After playing Elite Dangerous till this day i would like to share my experience (2.2) and also hear some of the community's feedback and opinion of how far Elite has progress.
The latest update 2.2 is something I very much look forward to just for the sole purpose of being able to deploying small fighters from ships. But lets get to the passenger mission first.
Passenger Missions
Missions in Allied systems are very high paying to the point it made the previous Robigo and CEOS mission looks like dust. Don't get me wrong, I don't think it is overly high paying because of the overhead that requires you to get a ship that is capable of doing it and the modules included to complete it is not something to sneeze at. The total payout for the mission I believe is on point but the way it is layout in my opinion is a bit lob sided. I have had missions that pay over 1 million and 99% of the time a secondary objective will appear just as you are arriving at your destination and requires you to deliver them to another end point or complete certain task of which the payout does not correlate to the missions worth. (i.e. 3000 credits to buy some beer). I believe an adjustment to the primary and secondary objective payout such that their differences are not too far fetch (i.e. 800K primary objective payout, 400K secondary objective payout).
The satisfaction of the passenger should play a much bigger impact on the mission payout as i only ever see a happy passenger who makes full payment or miserable passenger who pays close to nothing at all. Since the mission state that there is a time factor, the time taken to complete the mission should impact the payment received.
Since Obsidian Ant mention the criminal passenger mission is somewhat bugged i will leave it out.
Passenger Cabins
Honestly speaking, I don't see the point of having the Economy class passenger cabin. The payout is very low and it might as well be a cargo delivery mission. I have not encounter any prisoner transport missions but I do think if you hard lock a prisoner transport mission to use ONLY economy cabin, make it high paying, and through out the journey there will be pirate friends of theirs who will stop at nothing to free their comrades, maybe it will be of some use. As of now the business class cabin is sufficient for the lowest tier job and from then on you get the first class and of course it is nice that they lock the luxury class to passenger cruiser only ships.
Speaking about power play related ships, for most imperial ships, they lack fire power as to their opposing faction the federation but in the lore it mention that the imperial ships are made to carry out diplomatic missions to project soft power. I was hoping with this patch the Imperial fleet will perform its task.
*Before you start reading this I would like to mention that I am bias towards the Imperial ships. If you don't want to read it you make skip it
Ship Launch Fighters
Initially I wish that this means you can put small ships into Large ones and bring it out for a spin, but I can see how much more powerful larger ships will get and the CQC fighters are just as fun so that settles it.
1. I was hoping that the fighters have greater customisation to it rather than the default setup, and we get to choose what weapon and utility load out works better for our play style.
2. I also found out that every time when you change from a Non-Ship Launch Fighter ship to a Ship Launch Fighter Capable ship, you have to manually go into the crew lounge and activate your crew so that he/she is contributing to a fight. I wish you could do this in the ship itself, just some quality of life thing.
3. I wonder if in the future it is possible to fly around in your fighter and assign your crew to mine while in a resource extraction site.
4. These ship launch fighters are no more than a small fly buying you time to run from your enemies. I wish there is a command you can give to your crew who is piloting the mother ship to run for it while you buy time. For now it is your crew who will try his best to fend off the threat while you run.
Other Content
The new station interiors brings much atmosphere to the game and it allows you to connect to the economy type for the station without checking it out the system menu or the station service, something rather nice to have.
I have seen on youtube from other cmdr's that there are new space structure in game but non interaction available. Maybe in future it will be of some use.
It will be immersive to have a System security station or outpost where by you can hand in your bounty or bring escape pods to these location for rewards rather than just selling it, for immersion sake. Also there must be a station where all these System security officers hang out and Rescue One ships standby. Maybe in future after you kill a wanted criminal, there is a possibility that the eject off his ship and you can tank his escape pod and hand it over to the System Authority for extra bounty? Or after sending unknown escape pod to the authority, they will verity it and you will be given a mission to send the escape personal back to his home planet/station?
All in all I think FDev did an excelent job adding in more content, but I do think with all the mechanics that they have introduce, they could have created more game play elements within it.
The latest update 2.2 is something I very much look forward to just for the sole purpose of being able to deploying small fighters from ships. But lets get to the passenger mission first.
