Destroy the Bubble!

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

Yes. I mean it. It's broken and need fixing anyway.



You can use the Thargoids to devastate it, then redesign it, so it works better.

Why?

Well, currently, everything is safe. This is dull.
Also, there are no risky, but profitable trade routes. Adding these to the current bubble would simply add profitable trade routes, without any risk, because everything is compact and easy to jump between.
Without any logical and risky trade routes, there are no logical pirates, and without logical pirates, there are no logical bounty hunters. And don't forget the miners. Lol

So what's needed?
Firstly, each of the major factions should be separated by a large expanse of anarchy systems, with a few corridors for slightly safer trading between the factions, but they would be a long way round, and still a bit dangerous.

Trading between the major factions should then earn loads. It's a long(ish) and very dangerous trip, if you take a shortcut through the anarchies. Or it's a longer(ish) trip the safer way.

Lore could state, during the 2nd Thargoid war, mining was ramped up so high that we strip mined most of the high and medium security systems.
Now only low, anarchy, and systems beyond the bubble have good ore deposits left.
(I know there's far more resources than we could possibly use, but this is for gameplay).

The most profitable mining is now also the most dangerous.
Good outfitting or wings required, but demand is so high (cuz' of the Thargoids) that profit is massive.

Now trading and mining a massively profitable, if you pick the most risky routes, pirates will begin to pick on these cash cows.
With higher profits, pirates can actually earn really good money from stolen goods.
But more pirates means more bounty hunters. So pirating becomes a high risk, high reward activity (it's currently just high risk, no reward. Lol)

Explorers, rejoice!
You can find new ore deposits for the miners, and get a hefty payout for handing in these discoveries. Mining will eventually begin to ramp up in those systems.
But then large amounts of miners brings pirates, which brings bounty hunters. And so on.

The other good thing about blowing up the bubble is, each major faction will be separate, so can (with some development) be made to look and feel very different.
Empire stations can be all fancy and white (lol), Federation stations all serious looking and square, and the current look would fit the alliance and the independents would share the alliance look, but look a lot tougher and poorly maintained.

Anyhoo, it's probably not viable, but I felt like sharing.

CMDR Cosmic Spacehead

 

[Rubbernuke]

I was thinking this exact same thing. No mercy, full on life or death of mankind stuff.

Each tick the Thargoids and Guardians slug it out, and encroach on human areas. We can fight back as one force, or let ambition allow others to perish.

In Powerplay, it could be that Powers could be exterminated if totally overrun, destabilising a rather sedate situation and making for some extreme drama. Will Patreus help Grom? Will Aisling let Torval live? Would Antal help LYR? Would anyone help Mahon? As the noose tightens all bets would be off as everyone tries to survive.

How would you react? Collaborate with the bugs, or get in bed with the pixies? Or would you run off?

I'd love to see systems go dark, stalked by Thargoids. Desperate militaries offering insane rewards for pilots to recon these areas. Governments publicly saying nothing is wrong but secretly planning for the end.

 

[Riverside]

I think this is one of those ideas that seems cool for 20mins then becomes tedious with lots of downsides.

The Thargoid content is intended for more advanced/experienced player to have some fun with, but is only gated by distance, so any Cmdr at any level of experience (and loadout) can choose to have a go if they want to. If the Thargoid content is no longer gated by distance IMO it would need to be gated by some other method (to avoid piling too much difficulty on the novice or those less interested. I'm not sure another gate would be as satisfactory as distance for allowing all playstyles to take or leave this more advanced content. PowerPlay comes to mind, but it seems unlikely alien invaders should respect your choice to 'opt out'. Gating by distance is optimal.

It looks like we might be getting a war with visible fronts that could move (like powerplay, or perhaps more like the less distinct empire/fed/alliance/independant soft borders. It allows the possibility that the bubble could burn but gives players some agency in how bad the damage will be.

Ultimately this is a war between players & a dungeon master rather than between players. The dungeon master will always have fine control over the evolving story.

 

[Rubbernuke]

The trouble is (and solidly IMO) ED is being held back by a concern for people who hate combat. Due to this and a distinct lack of lore there is no implied or visible threat from the Thargoids, who are happily killing hundreds of thousands of people each week.

In previous Elite games the Thargoids were an ever present danger and made travel an intense experience. Now, we are at war and its like nothing has happened in the bubble. Even in anarchy areas its like walking down the street.

