ARX Ship Early Access Update
- Thread starter Phil W
- Start date
Can I play the idiot ?? I think that role is well suited to my abilities
As long as it doesn’t involve an ED-209.
… though I wouldn’t argue if you sent one to the next Azimuth board meeting with some… liberal target programming. Which they technically don’t need but I’d want to be sure.
I must confess I'm not sure if this is humorous or not.
Probably not. There are quite a few people genuinely disappointed with the capacity. And quite honestly, unless you are heavy into Colonization there really is no pressing need to get the ship with ARX instead of waiting it out.
If it was written in seriousness, I would like to once again ask where that magical number 1400 is coming from. Why has it become the universal threshold for excellency? Who came up with it, and on what grounds?
I'm pretty sure that the ship income is/should be going towards funding all things Elite. Credit to The Buur for this quote as I had certainly overlooked it:
Which to me confirms what I believed when I wrote the original post. Your point about the ships funding ships is actually my main concern in regards to the (still potential) slippery slope, as I think that goes a way to explain the stagnated mess of what is becoming a Star Citizen version of an Ant Mill, where it seems to have created a funding feedback loop of shame. It's important, if that money is going to the general development of Elite, that it just doesn't get swallowed up by how much the ships cost to produce. Which is why I'm not screaming mad about the Large Ship Tax either, and have accepted that it is what it is with it. It's not like you just take a small ship and scale it x5, the surface area of the design is of an exponentially greater area to put the same level of detail in. But again, therein lies the trap of the pressures/expectations of varied parties for each ship to outdo the last one which increases the dev cost, thus detracting from associated development. I'm not suggesting it's happening, just that it's part of that continual fine line.
I have had thoughts about the larger expansions, but I'm just going to say that I think as long ships are selling the motivation for Frontier to develop these bigger expansions will be viewed to be more demonstrably viable. The feedback of those who purchase ships are, and should hopefully be, giving to Frontier is that they are also the ones who would be most open to purchasing a Horizons/Odyssey scoped expansion if they were to develop it. Or maybe the amount and scheduled nature of these ships is enough to warrant ongoing and sustained development that will eventually yield each part of a major expansions/feature updates in smaller chunks?
Maybe twice the length of the T9 and the same width = twice the capacity ? I personally had hoped for 1200 shielded, so roughly 1300 max minus size 6 shield and size 5 scoop. And a size 8 FSD.
I wonder that also, it is such an abysmally low figure for a Behomoth of a ship it appears that expectations and aspirations here are incredibly stunted.
But then, during the period prior to the actual capacity being revealed, there were posters here who considered 950 to be ideal.
At least my 'ask' of 6050 was a number that permitted hauling the maximum amount offered as a team delivery mission all at once... (said number being very much levity, although having half the amount capable of being loaded didn't feel excessive to me)
And there lies part of your answer. If you could load a whole wing mission into one ship in one go, it wouldn't quite be a wing mission anymore. Also that's 1/4 of the capacity of a fleet carrier. Now compare the sizes of those two.
Except that 790 tons times 2 is 1580 tons.
I know exactly what I said. I steal wing mission cargo to refill my FC (or just because I can), so doing 18k in 3 round trips saves 24 or 25 round trips permitting me to go do something more interesting sooner.
Isn't the FC mainly landing pads & hangars? I have over 100 ships of all sizes parked on one of my FCs (alts living there) so I somehow doubt the majority of its volume is cargo - invalid challenge, sorry.
ETA: the cargo capacity of the FC doesn't change depending on how many ships it has loaded, which indicates that a small volume is allocated for cargo and services, rather than most of its volume allocated for cargo.
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Certainly I would expect that the ships do make more than the cost of developing them, yes, and whatever is surplus goes towards the rest of the game.
Equally from what Frontier has published, the amount they make from each ship won't be doing much more than paying for the ship itself in the context of the wider ED budget and revenue totals.
I think there's probably three key parts to a larger expansion.
1) General financing: Horizons and Odyssey cost something like £10M/year to develop, and ED doesn't currently bring in that much. So if the ship sales are part of making the game receive regular updates and therefore get it back on track to having that sort of regular income, that's great. But that'll be an indirect effect rather than from the ship sales themselves.
2) Can it reasonably be separated out: e.g. Powerplay or Colonisation gain a fair part of their value from other players doing them at the same time as you, so Frontier gets the most value by making that sort of thing free. Powerplay + Colonisation + Vanguards + Mystery Feature gives us about as many headline features as Horizons had in about the same amount of time, for example - but it's easier for Frontier to develop it as enhancements to how attractive the base game is to buy rather than as a separate expansion.
3) Specific financing: if Frontier make the base game better and sales go up, they don't need to necessarily tie the improvement directly to the sales so long as the overall result is positive. If they make a paid addon, at a cost of £X, they really need for confidence purposes it to make £X in direct sales - which the ships do, and Odyssey infamously didn't. So just running it through the general ED income/costs stream might end up being a safer way to finance it and also means it's a lot easier to break up the release incrementally.
I think colonisation was originally earmarked as part of original odyssey development program so presumably alot of the groundwork was completed at that stage? That being the case, maybe it didn't require a huge investment to get it over the line? So ship sales maybe enough in this case? This beta stage is a bit confusing as well. I'm probably wrong but beta to me implies that more change is coming as it's not considered final? Broken horse rant coming then - let me decommission stations!!!
