Engineering and Pre-Built Ships

[V'larr]

Some of these areas we are investigating are:

Reducing the number of materials required for Engineering.
Increasing payout of engineering materials from missions.
Increasing backpack capacity.

Please note, the above are examples of some of the areas we are investigating, not all the areas we are investigating. Elite Dangerous is a Live Service game and we anticipate that refining Engineering may take several passes. However, we will be listening to your feedback as we go about this process.

We will post a more detailed rundown of our proposed changes in the coming months.

Alright, that's well and good. But I am disappointed to not see the balance of Engineering's power (and the resulting massive gap it creates between vanilla & engineered modules & ships, as well as obviously superior options rendering most alternative blueprint options a moot point) brought up specifically as a priority item to look at.

However, it's encouraging to hear you're already thinking about multiple passes.

I'll be looking forward to more details as they come, so do please keep them coming, this is a refreshing pace of communication after the darkness of the past few years.

p.s. This is sort of aimed at the community - I for one think the pre-built ships thing looks fine, having an example that shows they're not fully engineered to the gills should tame the pitchfork mob but even then: "pay to win" really doesn't apply when the act of someone purchasing a pre-built ship will not affect anyone else's gameplay, period. This isn't World of Tanks where you can buy premium tanks and premium ammo and get preferred matchmaking and everything is centered around adversarial competitions - we have literally none of those elements here. I suppose the communication about them should have led with details about how 'advanced' these pre-builds would be - and really, a mining type 6? With small mining lasers? That's not going to be rocking any boats in terms of mining profit records any time soon.

 

[Bobio]

In regard to material collecting, I think reducing the numbers required is a simple and elegant step in the right direction. (Not necessarily a solution in itself.)

My personal (warmish) take is that the current method(s) to gather materials are quite good, and speak to the overall experience of ED. You have to perform a physical task in your ship/SRV and interact with the world in a tangible way. The more skilled you are, the quicker the process becomes, and the idea of someone being "good" at material gathering is interesting in a game like this, with a lot of immersive simulation going on. (Plus, speaking about combat mats specifically, there are already automation elements such as limpets, which require module slots as a trade-off. This already offers a good player agency and balance to the rewards.)

If you give players tractor beams or something, you reduce that activity down to nothing, essentially making it less engaging and even more of a time sink. Just "hoovering up" rewards after combat or whatever seems very arcadey, and goes against why ED is my personal space sim of choice.

However, even if you enjoy the current interactions and systems, there is only so much of them you can take. And once you get serious about engineering, the numbers required make a nice tempo-changing activity quickly feel like a chore. So, reducing the required amount will reduce the feeling of repetition/grind, while keeping the engagement aspect.

Experienced CMDRs can already trivialise a lot of the material gathering process with trading, etc. so getting new CMDRs interested and invested in the engineering economy is important. That means less repetition, more rewards, and more varied and interesting choices on how to use those rewards. This last point is important, because it means even once engineering is more accessible to everyone, not everyone is going to use it in the exact same way. E.g. there are very few use cases for clean drives, even though the potential for interesting and beneficical use is astounding with just a little imagination. I'm only brushing on this point here, but it's significant enough to warrant a topic of its own (probably already has several; I don't frequent the forums...)

 

[Planewalker]

how to get the materials

Quite a few settlements are in a near-constant turned off state from players working bgs.
(it is a mechanic that turning off a settlement enough times will see it turned off for a period)

Other than that there are also a lot of abandoned and infested settlements in thargoid territory.
-they do require fast and cold ships as well as on point GTFO skills to navigate somewhat reliably.

In addtion to the above, some fleet carriers also have mats for sale at bartenders; some listed via inara.
-mats and data are also quite logical in their distribution, defense plants are seldom found at tourist settlements.

For even more advanced approaches i recommend stealthboy on youtube and the settlement guides webpage. (idr the name rn)

Hope this helps some.


cheers

 

[Armaant27]

Greetings Commanders, 

We wanted to give you a heads up on our plans for Engineering coming later this year and share a first look at two of the Pre-Built ships that will be hitting the Gamestore in May. 

