Elite Dangerous 2018 Roadmap [Regularly Updated]

[Cocalarix]

Added comment by Steve Kirby related to Megaship interactions:

Hi folks,

Thanks for testing the megaship interactions in the beta and giving us your feedback.

One thing we have forgotten to pass on is that the interactions are slightly different at damaged and operational ships.
Cargo bays on wrecked ships will not give a crime as the systems are damaged. Data terminals and comms arrays still give crimes.
I'll pop some locations into the original post for some damaged ships for you guys to look at as well.
*edit* - Just to confirm something else, you can open the cargo bays more than once to get more of the cargo out of the ship (up until the bay is empty)

At the moment the cargo that the ships are carrying is based on the type of ship - Survey ship carries machinery, metals or minerals, tankers carry chemicals or some food types ans so on. We can look at this and see if we can put some higher yield rewards in place. Obviously we won't make all the ship full of low temp diamonds, but i'm sure there is a middle ground to make it profitable to raid one of these ships.

The ship log uplink should be scannable and give a flight plan for the ship so that you know where to find it again when it moves. If this is not working please put in a bug report.

We are going to review the interactions during the beta and balance where we think is appropriate, so please do keep the feedback coming so that we can get a clear picture of the areas that need balancing.

Thanks again for your help testing these locations.

Steve K

 

[Cocalarix]

Added another great comment by Steve Kirby regarding Megaship Interactions and a possible Limpet Controller Bay Module:

Hi Folks,

Thanks for all the great feedback, We're currently going through it and will use it to help rebalance some aspects of the mageship gameplay.

From what you have told us we will look into improving the following:

Balancing the cargo amount and values to make the interactions more worth while
Adding inbox messages to data and material loot to make sure you guys don't miss what you have just collected
Add High value or rare items to possible cargo bay items
Make sure physical materials are spawning as intended from Cargo bay hacks (looks like a bug is stopping this)
Investigate adding ID or number to cargobay and limpet target to make them more easily distinquishable from each other.
Investigate Fines and Bounties as they seem out of proportion for crimes commited.
Investigate if we can make silent running effect how detecable you are when commiting crimes at the megaship.

Other things that we will investigate to see how possible they are to add in the future to improve these scenarios.

Investigate if it is possible to put out a Instance wide broadcast from the megahsip when a crime is commited to signal to Bounty hunter players that there is an active pirate in the instance.
Design Limpet Controller Bay Module to prevent player having to use up too many slots in ship holding limpet controllers.

Thanks and we will keep you posted.

Steve K

 

[Cocalarix]

Added 3.0 Beta 2 Patch Notes and updated Engineering Improvements​ from a post by Edward Lewis:

Greetings Commanders,

First of all we wanted to say a huge thank you to everyone who has helped us test the Beyond 3.0 beta so far. A huge number of you have jumped in to the game to test out the Chieftain, listen to GalNet Audio, and experience the other hundreds of change to the Elite Dangerous galaxy, making it our most populated beta so far.
We’ve been watching your feedback very closely, and thanks to your support we were able to make a few changes to how Engineering works that we’d like to call out specifically.

All of the below will take effect as part of beta 2 (as well as the other many changes in the full patch notes):
- When pinning a blueprint, it will now pin all grades rather than just one.
- If you have a higher reputation with an Engineer, the number of rolls you need to progress through lower grades will be lower. This means you will be able to roll the highest grade much more quickly if you have a higher reputation with an Engineer.
- We’ve made a set of initial changes to improve the blueprints you receive from engaging with Engineers. As always, your feedback is hugely appreciated, and we’d love to hear what you think about these changes relative to how they were in beta 1. Please do continue to test and give us your feedback to help make the very best possible update. See the full list of changes to the modules so far here:

Spoiler

Drives:
- Dirty Drives:
Speed Increase 30%->40%
(Max possible increase now 47%, used to be 47% with extreme luck, 43%+ considered very good)
- Clean Drives:
Speed Increase 18%->28%
(Max possible increase now 34.4%, used to be 33.8%)

