FD - Please look at immersion breaking spawning...

Banquet

B
For all the great work FD are doing making the galaxy a believable 'hard science' environment I really think the way spawning is handled quite often ruins plausibility and breaks immersion...

I had never tried mining before, so last week I kitted out my Python for the job and found some pristine rings in a system with no space stations. Warped into system, no ships anywhere. Cruised to planet, no ships anywhere... came out of cruise in ring system and, as I'm deploying limpet drones. Two ships spawn behind me and scan me for cargo. Of course I have nothing yet, so they depart. 1 hour later, I have successfully mined some minerals and no other ships have shown up, but real life calls and I have to take dogs for a walk. I know that when I log back in, more ships will spawn and scan me. And that's exactly what happened. Of course, because I have cargo now, they want a fight. It's so predictable with no real attempt to cover up such a clumsy game mechanic.

Last night I decided to try a passenger mission. I love exploring, so did one of the ones to take a famous explorer. I found a good one paying 6.5 million to take an explorer 1200 light years out. This explorer (like just about all of them) is secretive and doesn't want to be scanned, so I knew I would have a challenge getting them back to the station, but would worry about that later! After many pleasant hours getting them to this distant location and scanning any previously unexplored planets and moons on the way, we arrived and I realised I had to drop out of cruise, into an instance, to scan a beacon. On dropping out of cruise, just after scanning beacon, a sidewinder spawns and immediately scans me, while messaging me to say 'got any interesting cargo?''... I mean f.u.c.k off.... a sidewinder?? Immediately the explorer complains and her status becomes 'unhappy'

The aspect of these explorer passenger missions I was looking forward to was rp'ing it and seeing some of the sights. I don't understand why FD, who deal with so many things (IMO) with total class, have bolted on such a crap mechanic to the game. In my opinion, taking an explorer thousands of light years, you shouldn't have to worry about a pirate spawning right next to you when you get there. But above all that, the spawning is so obvious - even logging in and out of RES to get the size of ships you want to fight. Refreshing the mission boards to get the missions you want. I do hope FD can address these issues because I had a great time roleplaying my exploration missions last night but the end just ruined it...
 

RobLocksley

R
This was one of the questions I asked David Braben during AmA on Reddit but the question was not addressed sadly enough.

But yeah, to make it feel like a living breathing universe the spawning has to have a look at because it doesn't fool you into beliving this could be hapening. Feels more like a table lookup spawning thingy, no fun if you want to try to figure out if you are gonna see ships or not.

A better implementation would be very nice indeed! [smile]
 

ShoeHash

ShoeHash
The problem with this is, with just ships flying about, no one is ever close enough to harass you. Ships started spawning on top of you when the Robigio smuggling runs ended. Personally, I didn't stack missions, it ruined it for me to do that. Even so, I was making about eight million an hour and life was grand. I got that Python I always wanted and flew most everything even a type 9, for a time. Then a quick update later and now police vessels came out of nowhere.

You could have fun with that though, the ships were stupid enough to fly into a star if you didn't exit supercruise and just orbited the very shallowly. I called it Sundiving, and it reminded me of Douglas Adams, so that was cool.

So what I suggest is - increase sensor range across the board for ships. The number now is a bit foolish anyway. And spawn these guys a good distance away. A few boosts and highwake is what should be required to escape. Sadly though, if ships were spawned at distance then most would just highwake so fast no one could give chase. The AI needs to give chase more often than they interdict. But if you want that you'd need vast sensor ranges or a new system all together which combines “Active and Passive” sensors.

Silent running should enable a “Passive” sensor mode that only allows you to appear on another pilots screen if you have hardpoints deployed, or you are very close. The trade off being that you have to run slow and cold, maybe even turn a few systems off.

So, to highlight this post in a TLDR format:

  1. Ships should spawn further away from you. This gives you time to escape.
  2. AI Ships should give chase more often, rather than interdict you instantly or scan you instantly.
  3. AI Ships need to be able to follow you from system to system.
  4. Further avenues for smuggling advanced.

Additions to the game I'd like to see:

  1. Active and Passive sensor modes.
  2. Power management minigame in “Passive Mode”
  3. Silent running actually works.
  4. Increase to ships sensor range across the board.
  5. Variable core charge times for low wake and high wake.
  6. ECM systems that work on more than weapons.
  7. 500 trillion spacebux to my account every sunday.
 

Alric

A
Yeah it's an awful system that I think most people though was just a placeholder during testing.
Even if they can't have proper persistence I don't understand why they can't use procedural generation to make sure you always get the same ships not have things appearing out of nowhere or changing completely when you log.
Seed it based on the system and the date/time, generate traffic based on that, assume every ship returns to its original course if distracted then just save ids of ships destroyed lately (only have to keep it as long as the longest time random NPC traffic needs to be in the system.. half an hour?) and network any ships that are currently off course due to player action.
It would need some fudging around combat spawn points or just leave them as they are since live ones are shared instances anyway. Though TBH I'd rather they just did away with them altogether and had conflict points that flare up, get fought to a resolution and go away again.
 

