Players buying G3 Suits and Weapons with Mods

[Hooplah]

Greetings,

It would be nice if the Frontier RNG or however it is done adding mods to G3 items used the ones that apply. Example
a Dominator G3 with damage resistance is great. Adding the mod to an Artemis suit is not all that useful per other
important Artemis mods like improved battery capacity.

A Manticore Executioner G3 (rifle) with audio masking in zero pressure environments (outdoors and no PSI indoors).
A Manticore Tormentor G3 (pistol) with noise suppressor in pressurized environments (indoors).
Awesome but the two I found have the mods reversed! Still they are Manticore G3s and can get the job done if a
player has figured most everything else without getting killed.

And that is the point. Frontier was nice enough to allow G3 purchases with mods to allow players to get into
all the new missions with a little help until we learn how to survive them. Then if successful we start unlocking
all the new engineers, gathering materials and know where to get them and upgrade all our toys to G5.

It seems a lot players did this posting YouTube videos showing how easy this is but most are all using G5 suits
and weapons maxed out! One shot one kill with a Manticore Executioner G5 with audio masking and all the best
mods taking out every NPC at a settlement quietly doing it.

If a player has figured out everything in Odyssey and all the missions mastering them my challenge is to take on
all missions using G1 suits and weapons without any mods and never purchasing any G3 at stations. Yes, some missions
will do this but others will need upgrades and how to get them helping others to do the same. Show me a player on
YouTube who did this they might be the best EDO player of all time! Frontier owes them a medal or a least a dinner.

Odyssey as I see it is a lot about combat legal or otherwise and if a player isn't into to that then don't waste
money on suits and weapons they are never going to use. In my Horizons world I maxed out everything in materials
and came close with Guardian and Thargoid materials. Odyssey has moved the bar higher with more engineers and
materials to gather. If a player isn't all that into combat then it is all pretty much eye candy.

Regards

UPDATE: I found a Karma L-6 G3 rocket launcher with noise suppressor! That should be interesting indoors if it doesn't
blow me up firing too close. Then again someone figured it out firing the weapon but not so much the explosion.

 

[metatheurgist]

Yeah, sorry. I see no point in wasting the dev zots to apply this. The engineers exist for a reason, put the mod you want on an item if you can't find it.

An audiomasked Tormentor is still good as a backup stealth weapon on missions where you don't plan on being quiet indoors. And one day we may even get atmo worlds....

G3 gear is more than adequate for anything, you don't need G5. Mods are very nice edge smoothers for certain things but not required.

Also, stop watching youtube. They give you bad ideas like how you have to murder everyone to get anything.

 

[CMDR Serra]

A G3 unsilenced sniper rifle is perfectly capable of clearing a base. It'll one-shot most enemies with shields down.
Just take your time, be methodical and pick your targets: don't shoot a guy who's chatting to someone else for instance - and you'll be fine.
A silenced sniper rifle (even the indoors version) is fine. Very handy for getting rid of an annoying guard who's about to scan you. "Hold on Commander... Put that weapon away..." ** BLAM**

 

[Felix DiCestria]

Tormentor with audiomasking? I'd chew your arm off!
You're making assumptions about what is and isn't a good mod. That is for individual cmdrs not the game which would inevitably get it wrong.
I am a trader, I find locating the premium stock syncs rather well with my trading.
For a player who can do stuff with G1 gear on YouTube? Ydiss (Stealthboy).

 

[Rat Catcher]

Odyssey has moved the bar higher where if you were a trader for decades one can still trade but are going to get left behind

What are you saying here? Is it possible to expand, or re-word, the comment to clarify, please?

EDO settlements generally pay more for commodities that are in demand than ports in the same system. Demand is lower to reflect the settlement status, naturally.

 

[Felix DiCestria]

I think he means the missions, those tend to be in systems with negative states where you wouldn't normally trade.
If his statements make sense at all.