Weapons:
- Short Range:
Damage increase 65%->75%
(Max DPS increase 67.5% in live, 70% in beta, now 80% including experimentals)
- Overcharged:
Damage increase 55%->70%
(Max DPS increase 67.5% in live, 59% in beta, now 75% including experimentals)
- Rapid Fire:
Firing Interval reduction 40%->44% (ROF increase 66%->79%)
(Max DPS increase 67.5% in live, 63% in beta, now 74.7% including experimentals)
- Efficient:
Damage increase 17%->24%
(Max DPS increase 26% in live, 20.5% in beta, now 27.7% including experimentals)
Passive power draw reduction 40%->48%
WEP draw reduction 35%->45%
- Focused:
Heat increase halved (10%->5%)

Shield Generator:
- Enhanced, Low Power:
Strength Multiplier: 10%->15%
- Reinforced:
Damage Reduction: 12%->15% (back to where it is in live), also fix a numerical error that resulted it odd results from crafting lvl 1-4 recipes

FSD:
- Increased FSD Range:
Optimised mass 50%->55%

Power Plant:
- Low Emissions:
Heat 60%->65%
- Overcharged:
Power 36%->40%
Hull Reinforcement:
- Single Resistance blueprints:
Off-type penalties reduced 12%->10%
- Heavy Duty:
Damage resistance restored from 8.5%->15%
- Lightweight:
Health Multiplier increase 18%->24%

Armour:
- Heavy Duty:
Health Multiplier increase 30%->35%

Power Distributor:
- High Frequency:
Global charge rate increase 40%->45%
- High Capacity:
Global Charge Capacity 40%->42%
- Priority X blueprints:
Increase charge rate on primary capacitor from 30%->36%
Shield Boosters:
- Heavy Duty:
Shield health increase 38%->40%
- Resistance Augmented:
Global damage resist 16%->17%

Once again, we’d love to hear your thoughts on all of the changes in beta 2 – we’ve been paying close attention to your feedback on social media, the forums, your emails and Reddit since the first beta livestream, and we’ll continue to make changes thanks to your support.

The full change log has been posted here.

 

[Cocalarix]

Added comment by Sandro Sammarco related to Interstellar Bounties:

Hello Commanders!

A little heads up! The Interstellar Factors are off their faces on Onion Head, charging premiums to clean ships based on ship rebuy cost. This is wrong. They're meant to base the premium on the bounty value.

This should be fixed in the coming days of the beta.

The formula they will use is going to be:

+10% of the total bounty/fine value for the faction per level of Notoriety.

This will mean that *non* murder crimes will only be marginally effected as they tend to be very small mounts (the real penalty for assault is that the bounty allows other ships to attack legitimately).

Murder crimes can get significantly pumped up by notoriety, but still nothing like what the IF is currently charging.

In addition, if you are prepared to wait until your Notoriety decays, you can pay the bounty/fine at its original value (which could still be significant if your crime spree included murder).

 

[NeilF]

Do we know at what rate Notoriety decays? I'm hoping weeks/months?

 

[Cocalarix]

3.0 Beta 3 planned for 6th of February
3.0 Open Beta ends on the 9th of February
All Engineer and Tech Broker blueprints require only 1 Iron
All ships and modules at 10% of their prices

From a post by Edward Lewis:

Greetings Commanders,

The Chapter One 3.0 beta will finish on February 9. This week will be your last chance to jump in to your Alliance Chieftain before we take the beta servers down for a while, in preparation for the launch of Chapter One. Keep an eye on our social media channels, the newsletter, and our forums for more information on when Elite Dangerous: Beyond – Chapter One arrives for all Elite Dangerous players.

On February 6, the beta servers will go down shortly to allow us to update to beta 3, which will be as close to the 3.0 release build as possible.

Last weekend of 3.0 beta – special treats

Because there’s only one weekend left on the test servers, we have made a few changes for the beta:
- Firstly we’ve made all Engineer recipes so they require only 1 unit of iron to complete.
- We’ve done the same to Technology Broker blueprints – they will require only 1 unit of iron to complete.
- We have given all Commanders who join the beta, 100 units of iron and 100 units of selenium in order to take advantage of the above, and get playing around with some of the Engineering changes and new Technology Broker modules.
- All ships, weapons and modules are now down to 10% of their normal price. Now’s the chance to play around with the ship of your dreams, even if you can’t afford it in the main Elite Dangerous experience!