Read more: https://elitedangerous.com/news/engineering-and-pre-built-ships

TLDR:

I started playing ED in November 2023 so I'm a new player with just enough experience to have a general idea of whats going on but still have lots of new things to try out. My suggestion is below -Caps to try and get it noticed btw.

***A SUBSCRIPTION MODEL WILL GIVE YOU IMMEDIATE ACCESS TO A CONSISTENT REVENUE STREAM FROM THE *ENTIRE CURRENT ED PLAYERBASE.

Say it's $5/month and you continue to introduce new types of gameplay while fixing the issues the community has mentioned, I doubt you will have many people complaining about it.

----------------------
Long Version:

It's perfectly reasonable that you guys need a reliable source of revenue to keep working on and maintaining the game. Please consider a subscription based model instead of selling pre built ships (that's 100% pay to win regardless of how you market it). Subscriptions have worked really well for many other games that continue to provide value and a $5/mo subscription significantly reduces the barrier to entry for new players who want to try ED but don't want to risk $40 for a game they may not play again.

For people who have bought the game that don't want to pay a subscription give them the option of having access to the current game in solo without future updates, they can always come back to it in the future. If you're going to people off and risk losing your current customers to Star Citizen you may as well go for your best possible outcome opposed to a half measure like hoping to sell a few ships.

We know if the pre built ship trial works you'll add more stuff for sale in the future that is unavailable to anyone unwilling to pay to unlock it. what if established players boycott the Pay2win ships and the community agrees to destroy any "Pre-built" ship on sight until no one buys them.

If you're unsure how to structure or implement a successful subscription model or want an indepth analysis & earnings projection email me and I'll consider a short term contract since I like the game.

Also please make engineering less of a grind for material and more straightforward, it would help alot.

 

[V'larr]

TLDR:

I started playing ED in November 2023 so I'm a new player with just enough experience to have a general idea of whats going on but still have lots of new things to try out. My suggestion is below -Caps to try and get it noticed btw.

***A SUBSCRIPTION MODEL WILL GIVE YOU IMMEDIATE ACCESS TO A CONSISTENT REVENUE STREAM FROM THE *ENTIRE CURRENT ED PLAYERBASE.

Say it's $5/month and you continue to introduce new types of gameplay while fixing the issues the community has mentioned, I doubt you will have many people complaining about it.

----------------------
Long Version:

It's perfectly reasonable that you guys need a reliable source of revenue to keep working on and maintaining the game. Please consider a subscription based model instead of selling pre built ships (that's 100% pay to win regardless of how you market it). Subscriptions have worked really well for many other games that continue to provide value and a $5/mo subscription significantly reduces the barrier to entry for new players who want to try ED but don't want to risk $40 for a game they may not play again.

For people who have bought the game that don't want to pay a subscription give them the option of having access to the current game in solo without future updates, they can always come back to it in the future. If you're going to people off and risk losing your current customers to Star Citizen you may as well go for your best possible outcome opposed to a half measure like hoping to sell a few ships.

We know if the pre built ship trial works you'll add more stuff for sale in the future that is unavailable to anyone unwilling to pay to unlock it. what if established players boycott the Pay2win ships and the community agrees to destroy any "Pre-built" ship on sight until no one buys them.

If you're unsure how to structure or implement a successful subscription model or want an indepth analysis & earnings projection email me and I'll consider a short term contract since I like the game.

Also please make engineering less of a grind for material and more straightforward, it would help alot.

I absolutely do not want future content releases gated behind a subscription model. These content releases (aside from cosmetics) are not gated from free-to-play, and it should stay that way.

 

[aRJay]

TLDR:

I started playing ED in November 2023 so I'm a new player with just enough experience to have a general idea of whats going on but still have lots of new things to try out. My suggestion is below -Caps to try and get it noticed btw.

***A SUBSCRIPTION MODEL WILL GIVE YOU IMMEDIATE ACCESS TO A CONSISTENT REVENUE STREAM FROM THE *ENTIRE CURRENT ED PLAYERBASE.

Say it's $5/month and you continue to introduce new types of gameplay while fixing the issues the community has mentioned, I doubt you will have many people complaining about it.