I've often wondered as well how many dedicated developers are working specifically on ED vs. other frontier games but that's probably not for this thread.
I've often wondered as well how many dedicated developers are working specifically on ED vs. other frontier games but that's probably not for this thread.
FWIW, I always wondered why it was called Odyssey. I think the release of colonisation answered that question.
Hi 
Probably not for this topic, but nevertheless it's a good question, I've actually thought about that too!
As for the topic subject...It didn't really surprise me that the price of ship's for ARX is going to be increased. It wasn't very good planning in my opinion the way Frontier increased the amount of Arx a year or two (?) ago. I think that the 'problem' occurred around that time was because Frontier hadn't kept abreast of their overall Arx pricing structure. In other words, it hadn't been really updated to keep up with the current global rising prices. Then when they did it was such a hike from previous prices that players sat up and noticed, and started complaining. Plus it then also devalued the ARX somewhat that players had obtained through normal gameplay.
If Arx prices had steadily increased by a relatively modest amount over, for example, the last five or six years I don't think personally that many players would have complained so much, it would have just been accepted as the 'normal' trend.
As for the topics announced increases for this year?...Quote...
"We are regularly assessing our in-game pricing to ensure we are creating a sustainable model allowing us to continue supporting Elite Dangerous with meaningful updates which bring more content and features to your time out in the black"
So the price of large Early Access ships *(Stellar versions) is being increased by roughly 5000 Arx or roughly £3?...Whilst small to medium ships prices are going to be static for now (As in no increase to what they are presently).
With the ships now being segregated into sizes this starts to confuse the issue, so now we have two basic price structures for early access ships. Is this going to change at some point in the future to then be split down again to three separate prices i.e. small, medium and large?
"Regularly"...Is this going to be on a yearly basis for example, every July of that year?...or is it going to be as and when it is considered necessary.
I personally have no arguments for Frontier putting overall prices for early access ships up to meet global price increases, generally speaking, obviously what those actual increases are could be debatable, and what this topic is revealing.
There's quite a multitude of individual factors surrounding this topic, all under the umbrella of marketing, and this basically could include for example, the age, disposable income and time players have to play a game of this genre, and can be quite a complex subject!
My personal view in short...price increases understandable and accepted with all your game related content, but with a caveat, no hidden agendas, please be honest in your intentions.
Edited and inserted *(Stellar versions) for clarity, my omission sorry.
Jack
Probably not for this topic, but nevertheless it's a good question, I've actually thought about that too!
As for the topic subject...It didn't really surprise me that the price of ship's for ARX is going to be increased. It wasn't very good planning in my opinion the way Frontier increased the amount of Arx a year or two (?) ago. I think that the 'problem' occurred around that time was because Frontier hadn't kept abreast of their overall Arx pricing structure. In other words, it hadn't been really updated to keep up with the current global rising prices. Then when they did it was such a hike from previous prices that players sat up and noticed, and started complaining. Plus it then also devalued the ARX somewhat that players had obtained through normal gameplay.
If Arx prices had steadily increased by a relatively modest amount over, for example, the last five or six years I don't think personally that many players would have complained so much, it would have just been accepted as the 'normal' trend.
As for the topics announced increases for this year?...Quote...
"We are regularly assessing our in-game pricing to ensure we are creating a sustainable model allowing us to continue supporting Elite Dangerous with meaningful updates which bring more content and features to your time out in the black"
So the price of large Early Access ships *(Stellar versions) is being increased by roughly 5000 Arx or roughly £3?...Whilst small to medium ships prices are going to be static for now (As in no increase to what they are presently).
With the ships now being segregated into sizes this starts to confuse the issue, so now we have two basic price structures for early access ships. Is this going to change at some point in the future to then be split down again to three separate prices i.e. small, medium and large?
"Regularly"...Is this going to be on a yearly basis for example, every July of that year?...or is it going to be as and when it is considered necessary.
I personally have no arguments for Frontier putting overall prices for early access ships up to meet global price increases, generally speaking, obviously what those actual increases are could be debatable, and what this topic is revealing.
There's quite a multitude of individual factors surrounding this topic, all under the umbrella of marketing, and this basically could include for example, the age, disposable income and time players have to play a game of this genre, and can be quite a complex subject!
My personal view in short...price increases understandable and accepted with all your game related content, but with a caveat, no hidden agendas, please be honest in your intentions.
Edited and inserted *(Stellar versions) for clarity, my omission sorry.
Jack
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Oh dear, I can't let the above slide after a moment of weakness and total hypocricy, with the ARX sale on, I bought the max ARX package, and stumped up for 3 Station Paints, (2 of which I have not even tried to built yet) A FC configuration and Paint Job, I skipped the Engine and Halo FC details as they are daylight robbery at any price, those at least I get to see, which was my main driver.
The PC MKII is still underwhelming in my eye's, and show's little vision from FDev, akin to an out of tune bugle, rather than a fanfare statement ship.
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Happy to see that the concept still works out for both you and FDev. You don't have to render your continued support as "weakness", thank you for contributing!