Answers from the Devs #3

Status
Thread Closed: Not open for further replies.
Hi FD Team :

Here is my question already posted last week :

Question : Capital Ship

1) First well introduced, not enough powerfull
2) Buff but players used last kill mecanism to cheat with turrets
3) Nerf last kill OK (fair) but now Capital Ship are a pain in standard battle because ennemy doesn't last long enough

=> So : Do you think there is an issue ? Capital Ships are for me a Colossal element of design but right now it is not very well integrated in game design.

Do you intend to fix something ?

Will we have large space battles really using it ?

For instance : capital ship firing on a station or another capital ship, only used turrets to direct attacker, make other IA spacecraft avoiding to take aggro and stay around in small spaceship dogfight ?


Hope you'll do something.

Thanks for reading and have a nice Gamescom.

Regards.
 
Last edited:
Answer to number two has already been given as "Craigslist". Also, basically most Pawn Shops fence stolen goods.

High tech comms allow illegal activity to be facilitated. The posts can be short-lived and rotate, making it hard for stretched authorities to expend resources to track down all the minor dealings.

Would be good to see enhancements and for the smuggling missions to make more sense though. There should never be a dumb smuggling reward where it pays far more than a ship and pilot would cost to buy for the fetch mission. Also, it shouldn't require goods be stolen- who cares if you are smuggling illegal goods to a system whether they are originally stolen or not? That might make sense for a purely criminal organization to prove your bona-fides, but just to truck in liquor where the county is dry shouldn't require the liquor be stolen to start with, that is just daft.

Thanks for the update. Great information. Three questions.

Why does smuggling prohibited goods (outside of mission and slaves) constantly pay less than risk free trading rather than at least twice as much?

What is the sensible in game reason for every single black market being featured on system maps?

Why do local system authorities pay trade dividends on black market goods?
 
Hi,

Really like these answers from the devs post, however I have a question:

When will more decals be available to buy from the Frontier store?

And expanding on this: has consideration towards user created decals being purchasable on the store been made? If you publish the specs required, and vet the user submitted designs by the community team then like with the app store model, you could take say 30% of the 79p or whatever charged.
 
Hi

I am liking the added info coming from you guys lately... So thanks.. With that, onto my question and it is regarding eyecandy.


Are there any plans to add cosmetic damage / and then eye candy repairs to the stations etc?. Going a step further, months ago there was a CG to build a new station, will this likely be expanded on and happen "live" on the servers with 10s of stages rather than 3 stages which only happen after a server reboot

(I am thinking the DeathStar in Return of the Jedi ;) )

thanks
 
Last edited:
Ask it again, might come up in the next one. Sorry, just lots of questions to ask. :)

Won't be one till after Gamescom now. :)

Ok. I'll ask mine again too... :)

"Report Crimes Against Me"

Hi Zac

I don't know if a dev has answered this before, but I would be very interested in knowing something about this mechanism / feature. It is sometimes put forward on the forums that if you do not have this enabled in the options, a ship attacking you will not become wanted (assuming you are clean and not in anarchy space). Is this correct?

I have been under the impression that all this does is alert the authorities to a crime, and has nothing to do with the setting of wanted status of your attacker, and that is the reason that authorities will scan everyone involved in the fight when they turn up (assuming you have it set on).

Thanks

TL;DR - Does "Report Crimes Against Me" need to be on in order for a ship that attacks a player to become wanted?
 
Last edited:
A few shots for the next Answers from the Devs:

#1 Overall Design

Does FD still intend to implement the overall DDF designs, recognizing that some may be too difficult to code or change slightly after coding starts? No timeline, no specific commitments, just in-general, is this still what FD are doing?

I really cannot imagine what FD would do after Power Play other than stick to what has been discussed in overall terms. The original design documents are so excellent, doing otherwise would not make sense to me. Yet many in the community have asked this many, many times and there is no generalized answer to the question, although some specific items get answers like Orrey View still "on the list", and Mission enhancements in the works, etc.

#2 Beauty Shot and Machinima Tools
The many streamers and YouTubers have IMHO been fantastic and free marketing for ED. Given some of the stunning videos, does FD have any plans to provide any new tools at all to allow awesome fan-videos and machinima?

