Hello Frontier!
I bought Elite D the first day it came out a decade+ ago and after a couple of weeks left the game as it was not a right fit for me. As an explorer, back then, honking then moving on wasn't that much fun.
Last month I purchased Odyssey and started fresh with a new account and had to learn everything from scratch again. The changes have been dramatic and for the better in general, especially for exploration (which is now actually fun and rewarding!). So, here's some feedback and suggestions:
Exobiology and Exploration related feedback:
1- There is a problem with how exploration and exobiology are rewarded in the game that encourages incomplete exploration of a system and its worlds. This creates big problems down the line as systems are left half explored/mapped.
The issue with reward is that you only have two categories player can choose from: A worthless monetary reward that is not sustainable over time (aka it does not 'add up') which is a complete waste of time... or a high monetary reward that is very much worth your time.
For example, only ammonia, water, gas giant class II, terraformable and earth like worlds provide feasible time to profit rewards. All other planets are not, aside from exobiology, worth the time or bother mapping. This creates a problem any explorer notices at the edges of the bubble: You jump into a system, it has been honked and only a planet or two mapped by a previous person... but the rest of the planets are unmapped and many undiscovered. Why? Because whoever first honked the system probably went into the Full spectrum scanner and went only after the signals for before mentioned profitable worlds... then ignored the rest and moved on because in the end, you make more money moving through more systems and grabbing the high profit signals than staying behind to discover and map the rest.
The same applies for exobiology. You jump in, honk, discover via FSS and then just look at planetfall with atmosphere planets ... then further filter down which you will visit based on known high profit items by looking at gravity/temp/atmo type and volcanism. Once again, time to profit. There is little reason to map or go exobio gathering for stuff that nets 1 or 2 mill reward, even if you get first planetfall bonus it still cuts deep into your time to profits to do so. Why? Again, I can discover six new systems and grab the 5, 10+ mill reward exobios via this filtering in the same time frame it generally will take to hunt down a single 1 mill reward exobio full sample.
So, overall, you have both planets and exobio items left untouched ... and the next player that comes along would be a fool to waste his time going after those because they've lost the first discovery, mapping and sometimes first planetfall bonus already.
Suggestion: The same solution applies to planets and exobio:
2- Exobiology and finding the stuff on the ground
This is a big problem for me: The render distance in the game and the size of the exobio items causes insane eye strain. Its like your eyes get carpal tunnel level of bad. Its quite shocking to see that in 2025 a game has an under 100m draw/LOD distance for objects in terrain ... this is equivalent to games from the late 90s like Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe (yes, im that old). To see that even under 100m distance I see rocks appearing out of thin air just 10m away on splotches on the ground which looked like an exobio location.
Suggestion:
You can see how this would encourage exploration ships to load a large probe launcher and an S1... so you can narrow it down fast. You can make the launcher use materials to synth the probe ammo too to encourage players to mine the resources along the way.
3- Wishlist: If we use the 'always wear helmet' option when in our ship and we have the exobio suit.. can we please get the on foot HUD compass system along with the ship HUD? Would make it so much easier to fly the ship low while knowing where the last exobio sample was taken as well as driving the SRV.
4- Please add a new vehicle class that would be used for exploration : The HRV Grasshopper. (Hover Rover Vehicle)
This vehicle would be essentially an SRV without cargo scoop or cargo capacity whatsoever, no weapons and that has very slow ground movement speeds. This makes it a very lightweight craft with a more powerful thruster and engine capacitor system which allows it to focus on hovering for short periods of time. Think of it as an SRV that has 10x the hover time... but its not a flying craft. It does have to come down and recharge the capacitor. That is why its called the Grasshopper.
The way the Grasshopper flies is it locks the thrusters to fire downward only.. so you strafe up and tilt the ship forward to gain forward movement...tilt back to slow down for touch down. The directional strafes would be weaker than the SRV's but enough for minor course corrections if needed. This makes flying this ship be involved and pilot driven .. its not flown like a fighter down in the planet.
Such a vehicle would allow the explorer to go after exobio signatures farther from the host ship and access harder to land or drive through spots like mountains and such. Since it has no weapons or cargo it is extremely limited to just carrying the pilot places.