I'm not advocating instakills, but having aliens being the 'oh crap' moment when they pop up on the radar in SC making you panic a bit.

 

[Riverside]

In previous Elite games the Thargoids were an ever present danger and made travel an intense experience.

They weren't, they were gated by experience (ie rank). You wouldn't encounter Thargoids until you had played the game for a while, and once you had unlocked the military lasers you had an effective weapon against them (and anything else).

Before the new content was released I speculated that it could be gated by military rank in part - beyond a certain rank the new content would become a complusory part of the game ie you were drafted That hasn't turned out to be the case so far.

With regard to ED being held back by those who 'hate' combat, I think you are broadly correct in the sense that the game tries to cater for more playstyles than only combat. I believe this is a good thing though.

There are plenty of players crying out for more challenging PvE combat scenarios, and the Thargoid content is the logical answer to this. If the content comes to you it needs to be balanced at an achievable level - it should be possible for most players to escape or even win with some practice. However if you go to the content (by travelling to an area known to be more dangerous, accepting a mission, dropping into a high threat USS etc) it can scale all the way up to impossible if required.

As I mentioned before, there are lots of ways the content could be gated, I think distance is the optimal approach, and can be adjusted by the dungeon master to suit any narrative needs.

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

Thanks for the support, but the Thargoid war suggestion was just a tool to perform a soft reset of the bubble to allow for a better economy model, and gameplay to go with it.

It's the bubble layout that actually needs looking at. But randomly changing things doesn't make sense without backstory. And the Thargoids seem to fit in with that. While an all outward would be awesome, it's not the point of this suggestion. Lol

Having the 3 major factions separated by dangerous space, can allow for all sorts of story, and gameplay adjustments.

Such as DMZ's (de-militarized zones) where two major factions get close to one another, which can escalate to cold wars, and eventually skirmishes, even all out war between two of the factions.

Again, trade and mining can be made much more profitable if done between the major factions, but would be far more dangerous, due to the lawless and warring areas in the middle.
With rich traders and miners, come hungry pirates.

A whole host of opportunities could arise.

But the bubble in its current form doesn't allow for much of that, because everything is blobbed together in one big bubble.

CMDR Cosmic Spacehead

 

[Ian Doncaster]

But the bubble in its current form doesn't allow for much of that, because everything is blobbed together in one big bubble.

That's true - but it wouldn't really matter if it had gaps - you could run over the gap in 2-3 jumps in most ships, which means by the time a pirate had got round to trying to interdict you'd already be gone, no need to fuel scoop or dock on the way.

They would also need - and this is hard reset "Elite 5" territory rather than anything which could be done in Elite Dangerous - to reduce jump ranges considerably (fixed at 10-12 LY regardless of ship, probably), increase fuel consumption per jump, and make you drop in to new systems well away from the primary star, so that being in a dangerous system other than your eventual destination actually made any difference whatsoever because you had to travel some distance to dock or scoop and were vulnerable to interdiction in the meantime, with high-waking an emergency rather than primary escape mechanism. Not practical to implement in this game, of course.

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

That's true - but it wouldn't really matter if it had gaps - you could run over the gap in 2-3 jumps in most ships, which means by the time a pirate had got round to trying to interdict you'd already be gone, no need to fuel scoop or dock on the way.

They would also need - and this is hard reset "Elite 5" territory rather than anything which could be done in Elite Dangerous - to reduce jump ranges considerably (fixed at 10-12 LY regardless of ship, probably), increase fuel consumption per jump, and make you drop in to new systems well away from the primary star, so that being in a dangerous system other than your eventual destination actually made any difference whatsoever because you had to travel some distance to dock or scoop and were vulnerable to interdiction in the meantime, with high-waking an emergency rather than primary escape mechanism. Not practical to implement in this game, of course.

Without gimping jump ranges (which no one would accept. Lol) another way to force a bit of danger is to exit hyperspace directly on top of a nav beacon, in normal space.

Then, you're immediately in danger, in low/no security systems (high security would be well patrolled), and if you need to scoop, you'll need to make a dedicated jump to SC to do so.
That, and it finally makes sense way nav beacons exist. Lol

Then, without a nav beacon, your exit in the system can be a bit more RNG and hair raising, like being dropped in low orbit of a 6g planet, or inside an asteroid ring. It'd be harmless (usually), but it'd wake you up a bit. Lol

 

[Ceitidh]

The trouble is (and solidly IMO) ED is being held back by a concern for people who hate combat.