 

[Kimosabe_X]

What exactly is your point here ? You want FD to have the Pioneer stores only sell "useful" mods on weapons and suits ?

 

[Chaparral]

Do you really need mods? In my limited experience, G3 gear is pretty solid in high rez CZs without mods.

Is it different if you clear bases?

 

[Hooplah]

What are you saying here? Is it possible to expand, or re-word, the comment to clarify, please?

EDO settlements generally pay more for commodities that are in demand than ports in the same system. Demand is lower to reflect the settlement status, naturally.

You're right, didn't make sense to me either. I re-worded it.

 

[Hooplah]

What exactly is your point here ? You want FD to have the Pioneer stores only sell "useful" mods on weapons and suits ?

Sure, that would be nice. I'ts not going to happen and won't bother me in the least. As for immersion it is a little silly to
apply combat mods to an Artemis bio suit. I guess Pioneer Supplies think that they can sell anything to a CMDR!

 

[metatheurgist]

Sure, that would be nice. I'ts not going to happen and won't bother me in the least. As for immersion it is a little silly to
apply combat mods to an Artemis bio suit. I guess Pioneer Supplies think that they can sell anything to a CMDR!

Artemis makes for a great sniper suit (I'm fairly sure it's also what the sharp shooters use even though the NPCs don't jump to high ground). I have one made to fill the role of overwatch in the off chance we ever get gameplay that means it's useful for someone in a team to fill that role. Live in hope.

 

[Caydran]

These suits and guns cost more than a Imperial Courier and you can find them just about anywhere.

I have been playing for almost seven years and still don't have an Imperial Courier, not that I want one.

I think FDev should lower the suit and gun prices quite a-bit here, maybe the cost of a Sidewinder.

 

[Rat Catcher]

These suits and guns cost more than a Imperial Courier and you can find them just about anywhere.

I have been playing for almost seven years and still don't have an Imperial Courier, not that I want one.

I think FDev should lower the suit and gun prices quite a-bit here, maybe the cost of a Sidewinder.

Or just up the prices of ships from those that were set when it could take a month to buy a Cobra III?
With earnings being enough to buy and equip a small ship in just a couple of missions when allied to a faction, the ship prices, these days, are stupidly unrealistic.

 

[Felix DiCestria]

Do you really need mods? In my limited experience, G3 gear is pretty solid in high rez CZs without mods.

Is it different if you clear bases?

I don't do the CZs other than to unlock Ms. Ferrari. I do infiltration mostly and the mods I take reflect that.
Mostly to increase accuracy, eg. Tormentor with hip fire accuracy, stability and faster handling so it actually fires in roughly the same direction I'm facing.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Or just up the prices of ships from those that were set when it could take a month to buy a Cobra III?
With earnings being enough to buy and equip a small ship in just a couple of missions when allied to a faction, the ship prices, these days, are stupidly unrealistic.

This is really a question of whether prices should be set for "game balance" or "realism", though.

For realism, the suits should be a lot cheaper than the ships. Similarly, since SRVs contain power regulators, then power regulators and related commodities should have cash values of a few hundred credits at most and probably a credit or two for the majority. That would, of course, substantially reduce the mission rewards for some and possibly all Odyssey missions.

For game balance, it goes the other way - a G3 suit and weapon set is sufficient to be earning tens of millions of credits an hour in combat zones, complete any mission, etc. An unengineered ship on a similar budget is unlikely to be getting anything like the same income or relative capability, so possibly the suits need to be more expensive.

With enough justified complaints already that Odyssey barely links up with Horizons in terms of gameplay, massively separating the cash baselines for the two so that a single Horizons mission can pay for a full set of Odyssey gear, but a month of Odyssey gameplay can't even afford a Sidewinder would just make things worse.

(This is again where explicitly fantasy settings have a big advantage. No-one has any intuition for what the exchange rate between bat wings, shiny rocks, and seashells should be, or whether a magic sword should cost more or less than a large but mundane barn building, so it can just be set to whatever makes the game work.)

