The Knights of FD ride hard for muh lady. Try not to be irritated, find some amusement in it.
Double engineered CG rewards have the potential to ruin the game
- Thread starter theothersteve7
- Start date
The Knights of FD ride hard for muh lady. Try not to be irritated, find some amusement in it.
Still waiting for FD to reveal it's a D FSD. C'mon, don't disappoint FD. 
Stick around, bring popcorn, but don't dare say anything negative about the masters, nor their holy orders, else you shall receive mod warnings while being set aflame by their zealots.
The big difference here is that all the previous 1-time rewards are cosmetic in nature or were things that could be obtained through normal gameplay in other ways.
Similarly, most games that do these kind of limited-time events tend to make the "new" content just cosmetically altered versions of existing ones.
This reward will basically screw over new players as they'll now have a module that they'll never be able to obtain. They'll forever be weaker than those who happened to be actively playing during this time period. Could you imagine how the PvP crowd would react if the reward was a class 8A Reinforced/Thermal Resist Prismatic shield? The entire PvP community would be split between the pre-prism and post-prism communities that leaves the latter group forever weaker than the former.
If they continue down this route of offering superpowered modules for limited time events, how do you think a new player joining the game in a couple of years will feel? They'll find it difficult to take down a pirate lord, look up a guide and the guide will say "against Pirate lords in Anacondas, you ideally need the OC/RF class 4 plasma accelerator to deal the bulk of the damage against the hull, while the shields you will want to strip with the paired C2 cytoscramblers with appropriate engineering mods. To resist their attacks over the long fight, the class 7A Biweave is quite important to use as prismatics don't have the regen to sustain you and normal Biweaves go down too quickly, this should be combined with the twin-resist SBs to further improve your shield's resistances." and then they'll find out that most/all of these recommended modules are no longer accessible, which means that they'll be locked out of potential gameplay opportunities (and possibly the top-tier challenges will be practically impossible for them). They have been screwed over simply because they are a new player and there is no way for them to catch up to the existing playerbase.
And to make matters even worse, if they continue down the route of making a new superpowered module for release every month then it becomes a simple matter of number of years played to determine how powerful a player can be. There would be no point going out of your way, spending entire weekends seeking out materials, unlocking things and shopping around for all the various bits of content if the real power just comes from partaking in every single CG. A super-dedicated newbie that has done literally everything possible in their first 3 months of owning the game would still be weaker than a casual who has been playing for 5 years simply because the old-timer has accumulated more of the limited-edition modules.
So, overall, this module release brings in two possibilities:
1) It screws over new players or those who simply want a bit of a break completely by forever cutting them out of content.
2) It is a sneak preview of a dual-modding system that will be appearing in a patch soon enough. This would unfortunately cause further power creep, but I guess it is a very low-effort way of giving players something to do. On the plus-side, it would allow FD to effectively give a dual-modding system a bit of an extended beta test for some of the mechanics before handing us the reins to make our own dual-modded modules.
While I agree in theory, the last double engineered reward was nothing worth missing. Unless the double engineered FD is G5 Increased Range, this one will not be worth missing either. So we will see. If it is G5 Increased Range plus a second Engineering. I will have to agree that a real problem has reared it's head.
Somewhat OT, but I would be fine with, and would actually like to see, double Engineering become a thing provided that you can only have 5 grades applied total. It would open up a lot more interesting build possibilities.
Somewhat OT, but I would be fine with, and would actually like to see, double Engineering become a thing provided that you can only have 5 grades applied total. It would open up a lot more interesting build possibilities.
The module is going to be marginally effective. It's a class 5, so only really useful in ships that have a decent range anyway and the ability to turn on a drive a little quicker is very much a niche thing to have. If it was increased range/shielded, absolutely I'd be agreeing it's overpowered, but they didn't.
Anyway, assuming they're going to keep going down the route of offering stronger and stronger mods to the point of saying we'll get reinforced thermal resistant prismatics is the same as saying the next CG will have a reward of a free fleet carrier. It's not going to happen. We have 2 modules with limited use so far. Extrapolating from there that we're going to end up with something useful to the point of game breaking is a bit of a stretch at the moment, don't you think?
Don't worry, I'll be with you with the torch and pitchfork should focused/efficient PAs become a thing, but we're not there yet. Let's wait for them to get there first or we're shouting about what ifs.
It's not a good idea either.
I expect only the best aspect of each BP to be applied, but it doesn't matter much either way to me. The issue, IMO, has never had much to do with the magnitude of the effect. Rather I have a fundamental problem with how this is implemented from both a gameplay perspective, and an in-setting context perspective.
In my view, if an item is actually unique, it should not also be mass produced. Likewise, if it's a limited run, it should not be replaceable (insurance shouldn't be able to restore it).
