Fleet Carriers - Patch 3 - Known Issues

[Harley Quinn]

Although in a galaxy the size of ours, overlapping LTD hotspots should have a chance of occurring, provide resources at the rate the rate they were, but be very rare which they were.

What FDev should have done is something logical, like lowering the price stations are willing to pay while the supply is high and allowing the hotspots to be mined out without continuous regeneration.

If they had done that, we would still have the latest gold rush to try and jump on, but increasing it would be further and further away from markets to sell them at, incidentally making a mining FC needed and necessary rather than just convenient and providing specific goals and needs for gaining a FC as well as a player driven need to explore to find the gold rush rather than just "oh look, another systems has been discovered with nothing new in it, how interesting".

 

[Astrometer]

Can you tell me the name of your system and number of planet?

Prue Eop QG-J d10-17 AB 1

EDSM - Elite Dangerous Star Map

The Galactic Positioning System of Elite: Dangerous at your service.

www.edsm.net

 

[Bran Tse Mallory]

Greetings Commanders...

UPDATE: We are investigating the issues above, and are working on a patch. We will update you with the date for this patch as soon as we have it. Thank you for your continued patience.

o7 Commanders.

Sounds like the QA department is just testing code branches... Again.

Try playing the game, works much better when you test both. Seen this in far to many development environments and it's the most backwards way of working ever conceived. The fact this bug (mistake by a developer) was allowed to go live shows without doubt that your QA department is utterly useless but this is not the first time I have pointed this out.

This is the state that the software industry has gotten itself into by all using the same old tools to make the same old engines do the same old thing... They have streamlined development to the extent it is now just a process and no longer an art form.

Shame on you Frontier for being caught out once more through lack of actual play-testing.

 

[Mengy]

The fact this bug (mistake by a developer) was allowed to go live shows without doubt that your QA department is utterly useless but this is not the first time I have pointed this out.

It's very disconcerting how often a Frontier update to one part of the game breaks completely unrelated things. Its been happening nearly every single update for many years now. Either the QA department has some serious constraints or ineptitudes, or the game's codebase is incredibly spaghettified and fragile.

Or maybe its a bit of both. The lacking communication by Frontier does not help either.

Poor Elite Dangerous. ☹

 

[K-nours]

If you focus on quality your code should be cover by both "unit test" and "integration test" those automated test should be done each time you merge new code in the release branch, the last level of test is human testing helped with a testbook that should be updated each time a bug is corrected so for each version you test that already fixed bug are not reintroduce.

this QA process doesn’t guaranty you don't create new bugs, but ensure you do not repeat the same mistake over and over...

Code coverage is the basic development QA rules, I start thinking this is not in usage anymore or Elite Dangerous is keeping advice from the same QA team as Boeing with their starliner capsule...

 

[Just Ice]

Or maybe its a bit of both. The lacking communication by Frontier does not help either.

I guess from their point of view silence seems to be a better solution then:

"Unfortunately we lost control over source code a long time ago and it's living it's own live for years now.
Every change is a hit or miss.
Just wait patiently until our Shamanism Department finishes their rituals, it seems to be the only way to tame the code and make it do more or less what we are expecting."

 

[Just Ice]

PS. I am not completely joking.
I studied IT (programming mostly) on Technical University a long (20+ years) time ago

And remember that when I was writing some long program for for a few days in a row with sleep deprivation (because deadline was coming or overdue), I have experienced multiple times a state when I was slowly detaching from "my fingers", I have been injecting lines of code though I did not completely understand what impact it will have in "global" view.

But somehow eventually I always succeeded, although when my fellow students were asking me
"What did you do to make it work?"
I could only shrug and answer
"I have no idea".

The funny part was that my experience was not unique, some other have admitted to know this "programmer's trance" state.
I guess it is similar to some writers that write their book not knowing the whole plot : subconsciousness just feeds them with stream of words.

Luckily I don't work as programmer, because it was scary as sh*t, when you realized that some day you may write some code for a hospital or flight control systems.
And you will never completely grasp what you really put there

 

[K-nours]

"Unfortunately we lost control over source code a long time ago and it's living it's own live for years now.

How I imagine the poor community manager each time they have to post about new patch note

 

[Just Ice]

Remember that Braben wrote the first Elite game in year 1984, you could write the whole game alone at this time, because it had to run on computers that had like 38k of RAM (EDIT: Acorn Electron, the original platform, had even less) available for user, so code that was running could not be very long

Even when you did the whole code directly in assembler, you could still have "mapped" your whole code in your mind and predict how any change will impact the rest.

