Enclave - feedback thread

Just landet at Ratchet Hub. It's a full fledged planetary port. It's really big. Alliance really builds those structures fast.
Too fast. I thought there was a Developer Diary on how things like this would take time and we'd see stations and cities going up in stages over many weeks?
 
Years of co-ordinating theft of Thargoid stuff for advancement of human research and technology?

People being focused on WH probably left a defensive gap in Maia.
Unlike the Tech Brokers, he's not selling AX weapons or technology to fight Thargoids, moreover the WH nebula expedition to find new Barnacles sites was requested by Professor Alba Tesreau of Aegis Research, not Paling, so I still don't get it...
 
I like to think FDev has learned with each II which makes it more likely II3 will be pretty good.

I'm hoping II3 will address a lot of the issues - mostly addressed above - but also build on the good points.
I like the idea of linked activities in nearby systems - perhaps dividing player efforts but with real consequences for failure.
You could have station defense where the rebuild cost of the station depends on the numbers of people rescued and the numbers of invaders destroyed. That would reward positive gameplay which otherwise goes mainly unrecognised.
There could be a "Far God" conflict where players can choose to side with either FG Thargoid sympathisers or local authorities in CZs. In such a scenario, FG sects could possibly co-ordinate with Thargoids, raising the prospect of a degree of co-operation and communication with the 'goids. You could even establish a Thargoid (or Far God) powerplay faction(!) so sympathisers could do some real work for their insectoid overlords... Obviously hostile to all other factions.
Taking useful resources (Engineers in this case) offline was a nice touch - real impacts of events.

There's a lot of potential even within existing game tools. (y)
 
An Interstellar Initiative to increase the size of the toaster rack in all stations so we can finally getting even bigger ships, like the Panther Clipper LX.
 
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The Thargoids attack the wrong person. Ram Tah is the one that build the best tech to fight the Thargoids.
Unlike the Tech Brokers, he's not selling AX weapons or technology to fight Thargoids, moreover the WH nebula expedition to find new Barnacles sites was requested by Professor Alba Tesreau of Aegis Research, not Paling, so I still don't get it...

True, and I would hope that the story progresses to something hitting Meene at some point as well. Thing is, it's Palin who's directly getting people to poke around the Thargoids. As Ram Tah is focused on Guardian tech and not as much on picking up Thargoid parts, they may be more interested in responding to the more regular thefts. Palin's location would have made him an easier target as well. As AEGIS is now based in Sol, I imagine the story will be left to build a little more before that attack happens.

I agree that it would make sense for them to work out where the Guardian weapons are coming from fairly soon. An attack is probably due at some point.
 
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yeah if it wasnt burn-out from all the other FDev missteps and the fact that pointless grind-style CGs were a weekly happening for years before this one and I wasn't sick of them I probably would have had a positive experience if I had participated.

I see someone at FDev is trying really hard to eliminate pointless grind by providing context and a point but it's still grind and there's A LOT of burnout to overcome...and the fact that the result is more grind (fixing all the new stations and ranking up the new engineer....which has no new recipes)....and then what? we'll have a new engineer we can grind materials for? yeah maybe 2 years ago I would have been more receptive to it. Now I can only say "come on FDev community.....get grinding so I can use the new stuff"

Even if a new recipe is introduced later after the engineers has been ranked up....it'll start with grade 1 again and require a ton of grind before its useful, which would be pretty bad. can't we just get something nice without grind?

I think one of EDs biggest faults is the game loops are way too short. Thats why it feels like grind. If nothing else this is a good step in the right direction but in its current form I think its too hands-on from the dev team and therefore not sustainable and doesn't apply to enough gameplay.
 
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Since it will likely be ages before I return to Witch Head, it won't affect me directly as much. All you forum people and your spoilers! I'd never known about this insta-city if not for you lot :p
But this leaves hopes to terraforming gameplay. Forum people said that this is a very long process so it can't be actual gameplay for a single player... Everything is still possible then :p
 
Thoughts from me: fairly short, since I'm been watching from Colonia rather than participating directly. But it's been really good fun to watch!

