General Exploration SRV death penalties are oppressive

[gorgofdoom]

I’m really enjoying Elite but I’ve got some thoughts to share.

I consider death penalties for exploration a bug because they are obviously not working as intended. They are supposedly to make the game more thrilling, but they do the exact opposite. They prevent us from doing anything risky which makes the game, simply put, very boring.

Now, I already tried posing this in bug reports only to be redirected here… so here I am, writing this again…. Almost like Frontier enjoys making their users do things repeatedly. Well, I really like this game, so please appreciate the effort.

Let me tell a bit of a story to illustrate my position: s

I was out in WREGOE VY-S E3-20, only about 885Ly from earth, and I found a large number of brain trees. I spent probably 3 hours exploring three footfall planets and documenting 6 brain tree types. I was in that Star Trek mindset where Data is singing “I just love scanning for life forms”.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/embed/dWBmaKk32fE


(that’s 18 scans preformed, getting in and out of the SRV…. 18 times… just in this system).

On the last planet, orbiting the farthest gas giant, i finished exploring. The planet itself is… small, nearly planetoid, but has incredible texture in the form of canyons. I felt the urge to race my SRV around. I drove it till the wheels nearly fell off, then had to go take care of family stuff, leaving my SRV at 2% health.

I come back, start up the game, and strap my headset on…. Only to see the last few frames of my SRV exploding. I wouldn’t say this is a bug because I probably hit the wrong button and slammed into a rock. But I lost hours of progress… in just this system. I had to go rescan all 18 plants, not even considering the dozens of other systems I’d visited.

In short: it just doesn’t make sense that the character is bringing bio data with them in an SRV. it should be left on the ship. If we die in the SRV we should only lose data acquired on the specific planet we died on.

Saving progress up to when we deploy the SRV from the ship would be a great step towards allowing us to properly explore and experience the planets with limited risk. loosing an SRV is already a blow to our ability to explore effectively, but to throw out hours or days of work is simply oppressive.

As it is now: I will never again want to do anything even remotely risky while exploring because it’s simply not worth the cost in time. This makes exploration sound incredibly boring. Please consider reducing the penalties of SRV destruction so we can actually play with them, and properly enjoy the planets we’re exploring.

 

[Ansic]

Is funny how Fdev allows you to retain all the combat bonds when you die but not exploration data. I think the main reason is people would suicide to respawn back in bubble - but instead the Devs could implement a mechanics that would mitigate it.

 

[Factabulous]

As it is now: I will never again want to do anything even remotely risky while exploring because it’s simply not worth the cost in time.

..or you could learn that you should repair your SRV when it drops to a point you get worried it. 2% seems low - I usually look at repairing at around 25%. Others will have different limits. Same with refueling it - some will leave it until the tank is dry, but is it worth the risk?

This is also the reason many explorers tend to try and fit 2 SRVs - just in case.

It's good that we now have FC scattered around the galaxy like the DSSA network so needing a restock is not the end of the trip. I often make trips based on DSSA locations and get more willing to risk the SRV as I get closer - and ofc I dump the Exo data on each carrier I can so that I don't lose everything.

 

[gorgofdoom]

We can’t use a death on foot or in SRV to teleport back to the bubble. Such circumstances results in us reappearing in orbit of the planet, in our ship.

It doesn’t matter how many SRV’s we bring if just one incapacitation wipes all data. The whole purpose of my post is to ask the developers to ease up on the constraints so we can stick our noses in a dangerous place without risking the entirety of the trip, up to the point of being incapacitated. The fact that we can repair our SRV’s, while helpful, is not really on topic.

I think, in elite dangerous, it should not be surprising or debilitating to find danger. It should be a matter of course to learn about hazards— not something that derails entire expeditions or requires us to repeat hundreds of actions.

 

[gorgofdoom]

Now, it's perhaps a digression, but I've many hopefully helpful suggestions in the support of immersion which i'm not really sure where to post.

it would be very nice to see the life support module reworked now that odyssey has an overlapping feature. It just doesn't make sense for our ship to explode (due to a busted canopy) after an extremely short timer if we can have 100ish hours of life support stocked in batteries. Having no HUD already makes playing very difficult. To pile on a doom timer is immensely stressful for new players, especially on their first Jet-cone boost accident...

Allowing a broken canopy's repair by AFMU while not under flight stress, or just while landed (anywhere), would be a good direction. Landing without a HUD is a feat in itself. (of course they'd have to remove that nightvision brings the hud back)

Perhaps the life support module could be reworked into an emergency medical recovery system /cloning machine that, given a limpet or charges that can be replenished via synth or station services, can recover us or explain how we wind up in orbit after an accident.

