COMPLETED CG Brewer Corporation Planetary Survey Initiative (Exploration)

[Shadowsnog]

I beg to disagree.

you would have to beg more.
my second or third ship i bought in this game was vulture that is still relevant to this day. the only thing i changed on it was getting drives from g3 (from felicity) to g5. it can take on npc conda without sweat.
not to mention nobody is forcing anyone to fight in the threat 7 pirate poi. theres plenty targets in res zones, where you can pick your difficulty and your target. you control the buttons you press, so press some.
im not arguing about the difficulty of the game and learning cliffs, but making outfitting some kind of occult mystery that only the intiated can manage wont fly with me.

DemiserofD already listed a few great ways to improve the UI without remotely approaching any of the nonsense you describe.

demiserof listed mostly things that are already in the game.

If you're saying you feel Fdev deserves praise for the legibility & synergestic quality of their UI design, well... you can have that opinion.

you like pancakes? so you say you hate waffles?!

 

[V'larr]

This one. All pirates in Pirate Activity sites are engineered... and worst, this has no impact on the bounty values.

A master- rank vulture will pay out about 100k, regardless of whether it's engineered or not. An elite Anaconda likewise will pay 200-300k.

But (imo) an engineered vulture in a Pirate Activity site is a much bigger threat (and takes longer to destroy) than an Elite- Rank unengineered Anaconda. So if you want to counter the lockdown, you're better going to nav beacons and res sites which only spawn unengineered targets.

It's something I've gone on about for literal years now... most just say "Oh Jmanis, not everything is meant to be worthwhile!"... which is ironic given the impact in this context... but this is why you'll never see Pirate Activity sites featuring in any get-rich-quick guides. It's just not worth it.

Edit: as a contrast, the threat 5/6 Pirate Attack enemies are roughly equivalent to CZ Spec Ops ships, or Wing Assassination mission enemies... but not as tough as ATR.

Tl;dr, it's not the wrong thing, it's just much slower than other options.

I will say one of my pet peeves about Elite at the moment, is how the difficulty of the target based on the actual ship (as in, including its configuration, if you're listening Fdev), has zero influence on what you gain for destroying it. Like...that's pretty mental. And it's a large part of why the Elite Combat rank grind is the longest in the game, in stark contrast to what's been done to Trade/Exploration in the meantime.

The exception of the absolutely bizarre design choice to allow progress for this rank through on-foot combat zones notwithstanding... every time I try to wrap my head around that one, my processing facilities just break down and give up. I just can't. (But hey, if all you care about is having any way to progress faster... I guess it's there, for the time being?)

 

[V'larr]

re: Factabulous -

You cannot mandate productivity, you must provide the tools to let people become their best.
- Steve Jobs

I can websearch AZQuotes, too. The point stands.

 

[Tifu]

Pirates in Pirate Activity signals are much harder than the ones encountered in RES.

Or so they say, since I've never tried that before.

I have. Tried it once at Threat Level 5 (that's the minimum). It's only worthwhile if you're a masochist

 

[Rainbro]

respetfully, just because its way above your head doesnt mean the design is bad. it just means you are bad combat pilot.

Risk/reward is a pretty big part of game design, though, one that Elite frequently forgets about. If I'm taking out pirates with strong gear, it would make sense for that to have a higher reward than pirates with much weaker gear. I doubt this was deliberate, it's just that Pirate Attack signal sources were added much later than RES and power creep was not accounted for.

 

[Rubbernuke]

I beg to disagree. Outfitting for combat is one of the most continually challenging aspects of the game that I see as the most common hurdle/learning-cliff that newer players encounter, especially because of how imbalanced and often poorly-thought-out aspects of Engineering are, but also because of hitpoint inflation, chaff spam, and other problems of Elite ship combat that have been rather accepted through apathy (and inaction on Fdev's part) than meritous considerations.

Experienced players obviously are aware of how to trivialize combat and pick-and-choose your poison in terms of what combat scenarios to engage in, because we have that knowledge. Newer players do not. Someone who's just coming out of doing exploration for the first time, jumping into any of the "Pirate activity detected" POIs, where there are engineered NPCs galore of varying sizes with FDL & Anacondas aplenty, is going to be in for a very rude awakening. And lord help them if they forgot to get rid of the 1t cargo (whether it's biowaste or a titan component, because why would the NPCs care about that? ) before jumping in....