Two examples. In various racing games and flight sims where the program can be toggled to "record" video or positional data from the game that can later and only off-line be viewed from various angles in a replay mode. Also, the original Elite had various cameras the player could toggle to view things. Isn't it really inexcusable in 3300 AD not to have rear and downward facing cameras for safety, docking and situation awareness? It just seems really silly of FD to insist these not be in the game in any form? IIRC, the original docking design mentioned having to use the down camera to be sure of alignment and position over the landing pad?

#3 Planetary Body Composition
The Stellar Forge contains lots of data about planets and presumably about asteroids. Are there plans to pull in the information about the composition of these bodies into exploration and mining? For instance, to make it more apparent what elements and what processes are required by Explorers to identify say, the atmospheric composition, surface liquids and solids and then what lies beneath (minerals, elements, gases, liquids)?

#4 Weather Variation on Different Planetary Bodies
Does FD aim to model a variety of weather conditions on planetary bodies as we see in our own solar system such as the violent, hot furnace of Venus, sand-storms on Mars, various Earth weather events, and the massive gas cloud storms on gas giants?

#5 Geologic Activity on Planetary Bodies
Various states of volcanic activity can not only influence weather, but are interesting to watch in their own right. Will we see planets with active volcanoes and other evidence of geological changes which will be interesting to witness?

#6 Locked Doors
When FD gets around to EVA mode and exploring Outposts, Space Stations and cities on planets, which is probably years away, is the intent to use Procecural Generation to have every room explorable? Or is the practicality that there will there be mostly "locked doors" that prevent players entering except for specific areas like shops? I am interested in the technical achievement of PG being able to remove "locked doors" despite any objections to "make it meaningful". I think that ultimately with the game built-out and having persistent NPC that missions could be generated that target specific PG created buildings and rooms as either starting or target points.

#7 Destructible Environments and Stuff (because, fun!)
Given ED uses a lot of PG and it is impossible to store data on the exact look and physical status of every object in the game, will we ever see destructible environments where damage persists? Something more than just ships.

#8 Asteroids as Realistic Objects
Will it ever be possible to tow a smaller asteroid or push it out of its acquired, stable orbit? I don't want players drawing persistent lewd pictures by shoving asteroids around but think in a given instance ships are powerful enough that they could cause asteroids to move and collide.

#9 Flight Model and Projectile Firing
Wondering about the full complexity of the physics of ships, does firing a physical projectile impart an equal and opposite force on the ship that fires it? If so, FAOn would obviously counter the force, but with FAOff should a ship's position and momentum be changed when it fires a cannon?

#10 Ship Damage Models
Will we ever see damage models like the Anaconda interior from the Kickstarter videos? Is this something that will come with EVA mode?

#11 Capital Ships and Conflict Zones
Does FD have any schemes to make it possible to "settle" a battle with destruction of large objects like Capital Ships? In a single-player game this is easy, but in the instanced multiplayer game that is ED this becomes more complicated and problematic. Personally I would forgive some "sins" like having hero quests and allowing some players to destroy a Cap Ship that others may not get to see because it would be fun and to me with the miracle of ProcGen and instancing we can all be heroes and who cares it is a game. As it is today, it can be really frustrating to have endless conflict zones where Cap ships just sit and spew spawn out fighters endlessly or are never able to be disabled.

*edit- Added #11 as the last conflict zone with Capital Ship I played in some time ago was not a satisfying experience...
 
Last edited:
#1 Overall Design
#2 Beauty Shot and Machinima Tools
#3 Planetary Body Composition
#4 Weather Variation on Different Planetary Bodies
#5 Geologic Activity on Planetary Bodies
#6 Locked Doors
#8 Asteroids as Realistic Objects
#9 Flight Model and Projectile Firing
#10 Ship Damage Models
#11 Capital Ships and Conflict Zones

Great questions! I'd like to see the answers for these as well...
I'd like to add some more questions to this thread as well:
  1. Is food consumption of the crew considered as a game mechanic?
  2. Will there be ships (that we can own) large enough to be commanded and not piloted? We are "commanders" after all and not only pilots...
  3. Quite a few groups applied to be added as minor faction... Are small groups consisting of 4-5 people considered eligible for one as well?
  4. What is the meaning of life?
 