Just try to imagine the added immersion if, after incapacitation, the ship swoops in and scoops up the SRV's cabin or our body with a limpet instead of just inexplicably reappearing in orbit "having been rescued by rescue rangers" in zero time while 50,000Ly from the nearest human.

Now looking at titles like valheim it might be interesting to have the characters backpack drop during recovery, to encourage returning to the hazard, but I personally don't like the concept considering how difficult it can be to upgrade things. Perhaps being able to salvage the SRV’s components and cargo would be appropriate; including all the raw engineering materials we’d collected.

To add some depth to exploring, making basic exploration easier but maintain the requirements of deeper exploration: why are we even maintaining cartographic data on our ships at all? we could just send or request it immediately since we can communicate instantly across the bubble. Biological & geological samples, on the other hand, should still require delivery. To tie it in to the thargoid war we could say that scientific study of the thargoids has helped us learn how to communicate better among the stars.

It would also help immersion to allow collecting ship engineering materials while on foot. Like I could shoot the brain tree’s with a handgun to drop objects but only collect them with the SRV scoop or limpets. Imagine after we lose an SRV we could get out of the ship, collect materials, and synth a new SRV with the end goal being that, short of our ship being totally destroyed, we can recover from any mistake.

 

[Schmack]

We can’t use a death on foot or in SRV to teleport back to the bubble. Such circumstances results in us reappearing in orbit of the planet, in our ship.

It doesn’t matter how many SRV’s we bring if just one incapacitation wipes all data. The whole purpose of my post is to ask the developers to ease up on the constraints so we can stick our noses in a dangerous place without risking the entirety of the trip, up to the point of being incapacitated. The fact that we can repair our SRV’s, while helpful, is not really on topic.

I think, in elite dangerous, it should not be surprising or debilitating to find danger. It should be a matter of course to learn about hazards— not something that derails entire expeditions or requires us to repeat hundreds of actions.

It's not danger if it's not debilitating - it's only interesting. Parachuting is dangerous and exciting. It wouldn't dangerous if it was only a sim. I think we should lose materials and everything if we "die". But I also think there should be consistency. If we can retain materials and some of that is data, we should be able to retain scanned data as well. Many of the materials we have are scanned data anyhow. The difference is that we don't cash in materials. There has to be a risk to losing this else we never leave the fight to repair (early on in the development of the game I'd leave several times a session to repair because I was close to 1m in credits and didn't want to lose it). So either we lose it all or we lose none. We seem headed to losing none though. Now we can't even die.

 

[SlickPBW]

leaving my SRV at 2% health.

and the conclusion is...

I consider death penalties for exploration a bug because they are obviously not working as intended.

Of the many things I could say about this, I believe this speaks for itself.

 

[gorgofdoom]

It's not danger if it's not debilitating - it's only interesting. Parachuting is dangerous and exciting. It wouldn't dangerous if it was only a sim. I think we should lose materials and everything if we "die". But I also think there should be consistency. If we can retain materials and some of that is data, we should be able to retain scanned data as well. Many of the materials we have are scanned data anyhow. The difference is that we don't cash in materials. There has to be a risk to losing this else we never leave the fight to repair (early on in the development of the game I'd leave several times a session to repair because I was close to 1m in credits and didn't want to lose it). So either we lose it all or we lose none. We seem headed to losing none though. Now we can't even die.

We can die. I die all the freaking time which is part of why I find this worth discussing.

The disparity I see is that once we have a carrier we can explore and be pretty much fine with dying, since it’s not a big deal to move our spawn point around and just do one system or one planet at a time.

This is more about the early game experience, though, before we can move our spawn point / turn in location. Like why is the early game harder than the late game? It’s upside down as far as expected progression.

it’s not danger if it’s not debilitating

Dying already is debilitating, because losing an SRV is a significant blow to the ability to explore & collect materials— not having an SRV makes it entirely impossible to explore some planets.

It moves right on to oppressive when wiping out all previous progress because you just didn’t understand the severity of the danger…. Which you cannot learn until you’re killed by it.

It’s the same problem that I see with there being no warning before entering a trespass zone. You just aren’t aware of the dangers and suddenly your ship is written off as scrap.

 

[aRJay]

We can die. I die all the freaking time which is part of why I find this worth discussing.

The disparity I see is that once we have a carrier we can explore and be pretty much fine with dying, since it’s not a big deal to move our spawn point around and just do one system or one planet at a time.

This is more about the early game experience, though, before we can move our spawn point / turn in location. Like why is the early game harder than the late game? It’s upside down as far as expected progression.

…

That is the sim like aspect of Elite, when you start out at most things your abilities, skills, experience and tools are not the best but in time you become better at what you are doing and can get better tools which in turn means that things seam easier.
As in the real world so in a sim and so in Elite.