Without being aware of the value of GSRPs & hitpoint inflation through stacking boosters & HRPs en masse, the passive regen importance of bi-weaves, the exponential power leap that is Engineering - the difference is night and day between 'casual first time doing combat' and 'properly outfitting', which is a fact that has been exploited heavily by gankers throughout Elite's lifetime, even setting aside the purpose-made Engineering weapon special gimmicks (#justFdevthings).

And then there's learning NPC behaviors, how to exploit them, how to match your vector to theirs, how to manage pips, how to not bite off more than you can chew, how to not boost too frequently & how to choke a poorly timed boost using scoop/landing gear; there's much more that goes into just flying a ship competently.

It's the most challenging aspect of the game - well, outside of understanding the black voodoo magic that is the BGS....

? Quite frankly you'd have to be a total numpty to jump into any POI /USS (this is why I said 'looking for trouble'). And even then, 'slapping together' is just that- even just A grading everything and a SCB is enough to ward off most low level NPCs in general flight, especially given most explorers have very low combat ranks (and thus have NPCs matched to them).

 

[Rubbernuke]

DemiserofD already listed a few great ways to improve the UI without remotely approaching any of the nonsense you describe.

If you're saying you feel Fdev deserves praise for the legibility & synergestic quality of their UI design, well... you can have that opinion.

I'm pointing out that the information is there and in logical places, you just have to actually use the UI.

 

[Shadowsnog]

Risk/reward is a pretty big part of game design, though, one that Elite frequently forgets about. If I'm taking out pirates with strong gear, it would make sense for that to have a higher reward than pirates with much weaker gear. I doubt this was deliberate, it's just that Pirate Attack signal sources were added much later than RES and power creep was not accounted for.

but the response was about outfitting combat ship being neigh impossible feat...
generally id agree that more difficult enemy the better reward, ofc.
but
the game measures skill, not equip
in my experience the difference in fighting haz res conda and pirate poi conda was not that large.*

*fighting in a general purpose combat vette. results may vary if you use smaller ships to fight large ships...

 

[Ian Doncaster]

They're nice for providing tougher opposition for people who are finding RES/USS/etc. too easy - you get a bunch of enemies up to high-end CZ strength, including experimental weapon effects, but still in the "pirate" archetype so providing bounties rather than combat bonds. All good stuff.

The catch is that they only provide the same value of bounties as the much weaker (and especially, much less HP) enemies you'd find in a HazRES or megaship/installation scenario which can be killed off much more quickly, so they are only useful for personal challenge rather than progressing anything - whether that be combat rank, credit balance, BGS influence or security state, or Powerplay control.

If they gave proportionally higher bounties, they'd actually fit pretty well into a generally self-correcting BGS: the presence of the Civil Unrest or Lockdown states would generate these POIs, which would then attract bounty hunters who'd work to clear those states. It'd probably need an equivalent on the Civil Liberty side where pirate POIs became much less common so keeping that state up with bounties became trickier.

 

[Jason70]

This was my first CG after watching CMD Burr talk about it. So I did a few planets and handed them in. I wanted the engineered surface scanner. It wasn't until I read someone saying it wasn't much better than what you can engineer yourself that I did that. So my engineered scanner is good, it saves a couple of probes and the time spent positioning said probes, a few seconds, time is money! Tbh I didn't notice if I was getting more credits for the data there or elsewhere. I don't get why people are upset. Unless you are role playing, maybe but isn't it better to think of fdev as the dragon master, adding or taking away gameplay to make it interesting? Btw I don't have it easy, I do have a billion and a few ships but combat is not something I'm good at. I did try taking a lvl 5 pirate and barely made it out alive.

 

[Shadowsnog]

They're nice for providing tougher opposition for people who are finding RES/USS/etc. too easy - you get a bunch of enemies up to high-end CZ strength, including experimental weapon effects, but still in the "pirate" archetype so providing bounties rather than combat bonds. All good stuff.

The catch is that they only provide the same value of bounties as the much weaker (and especially, much less HP) enemies you'd find in a HazRES or megaship/installation scenario which can be killed off much more quickly, so they are only useful for personal challenge rather than progressing anything - whether that be combat rank, credit balance, BGS influence or security state, or Powerplay control.

there is plethora of things the game could do better, but the discussion was how difficult it is to outfit a combat ship, not how unfair it is to have same cr for differently outfitted ships.
and when there are easy to shoot targets that actually give the same cr as the tough ones, then i really dont get whats the problem. just go for the easy targets. i went for the pirate poi because, exactly as you say, i find haz res boring and i like a bit challenge. i found it worth my time, i found it fun, it was my own volition, my choice, my preference and i was satisfied with the process as well as with the result.