We wanted to take a moment to thank every Commander who loaded up the beta during this testing period. The feedback you provided was absolutely invaluable in making Chapter One of Beyond the best Elite Dangerous experience possible.

 

[Gully Foyle]

Thanks Coca!

 

[Virionbot]

1. please create a left-hand pilot for left-hand commanders (1/4 of menkind is left-handed)
2. please create an option to seperate and turn off the ugly head pain causing boost sound of chieftain regarding to support tinitus players...

 

[Cocalarix]

1. please create a left-hand pilot for left-hand commanders (1/4 of menkind is left-handed)
2. please create an option to seperate and turn off the ugly head pain causing boost sound of chieftain regarding to support tinitus players...

Post these things in the Suggestions & Feature Requests forum.

I'd appreciate if you guys posted only things relevant/useful to the roadmap.

 

[Cocalarix]

Added 3.0 Beta 3 Patch Notes which makes important changes to Engineering, Crime&Punishment, Megaship Interactions, plus buffs to The Chieftain​ and Type 7 ships.

 

[Kaocraft]

Do we know at what rate Notoriety decays? I'm hoping weeks/months?

Hours. 1 level/hour.

 

[NeilF]

Hours. 1 level/hour.

Fine for NPCs... Very not fine for CMDR vs CMDR destruction...

 

[Lucifera Danzig]

This looks fascinating...

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/405850-Crime-System-Changes

 

[Cocalarix]

Added a comment by Sandro Sammarco regarding updates to Crime&Punishment:

Hello Commanders!
Here’s an update on some elements of the new crime system.

We’re going to make the following changes. Note that these changes will now likely drop when the update goes live, but we will still be able to pull a large number of number levers after launch, for fine tuning the results.

1. Interstellar Factors will no longer charge a premium to clear bounties and fines. At the end of the day, we felt that the disconnect between the amount shown in the cockpit interface and the cost at using the Interstellar Factors was confusing, especially now that they are the only way to pay off bounties.

2. Interstellar Factors will not allow you to pay off fines or bounties unless your Notoriety is at zero. Notoriety will decay at the rate of one point per hour of game time. So whilst you have Notoriety, you’ll need to either store your hot ships, or fly wanted.

3. The murder bounty currently gets increased by two formulas: a fraction of your rebuy multiplied by your Notoriety, and a fraction of the victim’s rebuy multiplied by your Notoriety. We’re changing the second formula. It will become: you pay ten percent per point of Notoriety of the difference between your rebuy cost and the victim’s rebuy cost. If your rebuy cost is less than your victim’s, this will be zero. If however, you’re in a fully pimped war-conda attacking a hauler – it will be almost your entire rebuy cost added on to the bounty. It’s important to reiterate that we’ll continue to tweak this number, and others, after launch to make sure the update is as sensible as possible.

4. Around starports, any death that results from collisions will not use either of the extra penalty costs, or increase Notoriety. This is to prevent excessive ram trolling by small, expendable ships. Note that we’re still looking at ramming (and combat logging), but we’ve nothing to announce right now.

5. The rest of the crime changes are, other than some possible number tweaking, likely to remain as they are.

 

[Cocalarix]

Added a comment by Steve Kirby regarding the buffs to the Type 7 ship:

Hi Folks,

Thanks for the feedback on the Type 7 beta changes. We have read the feedback here and on other social media and we hear you. Some of the changes we made to the T7 were intended to make it more versatile compared to ships like the Python and offer a real option for longer range traders.

One of the benefits of the beta is it allows us to test changes like these and gage the response. In this instance it appears that the changes made didn’t deliver the results we intended.
We agree that the Type 7 should not out jump the explorer ships. With this in mind we have decided to go in a different direction to give the T7 some love while making sure it still fits under the explorer ships in raw jump range.

Here are the new planned changes.

Instead of giving it a size 6 FSD, as we have in the beta, we are going to lower the mass of the Type 7 slightly so that its existing size 5 FSD will push it a bit further than it currently jumps. From an in-game context perspective, Lakon will now be using lighter materials to manufacture the Type 7.