…

Actually no it won’t as at least some of the player base would leave rather than pay a subscription, which would be especially punishing on the most supportive players who have multiple copies of the game and would therefore be paying multiple subscriptions.

 

[Sol Valou]

My initial feedback, fully appreciating that these could have been presented to us as fully engineered G5 endgame ships, is as follows.

- G5 modules with experimental effects. On the one hand if engineering is easier G5 means relatively less, on the other hand all players will likely engage in engineering so just let the player further improve their ship naturally. Especially if you're going to make that less painful to do. A main draw here imo should just be bypassing the other time sinks like the guardian tech unlocks. As suggested, perhaps G3 or 4 max would be more palatable. Also, more than one is ok guys, and nobody wants to buy B rated thrusters with real money. I sense you're trying to appease the folks qqing about pay2win (that's not a bad thing to do) but honestly you've left quite a bit of wiggle room for yourselves.

- Free rebuys. Bad in concept, inconsequential in the grand scheme of things but still not good. Kind of invalidates the game's #1 piece of advice to new players for the past 10 years; "never fly without a rebuy". A simpler approach would be adding credits to the ship pack to cover some insurance. Something not crazy but enough to afford a few rebuys. A couple million or thereabouts? edit - CMDR X I like your temporarily impounded idea. One could argue that still adds incentive to purchase as you'll never truly lose that ship without insurance, just lose temporary access to it. o7

- Hilarious points about the T6 and actually mining smh

Also pro tip if you want to sell more ARX; aside from additional storage, make more cosmetic decorations. There are still ships without any ship kits. This is baffling to me, it'd be like League of Legends not having a single skin available for some of their characters. Never mind the potential for Absolver/Warframe levels of fashion choices for commander avatars. Truly bizarre. Plus, where's my pink fuzzy dice!? The possibilities for further cockpit accessories are still very high. Do y'all lack the imagination or are your 3d artists just too busy twiddling thumbs? My roommate casually spits out several nice 3d models on an almost weekly basis as a hobby for crying out loud.


edit - The only thing that could convince me to pay a subscription fee would be dedicated game servers that alleviate p2p network instancing.

 

[amigacooke]

You can rebuy your pre-built ships for free every time.

I presume Frontier aren’t even going to try to provide a lore explanation for this.

 

[S3NS3R]

What happens to the modules that you have engineered on the pre built, do they reset back to there original state when you have to rebuy? If they don't reset and keep any engineering that you applied yourself then what value is this and will the rebuy cost reflect the pre-built has been modified with engineering.

 

[Luriant]

Python Mk2 will be released in 12 days.

Did you saw some narrative about the ship builders making new modules? Another "Core Dynamics want to buy Lakon!!!" that ended in a big battle against jupiter rochester...

At least the SCO drive have some narrative, but not the new ships.

For engineered modules, could be something like the 5A FSD from human tech broker, its FREE, until you add Madd Manager and restore the price.I have 2 old modules before this change, with mass manager and 0 rebuy (for my suicideDBX back to the bubble, transfer cost is 100 credits).

 

[CMDR X]

You can rebuy your pre-built ships for free every time. However if you modify the ship with credit purchased modules then you would need to rebuy that cost.

I presume Frontier aren’t even going to try to provide a lore explanation for this.

Re-buy charges should most definitely apply to pre-built ships! Just like regular ships! Difference being you don't loose your ship permanently.
You still get the Sidewinder if you don't have the insurance money and your ship is only "impounded" until you dig up the cash for it.

Always going overboard. Keep the balance.

 

[Oddball1975]

So Fdev will not sell console players new ships via ARX's odd choice. Glad to see fdev doing so well they can pass up easy money.

 

[Felix DiCestria]

0 rebuy kinda has suisidewinder written all over it. Who'd suspect a T6?
Otherwise as starter packs, interesting.

 

[Northpin]

***A SUBSCRIPTION MODEL WILL GIVE YOU IMMEDIATE ACCESS TO A CONSISTENT REVENUE STREAM FROM THE *ENTIRE CURRENT ED PLAYERBASE.

