Can you tell us if Smear Campaigns are in game yet? Anyone find one with the update?

[Azragon]

I've not seen this for weeks now. I think it may have been certain mission types and perhaps I don't do those.

Any statement I make about stuff is on the basis that bugs are fixed (this is another thing I try to add into my posts as a caveat, like needing to point out that "statement, statement, statement, but not including smear campaigns obv, because they're bugged") I think I'd be quite happy if I didn't have to reiterate that obvious fact in every post but appreciate it's good to qualify it often so. Yes. Bugs notwithstanding, missions are reliable for data mats for engineering (mods, not unlocks, just to be clear again.... see what I mean? )

Don't think it's completely fixed yet, happened to me again today. From a mission giver, but i've kinda given up on complaining about this already, they'll fix it when enough people get mad.

 

[CMDR Rabbit]

This is to say that yes, you do need to embrace Elite's willingness to make most things criminal in some form. So long as you're ok with that, I think asset acquisition is fun. But, if you explicitly force an altruist kind of role on yourself, even to the point that you consider taking items during restore missions "morally ambiguous" enough that you don't want to do it (the act of this, being 100% legal and, I'm guessing, supported because you're doing them a favour) then you're not likely going to enjoy engineering at all.

More an ethical crook than an altruist.

The closest model i could point to would be Mal and Zoe from Firefly. Just y'know, without Zoe's skill at shooting things

We literally have to do 12 illegal missions to unlock two engineers. I can see that this is a blocker for progress for some. I personally just see it as "the way the game is" and play it that way. Until now, my commander always avoided any mission remotely "illegal". No longer the case. It's been made very clear that this is baked entirely into the process of the game in Odyssey. All "legal" factions will willingly ask you to do illegal things. Why bother trying to pretend you're anything else? You literally are working for organisations that will happily off someone because they're inconvenient.

See, in horizons i did LOTS of illegal stuff of the smuggling, criminal passenger ferrying, illegal black box retrieval type of thing. So its not the legality, its conceptual...

I'm preparing this site for say, Sirius Corp, or the Blue Hand Mafia, or anyone else, presumably for them occupy....but i'm gonna pick it clean of stuff first?

"Yeah sorry every panel, locker and container has been sliced open, the data ports are all empty and the sample containment appears to have been emptied out..uhm...wasn't me?"

I would love for there to be more legal variants of all illegal missions and I would much prefer it if illegal missions were more reserved for the anarchy factions. But that's still just missions. I do not want mission rewards to be further saturated by assets. So the options for you are limited:

1) Add Combat based assets - which you've also excluded yourself from by admission of not doing it
2) Exobiology rewards that give assets - which would be a nice addition but would be undeniably way, way more grindy than anything we have now due to rarity
3) ...?

What else?

The game is based on loot, heavily. The obtaining of loot in most games isn't inherantly associated with criminality. In Odyssey, some of it is, some of it isn't. I'd just get over that moral hurdle and get on with it, personally. But appreciate that isn't enough for some.

I think its a different approach, like you see it as a game, i see it as a little vignette narrative making machine .

And now i gotta work o7 CMDR.

 

[Northpin]

Don't think it's completely fixed yet, happened to me again today. From a mission giver, but i've kinda given up on complaining about this already, they'll fix it when enough people get mad.

It happened for me yesterday and the day before... with Audio logs and Manufactured Instructions... The latter were supposed to give 9 pieces after a successful negotiation.
Disappointments's true face

 

[Episparh]

Well, I hope Frontier would have enough time to make their mind on that in the next 2 week before patch 5.

 

[Fishy]

It happened for me yesterday and the day before... with Audio logs and Manufactured Instructions... The latter were supposed to give 9 pieces after a successful negotiation.
Disappointments's true face

At the weekend, as I was after Combatant Performances (10 of them), I found a NPC with a data theft mission offering 5 of them. Negotiated up and increased the reward to 10. Score!

Flew to the settlement, and the mission data failed to spawn at the data port, even after relogging, flying out, etc.

 

[Fenwe]

Hello! I'll add a bit more context to what's happening with Smear Campaigns. Read no further if you don't like a slight peek behind the curtain! We're going to be upgrading the chances of coming across rare/high value data at difficult settlements, and we're also going to be tweaking what is available in some settlement types, which will organically increase your chances of coming across Smear Campaigns where you expect them to be.

This isn't in Update 4, at the moment we're aiming for Update 5.

Thank you for the information sir!

 

[Fenwe]

Yes, absolutely. At a demand of 8, I assume the intended rate is "low". Can't judge it yet anyway.

I just don't think we needed to trade data at any point. All data for engineering upgrades can be gained via missions (all of it) and that just leaves the unlock data. Most unlock data (ignoring smears obv) was OK to get and OPs was the worst so that's sorted now. Still think SDPs should be 5 and not 15 though...

Sir, how did you get your SDPs?

 

[leonardofelin]

Sir, how did you get your SDPs?

