If you could make one change to E:D

[[VR] scipio_77]

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combat in elite is not really only 'mindless pew-pew'. there are military vessels and several levels of danger, and different combat contexts, powerplay and also now scenarios (i confess i don't know either how exactly those work). i can agree that's not too nuanced and somehow mixed together, and while i'm not sure to grasp exactly what you mean (i've not played fe2 either), it's clear to me that the fact you can be allied with everyone while still blowing up everyone's stuff gets in the way. that always seemed off to me, and i might be wrong but i suspect that's intended: frontier simply does not want you to be able to plan and pursue destruction of factions with that level of liberty and efficiency in their galaxy. they have always been very reluctant to that. look at the mess simple ua hauling could get them into.

although bombing and surveillance runs do sound good, and unique tactics (specially if they affect ia behavior) too. just remembered that trailer with base assaults ...

It's not, the flight model and system management is actually deceptively complex. Easy to learn, difficult to master.

However NPCs aren't too strategic. Difficulty in PvE comes mostly down to inflated numbers. You can also engineer your ship in ways so that you can fly it like a complete nit and it won't matter for most PvE. Of course, it does down come to code... intelligent combat behavior for a 3d-space with Newtonian mechanics is a daunting task. But the end result is that for most PvE-encounters, mastering the flight model is only rewarded by personal satisfaction. You don't need to do so. It does feel good when you're dancing away from all shots, maximizing your own impact and do some elegant fa-off maneuvering though.

What is perhaps worse is that when something is difficult (wing missions, interceptors), the difficulty spike is suddenly enormous compared to the regular PvE stuff. There is no in between.

NPCs also really never employ group tactics, which gives the whole thing a haphazard and random feel, instead of acting out like a battle.

 

[Garbarrage]

I can't really think of something that everyone would agree with.

I think most of this game's problems stem from FDev trying to be agreeable to everyone, resulting in a game that doesn't do either MMO or single player particularly well. I think the game would have been far better served if they'd picked one and just done it really well. Game design by public committee seems in retrospect, a very bad idea.

 

[iFred]

Simulated real economy including production chains.

 

[Spaceman Si]

Can't decide between

1: Make the FSS optional, and reintroduce the possibility of flying to objects to scan them (preferably with a sysmap like the ADS generated). Pilots choosing to discover objects by flying to them would get an additional bonus or some extra tag to show that they put the effort in to fly there.

2: Remove the background tinting.

Though to be fair, I think Drew's suggestion of offline, so "Then I wouldn't have to suffer all the changes other people want." is the most expedient

 

[hugo_za]

• More variety in locations. Seen one barren rocky world, you've seen them all.
• Functional ship and station interiors with skill trees (think Hellion). Hole in cargo hold after a battle? Go down there and fix it!

 

[Franc Kaos]

Being able to land on more than two planet types...

EDIT: Since everyone else is doing more than one thing:
Ingame NPCs wandering and EVA'ing about... and those long missing comets!

 

[Jmanis]

So... the more detailed response now:

it's clear to me that the fact you can be allied with everyone while still blowing up everyone's stuff gets in the way. that always seemed off to me, and i might be wrong but i suspect that's intended: frontier simply does not want you to be able to plan and pursue destruction of factions with that level of liberty and efficiency in their galaxy.

That's no longer the case RE: Blowing stuff up and staying allied: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/hostile-from-fighting-in-cz-no-missions-taken.510915/

I disagree Frontier don't want people to plan destruction; they have very deliberate mechanics which appear in response to the negative states:

• Famine causes lots of source-food missions, and makes Food highly profitable.
• Bust, well, I don't really know enough about it to determine it's effects
• Lockdown causes station services to shut down
• Civil Unrest causes the more lucrative and exciting (Read: Engineered pirates) Pirate Activity USS to spawn

Additionally, the sourcing of certain materials for engineering can only occur in states such as Famine.

Conversely, there is absolutely no negative effects from having Hostile superpower rep; I'm currently -100% with Federation, yet Federal stations continue to welcome me with open arms.

I belive the core issue is a bad assessment of what should cause positive effects and what should cause negative effects. I'm not up to traipsing through the whole video at the moment to find the quote, but in the below video:

Spoiler

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5DGyG6Qwvk

... There's a moment where one of the Dav or Adam say something which, in essence, goes "Positive states are caused when players are successful, negative effects are caused when players fail activities... as such there's a prevalence of good states, and less bad states"

That was said at a time when missions didn't generally carry any negative-effects for the targets of them... and states like Famine didn't cause Food to become highly profitable in those systems.