All forum posts are opinion unless there's specific reason to assume otherwise, and I understand that you have yours.

I disagree with it. My opinion is that what you call "holding back" ED for the sake of people who hate combat could otherwise quite fairly be referred to as "catering to a percentage of the player base who find a combat focus immensely dull". That includes me.

Now, I don't know how big that section of the player base is -- I imagine only FDev could have a reasonable idea -- but I've seen enough posts in these forums to know I'm not a complete anomaly. The problem is that some of us (and, as I say, I make no assertions about how many) came to ED more with Frontier and First Encounters in mind than the original Elite. Which means that we were more used to the more simulation-like aspects of these games and had hoped (I had hoped) that ED would be an advancement on those, rather than, as I personally see it, a regression to the much more arcadey 1984 original. Which isn't to complain about the 1984 original specifically: for its time it was an amazingly complex game -- it's just that it was comprehensively overtaken in complexity by its sequels, which offered far more than just point-and-shoot, aeroplane-dogfight pew-pew.

For me, and I know for at least some others, combat is tedious. Boring. And combat fans will frequently present that viewpoint as a sign of someone who either a) just hasn't tried combat enough, come on, you'd like it if you got into it (we won't); or b) is just too scaredy-waredy that we'll get blown up by a better player and then we'll feel all inadequate, and if we'd just get better at combat we'd enjoy it more (we won't).

We won't. I'm speaking specifically for people like me here, but for us, the fighting just isn't fun.

Okay, so why isn't this attitude the reason ED doesn't cater to those who do like fighting? Surely me and people like me could just off and play one of the countless legions of detailed, open-world space sims out there, and leave ED to those who want to play it properly?

This is where I may sound a little entitled, if I haven't already. It's because Elite, as a franchise, as a game universe, is home to us as well. A very well established home. FE2 and FFE gave us a world that was about more than just fighting. They showed us that Elite, as a franchise, could represent a whole, coherent galaxy, with landscapes to explore and cities to land at and a whole, living social world with a political structure that mattered -- not to mention a considerably more sophisticated model of flight physics. Set things up right in First Encounters and you could actually create a stable-ish orbit around a planet, for example; or set up a clunky Hohmann transfer. Yes, these games were still pretty rudimentary, certainly viewed from today's perspective, and the physics wasn't quite accurate enough, but they were a notable advance on the original, even as good as it had been at the time.

I don't "hate combat". I'm just chronically uninterested in it. It was fine in 1984 when it was the pinnacle of what my ZX Spectrum could do in space simulation terms. But FE2 and FFE -- not to mention Martin Schweiger's Orbiter, the X series, SpaceEngine, and hell, even No Man's Sky -- have come along since and shown (at least between them) that space simulation can be so much more than just fighter planes with a starfield background.

And I know there are people who'll insist that ED is above all else a combat game. I'm well aware that FDev agree with that: that's the direction they've chosen to take, and that's fine. But there's no reason at all that combat couldn't have been made a integral, challenging and rewarding part of a deep and complex game concept, one that offered opportunities for players to 'Play Your Way' without every playstyle-based faction feeling put-upon and challenged by the others.

In short (too late), it isn't non-combat players that're holding this game back. It's the fact that this game, as much fun as it is, is a lot of extremely impressive visual and audio flesh grown over a 1980s skeleton.

 

[damon8r351]

Part of why I like how the Thargoid return is going is because it's not terribly disruptive to someone who still wants to just trade, manipulate the BGS, explore the interesting sights inside the Bubble, and otherwise take part in the core experience of the game relatively undisturbed by what's going on in the Pleiades. One of my main concerns about The Return is how disruptive it was going to be to the core experience, and right now it's working just fine. This suggestion is the complete opposite of not terribly disruptive.

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

I'm not sure where my thread is going anymore.

Is anyone reading anything I typed?

It's not about combat, or Thargoids, or traders being sissies, (Lol, joking).

It's about a completely theoretical redesign of the current bubble which, in my opinion of course, would improve the gameplay around all aspects of ED.

I just used the Thargoids as a reason for a redesign of the bubble. Which is what you're all seemingly focused on. Lol

Imagine for a moment that ED hasn't been released yet.
But somehow the story is more advanced than it is now. Or maybe a prequel, or alternate history.