Space Fan

Banned
#9 Flight Model and Projectile Firing
Wondering about the full complexity of the physics of ships, does firing a physical projectile impart an equal and opposite force on the ship that fires it? If so, FAOn would obviously counter the force, but with FAOff should a ship's position and momentum be changed when it fires a cannon?

Negligible. Not worth calculating. Strike that one off.
 
Last edited:
Great questions! I'd like to see the answers for these as well...
I'd like to add some more questions to this thread as well:
  1. Is food consumption of the crew considered as a game mechanic?
  2. Will there be ships (that we can own) large enough to be commanded and not piloted? We are "commanders" after all and not only pilots...
  3. Quite a few groups applied to be added as minor faction... Are small groups consisting of 4-5 people considered eligible for one as well?
  4. What is the meaning of life?

I can answer the last question, it's 42
 
regarding scanning planets, could it not work like fuel scooping, where you have to fly a circuit in the best window and you get higher resolution scans, so you get a bit of skill by trying to get 100% resolution while mapping the planet. perhaps you could see your scan build up on the hologram so you know where else you need to paint it.
 
QUESTION PLEASE:


Are there any plans to add avatars for NPCs and players (so that being contacted by an NPC or a player through comms their message is shown and also their avatar, should have a very large range of avatars, maybe make it optional as well, maybe also change the way players are alerted to receiving comms as I miss most of them)?
 
#9 Flight Model and Projectile Firing
Wondering about the full complexity of the physics of ships, does firing a physical projectile impart an equal and opposite force on the ship that fires it? If so, FAOn would obviously counter the force, but with FAOff should a ship's position and momentum be changed when it fires a cannon?

Negligible. Not worth calculating. Strike that one off.
Maybe so but just out of curiosity. Should be easy to answer as well, not like some of the others I asked.

Here is another Flight Model question:

Can we get hard facts on ship flight characteristics? For example, how much force do manuevering thrusters put out based on Class, Rating and is there a link to Power Plant or Power Distributor? How fast can an Anaconda roll and pitch 180 degrees with stock thrusters and how does that compare to the other ships? Ships have counter-placed thrusters which is great for increased maneuverability as well as redundancy. If a thruster is damaged / inoperable how does this affect the rotation about the ship's center of gravity and the speed of pitch/roll?

Curious as just watching some battles the bigger player pilotable ships often seem to maneuver about as fast or as fast as Sidewinders, Eagles and Vipers and to me it looks a bit off.
 
Last edited:
Elite dangerous Twitter says cqc is already out on Xbox (already checked it's a lie)can you confirm or deny this for those who are confused?
 
Are there any plans to revamp exploration in general?
Not a revamp as the core system is solid, however we do intend to provide more things for explorers to encounter.

Solid is a very ambiguous term. It's the same as saying "it's enough for our purposes". Well I think it's up to the community to determine that, and you'll find there are a few glaring holes that make most explorers think it's not quite solid. More like a non-newtonian fluid. If you hit it hard and fast it's indeed solid. Once to stop to look and think like an astronomer there is plenty of room for improvement (not to only criticise, let me add that what is there is FANTASTIC - a Wonder of the Gaming World)

So are you just saying it's solid and being vague because you can't fix it further (for example because it would affect the databases etc.) or is this a topic open to debate? Look at the Exploration Community Request List - we REALLY want some improvements! Not just to things we can "encounter"... :)
 
Last edited:
Are there any plans to revamp exploration in general?
Not a revamp as the core system is solid, however we do intend to provide more things for explorers to encounter.

Hello Brett

Please could you ask the Devs to revisit this statement.

More things to encounter is one thing, but I don't believe that is the root of the problem.

Simply jumping from system to system holding 1 button until you hear a honk is not really what was expected for exploration.

There is no skill in this process.

I tried to explore but returned very bored after making 5 or 6 jumps out so no, I am not an explorer at heart but I also want to voice my request for this to be revisited.
 
Last edited:
Status
Thread Closed: Not open for further replies.
Back
Top Bottom