Realism in a game that is set 1000 years in the future and breaks several laws of physics - interesting!!!
Elite - not dangerous
- Thread starter G.man
- Start date
I'm not disputing that Elite Dangerous has got easier over the years, but the first four of those were basically in as-is in 1.0, and the fifth and sixth just need the name of the current top earning method replacing to be there from the start too. (Just how many skimmers did that base have? Shouldn't the hotels in Rhea be full by now? Hasn't this ship sought enough Luxuries? etc. etc.)
When I started in 1.1 my initial impression was "where are all the pirates?!" - from Elite/FE2/FFE I'd expected just getting through the first trip to be a bit of a challenge. It's always been like this. (And the power curve flattened out pretty quickly in the player's favour in the previous games, too, of course - energy bomb, large plasma accelerator, etc. - but it didn't start out trivial)
You can easily self impose a higher difficulty. There are ton of things you can do, either singly or in combination to increase difficulty.
On ship destruction wipe save and start over.
On ship destruction always pick free sidewinder.
Do not use engineers.
Never fit A or B rated modules.
Limit yourself to small ships only.
Do not use third party sites like EDDB or Inara.
Just to name a few.
You can make the game as challenging as you want.
On ship destruction wipe save and start over.
On ship destruction always pick free sidewinder.
Do not use engineers.
Never fit A or B rated modules.
Limit yourself to small ships only.
Do not use third party sites like EDDB or Inara.
Just to name a few.
You can make the game as challenging as you want.
Yes that’s basically what we’ve done but we didn’t want arbitrary rules just to make it harder. We wanted them to be closer to what should really happen in the galaxy to better balance the game. For instance if you lose your ship, you lose your ship but you still keep your other ships and credits since you were in an escape pod.
A worthy goal and as I mentioned above I hope it works for you.
But it's not for me.
But thank you for the invitation.
Deleted member 121570
D
Just depends how you play it and what you do. I've lost over 3400 ships racing and training 
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For a space simulation game, Elite Dangerous has lost all sense of realism. Over the years, they’ve added and buffed rewards while minimizing or removing risks so it just doesn't feel real anymore.
In what galaxy could you:
There is no suspension of disbelief. It’s just disbelief. They kept making it easier to make money while taking away or minimizing risks.
- Get full bounties for a couple pew-pew shots when cops do all the damage?
- Always escape interdiction from every pirate?
- Hardly get interdicted by cops when wanted or carrying illegal goods even in high security systems?
- Have a 5% rebuy insurance for any ship but you don’t pay for any insurance installments??? What company would offer that?
- Make millions in mining risk free?
- Sell millions in LTDs in a never ending gold rush due to a broken supply/demand system?
- Buy your OWN fleet carrier? For a squadron - ok. Single commander - just no.
This isn’t an argument to change the game since there are many players who are perfectly happy with their fleet carriers. There’s lots of explorers who are perfectly happy roaming the galaxy. And it’s still a tough game for new players.
But there should be a realism mode for those veteran players who want to experience ED as a more genuine space sim the way it was meant to be played. If you want big ships and gobs of cash, it should be really tough to get there just like in the original Elite game.
Mining should only be in Res Zones (this was the original intent) and the best areas, (pristine metallic rings, hotspots) should be in a Haz Res. Cops should hop into low, medium, high Res areas based on system security level only when a crime has been committed, just like with interdictions and not constantly patrol the area.
Interdiction evasion from NPCs should be much more difficult and based on your ship’s maneuverability.
Bounty hunting payout should be based on damage dealt. You do most of the damage, you get most of the bounty.
Mission payouts should be nerfed significantly and rewards should be based on risk and time/effort needed.
Trade profits should be nerfed especially for tritium, military fabrics, basic meds in Outbreak (or add significant risk if hauling those commodities) but smuggling illegal commodities should be buffed due to the additional risk.
Explo data should be nerfed.
And yes, it should be Open Only.
No easy money. Credits will feel rightfully earned. Pirating will be a legitimate profession again (legitimately illegitimate?). There won’t be just one or two dominant ways to generate credits. Trader, miner, smuggler, bounty hunter, salvager will all be viable careers.