So since then, we've actually seen FD actually incentivise those negative states overall, and the introduction of end-effects for missions which cause them. Pre-3.3 BGS change, states like Famine, Bust, Lockdown and Civil Unrest were much easier to achieve as they were independent, unopposed states... the Bust bucket could fill up regardless of how the Boom bucket progressed. Of course, being pending Boom and Bust at the same time was a pretty inconsistent and confusing situation, so they made them different ends of a sliding scale so that only one could happen. That's reasonable, but by doing that it's highlighted the major disparity in activity effects caused by opposing the states.

Economic and security states aside, the lack of targeted negative actions also makes Retreat virtually impossible to achieve these days:
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/retreat-tried-several-times-in-vain-your-ideas.480591/

and while i'm not sure to grasp exactly what you mean (i've not played fe2 either),

So in FE2, you went to the Bulletin Board (aka the mission board) and you'd find, among other missions or activities, the Navy Recruiter ad:

Note that in FE2, it was only Federal and Imperial superpowers.

If you selected that, you'd get a list of missions. The missions offered were based on your naval rank:

• No/Low Ranks: Basic no-risk A->B courier missions
• Low Ranks: Better A->B Courier missions with a risk of interdiction by opposing naval forces
• Medium Ranks: Assassination Missions
• High Ranks: Surveillance Missions (flyover base at close range =~ 2km and take photographs, under fire from multiple naval aircraft)
• Highest Rank: Bombing Mission (Actually easier than surveillance... fire nuke at base from =~ 1000km away, run away)

Basic bulletin board also offered courier and assassination missions. The difference between them was the basic bulletin board gave random assassination/delivery targets in somewhat random systems. Military courier missions were always to an allied system (So, Imperial->Imperial) while assassination/surveillance/bombing missions always targeted federal installations (and the way the game was laid out, these were always 2-3 jumps away).

Progressing rank with one military made it progressively harder to make any rank in the opposing navy (so if you were an Imperial Lord, it was virtually impossible to rank up with Federal Navy at that point), and given most missions were criminal in their target jurisdictions, you'd become wanted (and in FE2, that meant you couldn't dock at any station controlled by that superpower, as opposed to ED where they barely bat an eyelid). The critical thing was, although FE2 didn't have a BGS like ED, the naval mission board was a reliable method for accessing missions targetting the other superpower's holdings.

Fast forward to ED.... missions are just to random factions in random systems, and while conflicts will have a faction target the opposition for the duration of them, your rank has absolutely no bearing on them; I can support a Federal faction regardless of if I'm a nobody, a Federal Fleet Commander, or an Imperial King. Put bluntly, superpower allegience means nothing, naval rank means nothing, and there's a dearth of available activities which cause negative effects. Those things sound perfect to roll together into a proper military system where you can target other superpowers with negative state effects and reap both the rewards and consequences of your allegiance choice.

 

[VR SenseiMatty]

I can't really think of something that everyone would agree with.
The new USS system or mining on the other hand is probably the best thing that was added to the game since a long time.

Can you name something that gets supported by a vast majority but isn't on their to do list yet?

We don't know their to do list, that's the problem. But here there are few suggestions.

I recently posted this about NPC Multicrew.
One FDEV could have show up and say "hey great idea, we will include it in our roadmap" or "Nice idea, but this takes a lot of effort and at the moment our pipeline is full".

Another one that gets always a lot of consents is new type of SRV's with specific roles and additional gameplay. FDEV could show up and say "while we cannot integrate all great suggestions here, I will push the team to release at least one new SRV for the end of the year!".

More exploration contents and things to find in the galaxy. It would be nice if with the small updates instead of realeasing only weapons they would release some new phenomena or cool things to find. I would expect something like "hey guys we have a couple of options for the next update: do you prefer a new weapon to kill Thargoids with some gameplay to unlock it or do you prefer a completely new stellar phenomana to discover in the galaxy?"

