the way. IF it was no planets to map by DSS during those jumps, I arrive at worse 30s prior carrier, with NS boost on the way I get 10 mins faster.
That is slow enough already.

P.S. Actually got a bit compromising idea. Put carrier with repair only enabled somewhere near ETA Carina, where good NS way starts. From there you can go any region in less then 1 week. Because those last 10000ly to bubble are really slow on normal ship.

Your way of "exploring" isn't the most efficient way to explore. So it's not surprising there are significant downsides experienced or it's not behaving ideally.

The most efficient way to explore is to be in economy jump mode and go to as many systems as close to your current location as possible before moving to an entirely new 50-100ly cube. The least distance you jump, the more jumps before refueling and the more systems you can explore. It's not like the things you discover or are exploring matter or are different whether you are doing it 40,000ly away or 1000ly from the bubble. The entire galaxy is just a bunch of the same stuff so this idea that you really need to explore some nebula (and nebulas have already been explored more so than the crap between) is a facade. You're not going to find something nobody else has because you were the first one to scan a system across the galaxy. If something has been hidden in the game, it's almost surely very close to the bubble. For all other exploration ...it literally doesn't matter where you do it, so there's no need to "fix" things to allow people to do it super far away.

 

[alexzk]

Your way of "exploring" isn't the most efficient way to explore. So it's not surprising there are significant downsides experienced or it's not behaving ideally.

The most efficient way to explore is to be in economy jump mode and go to as many systems as close to your current location as possible before moving to an entirely new 50-100ly cube. The least distance you jump, the more jumps before refueling and the more systems you can explore. It's not like the things you discover or are exploring matter or are different whether you are doing it 40,000ly away or 1000ly from the bubble. The entire galaxy is just a bunch of the same stuff so this idea that you really need to explore some nebula (and nebulas have already been explored more so than the crap between) is a facade. You're not going to find something nobody else has because you were the first one to scan a system across the galaxy. If something has been hidden in the game, it's almost surely very close to the bubble. For all other exploration ...it literally doesn't matter where you do it, so there's no need to "fix" things to allow people to do it super far away.

Not completely true ...
For example "life" concentration seems higher at right-mid part of galaxy ("dry man" etc)...also many "earth like" there and "stellar phenomena". Also types of phenomena are different. W-R stars you can meet a lot on left side.... but yes, in general you can stick to 500x500x500 cube anywhere, except I like feeling being somewhere else each new day.
You can check that doing round galaxy trip. Will you go on economy? >: On NS boost that took 3mo.

Check is simple - count "phenomenas" per 10 jumps. On left it was 0 for me and on right 7 of 10 happened once. But avr was 2 of 10.

So my point is, there are some things which you can discover only doing global travel. Even SQL on EDSM needs you to travel first.

 

[Darth Ender]

Not completely true ...
For example "life" concentration seems higher at right-mid part of galaxy ("dry man" etc)...also many "earth like" there and "stellar phenomena". Also types of phenomena are different. W-R stars you can meet a lot on left side.... but yes, in general you can stick to 500x500x500 cube anywhere, except I like feeling being somewhere else each new day.
You can check that doing round galaxy trip. Will you go on economy? >: On NS boost that took 3mo.

A carrier doesn't need to make every single thing a player can do in the game better or more convenient or even possible.

A carrier only needs to apply to the various roles, and it does... It doesn't need to make every way you play those roles improved.

As it stands, the carrier greatly improves exploration if you adapt your way of exploring to the carrier and not the other way around. Doing so doesn't really alter how effective exploration is. So there's no problem here.

It's asking no more than it asks all other roles to adapt to it. The main difference being within the bubble, tritium is freely available since money is worth nothing these days. Fix that (money being worthless), and you fix the "unfairness" of using carriers in the bubble vs using them out in the black. And as a bonus, you fix other issues as well.

 

[alexzk]

A carrier doesn't need to make every single thing a player can do in the game better or more convenient or even possible.

A carrier only needs to apply to the various roles, and it does... It doesn't need to make every way you play those roles improved.

