Just caught up with this. Bang on Derthek. . Add my signature to the letter
I would however add we are 15/16 months into the game and still no alien bad guys to shoot. The game needs real conflict and persistence derived for that. Not power play persistence. Broken stations from Thargoids assaulting it- that sort of persistence of story and environment. To be honest - I would be happy with some consistency in the story, and CG story involvement, for now. Near future, they really need to bring in bad guys we can kill, with little moral concern. Ones we can hate. (Ok we have SDC- and in some ways FDev's support of them is a bit of a cop out of developing a true antagonist in the game)
Bottom line is the alien/human story line desperately needs moving on, not circum locution, it needs persistence, credible action/reward/risk CGs and a proper adversary- stat.
On holiday around Europe at the moment, and will be for another 3 weeks still so I'm a little out of touch besides what I read on Galnet and the OP (and thus, don't really have time to read the 7 pages here).
I noticed the most recent Galnet article about this story arc was yet another prod to sell Meta-Alloys at stations to "restore" them.
I think it's worth bringing up this old bugreport I put in a while back regarding my shipments of UAs (over 300) to Walker Survey failing to cause any failure and, since then, a second station whose name I can't remember as I don't have my notes, where I sold 100.
Before anyone goes down the same path of some commenters in that bugreport, bear this in mind: Regardless of whether the mechanic to cause station failures via shipping UAs was an automated process (very unlikely) or the result of FD staff monitoring sales and manually "injecting" these failure events (much more likely), it doesn't really matter. Whatever the mechanic was, it failed to cause these stations to fail. QA-Jonny goes as far as saying it's "been bugged" (whatever that means) and has passed on for further investigation.
With that in mind, I don't want to waste time sending MAs to stations only for this "hidden" mechanic which probably controls station failure *and* station restoration only to have it simply not work. Grinding Meta-Alloys is far more tedious (and dare i say, meta) than grinding UAs, which is actually interesting by comparison (see spoiler below).
Meta Alloys spawn in fixed points on planets. Nobody really knows why, and that's what we're stuck with. Maybe there's a pattern, but who knows.
Once you get to a MA spawn site your options are:
- Harvest MA's, log out/in, rinse, repeat (efficiency); or
- Harvest MA's and expend more time flying between different sites (much less efficient, more interesting, maybe before you've done the loop 10 times).
As for UA's, they spawn in SSS at any system 135-150LY around Merope.
- SSS aren't guaranteed to be UAs, but usually are. You can run the risk of hitting pirate spawns in which case you have to keep a cool head to escape with a possibly malfunctioning ship.
- Efficient harvesting is sitting in the one system at 30km/s pulling in UAs from SSS.
- Less efficient, more interesting way is to explore the systems as you wait for SSS to spawn. There's thousands, so lots of variety.
- (the exciting bit) UAs cause ship malfunctions. Cool-headed tactics can minimise this risk, but there reaches a point now (16+ UAs) where death becomes almost guaranteed, as it will knock out your canopy in one hit at that point, then you're on the clock to get back to civilisation in the time you life support allows.
- (more excitiement) Malfunctions increase in frequency the more you carry. It's always a trade-off of how many you feel comfortable carrying vs efficiency of travel. My PB was 23, which is almost impossible now due to canopy malfunctions. Still, it's a constant gamble.
- Known spawn mechanic introduces reliability to doing other activities while searching, as opposed to fixed spawns which lock you in place doing a single activity.
So, I'm not really interested in grinding a (silly) mechanic which may not even recognise my contributions, based on past experience to such things. I shipped 200 MAs during the time I could spare for the recent CG, but it was very dry and tedious.
Oh, in case anyone wondered, I'm not part of Canonn.
Putting my name in here for support too, for what it's worth.
When I saw the new CG I was excited because I love having an excuse to ahng out in and around Maia and the Pleiades.
I packed my bags, hyperspaced my way over to Maia and picked up the CG.
I flew to one of the Pleiades Sector systems, where there are 5 Barnacles in one crater, picked up 8 or the 10 MAs available there and... it struck me.