 

[Rat Catcher]

With enough justified complaints already that Odyssey barely links up with Horizons in terms of gameplay, massively separating the cash baselines for the two so that a single Horizons mission can pay for a full set of Odyssey gear, but a month of Odyssey gameplay can't even afford a Sidewinder would just make things worse.

I only ever load Horizons when I'm moving my FC across the 22KLy between bubbles...

I can still earn literally millions of credits in EDO taking faction specific, simple to complete, scan missions, in a very short time. Implying that Odyssey is solely on-foot is misdirection. The EDO surface installations have their own mission boards, markets and on-foot missions if one disembarks. (and the mission boards are faction specific)

But, I suppose if one is not going to fly the free Sidewinder given, even in Odyssey, and only use shuttle transport, then, and only then, would such a narrow choice seriously disadvantage the player is versatility.

On-foot CZs can earn up to 12 million for a single play... On-foot missions can pay well enough to progress rapidly too.

I'd have thought that you, in particular, would have investigated Odyssey pretty thoroughly, but, I suppose if an expansion is not of particular interest to one, such action is easily put aside.

Edit: Correction and clarification

 

[Ian Doncaster]

On-foot CZs can earn up to 12 million for a single play... On-foot missions can pay well enough to progress rapidly too.

This is mostly the point I was making, perhaps badly - at the moment, both Odyssey and Horizons content can earn credits at a decent rate. It's therefore not surprising that Odyssey equipment costs a similar amount to Horizons equipment.

The alternative - Odyssey equipment costing trivial amounts but only being useful to earn trivial amounts - would enforce a disconnection between the new features and the old ones.

I'd have thought that you, in particular, would have investigated Odyssey pretty thoroughly, but, I suppose if an expansion is not of particular interest to one, such action is easily put aside.

It wasn't an expansion concept I was particularly interested in - the same has been true of most "headline features" - but I gave it enough of a go over the first six months to pick up a decently upgraded set of suits and weapons and learn my way round the various bases.

Unfortunately, fun as it was in itself, very little of it fits in with my normal activities so about all I use of it nowadays is a bit of exobiology and the occasional landing at a new settlement where it's more convenient.

Two tiny changes would be all that were needed for me to use it a lot more: Odyssey mission boards available from the ship at least when at a conventional starport ; Odyssey delivery missions - or indeed other types but delivery is obvious - that don't require return-to-source to get paid. Then I'd pick up those missions while wandering around in the same way I pick up cargo or ship missions now. Obviously I'm not expecting either to happen.

 

[Morbad]

Some mods on pre-modded gear are fairly non-nonsensical. I'm not sure if they are entirely random or if there is a weight to what mod will be on what, but it would make sense if there were. Not a huge deal either way though.

They give you bad ideas like how you have to murder everyone to get anything.

Well it is faster when you know each NPC will only encounter you once.

(This is again where explicitly fantasy settings have a big advantage. No-one has any intuition for what the exchange rate between bat wings, shiny rocks, and seashells should be, or whether a magic sword should cost more or less than a large but mundane barn building, so it can just be set to whatever makes the game work.)

If a game is to work beyond the most superficial levels and have any real depth, things like economics can't be ignored, even in the most fantastic of settings. And the more fantastic the setting the more work this is because fewer real-world sources can be used without modification and the more players have to absorb before they can have their characters interact competently with the world.

As for magic swords, when one realizes that making a sword +3 in old school editions of D&D required months of research and dangerous adventuring, spells or scrolls from a 16th+ level Wizard who had to be willing to risk permanently losing a point of their constitution score, still had a fair chance of failing, and could fairly easily be destroyed (item saving throws!) while adventuring...it did imply a fairly significant value that was, by the middle of 2nd Edition, well codified into the rules. IIRC, a large barn would cost something like 500 'gold pieces' to have built from scratch, while that sword +3, if one could be found for sale at all in a moderately-magic heavy campaign, was recommended to be worth at least 15000 gold. And all this is for a weapon that typically has a 15% higher chance of wounding a foe...not that such an advantage wasn't a big deal in a life-or-death situation, or that people wouldn't rightly covet such an edge.