 

[aRJay]

Hi all. I haven't read this thread so I'll probably have a mouth<>foot event with this.

It would be rather unfortunate to have the renewed interest, goodwill, and momentum in the game stunt by disappointing the 14,000+ players that have signed up for the CG. This lockdown state can be removed with one of these:

Those 14,000+ players haven’t merely signed up for the CG they are contributors, players who have not only signed up but handed in items for the CG and will thus be receiving the DSS module but also at least 30,000,000 credits in addition to what they already got for turning in their data. They have little reason to be disappointed.

a) Deploy ATR. This doesn't/rarely happen anymore and it should. The lock-down was a direct result of murders of likely unarmed, maybe noob exploration ships returning to the CG system.

I am unconvinced that was the direct cause of the lockdown.

Why do we have a peak security risk state in a system and no ATR in sight? Drop ATR in the Pirate Activity SS, and maybe chase the murderers off the system, and the state can clear on the next tick. Maybe ATR needs some coaxing from the Devs but that would be better than godhand clearing the state.

The state is a BGS thing I am not sure actions by NPCs count so it would be straight godhanding.

b) Move the darn megaship to an uninhabited system next door. No population, no lockdown.

c) Allow turning in data after the CG has closed at any Brewer Logistics owned station.

You can turn in data wherever you like after the CG has closed, as you can now, at any station not in lockdown* but after the CG is closed will obviously not count for the CG. Just as handing in data anywhere else doesn’t count.

*Not all stations owned by Brewer are locked down.

 

[JR250]

Those 14,000+ players haven’t merely signed up for the CG they are contributors, players who have not only signed up but handed in items for the CG and will thus be receiving the DSS module but also at least 30,000,000 credits in addition to what they already got for turning in their data. They have little reason to be disappointed.

Your participation is counted when you sign up for the CG. But fine, some may have dropped a planet or two in, but then took off to bring a bunch more data and now they can't turn it in. Plus, any new player after 11 Feb has not been able to contribute any at all.

I am unconvinced that was the direct cause of the lockdown.

Quote from Frontier themselves:

A rogue group of Commanders have driven Brewer Logistics in HIP 90578 into lockdown, in an attempt to sabotage the latest initiative!

Commanders are called on to bounty hunt within the system to break the lockdown and allow the initiative to coninue!

The state is a BGS thing I am not sure actions by NPCs count so it would be straight godhanding.

Not to me. Godhanding would be to clear the state, period. Fixing available tools in the game, like ATR, to clear the source of the issue, and eventually let BGS clear the state is less than godhanding it, IMHO. But again, fine, just move the megaship elsewhere like any sensible ship captain would do if they're under attack.

You can turn in data wherever you like after the CG has closed, as you can now, at any station not in lockdown* but after the CG is closed will obviously not count for the CG. Just as handing in data anywhere else doesn’t count.

Right, it's not a matter of just turning in carto data anywhere, it's turning it in to the CG so you get the better rewards and participate in the goal of the community.

*Not all stations owned by Brewer are locked down.

Worth repeating, only one station can accept cartographic data to be counted towards the CG.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Quote from Frontier themselves:

Yes. That quote doesn't say how they did it - it was likely through attacking NPC ships, not players.
(Whether they attacked the NPCs because they showed up after they attacked some players, maybe. Hard to say)

Fixing available tools in the game, like ATR, to clear the source of the issue, and eventually let BGS clear the state is less than godhanding it, IMHO.

That's not how the BGS works, though - only activity involving a player contributes to it. Adding a bunch of ATR to shoot at the existing pirates in signal sources/RES would:
- if no player was also shooting at the pirate, do nothing
- if players were also shooting at the pirates, make their job slightly easier (right up until the player hits the ATR by mistake, and then it gets a lot harder)
The NPC pirates aren't the source of the Lockdown in the first place - they're a symptom of it. The extra pirates in the system are supposed (in a flawed way because of other issues, but still) to make it easier for players to clear the Lockdown by giving them more targets.
(And with over 7 billion credits of bounties handed in by players in the last 24 hours alone, it doesn't seem like "lack of targets" or "difficulty killing them" is the problem here)

ATR probably are already showing up to attack people attacking clean NPCs in the system, which may be slowing down the pro-Lockdown side a bit, but players can deal with that if they expect to need to.