It was fun, but also imprints you with some habits, that turn out to be very dangerous(!) later.

There are ways to avoid this "programmer's overload" I wrote about, which became inevitable when hardware capabilities skyrocketed and "critical mass" of source code you could compile and run exceeded the capability of human mind to grasp the whole thing.

I simply suspect , that ED could have been created a bit too "old school", too "low level", and because of that there are bugs lurking from the beginning, or added later, that originally were not "active", because they appear at specific circuimstances only, but every change to the code can accidentally do just that.

I may be totally wrong of course, it's just my mind game with the question "Why every patch in ED is such a mess" using some ideas that come from personal experience from "the old times",

 

[schmu666]

no patch today?

 

[Just Ice]

no patch today?

As you can see, any changes in code need to be THOROUGHLY tested.
It seems that FD has finally acknowledged that, so:

do not rush the developers!

 

[K-nours]

The true things that actually kill software quality is the speed of internet. Decades ago delivred a patch was way harder than today. So basicaly you just have 1 chance to deliver a good working product. If your product was buggy as , it cost you a lot bacause you have to refund all your customer or engrave new floppy disc or cd and send them to all again.
Nowaday the mentality have change. Delivering unfinished product is the new trend and user should be please if they recieve an update that finish the job...

 

[shadowwar]

The Community Managers are the ones to keep us informed of developments. These people are expected in my mind to manage the expectations of the player base. They are being too rude and ignorant as I see it. They only post when someone blows smoke up their poopoo holes and praises them. Otherwise silence. RUDE!

 

[shadowwar]

no patch today?

No patch any time soon I expect. Even then it may introduce more bugs! Just like every time a patch is issued as long as I can remember! Since 1st BETA of this game. Now the game is being ruined!!!!

 

[Northpin]

UPDATE: We are investigating the issues above, and are working on a patch. We will update you with the date for this patch as soon as we have it. Thank you for your continued patience.

Hi Stephen,

For almost a week LTD prices are consistently below 1 million credits per ton, while before the patch top prices for LTD were between 1.1 and 1.7 millions per ton, depending on BGS condition.

Can you confirm the current prices are intended and will stay like that or it is unintended and it's being investigated?
Asking because i see no mention of LTD prices being "touched" in the patch notes for Patch 3.

 

[Nadreck]

Surely the tritium supplies in stations are held server-side? I get that hotspots would probably be procedurally-generated by the client.

If they could significantly increase the regen rate at stations, enough to get Colonia back on its feet at least, then rescue missions into deep space could begin.

 

[Just Ice]

Now the game is being ruined!!!!

I have played since the release (I missed pre-release betas unfortunately), then had some break, then I came back.

All this drama is amusing.
There were always bugs in ED, some were fixed, some have stayed, some new emerged.

It's just the part of ED experience, I personally like to search for workarounds for things that do not work as they are supposed to.

It introduces some challenge to the current state of ED, which actually became to easy: to progress, to earn credits, to fight NPCs etc...

So, if it have to be bugs that make things more challenging - I couldn't care less about them

EDIT: of course there were game-braking bugs made the in-game activities that are already difficult next to impossible.
Like the invincible thargoid hearts bug.

But all this crying and whining because of LTD credits farming / sparse Tritium in Tri hotspost... LOL
Both issues have workarounds (Painite mining, non-Tritium hotspots).

 

[Just Ice]

The true things that actually kill software quality is the speed of internet. Decades ago delivred a patch was way harder than today. So basicaly you just have 1 chance to deliver a good working product. If your product was buggy as gently caress, it cost you a lot bacause you have to refund all your customer or engrave new floppy disc or cd and send them to all again.
Nowaday the mentality have change. Delivering unfinished product is the new trend and user should be please if they recieve an update that finish the job...

Interesting approach, I have to agree with this.
Of course it's true to some extend, there are many factors that impact the current state of gaming industry products.

 

[Rudi Raumkraut]

Do the two trainees which work on ED still have no patch 4 in the pipe?!

Oh, I forgot, they have to "concentrate on Odyssee"

 

[Just Ice]

You people are amazing.

You can have
- quickly released patch with inevitable new bugs (done in a hurry and not enough tested)
or
- delayed but thoroughly tested patch, with higher chance to fix current issues without breaking many others accidentally.

Chance for a quick and proper patch is like chance to find a lot of LTD in LTD hotspot atm

PS. Of course there is possibility that FD manages to release a "late" patch that is bugged up to the teeth anyway.
But it does not falsify the above statement which is generally true.