Positive:
- lots of breaking things we thought were established fact (e.g. certain classes of interesting thing can only happen on Thursdays, e.g. nothing bad will ever happen to certain elements of the game)
- high stakes and interesting gameplay scenarios
- good and responsive use of Galnet to deliver the storyline, story felt like it was responding to player progress
- good mix of CG and non-CG ways of providing challenges, especially when combined with the isolation and limited services at Witch Head
- the Witch Head environment has a lot of potential for many further stories in an interesting setting
- fast response and monitoring of issues
- great opportunity for people who weren't around for the early months/years of Colonia to get that same "building a new settlement" feel
- good calibration of things like Trade CG and Repair targets to make them fit the timescale expectations

Ideas for next time:
- in-game foreshadowing of the next II. e.g. for this one, meta-alloy prices could have started steadily rising, and getting articles in Galnet, weeks or months before the II itself started, or for the first one, the two corporations and their rivalry over Guardian tech could have been introduced a few weeks in advance.
- more fuzziness of the phase structure: now that things clearly don't need to happen on Thursdays, doing more with the overlapping and interleaved events used in this II should make the whole thing feel more 'natural'

Negative:
- exploration CGs still don't work well, and the targets were way off all precedent. It's a credit to the rest of the II process and how well that was done that most people have basically forgotten that first CG was part of it at all.
 
Too fast. I thought there was a Developer Diary on how things like this would take time and we'd see stations and cities going up in stages over many weeks?
It's one of those early ideas that sounds good but doesn't actually survive contact with implementation.

They could have stations and cities need weeks to develop stage-by-stage ... but that would mean this II would need to have had its final stages last three months rather than two weeks, which would be a really long time to try to spin the story out for and maintain interest.

The station at Sag A* was built up over five weeks, but that fitted well around the expedition which had other things to do over that time and wasn't in a massive hurry.
 
Ideas for next time:
- in-game foreshadowing of the next II. e.g. for this one, meta-alloy prices could have started steadily rising, and getting articles in Galnet, weeks or months before the II itself started, or for the first one, the two corporations and their rivalry over Guardian tech could have been introduced a few weeks in advance.
Indeed, I totally allowed myself to believe that the storyline with the stolen ship was somehow setting up the Enclave plot. No dice - if those Galnet posts relate to anything at all, it doesn't seem to have been the II.

The station at Sag A* was built up over five weeks, but that fitted well around the expedition which had other things to do over that time and wasn't in a massive hurry.
And even so, it was probably too long. I got the impression that the DE2 fleet lost a lot of pilots and momentum during that time. Using mid-week updates to compress the construction into 2-3 weeks would likely have been ideal.

But in general, I agree that station/base construction phases are a cool idea that just doesn't always work. For one thing there's the question of consistency: if bases normally take days or weeks to go through phases of construction, how do the devs explain it when they really need to place a base today? What we have now at least allows a reasonable head-cannon. Bases and ports close to the bubble can be warped in almost ready to go, only really distant facilities need to be shipped in smaller pieces and built on-site.
 
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139903



My little cockpit boi is too cute and I will defend him with my life

This entire event was worth it
 

rootsrat

Volunteer Moderator
Years of co-ordinating theft of Thargoid stuff for advancement of human research and technology?

People being focused on WH probably left a defensive gap in Maia.

Treating Elite like turn-based board game with a weekly Big Tick and dynamic pawn movement mechanics helps ;)

I'm not even joking :p

View attachment 139903


My little cockpit boi is too cute and I will defend him with my life

This entire event was worth it

Definitely! It's a nice bobblehead. It's made out of a Thargoid Interceptor heart. Alien biotechnology right at your doorstep. Let that sink in.
 
I liked the bit where Palin’s base was under attack and Harry Potter was killing CMDRs fighting Thargoids.

I went there in my unarmed DBX- ended up getting it destroyed - but I got out into my SRV I time and then spend some hours on the surface while chaos reigned all around.
Hiding under boulders near the base, taking pot shots at Harry from my SRV. Until I was killed by a Thargoid swarm that came when I was hiding in shadow but still in the open.

So much fun, except some Mod here deleted the link to Harry’s stream - which was live, exciting and newsworthy.
@rootsrat you could probably challenge that decision - I think it was in error.
 
Just landet at Ratchet Hub. It's a full fledged planetary port. It's really big. Alliance really builds those structures fast.

Prefabricated and then flown into place just like the big stations, would love to see one landing though.
 
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