Elite Dangerous' Game Design is stuck behind a rock and a hard place

bigmuthatrukka

B
Very valid point. I understand why they have done this but the "unrealistic" Torus jump drive of the original Elite made for much better gameplay. For those of you who were still in nappies/ums in the 80's ill explain. You got into the system. You aimed at the planet as the station wasn't visible. You hit J. Whoosh you shot forward. I f you suddenly became mass locked by an intervening object, planet ship asteroid you went back into normal space. The less risky the planet the less incidents you got. So corporate state was whoosh planet dock. Anarchy was whoosh 5 pirates, whoosh 3 more whoosh 5 more whoosh planet dock. Not overly realistic but great playability. When you got to the planet a little S appeared in your target locator to show you to the station or hit the docking computer for either a docking sequence or skip to dock. I still believe that pretty graphics aside, I enjoyed the original more, as it stands now. That said this does have exponentially better facets to it in other areas. It also has tremendous potential. So although the op will get plenty of flame and butthurt I agree with with his points. I also don't see it changing. I guess we need to learn to love it and celebrate the vast improvements.
 

Maiakaat

M
Armand said:
I agree with OP's sentiments. I think there are some solutions to this problem:
  1. system-wide chat that can be used by NPCs and players. It could be used to break the monotony and deliver missions; would augment the bulletin board and work in conjunction with the mission branching mechanism. I don't see any downsides to this.
  2. more space phenomena - electromagnetic storms, gravitational anomalies, solar flares, cosmic radiation, micrometeorites - unexpected stuff to keep you on your toes. This is actually a 'must-have' in my book, I don't understand why more people don't request this.
  3. more in-system nav beacons - especially for binary stars. Eliminating the need for SC completely would be a bad choice as it would kill interdictions and the space events I proposed above, but on the other hand spending 15-30 minutes in SC is just boring. I'm sure a balance can be achieved.
Click to expand...

have you added it as a suggestion, I'm certainly impressed with the idea.

Biggest issue with SC, the exit, disappearing hud overlay, no impact on accuracy of trajectory on exit points, no transition from normal speed to SC (or back down), followed by the stupid timer and verbal countdown (no option to turn off the audio and it gets pretty infuriating and tacky pretty quickly)

Another issue is the combat system means there is no high speed pursuit, interdiction is a very very poor solution to what could become an exiting tactical scenario (I'm thinking of the persuit of scade by Nevil Clavain in the revalation space series) a good pursuit and combat option could provide an hours entertainment, an hour in supercruise, even with a few interdictions would be a nightmare by comparison.
 
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Xanador

X
After watching a tutorial video about using planet mass in supercruise and testing it by myself it I've got a suggestion for the gameplay:

Trading ships could be allowed to program personal routes set by themselves when entering a system

I detail :):

1. ship sets starting point
2. try to find the fastest route and record it (basically the thruster values) until you...
3. set the endpoint
4. use the same route again when entering the system again (nav system shows automatically your starting point in relation to the star when entering the system, no slowdown needed, autopilot takes over when you are in range)

Obviously the route can't be used very often and must be reprogrammed because of all the planetary movement, but this keeps it interesting. And it's also a race against yourself (do I get a better this time? :))
Espeacially when you fly the same routes over and over again this can add some variety. What do you think?
 
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