Yes, sadly very unlikely that I’ll ever be able to outfit my fleet with a full compliment of chrome paintjobs. I did manage to do that, over time, with Midnight Black, but that was when paintjobs were reasonably priced (certainly for the quality of the design and their fit with decals and nameplates…my personal bugbear.)
Chrome and Gold are back in the store
- Thread starter Three Stars
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Maybe, but I'm not convinced that rationale stands up to scrutiny. How many potential purchases are being missed out entirely because the paint jobs they want just aren't available? Perhaps such tactics work when things that have an actual impact are being sold, but the ships work just as well without fancy paints.
The problem is, FD didn't even create new paintjobs. The ones in the store are only (I guess all?) versions of chrome(d) and gold(en) that have been in the store before and nothing new. Not even the different missing versions for some ships... So it's fairly unlikely that they will create some for the newer ships right now.
Maybe at some later point, but who knows. IIrc they said during the stream that they would monitor the sales of the different versions to maybe decide what versions to keep or maybe even invent for newer ships.
Maybe at some later point, but who knows. IIrc they said during the stream that they would monitor the sales of the different versions to maybe decide what versions to keep or maybe even invent for newer ships.
I really wonder what goes on at FD. It's obvious these paints are popular, and people want them for the new ships.
Why don't they make them? These are the easiest kinds of paints they even make. It is a solid color with a reflective shader property. They don't even have to worry about "coloring inside the lines" like they do when creating a pattern and making sure the design they're trying to draw lines up with contours and greebles. And the shader is probably shared between all the chrome/gold ship paints.
Why don't they make them? These are the easiest kinds of paints they even make. It is a solid color with a reflective shader property. They don't even have to worry about "coloring inside the lines" like they do when creating a pattern and making sure the design they're trying to draw lines up with contours and greebles. And the shader is probably shared between all the chrome/gold ship paints.
It needs a patch to add new paintjobs to the game. The ones now on sale have been in there since 2015 and could be enabled at anytime. So let's wait for the 10th. If that doesn't bring Chrome for the Mandalay, then complain
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Well, they are creating new paintjobs for the new ships, so you could say they could re-do old paintjobs for the new ships.
At least it's not a ship kit for the Dolphin.
I purchased the chrome paintjob for my Gunship and I'm really disappointed. The reflection is verry blurry, pixelated and noisy, it just doesn't look good even from far. There's some lines everywhere, it reveals every 3D modeling lines and shapes which "shakes" even when not moving. It's really worse in game, but see my screenshots. I can't find anyone complaining, I run the game at max settings with 1.25x supersampling. It does the same at 2.0x, my drivers are all up to date with no supplant enabled. Maybe this is some cache I have to delete but I don't know how
They do the same thing on my computer. I assume this is the real reason they tried to phase out these paints and replace them with the brushed variants. I don't remember them looking this way before the lighting upgrade and I assume the new lighting just doesn't work well with them.
I don't complain specifically about it because the issue tracker sucks, and I really could find a complaint about every single paint in the store except the most basic solid-color ones. They're also gaudy for my taste so I don't own any of them, nor have any desire to own them, so not really personally bothered by them looking bad. My previous post wondering why FD don't make them for new ships was because I realize they are pretty popular amongst the other players, even if not desirable in my own opinion.
100%. Whoever calls the shots in that department is undoing the good work of the development team and ought to be corrected or dismissed. They may not notice the pain at once since the new ships are driving sales. But the whole idea of restricting digital goods which cost nothing after creation is fundamentally flawed. Whether a design is more or less popular at the moment someone decides about it has next to zero impact on its future sale trajectory. They just miss out on both off-beat sales and the unpredictable chances of any item suddenly shooting up, maybe because some popular streamer showed it off or for whatever reason.
That is not the fault of the paintjob though. It's the missing antialiasing in the game engine, which is probably never going to be fixed. It just happens to be very visible with those paintjobs. But as long as I can get a look like this, I don't really care:
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I don't even know what that is.
"The Panther Clipper LX is one of the largest ships likely to be owned by a private individual. It is also the largest ship that will fit in the internal docking bays of space stations. Piloting one requires real skill. Its cargo carrying capacity is massive, although like most transport ships it is lightly armed and poorly armoured."
source: https://elite-dangerous.fandom.com/wiki/Panther_Clipper_LX
The biggest pilotable freighter. David Braben himself referred to it as "the T9's bigger brother". First mentioned/announced as early as Newsletter #13 before the game was even released. Around the Odyssey release datamining found an updated model for it in the game data, which hackers promptly spawned into the game. It looked a lot different from the original concept art and had no textures or moving parts yet. Still no news whatsoever if it will ever make it into the game. This ship would use the large pad to the maximum possible size, wide as the T9/T10, long as the Cutter/Beluga.
I think a fair number of the Gold and Chrome paints (not to be confused with the disappointing Golden and Chromed versions) currently showing in store are new. If I remember correctly, the original Gold was only available for about half-a-dozen ships and Chrome for about a dozen before they were removed from the store and have never been seen since.
Edit: Found this which - if accurate - would align with what I remember: Limited Edition paintjobs
So it would seem that Frontier have decided to make these available again after an eight-year absence and are applying them to a larger number of ships than the original run.
The Panther Clipper originates from Frontier Elite II (where the Frontier Developments name comes from) there were a number of new ships to the Elite franchise, the pinnacle of which was the Panther Clipper (of the ships you could buy and fly that is. If you hacked the game, you could technically fly bigger ships). It had 2,000T of space for you to fit in a jump drive, weapons and cargo and/or passenger cabins. It had four landing legs that rotated 90º and in flight were your main thrust. It required 12 crew to fly, so you either worked your way up through the ships requiring more and more crew, or you just bought the ship and waited forever for 12 crew to appear on the bulletin board for you to recruit.
It is remembered with rose-coloured glasses on, and those who keep wanting it in Elite Dangerous (in my opinion) don't realise how big it'd have to be or that it won't be the same ship they remember from FEII/FFE, the current Imperial Clipper being the true Imperial Courier from FEII/FFE being an example. There was some concept art for the Panther Clipper, as was posted above, but that's as far as it got in Elite Dangerous.
And that's the Panther Clipper in a nutshell.
Cutter looks ok with chrome. It looks smooth enough. The worse for my gunship are the 3D model "lines" like this, and you can clearly see it on my screen shots (it's really worse in game, and I'm gutted because I would've chose the brushed paint or midnight black if I knew) --->
For what it's worth, I'm running Chrome on my Gunship and Vulture too, but right now don't know if these screenshots are from Odyssey or Horizons, since I've bought the paintjobs in 2015 already. I am aware though how much those things tend to stand out when you are used to the crystal clear quality of 2.0x supersampling, which is the only actually functioning variant of AA for ED.