I started playing with self-imposed rules a couple years ago to try to recreate this more realistic galaxy and after hundreds of hours of testing, they work reasonably well (e.g. submitting to all interdictions) but it would be far better to have a separate mode to play from scratch. I’m constantly resetting my accounts and tweaking these rules but would love if others could help better refine these while I hope longingly that FDev adds this new mode of gameplay (which I would gladly pay for). And it shouldn’t be hard to implement since nothing would need to be added to the game, just tweak the existing mechanics.
But since that’s not likely, my dream is to have a good-sized veteran player group where everyone follows and tweaks these rules for the most realistic gameplay possible. Violators will be kicked. Gankers would be welcomed! The galaxy should be a dangerous place!
If you’re interested in joining a group of us who play this way and rediscover this great game or just watch us flail around the galaxy, check us out. We need more feedback and based on a lot of forum posts, I think there are a lot of experienced players out there who would love to play this way (or already play with similar rules).
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Here are the current rules:
ED Veteran Rules
OPEN only
Must submit to all NPC interdictions. Can evade player interdictions.
Reset your commander or get a new account
Get standard sidey loadout without SRV
Bounty Hunting: (no help from cops). Only in low/medium/high Res areas or Nav Beacon in Anarchy systems (KWS required) or Haz Res/CNB in any system.
Exploration: No explo data until Entrepreneur.
Mining: Can only mine in Res areas until Tycoon. Must stay near center of Res areas.
Missions:
PAX: Only Saud Kruger ships can use Business, First or Luxury class PAX modules.
- Penniless: No missions
- Mostly penniless: < 10K mission reward
- Peddler: < 25K mission reward
- Dealer < 50K mission reward
- Merchant: < 100K mission reward
- Broker: < 250K mission reward
- Entrepreneur: Can do any mission
- Exceptions: Can do any mining missions or fed/imperial rank up missions regardless of trade rank.
Trading: No profit margins > 2500 per ton until Broker.
Optional Rules (bold are recommended)
Crimes against me: OFF/ON
Engineering: Yes/No
3rd party apps (outfitting): Yes/No
3rd party apps (trade): Yes/No
3rd party apps (mining spots): Yes/No
Ship loss: 50% rebuy, lose the ship, permadeath
There are things frontier has done in the past that improved the game which they rolled back. I remember when they first gave the AI a huge upgrade people were getting killed all over the place. I remember I had to actually use turrets for the first time because the smaller ships knew exactly how to stay behind me. I think they could really improve the danger aspect with one similar small change- make missiles dangerous. Currently you'd be an idiot to stock them on a PVP ship, the ammo sucks and they barely do any damage. This also means that when an NPC hits you with one it's sort of insignificant. Make missiles pack a punch, give military ships dedicated class 1 missile hardpoints to force players into a use it or lose it choice, and see how it all plays out.
They once made interdictions very hard to get out of.
They once rank-locked the higher paying missions based on activity. So you could be a tycoon and allied but it wouldnt land you a mercenary job.
I think all of this stuff was good and it really helped the beginner progression. It is a bit too easy to get a lot of money right off the bat and skip the small ships. Frontier needs to think about how to mitigate that. I'd say that for bounties, laying a couple shots on an anaconda clearly getting destroyed by system authorities shouldn't get you a full bounty. Anything you could actually 100% in a stock sidewinder would probably net you a small profit, 5-15k. Bounty hunting used to be slow like this, then the haz-res came and the profits jumped up.
Exploration data rates need an adjustment to actually be worth more the further from civilized space you travel. For the early game it's too easy to sell data for widely known systems at full price, which is enough to blow past small ships and it doesn't make sense either.
As far as being open-only, I partially agree. I think that instead of solo and private group there should just be Open and Open Hardcore. The regular has no PVP damage, and the hardcore option does. Hardcore could have additional benefits, and maybe there would be places in regular open where the rules are changed like High-Intensity CZ's.
It would still split the player base a bit, but just into two groups instead of thousands.
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Have you tried flying FA off?