As it stands, the carrier greatly improves exploration if you adapt your way of exploring to the carrier and not the other way around. Doing so doesn't really alter how effective exploration is. So there's no problem here.

It's asking no more than it asks all other roles to adapt to it. The main difference being within the bubble, tritium is freely available since money is worth nothing these days. Fix that (money being worthless), and you fix the "unfairness" of using carriers in the bubble vs using them out in the black. And as a bonus, you fix other issues as well.

That's impossible to fix already. Train is gone.
So time to change game rules - allow carrier to refuel itself (for additional cost to hire npc's).

Other solution could be - player created outposts. Like player(s) invest time/money doing big grind / missions/deliveries and get new NPC station. And players get lets say 1% of what station trade there, like from carrier. Also player decides what fraction will be there by doing missions (like deliver colonists to start, if 2 players deliver feds and imps then they start civil war right on construction done, etc.). So basically players establish new NPC outpost somewhere. Then it can be used as any other station, for example to buy tritium.

P.S. problem with tritium is that in-bubble it is "npc mined", i.e. player do anything he likes and gets tritium, while out bubble player MUST spend own time to mine tritium and then only do what he wants. To return back from 60000ly "there" trip you need to mine 120hrs without doing anything else and smoke/sleep breaks.

 

[Frankymole]

Not completely true ...
For example "life" concentration seems higher at right-mid part of galaxy ("dry man" etc)...also many "earth like" there and "stellar phenomena". Also types of phenomena are different. W-R stars you can meet a lot on left side....

Not forgetting the "Neutron Fields" broken torus around the galactic hub.

 

[Tikanderoga]

Other solution could be - player created outposts. Like player(s) invest time/money doing big grind / missions/deliveries and get new NPC station. And players get lets say 1% of what station trade there, like from carrier. Also player decides what fraction will be there by doing missions (like deliver colonists to start, if 2 players deliver feds and imps then they start civil war right on construction done, etc.). So basically players establish new NPC outpost somewhere. Then it can be used as any other station, for example to buy tritium.

Dang it!
Now Fdev will never implement this.
Not that they would have to start with, but in theory, this could be considered player created content.

It is safe to say, the gold rush/cash grab of LTD mining has long gone, and unless FDev rolls back the servers to a month ago, the FC invasion will not go away.
All they can do now is to play on what the players did and tank the LTD prices for the next 6-12 months and carefully balance other minerals.
If it can be laser mined: max price 500k
It if can only be core mined: Max price 1m
If can be core and laser mined: 350k
This would reflect the rarity and difficulty to obtain certain goods.

Also AXI combat rewards need a buff by about 2.5x
The investment and reward involved do not reflect the risk pilots are taking to defend this corner of the bubble.

 

[alexzk]

Dang it!
Now Fdev will never implement this.
Not that they would have to start with, but in theory, this could be considered player created content.

Not sure If I understand ...are you speaking about copyright rights?
Then they can use it. I allow with 1 free copy of that DLC for me
..any way, currently I don't like tritium dis-balance. Inside bubble it is npc mined in fact, and outside I'm forced to mine it personally. That is worse thing. Don't care anything else, I stopped to mine LTD once I got extra 2 bils after buying FC.
Today I mined 150t of tritium, that is enough of mining for me for a week. Will check tomm though once too.

 

[CMDR Don Samen]

Why this overlapping high-value hotspots, why not just remove them and have the normal calculation? You destroyed traditional mining with all calculations when you have tried to limit the outcome of mining. I've been out in the void, finding pristine systems with LTD-hotspots with no result after an hours search. Had to go to VO-hotspot to find LTDs, that's really messed up. Why not make overlapping hotspots for Tritium. I spent one or two hours in a Tritium hotspot, got something like 100-150 T, and a great amount of LTDs... In a Tritium hotspot... If you want to make overlapping hotspots, let it be of the lesser value stuff endig with -dite, and Tritium.

If you want us to use all functions of the game and be more versatile, it has to make more sense. And there still is too much out there that makes no sense at all. It's still too much unbalance to avoid all grinding and single track gaming. And you have a long way to go to make beginners stay in the game, and in open.