Was I going to have to only deliver 10 at a time? Or was I going to to the log in/log out trick?
I didn't fancy doing the trick, as I had literally finished doing it to get my Corvette and wasn't up for it again.
So I just kinda... stopped. I logged out and didn't play Elite again for a while.
I get that there are only so many ways the world can truly be dynamically be interacted with at the moment. Functionally hand in cargo or vouchers. But I would have much rather FD had told us ''Thanks for all your participation. The next story advancement is coming with 2.1, we are sorry for the delay.'' rather than kinda just string us along with generic CGs.
I also, for what it's worth, kinda have more of a problem of the side-effect of these CGs. They turn the mystery and wonder of the Barnacle into a trip down to the Co-op to pick up some MAs while I'm out already. I feel like you can ONLY do one of two things; Make them more plentiful for CG purposes but kill their uniqueness and mystery... or keep them creepy and super-rare so that you truly appreciate your time spent with one of the rare beasts
I think it's worth bringing up this old bugreport
...
With that in mind, I don't want to waste time sending MAs to stations only for this "hidden" mechanic which probably controls station failure *and* station restoration only to have it simply not work.
Geez, really? I missed that one. Luckily, since 'time wasting' bugs like this frustrate the hell out of me. This confirms my decision to ignore story and CGs - all 'non-standard' mechanics probably won't work anyway.
FDev should really start to do this properly - or stop it completely. IMHO: As things are, they don't do the game much good and bind valuable resources at FDev. Currently, I hope the delay in 2.1 is an indication for the first option. But I am strongly prepared to be severely disappointed.
I think it's worth bringing up this old bugreport I put in a while back regarding my shipments of UAs (over 300) to Walker Survey failing to cause any failure and, since then, a second station whose name I can't remember as I don't have my notes, where I sold 100.
Before anyone goes down the same path of some commenters in that bugreport, bear this in mind: Regardless of whether the mechanic to cause station failures via shipping UAs was an automated process (very unlikely) or the result of FD staff monitoring sales and manually "injecting" these failure events (much more likely), it doesn't really matter. Whatever the mechanic was, it failed to cause these stations to fail. QA-Jonny goes as far as saying it's "been bugged" (whatever that means) and has passed on for further investigation.
With that in mind, I don't want to waste time sending MAs to stations only for this "hidden" mechanic which probably controls station failure *and* station restoration only to have it simply not work.
Shame that. Not that I had a personal hit list of stations that were going to be receiving the benefits of a sudden expansion in the galactic UA trade when these resistant cargo racks make an appearance. Much.
OP makes fair points but the use of the term 'Open Letter' detracts. It is a legal term and so clearly misunderstood in the context of the forum posting. It also has no bearing on whether or not it is noticed by FD or (more importantly) acted upon.
Shame that. Not that I had a personal hit list of stations that were going to be receiving the benefits of a sudden expansion in the galactic UA trade when these resistant cargo racks make an appearance. Much.
Tangentially, the whole reason I did this wasn't to take down stations*, but to actually determine how the mechanic worked and whether there was background monitoring of sales, or FD just reacting to forum/reddit chatter. Walker Survey was kept "under wraps" until such a point as I could guarantee I'd shipped enough UAs to cause a failure based on previous examples (I don't have handy links, but in some cases 50-60 UAs did it), which was my test to see if there was automated monitoring, at which point I tried announcing it. Obviously neither achieved anything.
Also...
Whatever the mechanic was, it failed to cause these stations to fail. QA-Jonny goes as far as saying it's "been bugged" (whatever that means) and has pRhubarb on for further investigation.
*I had a UA collection CG which got denied just before the first MA CG due to similarity, but the crux of that was for my minor faction to attempt (success or fail; doesn't matter) to weaponise UAs. This is pretty standard behaviour when humans encounter strange new tech... but alas, no dice to date, though it doesn't mean I won't try again.
OP makes fair points but the use of the term 'Open Letter' detracts. It is a legal term and so clearly misunderstood in the context of the forum posting. It also has no bearing on whether or not it is noticed by FD or (more importantly) acted upon.