Passenger Missions
Missions in Allied systems are very high paying to the point it made the previous Robigo and CEOS mission looks like dust. Don't get me wrong, I don't think it is overly high paying because of the overhead that requires you to get a ship that is capable of doing it and the modules included to complete it is not something to sneeze at. The total payout for the mission I believe is on point but the way it is layout in my opinion is a bit lob sided. I have had missions that pay over 1 million and 99% of the time a secondary objective will appear just as you are arriving at your destination and requires you to deliver them to another end point or complete certain task of which the payout does not correlate to the missions worth. (i.e. 3000 credits to buy some beer). I believe an adjustment to the primary and secondary objective payout such that their differences are not too far fetch (i.e. 800K primary objective payout, 400K secondary objective payout).
The satisfaction of the passenger should play a much bigger impact on the mission payout as i only ever see a happy passenger who makes full payment or miserable passenger who pays close to nothing at all. Since the mission state that there is a time factor, the time taken to complete the mission should impact the payment received.
Since Obsidian Ant mention the criminal passenger mission is somewhat bugged i will leave it out.
Passenger Cabins
Honestly speaking, I don't see the point of having the Economy class passenger cabin. The payout is very low and it might as well be a cargo delivery mission. I have not encounter any prisoner transport missions but I do think if you hard lock a prisoner transport mission to use ONLY economy cabin, make it high paying, and through out the journey there will be pirate friends of theirs who will stop at nothing to free their comrades, maybe it will be of some use. As of now the business class cabin is sufficient for the lowest tier job and from then on you get the first class and of course it is nice that they lock the luxury class to passenger cruiser only ships.
Speaking about power play related ships, for most imperial ships, they lack fire power as to their opposing faction the federation but in the lore it mention that the imperial ships are made to carry out diplomatic missions to project soft power. I was hoping with this patch the Imperial fleet will perform its task.
*Before you start reading this I would like to mention that I am bias towards the Imperial ships. If you don't want to read it you make skip it
I find this very unsatisfying and for the most part disappointing because it is not even good at its job (other than the Cutter). The Clipper is a Very Large ship, although cheap and fast moving, its jump range is worse off than the python, carrying capacity is not really there given that you need to use one of those compartment for a Shield Generator, ideally the Class 6 since it is already absurdly weak and on top of that it is a large ship. I don't suppose diplomatic missions includes moving VIP from point A to B and you would expect ships that are tailor made for this purpose should be rather good at it. Even a Type 6 can do better and it looks like a tug boat.
Ship Launch Fighters
Initially I wish that this means you can put small ships into Large ones and bring it out for a spin, but I can see how much more powerful larger ships will get and the CQC fighters are just as fun so that settles it.
1. I was hoping that the fighters have greater customisation to it rather than the default setup, and we get to choose what weapon and utility load out works better for our play style.
2. I also found out that every time when you change from a Non-Ship Launch Fighter ship to a Ship Launch Fighter Capable ship, you have to manually go into the crew lounge and activate your crew so that he/she is contributing to a fight. I wish you could do this in the ship itself, just some quality of life thing.
3. I wonder if in the future it is possible to fly around in your fighter and assign your crew to mine while in a resource extraction site.
4. These ship launch fighters are no more than a small fly buying you time to run from your enemies. I wish there is a command you can give to your crew who is piloting the mother ship to run for it while you buy time. For now it is your crew who will try his best to fend off the threat while you run.
Other Content
The new station interiors brings much atmosphere to the game and it allows you to connect to the economy type for the station without checking it out the system menu or the station service, something rather nice to have.
I have seen on youtube from other cmdr's that there are new space structure in game but non interaction available. Maybe in future it will be of some use.
It will be immersive to have a System security station or outpost where by you can hand in your bounty or bring escape pods to these location for rewards rather than just selling it, for immersion sake. Also there must be a station where all these System security officers hang out and Rescue One ships standby. Maybe in future after you kill a wanted criminal, there is a possibility that the eject off his ship and you can tank his escape pod and hand it over to the System Authority for extra bounty? Or after sending unknown escape pod to the authority, they will verity it and you will be given a mission to send the escape personal back to his home planet/station?
All in all I think FDev did an excelent job adding in more content, but I do think with all the mechanics that they have introduce, they could have created more game play elements within it.