Another post that received a lot of thumbs up was the one where I showed improved system arrival from witch space and improved seamless transition from supercruise to normal flight approaching a starport. FDEV could've show up just to say "Hey nice improvement here. Improving the arrival transitions is not part of our near future release, but since many people seems to push for it we will see if we can find a place in our priority list" or "Nice ideas here, I will discuss with the team if we can put this somehere in our plan but don't expect anything soon because our prioirty list is already full of things that you will love for sure"

There is also a megathread about small things that break immersion that has never been considered in the updates.

Last but not least, Legs and atmospheric landings have been requested long before engineers, guardians and thargoids. Legs leaked but not confirmed and still no info about atmospheric planets. So this is a clear sign that they have a roadmap which do not interact with the community.

 

[Northpin]

Module stacking re-balancing as in:

• Military modules (HRP, MRP, SCB) limited to military slots only
• Shield Boosters - limited to maximum 1/2 of number of Utility Slots. Max 3 for FDL, Max 4 for Anaconda/Cutter/ etc - you get the idea

 

[Riverside]

Excluding putting the ADS back into the game and nerfing Frontier's obsession with secrecy I'd go with cross-platform instancing I think.

 

[[VR] M4st0d0n]

Mod support.

 

[DragonIV]

Redesign SC to be way less "watch netflix time." I'd suggest finding a way to shorten longer trips--methinks choosing a destination star and/or micro jumps in system are the two best approaches to get this done.

 

[Lightspeed]

Flimley points. Triple Elite pilots need to work towards a golden \o/ decal.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

It dends on how much time/money/effort we were allocated for this change.

(possibly? relatively?) Minor change: See our NPCs in cockpits, ability to fill seats with NPCs even if you don't have SLF/turrets. New SRVs as well.
Medium change (months of work?): Add powerplay missions, make changes to make powerplay more interesting (won't go into details here, far too long, but no, it wouldn't include making it open only).
Large change (sky is the limit): Add atmospheric worlds, life on planets, etc

 

[gpcustoms]

Two issues for me but if I had one choice then I would say its the lack of NPC individuals in ports(landing towers/parks/walkways/ground crew) even if they were static it would be a step above the empty ghost town effect the lack of people create. Would it really be that much trouble to add a few stick figures around.....Perhaps the remains on crash sites. This alone would be an interesting detail that I feel is lacking.

 

[starman]

Either.

1) Getting rid of Witchspace and allow ultra-high C interstellar Supercruise at tens of thousands of Cs

or

2) Enable all FSDs to use all their fuel for jumps, rather than limiting it to a certain tonnage. So stupid.

or


3) Allowing us to choose which star to jump to in a binary/trinary/quaternary system.
So I don't have to jump in at freakin' A and SC to B or C, 100000Ls away. Borrrrrinnnnnggg......

Excuse me could you please define one? I really the resultant operation of those statements does resolve in to on yet 3 points were made . Actually its a very clever answer.

The how? Everything in the game is there for a reason. And not in any players control.
You cant just 'get rid of witch space'

But a hutton orbital star gate would be good.

 

[starman]

Mod support.

Is that even technically possible as it stands?

Planet coaster is stand alone offline.

What could be modded that would not impact other player interaction?

The commander creator could be a standalone 'toy'

 

[BigBANGtheory [VR]]

I'd salvage 1950s technology to allow my FTL space ship simple auto-pilot navigation. Long distance travel in ED just does my head in.

 

[VR SenseiMatty]

Either.

1) Getting rid of Witchspace and allow ultra-high C interstellar Supercruise at tens of thousands of Cs

or

2) Enable all FSDs to use all their fuel for jumps, rather than limiting it to a certain tonnage. So stupid.

or


3) Allowing us to choose which star to jump to in a binary/trinary/quaternary system.
So I don't have to jump in at freakin' A and SC to B or C, 100000Ls away. Borrrrrinnnnnggg......

Yes number 3 could be an option. Stellar forge doesn't know that there are multiple stars until you drop in the system and it generates the bodies, so we would just need a slightly longer transition that gives the time to the system to generate the multiple stars and place your ship to the new relocated position.

In undiscovered and unpopulated systems it should be possible to make a microjump. There's nothing in the lore that blocks this since in the star clusters we have indipendent stars closer than 0.22LY and we can jump to each.

 

[ebbrell]

make it dangerous, we exit SC too close to stations, and nothing attacks you with data missions.... and being hostile to a power mean nothing attacks you from an opposing power.

just make it dangerous.... its in the name