 

[varonica]

It’s the same problem that I see with there being no warning before entering a trespass zone. You just aren’t aware of the dangers and suddenly your ship is written off as scrap.

You can see the trespass zones on the radar, the problem is how are they supposed to know you are going to enter the trespass zone? Do they just start spamming out warning repeatedly to any and every ship that comes near. I mean, there you are approaching a trespass zone and get a warning, you turn away, then turn back, they warn you again, and over and over again every time you reduce the distance between you and the trespass zone? That could get tiring very quickly, specially when you can see the trespass zone on your radar.

 

[Shadowsnog]

elite is really great game if you dont think about it.
because then you will get ship not being able to land by itself when you are in the cockpit, but landing by itself if you are on the ground.
i too think that loss of exporation data should happen on the loss of ship, not just an srv.
spaghetti environment is already hostile enough. a little bit more handholding really wouldnt hurt the game that much. and its not like there isnt a precedens for it, like the before mentioned combat bonds.

 

[Factabulous]

It’s the same problem that I see with there being no warning before entering a trespass zone. You just aren’t aware of the dangers and suddenly your ship is written off as scrap

No warning?

• You get to see a red box around the trespass zone on the radar before you enter. In most cultures red is an indication of danger / prohibition.
• You get a visual warning on the screen when you actually enter - with a reasonable amount of time to exit before anything attacks you
• You get an audio warning on the screen when you actually enter - with a reasonable amount of time to exit before anything attacks you

Not sure what you want in addition - maybe you could say.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

But I also think there should be consistency

Up until they made combat bonds survive death, there was approximate consistency - the design goal I think was to roughly match the feel of the original singleplayer games.
- items which you'd generally be expected to hand in when you dock don't survive ship loss
- items which you'd generally be expected to keep after docking do survive

The distinction is if - like in the original Elite - you can only save at stations, what's part of your save state when you reload?

But it's ED-ified, so that rather than actually taking a save state when you dock/launch, it just looks at what's most likely for each type of item
- credits, materials, rank, reputation, etc. you picked up almost entirely before your current trip so they're kept (even the ones you got on this trip)
- cargo, bounty vouchers, etc. are picked up for or on your current trip so they're lost (even the ones you carried over from previous trips)

Exploration data has always broken the model because of just how long you're out for: it's current trip collection so it's vulnerable, but the trip is potentially days or weeks rather than the minutes of a trade run or the maybe a few hours of a combat patrol ... so as in the OP it has to be basically risk-free because even a 1% risk of ship loss per system would have excessive consequences.

The change in Odyssey to make combat bonds persistent completely throws the old model out anyway, so on that basis they might as well move exploration and exobiology data (and bounties and other vouchers) into the "kept on ship loss" bucket as well.

 

[Hellrider]

No.
They arent, thank you. Just don't die, it is very easy.

And if we talk about bonds- they should disappear too.
Stop this logic "if X was trivialised let's trivialise everything".

 

[Alec Turner]

I think I'm basically OK with there being a risk to dying. I do however agree that data notionally stored on your person (i.e. exobiology scan data) should be automatically backed up to the ship's data storage (alongside cartographic data for example) when you re-board the ship. That would both alleviate the worst of the pain of losing multiple system's worth of exobio data and also make things a bit more internally consistent.

 

[Northpin]

Is funny how Fdev allows you to retain all the combat bonds when you die but not exploration data. I think the main reason is people would suicide to respawn back in bubble - but instead the Devs could implement a mechanics that would mitigate it.

The change in Odyssey to make combat bonds persistent completely throws the old model out anyway, so on that basis they might as well move exploration and exobiology data (and bounties and other vouchers) into the "kept on ship loss" bucket as well.

It was a required change due to the fact that:

• combat bonds are the same for on-ship / on-foot combat
• it's really easy to die in an on-foot cz, multiple times per session - compared to on-ship combat where the chances to survive are orders of magnitude higher

On the last planet, orbiting the farthest gas giant, i finished exploring. The planet itself is… small, nearly planetoid, but has incredible texture in the form of canyons. I felt the urge to race my SRV around. I drove it till the wheels nearly fell off, then had to go take care of family stuff, leaving my SRV at 2% health.

I come back, start up the game, and strap my headset on…. Only to see the last few frames of my SRV exploding. I wouldn’t say this is a bug because I probably hit the wrong button and slammed into a rock. But I lost hours of progress… in just this system. I had to go rescan all 18 plants, not even considering the dozens of other systems I’d visited.

In short: it just doesn’t make sense that the character is bringing bio data with them in an SRV. it should be left on the ship. If we die in the SRV we should only lose data acquired on the specific planet we died on.

Saving progress up to when we deploy the SRV from the ship would be a great step towards allowing us to properly explore and experience the planets with limited risk. loosing an SRV is already a blow to our ability to explore effectively, but to throw out hours or days of work is simply oppressive.