Thargoids attacked the bubble, decimated it, left the major powers much smaller, and lawless factions filled the vacuum in between.
The Thargoids were [mostly] pushed from the bubble, but at a great cost. Resources are low in the major factions, so trade between them is high. And so on.

Then the game starts.

 

[drops boms]

then what happens? lol

i like the idea i really do shake everything up so its different but the same

 

[Reckless Troll]

I don't think this can or would happen. Not unlike governments on Earth as we know them now, each system in the game has a government. With functioning military and police... without those, the game is kinda dead anyway right? I mean, no law, no order, what's the point in humanity anyway? Everyone would be dead except those few that have found a place to hide in safety. Thargoids are no match for humanity anyway. So this virtual bubble, also known as populated space, is going to remain safe because everyone is already a homicidal maniac, and wants to kill the goids.

 

[Anon Sin]

Yeah let the Bubble burn! And Colonia too were all the cowards have fled! (joke) o7

 

[varonica]

I'm not sure where my thread is going anymore.

Is anyone reading anything I typed?

You should know better than that Cosmicspacehead, you've been around for a while as have I, this is a thread on an internet forum, nobody reads it before commenting.

I personally have gripes with the game as well, there are things I don't like. When I first started playing it seemed a huge adventure to travel all the way to jaques station from the starter station with just a few credits to my name and a Cobra 3, to get the same feeling now I have to travel to BP or somewhere else more remote, the transition from adventure to boring was quick and easy, to quick and to easy in my opinion. The bubble feels safe and comfortable, boring even as you say, the problem is how to preserve that sense of adventure now that I can cross the entire bubble in a half a dozen jumps, it's a problem with no easy answers. Resetting the bubble may help, or it may not, it depends on how it is done and what happens after. Personally, and this is only my view, the engineers were a big part of the problem, they were done wrong, but as I say that's my opinion, others will disagree and tell me off for it, meh.

Have fun.

 

[Ceitidh]

I'm not sure where my thread is going anymore.

Is anyone reading anything I typed?

Yes, I read it. I disagreed with it -- and certainly keep the Thargoids where they are, for those who're interested in them to deal with -- but I didn't feel strongly enough to reply.

I replied to the post I felt strongly enough to reply to, which was suggesting that the blame for the game not fulfilling its potential lay solely at the feet of non-combat players.

As for where the thread is going, it's doing what all threads do once they get above a few posts: it's evolving according to what people say in their posts and how others reply.

 

[Mae Tang]

I think this would be hella exciting but I do think for new players it would be overwhelming, especially starting in a sidewinder! imagine being interdicted by a Thargoid in that little tin-can, haha! Although I suppose FDevs could code it a certain way. Still, I like that they are present mostly in the Pleiades nebula, it makes going to that area very eerie and fear-inducing

 

[varonica]

I think this would be hella exciting but I do think for new players it would be overwhelming, especially starting in a sidewinder! imagine being interdicted by a Thargoid in that little tin-can, haha! Although I suppose FDevs could code it a certain way. Still, I like that they are present mostly in the Pleiades nebula, it makes going to that area very eerie and fear-inducing

Yes, we get wrapped up so much in our own pilots and achievements we forget there are beginners, every MMO ever invented has a safe place where beginners can learn the ropes, throwing beginners out into space to face thargoids would be like throwing level 1 WoW players straight into the middle of Gorgrond, if ED is aspiring to be an MMO there must always be a safe area for beginners, and gated by distance seems to be a good choice, otherwise you will have thargoids flying around ignoring sidewinders while laying waste to everything else.

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

Well, ideally, after a "bubble reset", the Thargoids would be rare around the bubble, but still in force around the Pleiades (we technically won, just with heavy losses), and newbies would get to choose their starting location in one of the 3 major factions, or a random independent faction (hard starting choice, possibly for advanced players), similar to how MMOs work.

Running the high risk, high reward trade routes wouldn't be something a newbie would do straight away anyway, and the faction bubbles would actually be very safe in the core systems, but lower profit.
Higher profits can be found in the outer systems. And the best profits by flying between the major factions.

It's all just talk anyway. I won't happen. Lol

It's just kinda how I would do it if I was designing the bubble.

CMDR Cosmic Spacehead