There is also the issue of why it would be limited to an arbitrary community goal. If it's possible to create in large numbers, and there is sufficient demand for it, then there would be no reason to stop production, or refrain from restarting it, if demand persisted.
The actual in-game situation of an arbitrarily limited, one-time run, where infinite spares are somehow produced before actual demand is known, or magically produced instantly as replacements, whenever required, is one of the dumbest and most gamist contrivances imaginable.
Yes, the game is already full of these absurdities, but rather than being justified or diluted by past mistakes, stuff like this piles up, and slightly, but tangibly, reduces my enjoyment of the game.
And it's just as bad if my CMDR has one, maybe even worse, as self-handicapping is yet another one of those idiotic contrivances.
So yeah, I have much the same problem with these rewards as I do with the block, permit lock/exclusion zone, or lack of docking queue mechanisms. There is no internally consistent setting where the effects of such could be explained away without pioneering new Frontiers of mental gymnastics.
Still waiting for FD to reveal it's a D FSD. C'mon, don't disappoint FD.
Every grade except perhaps C would have some utilitarian niche. Even E would be useful for power constrained setups.
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I like the idea in principle, but I imagine it would just lead to every weapon being G1 long-range / G4 whatever, completely removing falloff from the game.
Yeah, the elephant in the room regarding Engineering is how non-existent balance among the options/grades is. That being acknowledged, allowing dual Engineering restricted to 5 grades wouldn't hurt things regardless. Min-maxers would have shorter fights, which would be nice, and the rest of us would have more options to toy with.
However, mechanically it is no different - It's a dual-modded module and, in theory, the fast boot mod should be just as powerful in overall terms as any other mod. The fact that they haven't changed it at all suggests that they already think that the fast boot mod is just as good as the normal long range mod; as far as FD is concerned there is no difference between the current dual-mod FSD and a Heavy-Duty/Resistance-Augmented Shield Booster and so why should they limit future releases as such?
So it leaves FD in an awkward position - either they admit that they have massively dropped the ball on balancing engineering mods and proceed to balance all mods appropriately, or they admit that some mods are significantly weaker than others and so they shift them onto their own category of mods that can be combined with the existing primary and secondary mods (tertiary mods?). But the worst possible outcome is that they stick their head into the sand, claim that all mods are balanced and proceed to endlessly and forever cut new/inactive players out of content.
Considering how secondary effects affect the module stats, I'd expect that it would stack multiplicatively for an optimised mass increase of 15% over a normal jump range/mass manager mod, which would result in a 15% increased actual jump range.
If these new dual-mods simply took the best stats from each of the mods, things could quite quickly get even more broken than ever before with other combinations in the future. Imagine an overcharged/RF laser? 70% increased damage, 65% of the distro draw and 78% faster RoF, completely cancelling out both the -5% damage from RF and the 35% extra distro draw of the OC. Dual-mods might even remove the jitter from rapid-fire, depending on how they code it.
Option indices added for ease.
They will go with their usual approach. Option C, but without claiming or saying anything.
That's not what happened with the missile rack from the last CG:
COMPLETED CG - Fight for Liz Ryder and the Eurybia Blue Mafia (Combat)
Noice .. I guess :) Edit: Not much resale value :ROFLMAO:
The only effect that is stacking multiplicatively is the power draw. The others are either unique (distributor draw is better than lightweight G5) or take the best of each mod and ignore the negatives (the mass of the module).
I understand the implications, but I'm going by the only past precedent we have.
While I understand your position, I believe it is quite simple to become poor again. Crash ships and pick the sidewinder. Buy expensive commodities and dump them etc.
But there is a huge psychological barrier to do this.
How about an alt account? There you can begin from scratch. You can still roleplay poverty with the main account, but keep materials, tech broker unlocks and precious modules.
I play ‘dead is dead’ in ED, if I lose a ship I always reset my CMDR, every time. It probably sounds foolish to most people, but it’s a thing...
And there’s no way I could RP a reason to ever dump commodities out the back of my ship...
...or any other way to purposefully become poor.I actually just enjoy restarts. Being in the Sidey again and picking a different career path each time is fun for me.
I was actually a little drunk when I posted here yesterday. On sober reflection i’m not so bothered by Frontiers new “CG motivation modules”...my playstyle just happens to be incompatible with it, not going to lose any sleep.
I also think it could be beneficial just to slow down the process of introducing new ones.
My CMDR's first stealth Clipper retained a 128 ton cargo rack so he could dump dozens of tons of biowaste around RES sites and CZ to hide his unresolved sensor contact from hostiles.
Then they capped the amount of cargo that could be jettisoned without the cans self destructing...
I dont think so.
It's disagreement seasoned with some irony and sarcasm.
The only thing that i find unfair with the current modules is the Top25% limit
Top 75% is makin more sense, imo - ofc.