As it is now: I will never again want to do anything even remotely risky while exploring because it’s simply not worth the cost in time. This makes exploration sound incredibly boring. Please consider reducing the penalties of SRV destruction so we can actually play with them, and properly enjoy the planets we’re exploring.

So, the conclusion would be:
I FAILED, SO THE GAME SHOULD BE CHANGED TO ACCOMODATE MY MISTAKES

Do i get that right?

In the past I complained that death penalties were rather too much especially for explorers, but i was always been told that the game should have consequences - and ultimately i do agree with that.
Indeed, there can be a quite discrepancy between death penalties suffered by a trader doing in-bubble A-B trading compared to the losses that an explorer can be subjected to.

But let's be honest - exploration is so damn safe while the gains from exobiology can be some damn exceedingly high, that i do find the death penalties rather appropriate.

You can die in exploration only by doing stoopid things. Like failing to notice that High G planet or letting your srv run out of fuel or run out of hull - especially when repairs/refuels are so damn cheap that people have circumnavigating entire planets in the SRV.
At first offense, usually the support oblige to restore the lost data, but i would assume it depends (on the scenario, attitude etc)
Or by suiciding, of course. Which would mean an instant trip back to civilization.


So, IF you die in ship, you lose everything except combat bonds
if you die on-foot you lose bounties, exobio data, maybe some other vouchers, but you dont lose ship exploration data and ofc combat bonds.

Seems rather fair IMO
And to be honest, the penalties for dying on foot are less harsh than dying on-ship.

Edit: the only thing i would change would be a 4 weeks* auto-cash-in for combat bonds (which tend to accumulate in billions due thargoid combat paying exceedingly well, too well IMO)


*(or even maybe lower, like on every Thursday maintenance)

 

[Brrokk]

When carrying many millions' worth of data, don't take unnecessary risks. Seems like common sense to me.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

It was a required change due to the fact that:

• combat bonds are the same for on-ship / on-foot combat
• it's really easy to die in an on-foot cz, multiple times per session - compared to on-ship combat where the chances to survive are orders of magnitude higher

Certainly losing bonds every time Frontline drops you into the fight would be annoying, though I don't think "bonds aren't lost" necessarily had to be the solution - without changing anything else they could for example have made the bonds for kills relative small (and therefore effectively a bonus for "survival" completions), while making the zone victory bonus much larger. Or it could have worked like CQC does - another mode where losing your ship is expected - where your score for the zone is tracked across deaths, but you only get that converted to a payout at the end of the match.

(And if you relog to chain zones together in that model, you'd better be confident of winning them all flawlessly if you were intending to cash in the bonds later)


Having broken the old short-term/long-term distinction for that, though, it's probably worth considering if it's actually serving a purpose at all, or if it's just encouraging an already incredibly risk-averse and loss-averse playerbase to be even more so. Would the game actually be any worse off if - as in the earlier 3 Elites, among many others! - doing a thing gave you a direct credit account boost without the need for an intermediate voucher?

 

[Northpin]

though I don't think "bonds aren't lost" necessarily had to be the solution

Absolutely.
But it is their chosen solution and i would like to think it was not lightly taken.

 

[Kira Goto]

Edit: the only thing i would change would be a 4 weeks* auto-cash-in for combat bonds (which tend to accumulate in billions due thargoid combat paying exceedingly well, too well IMO)

Might have to agree there. I made an alt which I use to participate in different, more AX-oriented parts of the war and making money wasn’t all that quick during the initial few weeks. Then I had a ship with some basic engineering(for a couple modules, others got a bit higher), good enough to take on Cyclops at least, and suddenly I had half a billion within a day or three just by visiting CZs with AX multicannons.

Granted, I’m no beginner to the game which sped along the process some, but I’m still feeling like I sit on too much money for such a short period of time. And have deliberately not used/redeemed the bonds since that initial 500 mil. In that time, they have gone to a billion or so. (Also went eye for an eye with a Medusa at some point so I’d technically have lost some. I was happier to get the kill on it for the mission.)

RE exploration/bio data - well, as it has been said, exploration is generally already pretty risk-free. The only time I got kind of close to losing anything was not paying attention and bumping a .5G planet at ~550 m/s.

Still survived though, now I generally remain careful during any planetary approach which has removed most other risks. Does it make logical sense to lose bio data in an SRV or if you get ‘killed’ on foot? Not really, but I take it as a game mechanic to at least keep an eye on the game that I should be playing, even if I’ve got some entertainment material running by the side to cover those relatively inactive phases of exploration.

(And that bump with a planet led me to seek out the nearest DSSA carrier. Through which I found the Zurara in the same system by total dumb luck. Funny stories.)