Banquet

B
Alric said:
Yeah it's an awful system that I think most people though was just a placeholder during testing.
Even if they can't have proper persistence I don't understand why they can't use procedural generation to make sure you always get the same ships not have things appearing out of nowhere or changing completely when you log.
Seed it based on the system and the date/time, generate traffic based on that, assume every ship returns to its original course if distracted then just save ids of ships destroyed lately (only have to keep it as long as the longest time random NPC traffic needs to be in the system.. half an hour?) and network any ships that are currently off course due to player action.
It would need some fudging around combat spawn points or just leave them as they are since live ones are shared instances anyway. Though TBH I'd rather they just did away with them altogether and had conflict points that flare up, get fought to a resolution and go away again.
Click to expand...

Absolutely agree with this...
 

askavir

askavir
I agree, the NPC spawns are in most cases absurd and mostly feel cheap and cheesy. It isn't even interesting as gameplay, because its not part of the environment, you cannot plan or make any kind of educated guesses and devise any kind of strategies for your activities, they will spawn on you because they are hard scripted to spawn on you, wherever you are, whatever you're doing. Its a weird "there must be random pewpew wherever, whenever and whatever" kind of thing.

If someone goes a few hundred LY out to mine, in a system with no one in supercruise, and drops in a ring with millions of square miles, its completely absurd that a few moments later a pirate shows up.

If you land on some huge planet in some unpopulated system where even to detect something on the surface you need to be extremely close to it, its absurd that a few moments later some NPC will be flying by, like he sprang from your own butt.

Its hilarious like NPC pirates always seem to know where ypu are and that you're carrying cargo. Or police seemed to know where you were at all times, your specific route, and what you were doing... And lots of other similar situations, where apparently "logic is for nerds".

The specific location BGS should dictate what NPCs are created, and then those NPCs should react (or not) to your presence and actions using logic, not magic.

THis ends up making ED seem like a movie made by two opposing directors. On one hand, we have a magnificent, masterfully crafted galaxy and game world, that looks like a Stanley Kubrick masterpiece. The galaxy is a masterpiece, the ships, the flying, the stations, the planets, all things of wonder which have no paralell in any game past or present. But then we have Michael Bay gameplay elements, where logic is for nerds and pewpew and explosions must be ever-present just because. The result is like a version of 2001 made by scyfy channel. I still love the game for its "Stanley Kubrick" part, but would love it far more if it got rid of its "Michael Bay" facepalming parts.
 
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Mr_sukebe

Mr_sukebe
I very much agree with the sentiments here.
It's just ridiculous how a pirate can find you when you've dropped out in the middle of nowhere. I get that they might have a low possibility, but that's not what happens, it's EVERY time.

In addition is their stupid risk/reward basis. Examples:
- Recently went to go mining in my Clipper (fully engineered). On arrival, get scanned by a sidewinder. I have no cargo, so he leaves. Comes back 5 mins later as I've mined and refined ONE ton of goods, and demands I give it to him. So he's going to put his life at risk for 1800 credits of materials, really?
- I still sometimes get interdicted by pirates in Vipers, when I'm out for example in my fully engineered Corvette. Seriously? Just how does the pirate think this is going to go?
- Even when I'm interdicted by something that might be able to fight say my Vette (e.g. a Conda), to be able to really put up a fight, they're going to be needing to be using a seriously expensive ship. So they're going to put a ship worth say well over 100 million credits for a payout of under 20k credits (have that fairly regularly). Even if they win, they're going to get a payout less than the probable repairs to their ships
- Some of my ships are deliberately unarmed (e.g. my Clipper and Conda). That reduces weight and pushes up the jump range. So when I get interdicted, I submit, run and jump. Neither of those ships can be effectively mass locked and both have shields that can easily deal with the short cool down period. So when I've proven that an interdiction is NOT going to work by successfully jumping out 6 times in a row, why does the pirate think they'll do any better on the 7th, 8th, 9th etc time?

I love the game, but the logic driving the engagements and interdictions is a shambles.

