Proposal Discussion competition, space craft, power creep?

[DNCSY]

My first question is this;

Are more spacecraft going to be added during elites lifetime?

If yes, will a vessel released in 2017 be more powerful than an equivalent craft released in, say the initial release. (2015?). this would make some sense assuming that game time would progress faster than real life.

After all you would not expect a 1950s f1 car to keep pace with a modern f1 car.

If this were to be the case, then would it make sense to split the spacecraft dev team into competing groups, or ingame companies? Maybe they could be split into federation, empire and Indies, or some fictional companies.

This could be quite interesting adding more variance into different craft and symbolize technological advancements over timein game. Though I suppose that could also be shown with upgrades you can unlock.

Anyway, this is all questions and speculation, I could completely understand if they didn't bother with this as it would introduce a few issues with balance and maybe just having unlocks is a better system.

 

[Trippyhippy]

I would hope they do add new ships later on. As to the power imbalance I guess it might work if they had a modular system for the weapons/shields/engines etc. so when they bring out new stuff you can add it to your existing ship.

 

[Susimetsa]

They have pretty much confirmed that new ships will be coming along. And the newsletters have had examples of the design styles of various companies making ships.

I would not expect a lot of new and better tech in very quick succession, though. The Elite universe has been pretty stagnant since the early 32nd century (from the time of the original Elite to FFE) and tech is clearly not developing as quickly as it does in our own time.

 

[Aewarin Jameson]

A suggestion I have given to FD in the past was to do with new ships and components and to link that to the players actions. We know that from the bat there will be 25 player ships but what we don't know is if all 25 are available from the get go - I know some are going to be hard to acquire as they either be extremely expensive or tied to a faction rating of some kind.

The suggestion I had for them was to release some of the ships immediately then give the factions the ability to research items. If players invest in the research - give them materials & money by means of quests and missions, they can shave off some time for this research. Then slowly as the various factions release the new items they are introduced into the gaming world. This isn't by the way a personal commander research thing but more a general community research idea - if the majority of the players tend to support one of the factions then over a long period of time they will unlock the newer items quicker.

 

[Michael Brookes]

One of the major goals we have for the ships is tio make sure that all remain relevant, even if you've bought more expansive ships. As we're allowing players to own multiple ships we intend there to be a good reason for doing so, so players can pick the right ship for the job. Naturally people will have their favourites and if you follow a narrow path of the available roles then only some of the ships are relevant, but for those expanding their horizons they can take advantage of the variety.

Michael