Irregular Markers, the ones with two containers, have a crashed Skimmer. Got mine there, 108 relogs to get the needed 15.

 

[Fenwe]

Spot on

That's basically it. In alpha, we said the upgrade requirements were too severe and Fdev reduced them to something way more reasonable. It was still unknown how engineering would work and I was so scared it would be a mess like Horizons. We then had "do 10 missions" unlocks and I was so pleased with that. And then... 40 OPs. Ugh.

The whole community focused hard on that and suddenly we get people trying to say that Odyssey is worse than Horizons. I remember when I first saw the engineer requirements as a whole on Inara and then checked every data item and... they were all on the mission board. I was so happy. Been sort of trying to beat this drum ever since and it's slowly getting through but the whole unlock process has likely tainted that too much. Manufacturing instructions haven't helped either (but the number you need was reduced and no one seems to acknowledge that).

Engineering, the actual process of adding mods, has been so much fun for me. Way more fun than Horizons engineering.

I still want the ability to remove\add mods. It makes no sense that we can't do that.

 

[Fenwe]

Gleaning the body of "cross paths" from your post otherwise, I think it boils down to asset and goods gathering.

I support it because it's varied (settlements are varied, and I think it's really difficult to empiricaly argue against that position) and the methods of acquisition are varied too. I like it because you can skin the cat in multiple different ways. In alpha, everyone thought the only way to get mats was via restore missions (or at least, that's the only way most wanted to do it) and I thought that was horribly limited. So I worked out how to steal it from any settlement. And that approach can be done in a number of different ways. Using ebreaches, arc cutter, cloning, tailgating, violence, avoiding all violence.

This is to say that yes, you do need to embrace Elite's willingness to make most things criminal in some form. So long as you're ok with that, I think asset acquisition is fun. But, if you explicitly force an altruist kind of role on yourself, even to the point that you consider taking items during restore missions "morally ambiguous" enough that you don't want to do it (the act of this, being 100% legal and, I'm guessing, supported because you're doing them a favour) then you're not likely going to enjoy engineering at all.

We literally have to do 12 illegal missions to unlock two engineers. I can see that this is a blocker for progress for some. I personally just see it as "the way the game is" and play it that way. Until now, my commander always avoided any mission remotely "illegal". No longer the case. It's been made very clear that this is baked entirely into the process of the game in Odyssey. All "legal" factions will willingly ask you to do illegal things. Why bother trying to pretend you're anything else? You literally are working for organisations that will happily off someone because they're inconvenient.

I would love for there to be more legal variants of all illegal missions and I would much prefer it if illegal missions were more reserved for the anarchy factions. But that's still just missions. I do not want mission rewards to be further saturated by assets. So the options for you are limited:

1) Add Combat based assets - which you've also excluded yourself from by admission of not doing it
2) Exobiology rewards that give assets - which would be a nice addition but would be undeniably way, way more grindy than anything we have now due to rarity
3) ...?

What else?

The game is based on loot, heavily. The obtaining of loot in most games isn't inherantly associated with criminality. In Odyssey, some of it is, some of it isn't. I'd just get over that moral hurdle and get on with it, personally. But appreciate that isn't enough for some.

This hit the nail on the head, from my perspective. The biggest issue I have with odyssey isn't the criminality of acquiring loot. It's actually that the best way to make credits is to become a drug supplier. I find that unsettling.

 

[Azragon]

This hit the nail on the head, from my perspective. The biggest issue I have with odyssey isn't the criminality of acquiring loot. It's actually that the best way to make credits is to become a drug supplier. I find that unsettling.

I would very much like a legal means of acquiring loot as well, which doesn't involve slaughtering a whole settlement, or looting a client's base while playing the 'electrician', honestly I've gotten very very good at the former and it certainly is highly efficient. But it's hard to spin any other narrative than "they were cold blooded mafioso" or "wiping out a drug operation"

 

[Mormo]

It makes no sense that we can't do that

There is a reason for that - to make ppl grind more. More grind = more exciting gameplay.

 

[leonardofelin]

So, has anyone acquired a Smear Campaign? No? Bummer.
It's nice they'll fix it for Update 5, in two weeks.

 

[Ydiss]

This hit the nail on the head, from my perspective. The biggest issue I have with odyssey isn't the criminality of acquiring loot. It's actually that the best way to make credits is to become a drug supplier. I find that unsettling.

Surely it beats being a slave peddler like in the heady days of ABA trading?

The rest of this is directed in general at those who are disatisfied by "looting" in EDO.

Most games that have loot, which is what materials constitute exactly, will provide it as part of the morally sanctioned murder of monsters or "bad guys", like bandits and denizens of chaos or whatever you want to justify it by. I think EDO at least adds more grey to that mix, where we actually get to choose to get loot via being a good guy, a bad guy, a very quiet-slightly-bad guy (seriously, we finally have proper smuggling and everyone avoids it like the plague because it's "morally wrong" ) , a loud bad guy or a loud good guy, depending on the target settement and what we choose to do in it.