Of course, even if the specific details are a mystery, the relative rarity and utility of items should hint at their value. Basic supply and demand should hold almost irrespective of setting or genre, and obvious exceptions should have some explanation. Players in my table top game have had enough sense to, once they realized what they'd found, throw a randomly generated vorpal sword down a well, cash out of all local holdings, and then book passage to the furthest port they'd ever heard of. Anyone, or anything, capable of creating, or making a serious attempt at taking possession of, such an item wasn't likely to find a squad of low-level adventurers much of a challenge, nor would have any compunctions about using force to retrieve/acquire it. It would be like finding an intact MIRV, or suitcase full of money, in the real world; I had made sure, though various prior, organic, exposition (they quickly learned how rare powerful wizards are, how much more rare powerful permanent magic items are, and that something special is invariably made for a reason), that the players understood the (FY1980) implications of their characters' find.

Anyway, I like my fantasy to make sense and I don't consider it advantageous when no one has any idea of how their character's world works. It may make it easier for those running the game to get away with sloppiness, but the lack of internal consistency has enormous costs to plot and gameplay. It creates a disconnect between cause and effect that undermines the predictive abilities of reason and therefore the value of rational thought, planning, and foresight. As a storyteller it's hard inspire meaningful reactions if the implications of some facet of an encounter go right over everyone's head or are discounted with a O'Reilly-esque ("tides come in, tides go out...you can't explain that!") shrug because the setting is impossibly vague or counterintuitive. As a player it's frustrating to figure out how approach phenomena in a world without without apparent rhyme or reason.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

If a game is to work beyond the most superficial levels and have any real depth, things like economics can't be ignored, even in the most fantastic of settings. And the more fantastic the setting the more work this is because fewer real-world sources can be used without modification and the more players have to absorb before they can have their characters interact competently with the world.

Certainly the system still needs to have a coherent economic basis for pricing, but there's more flexibility over what that basis is.

As you say, in early D&D magic items were incredibly difficult to make and therefore very expensive compared with mundane items. Equally, a different fantasy setting might have at least minor enchantments be somewhat routine to apply, most items go from the blacksmith to the village witch before being put to use, while a barn still consists of a huge amount of wood and many person-days of labour to construct. Either is fine, but you have the freedom to pick one and then find ways to get which it is across to players.

Similarly the Elite Dangerous setting could be turned into one - with relatively small modifications - where raw materials and large-scale fabrication are cheap, but miniaturisation is expensive. So a Sidewinder is basically a bunch of sheet metal bolted together at the macro scale, even the more "precision" components are still several micrometres across, and you're mostly paying for the several tonnes of material needed ... while a Maverick suit is about three credits of raw materials and half a million of fabrication time for the atomic-scale manipulation needed. And that could also be coherent ... but unlike the two different fantasy options, would still grate against people's pre-conceptions of what a high-tech world is like.

 

[Morbad]

people's pre-conceptions of what a high-tech world is like.

I don't really consider this a big problem, if the setting is fleshed out well enough to explain a bit of the why things are. Elite's failings are all the internal contradictions that aren't adequately explained. It's not that there is a hidden method to the maddness, it's that no one even bothered to try to make it make any sense.

People have all sorts of stupid and wrong preconceptions anyway, even about the real world they actually live in. Real-world space suits are not cheap, and once you account for inflation you get a per-unit cost that rivals a jet fighter. The most expensive small arms that can't just be substituted with something cheaper of near identical functionality are still a tiny fraction of the cost of either. Most of this is economy of scale, which is evident almost everywhere, but still poorly understood by most people. You can still point out things, or leave meaningful examples that can be brought up as precedent later.