IMO, we still need to have a serious overhaul of the law, order and piracy side to the game, including:
- Have a risk/reward calculation included such that if you're in a fully engineered high end ship, you're not going to have a single cobra interdict you. If a player is in a Conda and the pirates want to have a go, interdict it with a wing of say 6-10 pirate ships.
- Have the system status MEAN something. If you're in a well policed system, have a MEANINGFUL police response, such that pirates are pretty rare in well controlled systems
- Have a cross system bounty, e.g. all across all imperial or fed space systems, such that there's a reason for chasing a pirate across multiple regions
- Allow both pirates and players to CAPTURE other ships. So if it's a player, they can be fully disabled, such that you eject and surrender your ship. Then allow the sale of the damaged ships. Clearly this could/should be limited by the weight of the damaged ship that you wish to tow. So if it's in a policed system and killing the enemy ship get's you a wanted status, chances are that you won't want to wait for the cops. However, if they enemy ship is a pirate, allow the player to tow slowly in supercruise. So ships like a T9 could be tasked to tow a several hundred ton vessel. Clearly it would have lousy jump range.
 

Banquet

B
askavir said:
THis ends up making ED seem like a movie made by two opposing directors. On one hand, we have a magnificent, masterfully crafted galaxy and game world, that looks like a Stanley Kubrick masterpiece. The galaxy is a masterpiece, the ships, the flying, the stations, the planets, all things of wonder which have no paralell in any game past or present. But then we have Michael Bay gameplay elements, where logic is for nerds and pewpew and explosions must be ever-present just because. The result is like a version of 2001 made by scyfy channel. I still love the game for its "Stanley Kubrick" part, but would love it far more if it god rid of its "Michael Bay" facepalming parts.
Click to expand...

I couldn't have said it better... thank you
 

Ca$hback

Ca$hback
I agree with the procedural generation idea where the kind of ships you run into depend on state, security level, gov't etc. and not your rank or type of ship you'll be flying. Sometimes it's annoying to switch to a certain ship because you don't want to lose the variety and only have FDLs after you. After a while no amount of suspension of disbelief is enough to maintain verisimilitude.
Verisimilitude is why I play this game. It's not perfect but I've yet to see better. The scale makes it for me. I like being in that world. I don't like to be reminded all the time that I'm playing a game. Might as well do chores. I want a HOTAS and a Rift. I want space legs.

Somehow when you reach higher ranks everybody else becomes deadly or elite too. All the 1000s upon 1000s of elite veterans. Where do they all come from? Must have a bunch of elite pilot clones on standby for every pilot that ranks up. Whatever happened to the harmless pilots? Maybe your scanner's factory programmed not to show lower ranked NPCs in the same fashion that they programmed our ships to go way slower than they can for some reason.

Sometimes they have better reasons than others to take shortcuts but this is such a common part of the game that affects everyone in every career and would be worth some extra investment in hiding the gears better.
 

ShoeHash

ShoeHash
I just want to add something. I've worked with friends on large web coding projects before. Coding a game and their own engine must be something of a monstrous nightmare, combined with another nightmare you wake up into, and then you wake up again, and - you're on LSD in the back of a cop car.

Firstly you consider the cost to make even small design choices. That is why this game updates at a fairly regular but slower pace. In my day it was mod teams on Quake 2. Sometimes they would forgot to post for half a year and then a week later release another beta that had 700 new things and 400 new bugs. This is not the era we live in today.

A good artist at a games company can make 50-70k a year. Hell, I heard from a friend that, Gabe Newell [Creator of Half-Life and Steam, Owner of Valve and guardian of the Crowbar] makes 4 dollars on every steam sale of $20 dollars. Imagine the wealth this generates over a year. And no, we still don't have enough for Half-Life 3.

Now play that, salaried or not, hourly. Then you're quickly talking 40k for a new ship, 20k for a batch of reskins.

Same with the code. Players broke the game with Robigio. Easy fix, cops on cops on cops. Only cost Frontier 160k and 4 months development time. Then testing plus making sure it doesn't break the background sim. Then sever stress tests and server upgrades. New caching procedures. Oops! Someone forgot a bracket, we have to sort through all the code.

[video=youtube;dNoDgxX4xHY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNoDgxX4xHY[/video]

Get my point? We've really got to rally around these guys, but keep your expectations reasonable. Our ideas are valuable, as long as they are well voiced and not insanely shouted like a homeless schizophrenic, and you keep in mind not to expect them right away. This company will get there, and maybe even faster than Star Citizen.

I play Elite because I do love that Stanley Kubrick's Universe feel. Now add a dash of Alien(s) and some content every now and again. I think 2.2 was a huge improvement, but what do I know, I've only been working on games since I was 14.
 
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Banquet

B
Totally agree, but although I've seen FD chipping away at other issues with each release, while trying to keep up with the headline features that keep people interested, the spawning issue has not really got any better. It's tough one because it will take a lot of work to introduce a better system, but you can't really sell an expansion on 'we've fixed our crap spawning system and introduced a persistent ai cycle' - I'd buy the bloody thing in a heartbeat, though...
 
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