Amazing that people still get upset some players like solo. Leave em alone, that's what they paid for!
I like the idea of RES being interesting to mining.. foremost because that's what they're named for.
This might sound anti carebear, but wait until you try mining in a corvette with npc police and npc attackers. Its amazingly fun and still easy mode.
Yeah i know this makes too much sense for frontiers siloed (from all other content) and hardline / punitive (instead of variable rewards tradeoff) approach to designing features. How dare we suggest a feature that's not tunnel visioned and only has punishments to avoid! Sacrilege! The white knights love it!
Sorry, lol. It would be fun though
- Leave overlapping hotspots as they are for miners who don't want to do combat.
- Buff the yields of single resource extraction sites to match the top overlaps over low to hazardous.. of course this would mean you can only mine haz rez with a wing.
- Leave the npc's as current.. while for bounty hunting they're a bit off, for mining pests they're perfect.
This might sound anti carebear, but wait until you try mining in a corvette with npc police and npc attackers. Its amazingly fun and still easy mode.
Yeah i know this makes too much sense for frontiers siloed (from all other content) and hardline / punitive (instead of variable rewards tradeoff) approach to designing features. How dare we suggest a feature that's not tunnel visioned and only has punishments to avoid! Sacrilege! The white knights love it!
Sorry, lol. It would be fun though
In a real galaxy it's highly doubtful you'd run into another ship while out travelling between ports, except on communications. You certainly wouldn't be pulled from high speed travel by a magical interdiction device. Just docking in real space is a surgical maneuver - imagine the precision needed to follow a FTL ship and lock onto it, scan the cargo and interdict it.
You'd never get full bounties for simply destroying a ship. Cops aren't able to turn in bounties, and they are not aligned with the factions offering the bounties. You only kill the ship anyhow, the commander escapes into a pod and ends up back at a station in another ship.
Rebuy is a game mechanic only. You'd not need a rebuy, you'd be dead.
Mining isn't risk free. Mining in Solo is risk free. But IRL you'd mine all your life and never see a pirate, ever, because the cost of operating a ship would far exceed the profit from mining, and the pirate could simply be mining - not pirating for slim pickings. The odds of finding a ship in a ring of a random planet would be nil. Ocean pirates weren't pirating miners, they were pirating shipments. Shipments between stations are fair game, but pirating a miner doesn't make a lot of sense if you want to look at it realistically. What, you're going to spend billions to go steal some bauxite? If all pirates were focused on cost per ton of stolen goods, they'd all concentrate in systems with high trade activity in high priced goods. Instead, a pirate is just as likely to want your tasty biowaste as the LTDs in your hold.
LTD sales? In a very remote part of the galaxy, sure, but IRL not everyone in the galaxy would go to INARA and find out about it. It would be a secret, some company would buy the rights to it and there would be security.
Fleet carrier: If you had the 30+ ships some here have and the funding, why not? You're not alone on the carrier, you have an entire crew. You can invite your squadron if you like. Jeff Bezos could buy an aircraft carrier for about 10b if someone would build it for him. He could have 10 of those and still have enough money to operate them.
I do miss Sarah J? and her pumped up npc's on steroids. I lost so many ships against them.
The multi cannon PA's were a bit much tho. lol
Those ships FD should bring back.
Make an extreme rez or extreme cz for them.
The spec ops in cz's are a great touch tho.
The multi cannon PA's were a bit much tho. lol
Those ships FD should bring back.
Make an extreme rez or extreme cz for them.
The spec ops in cz's are a great touch tho.
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I like the idea of RES being interesting to mining.. foremost because that's what they're named for.
- Leave overlapping hotspots as they are for miners who don't want to do combat.
- Buff the yields of single resource extraction sites to match the top overlaps over low to hazardous.. of course this would mean you can only mine haz rez with a wing.
- Leave the npc's as current.. while for bounty hunting they're a bit off, for mining pests they're perfect.
This might sound anti carebear, but wait until you try mining in a corvette with npc police and npc attackers. Its amazingly fun and still easy mode.