 

[alexzk]

Other idea "ltd to tritium converter".
So basically you "hire" own NPCs on board to make tritium for you paying them by LTD.
Lets say best market ratio is 1600 000 / 4000 = 400 : 1. Let it be half.
So 200:1
You gave to NPC on board 1 LTD, he gives you 200 trit back "from the air", maybe delayed 10 mins, maybe avail conversion only if system has trit spot.
Next, that 1 LTD you gave to NPC may even lock 1 place in your carrier cargo until you visit system with station. So you cannot do that infinite or do that with full cargo.
That could be fair enough for everything.

Or even simpler - make new "compressor" module. It can compress tritium 200 to 1 and produce "compressed tritium" and back. To uncompress 1 u need 200 free slots.

 

[Darth Ender]

Why this overlapping high-value hotspots, why not just remove them and have the normal calculation? You destroyed traditional mining with all calculations when you have tried to limit the outcome of mining. I've been out in the void, finding pristine systems with LTD-hotspots with no result after an hours search. Had to go to VO-hotspot to find LTDs, that's really messed up. Why not make overlapping hotspots for Tritium. I spent one or two hours in a Tritium hotspot, got something like 100-150 T, and a great amount of LTDs... In a Tritium hotspot... If you want to make overlapping hotspots, let it be of the lesser value stuff endig with -dite, and Tritium.

If you want us to use all functions of the game and be more versatile, it has to make more sense. And there still is too much out there that makes no sense at all. It's still too much unbalance to avoid all grinding and single track gaming. And you have a long way to go to make beginners stay in the game, and in open.

which keeps bringing it back to the issue of the same exact activities are trying to be balanced to work for new players and veteran players and there is no significant difference in skill in these activities to limit income automatically.

Instead of running in circles that haven't been able to be corrected in 5+ years. Give newbies and casuals and people who just want a break the current activities at low income rates. Create new activities that are much harder and less frequently available at much higher income rates and balance things around a two tier system. Create a new material that can't be traded to act as currency for higher tier ship operations. This eliminates the benefit of having exploiting credits or collected a bunch of ships while credits were free and easy. All your riches would be useless when actually trying to use top tier ships in the game and you wouldn't ever be able to hoard them because materials have a max limit and so would this new one.

So many problems solved. you can thank me later fdev.

 

[alexzk]

which keeps bringing it back to the issue of the same exact activities are trying to be balanced to work for new players and veteran players and there is no significant difference in skill in these activities to limit income automatically.

Instead of running in circles that haven't been able to be corrected in 5+ years. Give newbies and casuals and people who just want a break the current activities at low income rates. Create new activities that are much harder and less frequently available at much higher income rates and balance things around a two tier system. Create a new material that can't be traded to act as currency for higher tier ship operations. This eliminates the benefit of having exploiting credits or collected a bunch of ships while credits were free and easy. All your riches would be useless when actually trying to use top tier ships in the game and you wouldn't ever be able to hoard them because materials have a max limit and so would this new one.

So many problems solved. you can thank me later fdev.

They try to balance tritium! They broke mining so tritium in the Void does not take years. That is fundamental point. Nothing about newbe-vets.
Once they made +/- acceptable trit it broke other deeps, then they started to balance LTD etc.
So they need to redesign idea of manual trit mining out there and rollback all mining to prior-FC. It was OK.

 

[Darth Ender]

They try to balance tritium! They broke mining so tritium in the Void does not take years. That is fundamental point. Nothing about newbe-vets.
Once they made +/- acceptable trit it broke other deeps, then they started to balance LTD etc.
So they need to redesign idea of manual trit mining out there and rollback all mining to prior-FC. It was OK.

Mining was not ok prior to Tritium ..let alone tritium's rebalance. The abuse of mining happened once they added hot spots. But mining and trading and even exploring and bounty hunting/etc haven't been OK ever. You can go back to around 2015 when the game was released and read almost identical issues around income rates with trade and how it balances agains combat and how that relates to how much income a new player makes vs a player who is trying to A-class a conda and what that means about the point of ships in between. This is not a new issue. It's the same old one we've always had.