This won't work in ED
It was made clear in the early dev stages that subscriptions are not wanted and the game infrastructure was built accordingly.
Even now, most of the player base will quit rather than paying a subscription

 

[Shurimal]

For Wake data, you should be able to fly through the wake, and get the data and a small credit payout, to encourage new players to do it.

What we really need is a material-specific method of collection, such that a player can simply fly near a cloud of materials, open their cargo hatch, and reel them in in a matter of seconds

Collecting materials should require interactivity, not just moving through a wake cloud or opening cargo scoop and automagically collecting everything instantly. Current system of scanners and limpets is in principle fine, but scanner power draw and scan time should be rebalanced and limpet collection speed could be faster. Ultimately, player choosing to ignore the booty because they can make credits faster that way or whatever is on the player. If I need to let my biweave shield recharge from 20% to full after fighting an Elite Anaconda wich has a fighter supporting it, I also have time to look around for good loot. Who cares if I miss one pirate FDL—there'll always spawn another one.

As for wake scanning, virtually no-one uses it to chase other players down—an escaping trade ship can jump 30 ly away and the chasing FDL would need to do at least two jumps to get there by which time the runner has already switched to solo and back in the system they escaped from Halving wake scanner scan time would not change the balance much but would make collecting the data much faster. The power draw could also be halved for all scanners, it doesn't make much sense for them to require 1,3 megawatts of juice

Technical limitations allowing, collector limpet speed could be doubled and their pathfinding improved so that they don't do that silly loop under the ship

Then there are three big elephants in the room:
1. Drop rates of high grade materials from destroyed ships, ship and wake scans. These could be increased and additional rules added so that eg Imperial ships have a very high chance of dropping Imperial Shielding and Core Dynamics ships drop Core Dynamics Composites.
2. Missions should reward a wider variety of grade 5 and 4 materials, including raw materials, not just 3 or 4 like now.
3. Material trader cross trade ratios are, frankly, insane. 3:2, 2:1 or even 3:1 would make things much, much less painful.
These three changes alone would be a huge step toward making material collection far more accessible, no need for magical collection mechanics (which I personally have never liked in any game).

 

[Crank Larson]

The T6 miner I'm OK with but the Chief with the Guardian weapons is a bit too much. Give it only AX Multicannons and Missles and it would balance. Guardian/Engineer/PP unlocks should not be bypass-able with real fake money. I know you're all gung-ho for Thargoids but I think sticking to basic ship purchaces would be wiser:

A rated Keelback for Combat+SLF
A rated T7 for Cargo
A rated DBS/X for Exploring
A rated Dolphin for Passangers

You get the picture. I would not like to see G5 PA/Rail Kraits for sale in the store.

Remember you said this:
"However, we will be listening to your feedback as we go about this process."

This is make-or-break territory you are wading into with these changes. Please get this one right.

"Make or break"

It really isn't. Why are you wanting to stop other people enjoy the game? Why should they not be able to buy a ship they can take straight into AX combat? If an item is available in-game, then it's reasonable that it would be available for pre-built ships.

From what I can see the ships only have a couple of engineered parts. Seems eminently reasonable.

 

[CMDR X]

..
From what I can see the ships only have a couple of engineered parts. Seems eminently reasonable.

"Only".

Yes, and evil always creeps in slowly.

 

[JakXLT]

So the most pay-to-win thing about this is 0 rebuys on cheap knock-offs of engineered ships?

You could have led with that....

 

[Vardaugas]

I hope the 'more predictable' part about engineering means you finally get rid of the random rolling and give engineering modules a fixed cost. The rolling is superfluous and only eats time. And materials, if you are peculiar about your max rolls.

 

[CMDR Daiyus]

I hope the 'more predictable' part about engineering means you finally get rid of the random rolling and give engineering modules a fixed cost. The rolling is superfluous and only eats time. And materials, if you are peculiar about your max rolls.

Agreed. Despite the frustration with Odyssey engineering (hard to find mats, no swapping mods, etc) the single cost to get the changes is the best thing about it. Bring that into the ship game for definite.