We either have to acknowledge that Anarchy factions are either the "monsters of Elite" (which they're not, that's the Thargoids and I guess that's not going to reward us with Metal Coils either, if we ever get that on foot) or, at least, the bad guys. And I think there's enough of an argument that they're neither. So the alternative is just "let us find loot that's free for looting", otherwise known as scavenging. Which is absolutely in the game, everywhere. Yet, frowned upon.

I don't really know what else Fdev could have done without resorting to literal dungeon crawls with chests and loot, except for just "loot from shooting stuff", which is something I think we should have anyway. But still... people are saying they aren't up for looting from scavenging so what'll make them enjoy looting from killing, whoever the target is (I commonly see distaste for the idea that we loot from inactive settlements... where else should you get it from then?)

If it's at a POI, it's dull, it gets relogged and people hate it. If it's at an active settlement then it's stealing and some people dislike that. If it's at an inactive settlement then it's uh... what is it? Glorified janitor? Ok, so where else then? I just don't see any ideas, I just see people upset about looting. And, I guess, that's an issue given "taking things" is something that's a pretty massive staple of the FPS RPG genre.

The alternative is just "use credits" or "use alternative, cap-limited currency fdev make up instead of credits". What materials are is basically the latter. And we find it in lockers. So I think we should get it for killing stuff too but that's about it. For me, that's the most obvious glaring omission. And I don't see many others here suggesting anything significantly fun sounding in place of "looting".

 

[762s]

It's nice they'll fix it for Update 5, in two weeks.

this type of talk needs to stop and is a big reason people have gotten all upset around here!


the dev did not say it would be in update 5

the dev said " This isn't in Update 4, at the moment we're aiming for Update 5."

so, if it doesnt show up in update 5 dont be upset because that is not what is said

 

[leonardofelin]

the dev did not say it would be in update 5
so, if it doesnt show up in update 5 dont be upset because that is not what is said

My expectations were already low... but you're right.

 

[Ydiss]

this type of talk needs to stop and is a big reason people have gotten all upset around here!


the dev did not say it would be in update 5

the dev said " This isn't in Update 4, at the moment we're aiming for Update 5."

so, if it doesnt show up in update 5 dont be upset because that is not what is said

Nice try. That quote means they promised it for update 5. And, equally, when it's been changed it'll also mean they lied about them being in the game. And probably caused covid-19.

 

[762s]

That quote means they promised it for update 5.

i dont know what english you learned but, nowhere in that quote is there a promise of anything!

 

[Fenwe]

Surely it beats being a slave peddler like in the heady days of ABA trading?

The rest of this is directed in general at those who are disatisfied by "looting" in EDO.

Most games that have loot, which is what materials constitute exactly, will provide it as part of the morally sanctioned murder of monsters or "bad guys", like bandits and denizens of chaos or whatever you want to justify it by. I think EDO at least adds more grey to that mix, where we actually get to choose to get loot via being a good guy, a bad guy, a very quiet-slightly-bad guy (seriously, we finally have proper smuggling and everyone avoids it like the plague because it's "morally wrong" ) , a loud bad guy or a loud good guy, depending on the target settement and what we choose to do in it.

We either have to acknowledge that Anarchy factions are either the "monsters of Elite" (which they're not, that's the Thargoids and I guess that's not going to reward us with Metal Coils either, if we ever get that on foot) or, at least, the bad guys. And I think there's enough of an argument that they're neither. So the alternative is just "let us find loot that's free for looting", otherwise known as scavenging. Which is absolutely in the game, everywhere. Yet, frowned upon.

I don't really know what else Fdev could have done without resorting to literal dungeon crawls with chests and loot, except for just "loot from shooting stuff", which is something I think we should have anyway. But still... people are saying they aren't up for looting from scavenging so what'll make them enjoy looting from killing, whoever the target is (I commonly see distaste for the idea that we loot from inactive settlements... where else should you get it from then?)

If it's at a POI, it's dull, it gets relogged and people hate it. If it's at an active settlement then it's stealing and some people dislike that. If it's at an inactive settlement then it's uh... what is it? Glorified janitor? Ok, so where else then? I just don't see any ideas, I just see people upset about looting. And, I guess, that's an issue given "taking things" is something that's a pretty massive staple of the FPS RPG genre.

The alternative is just "use credits" or "use alternative, cap-limited currency fdev make up instead of credits". What materials are is basically the latter. And we find it in lockers. So I think we should get it for killing stuff too but that's about it. For me, that's the most obvious glaring omission. And I don't see many others here suggesting anything significantly fun sounding in place of "looting".

I agree with everything you wrote, except for one thing. Nothing in EDH was gated behind doing illegal things. Certainly not the engineers. This isn't a big thjing for me, but I can understand why it might be for others. Hopefully the colonia engineers will give players a different set of options. If Fdev puts more in, that is.

 

[Ydiss]

i dont know what english you learned but, nowhere in that quote is there a promise of anything!

Didn't the last line about covid-19 give it away? I didn't think I was that subtle.