Yeah i know this makes too much sense for frontiers siloed (from all other content) and hardline / punitive (instead of variable rewards tradeoff) approach to designing features. How dare we suggest a feature that's not tunnel visioned and only has punishments to avoid! Sacrilege! The white knights love it!
Sorry, lol. It would be fun though
I’ve done half a dozen mining runs in low, medium and high Res but the Pirate scanning pattern seems the same as a non Res area. They scan you when you first arrive but then never scan you again. Maybe I’ve just been lucky.
Expecting to get interdicted by the cops when carrying illegal goods isn't particularly realistic either, at least not if you've not been doing it for quite a while. In real life cops can only really check your car at national borders or inspection points, and that's in two dimensions and on a much smaller scale. This game exists in three dimensions over entire solar systems, but typically with populations in the millions, billions at most, and most of those are on the planets.
That's millions of times more area with a fraction the number of people to patrol it.
Most of your other critiques follow a similar problem.
Frankly, your suggestions create just about as many problems as they solve. Not the least of which being that the core of the game is made up of the more casual players, who won't stick around to try to re-earn the dozens of hours of effort they just lost when their ship got blown up, but will rather just quit the game.
You'll end up playing alone in a vast and empty universe. And you can already do that. It's called Solo.
That's millions of times more area with a fraction the number of people to patrol it.
Most of your other critiques follow a similar problem.
Frankly, your suggestions create just about as many problems as they solve. Not the least of which being that the core of the game is made up of the more casual players, who won't stick around to try to re-earn the dozens of hours of effort they just lost when their ship got blown up, but will rather just quit the game.
You'll end up playing alone in a vast and empty universe. And you can already do that. It's called Solo.
Do you have cargo in your hold? You're not supposed to cheeze it, you're supposed to let them discover valuables and let the mayhem of you mining, your slf having something to do, and the npc police coming to help. Its pretty fun and a good light show with everything happening at once.
Naah i don't think you'll be able to mix max boast 4 trillion credits per hour with this, just for the fun, and better than no buff at all. Maybe the point is so you can mine anywhere you feel like rather than just one spot in the milky way.
Ha, I remember that - everything would start strobing pink as the blasts went ripping by your hull...
The problem I see with ED is that generally NPCs don't have the room to attack and be a threat for the 'bread and butter' of the game.
Mission wise, Pirate lord wing missions are not really hard enough, or varied. I'd love to see a flock of Sidewinders all G5, or the 'old' pirate lord wing style. I once stacked pirate lord missions and wound up facing two Corvettes, an Anaconda, FdL, being pirated by an Adder and also had the cops going off- it was amazing and pushed my G5 Corvette way past its limits. We need more of that top end crazy, along with much more variety below. There are far too few NPC loadouts that always use a narrow set of weapons.
I still think FD need to make station drops larger to allow NPCs room to do things. Pirates, Powerplay, bounty hunters, ATR etc would all benefit, and would lessen the need for SC interdictions as the single attack vector.
Pursuing bounty hunters need to get mean- as well as Powerplay defector hunters. They need to be a threat.
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Mission wise, Pirate lord wing missions are not really hard enough, or varied. I'd love to see a flock of Sidewinders all G5, or the 'old' pirate lord wing style. I once stacked pirate lord missions and wound up facing two Corvettes, an Anaconda, FdL, being pirated by an Adder and also had the cops going off- it was amazing and pushed my G5 Corvette way past its limits. We need more of that top end crazy, along with much more variety below. There are far too few NPC loadouts that always use a narrow set of weapons.
I still think FD need to make station drops larger to allow NPCs room to do things. Pirates, Powerplay, bounty hunters, ATR etc would all benefit, and would lessen the need for SC interdictions as the single attack vector.
Pursuing bounty hunters need to get mean- as well as Powerplay defector hunters. They need to be a threat.
Revert no fire zone / drop distances to stations to pre gamma(?) distances and other C + P tweaks
Currently its far too easy to never see an NPC opponent from missions. Commanders drop far too close to stations and enter the no fire zone (NFZ) almost instantly, making any NPC bounty hunter or pirate instantly fly off (making them redundant). A distance like 20Km (or perhaps shrink the NFZ...