But again, fine, just move the megaship elsewhere like any sensible ship captain would do if they're under attack.

"Giving up on the CG and going home" is certainly an option for the ship captain but probably not a productive one for everyone else if they do that - because, as you say, only one station can accept the data, and if there isn't a station called "Trailblazer Echo" in the HIP 90578 system any more, that won't help matters.

(Megaships can also generally only be moved safely on a server restart - they're not like Fleet Carriers which are designed to move more often - and the next one isn't until Thursday after the already-extended CG ends)

 

[Tifu]

That's not how the BGS works, though - only activity involving a player contributes to it. Adding a bunch of ATR to shoot at the existing pirates in signal sources/RES would

What I'd really like to know is - if it was indeed planned - what the intent of the infrastructure failure was. The only other time I encountered this BGS state was in Orerve at the height of the Mahon-Kaine tussle in that area. The net effect was (aside from greatly depressing market prices) to drastically slash the merit awards for salvaging power wreckage. Had to resort to donations to make up the difference.

But for this CG, what was the point?

 

[Jmanis]

ATR probably are already showing up to attack people attacking clean NPCs in the system, which may be slowing down the pro-Lockdown side a bit, but players can deal with that if they expect to need to.

Yes... "dealing with that"... yes

 

[Jmanis]

What I'd really like to know is - if it was indeed planned - what the intent of the infrastructure failure was. The only other time I encountered this BGS state was in Orerve at the height of the Mahon-Kaine tussle in that area. The net effect was (aside from greatly depressing market prices) to drastically slash the merit awards for salvaging power wreckage. Had to resort to donations to make up the difference.

But for this CG, what was the point?

Nobody's really clear on exactly why/how Infrastructure Failure happens. Like all BGS states (even Natural Disaster)... it gets caused by player actions, but because there's no explicit indicator that an action causes it (like there used to be for all states and actions many iterations of the BGS ago) and FD haven't put out any information on the newer states[1]... so if someone can deliberately cause it reliably.... I'd like to talk to them XD... but more realistically, anyone who thinks they can is probably experiencing their car being allergic to vanilla icecream.

Almost certainly, the overwhelming number of violent crime is disproportionately represented in causing it... but whether it's that, or something as simple as "Many, many ships visiting the system, but no industrial components being delivered, so station services are failing" is not known

[1] Being Terrorist Attack, Pirate Attack, Infrastructure Failure, Blight, Drought, Natural Disaster, Public Holiday... they're not "random"... but there's no hard evidence of what causes them.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

But for this CG, what was the point?

Background variety, like the rest of the BGS.

Infrastructure Failure is one of the most interesting states in general
- major effects on market prices
- causes passive economy and influence decreases
- has a "contagion" effect so it can spread to other factions in the system
It doesn't really affect an exploration CG - but then, other than Lockdown, no state really affects Universal Cartographics.

It's almost certainly just a consequence of the increased traffic - of the seven factions in the system, five currently have an Event state active or recovering:
- two Public Holiday
- one Outbreak
- one Drought
- one Infrastructure Failure
...and two non-control factions yet to trigger anything (and may not, or may get contagion IFs if nothing else happens to them first)

The Event states are generally not easy to deliberately trigger specific ones (Outbreak is straightforward in certain situations, but that's mainly cases inherited from the pre-3.3 BGS) and that's probably intentional on Frontier's part.

 

[Rubbernuke]

Yes... "dealing with that"... yes

If you can count to about twenty five (IIRC) its easy to avoid ATR in low sec.

 

[Kort]

Hi all. I haven't read this thread so I'll probably have a mouth<>foot event with this.

It would be rather unfortunate to have the renewed interest, goodwill, and momentum in the game stunt by disappointing the 14,000+ players that have signed up for the CG. This lockdown state can be removed with one of these:

a) Deploy ATR. This doesn't/rarely happen anymore and it should. The lock-down was a direct result of murders of likely unarmed, maybe noob exploration ships returning to the CG system. Why do we have a peak security risk state in a system and no ATR in sight? Drop ATR in the Pirate Activity SS, and maybe chase the murderers off the system, and the state can clear on the next tick. Maybe ATR needs some coaxing from the Devs but that would be better than godhand clearing the state.

b) Move the darn megaship to an uninhabited system next door. No population, no lockdown.

c) Allow turning in data after the CG has closed at any Brewer Logistics owned station.

I like the idea of moving the megaship.