It will be keeping the extra size 2 optional slot to give it some versatility and we will up the power distributor from 3 to 4 (not 6, this was a bug) so that it can work better as a mining/exploration/utility ship.
The other slot size changes will be put back to their previous sizes.

This should achieve our aim of giving the Type 7 a clearer role in the game for traders and offer some more versatility, while not making any of the other ships obsolete.
As you can imagine, in a game like Elite with continuous updates, these types of balancing tweaks and changes can happen from time to time. I’d like to pass on our sincere thanks for all your support, testing and feedback during the beta.

Fly safe, Commanders.

Steve K

 

[Hydrino]

IMO, Improved ice planets as a feature (near the end of the roadmap list) is mis-characterized.

FD said the improvements are targeted for all the planets, the "scatter-rock" system, mist/fog, overhangs, etc. to give planets more character, etc. The ice-planet concept art is one piece used as a target for the in-game effects of this update.

Hopefully we get planets with atmo before the end of the year, and this system update will benefit their looks as well. IIRC, and I think I do, one FD dev posted/said some time ago that changes under the hood to the "beige-ification" issue were being done with future planets in mind . . .

 

[Darth Ender]

nothing about this roadmap makes me any more confident that Fdev is going to improve the experience of traveling from point A to Point B. Which is the greatest problem the game has and leads to all kinds of balance decisions that impact the gameplay in every other area and even impacts the in-universe lore.

The only solution i've seen has been the solution that Fdev has already fallen back on, removing as much travel as possible from the game by increasing jump distances. Which at that point, why even have a full galaxy? If i can cross half of it in a couple hundred jumps, how do you rectify that kind of ability in the game? it breaks everything.

 

[Cocalarix]

Added a comment by Sandro Sammarco regarding the new changes to Crime&Punishment:

Hello Commanders!

A few points, as there's an amount of incorrect information floating around:

1. Sorry, I was not clear enough in the original post. These changes are likely to drop when 3.0 goes live, not this beta update. You won't be seeing the effects at the moment.

2. Points taken on the decay rate. We might consider halving the decay rate for Notoriety to two hours per point (it's quite possible we will try a few different rates, as it's something we will be able to change on live reasonably easily.

3. We don't want to unduly punish criminals. This is why notoriety only ticks up on murder, and only modifies murder bounties, not all crimes. It's the reason why we're going with a differential payment as the larger part of the murder bounty: we want to dissuade "seal clubbing", rather than stop murder.

4. Destroying skimmers, SRVs and Fighters and trespass is assault, so should not trigger notoriety, so no delays to paying at Interstellar Factors and no inflated bounty costs.

 

[Cocalarix]

Added a comment by Edward Lewis (and Anthony Ross) regarding the dark side of planets​:

Hey everyone!

I've had a word with the devs about this, and just wanted to clear up a couple of things.

The dark side of planets went pitch black in beta 2 due to a bug which disabled environment lighting for all aspects of the game.
As a result of this bug, the planets appeared to be darker in beta 2.
We had to fix this bug because the lighting has changed subtly and unpredictably across the game.
We understand the call for darker 'dark sides' of planets, and we're looking to address this as part of a larger suite of lighting changes coming later in the Beyond season.

We've updated the patch notes to more clearly explain the changes in the beta.

Thanks!

Ed (and Ant Ross)

 

[Cocalarix]

Added a comment by Sandro Sammarco regarding new changes to Materials Storage and FSD Synthesis:

Hello Commanders!

This is a quick update to let folk know that we are increasing materials storage capacity in the following manner:

Tier 1: 300
Tier 2: 250
Tier 3: 200
Tier 4: 150
Tier 5: 100 (no change)

In addition, we have updated the FSD boost synthesis recipes to the following:

FSD Basic
Carbon 1
Vanadium 1
Germainium 1

FSD Standard
Carbon 1
Vanadium 1
Germainium 1
Cadmium 1
Niobium 1

FSD Premium
Carbon 1
Germainium 1
Arsenic 1
Niobium 1
Ytrium 1
Polonium 1

These changes should hopefully drop in the next few days.