As an added bonus, this would enable Anaconda and other large explorer ship users to land where possible and have a generous range and enjoyable travel speed. It can also be used as an EVA craft in the future should you add EVA exploration of asteroids or shipwrecks.
As a side note: Whoever was the dev that designed the SRV ... I want to thank him or her for it. Its absolutely gorgeous and 100% fits the 'space age' look, feel and functionality. Please have this dev make the Grasshopper too!
5- The current embark/disembark system is incredibly irritating to use. Every time its look down, disembark, hit 5 to bring up exotool. When you do it many times in a row your brain zonks out.
General Flight & Combat feedback:
- Unassisted flight is what I would use all the time because it does not have the childish flight experience akin to Starfox having an unwanted child with Descent. However, I cannot use it because I do not have dual joysticks (nor want to) , the keyboard input for unassisted flight is extremely poor (tap once ...and tapping opposite key does not set the rotation to cancel out, theres always a noticeable rotational drift movement still left).
Suggestion:
- Turret Weapons: Because of arm injury I cannot use joysticks nor can swirl/twitch use a mouse for flight when in combat. I fly both hands on keyboard and have a little throttle lever set up. Because of this, I must use only turrets for any combat setups. The problem is, turrets are horrible in output and cost. Its like you get double punished for using them. I understand that the firing arcs mandates it be balanced with lower dps but its over-nerfed as it is. Then on top of that having to pay a lot of money for a lower dps turret which, in the case of beams at least, spends half the time missing anyway.
Suggestion:
- Critical: Can you please put an option in settings or a keybind to enable or disable the ship's auto-leveling feature? Nothing is more irritating and frustrating when flying than to have your ship do something on its own you didn't tell it to do. I can't even fly the ship down or up a sloped terrain with the nose pointed at an angle so I keep stable altitude with the ground (because of said 100m/10m draw distance thing) while looking around with the headtracker... and suddenly the ship decides on its own to pull nose up or down and potentially slam me into the ground.
I bought Elite D the first day it came out a decade+ ago and after a couple of weeks left the game as it was not a right fit for me. As an explorer, back then, honking then moving on wasn't that much fun.
Last month I purchased Odyssey and started fresh with a new account and had to learn everything from scratch again. The changes have been dramatic and for the better in general, especially for exploration (which is now actually fun and rewarding!). So, here's some feedback and suggestions:
Exobiology and Exploration related feedback:
1- There is a problem with how exploration and exobiology are rewarded in the game that encourages incomplete exploration of a system and its worlds. This creates big problems down the line as systems are left half explored/mapped.
The issue with reward is that you only have two categories player can choose from: A worthless monetary reward that is not sustainable over time (aka it does not 'add up') which is a complete waste of time... or a high monetary reward that is very much worth your time.
For example, only ammonia, water, gas giant class II, terraformable and earth like worlds provide feasible time to profit rewards. All other planets are not, aside from exobiology, worth the time or bother mapping. This creates a problem any explorer notices at the edges of the bubble: You jump into a system, it has been honked and only a planet or two mapped by a previous person... but the rest of the planets are unmapped and many undiscovered. Why? Because whoever first honked the system probably went into the Full spectrum scanner and went only after the signals for before mentioned profitable worlds... then ignored the rest and moved on because in the end, you make more money moving through more systems and grabbing the high profit signals than staying behind to discover and map the rest.
The same applies for exobiology. You jump in, honk, discover via FSS and then just look at planetfall with atmosphere planets ... then further filter down which you will visit based on known high profit items by looking at gravity/temp/atmo type and volcanism. Once again, time to profit. There is little reason to map or go exobio gathering for stuff that nets 1 or 2 mill reward, even if you get first planetfall bonus it still cuts deep into your time to profits to do so. Why? Again, I can discover six new systems and grab the 5, 10+ mill reward exobios via this filtering in the same time frame it generally will take to hunt down a single 1 mill reward exobio full sample.
So, overall, you have both planets and exobio items left untouched ... and the next player that comes along would be a fool to waste his time going after those because they've lost the first discovery, mapping and sometimes first planetfall bonus already.
Suggestion: The same solution applies to planets and exobio:
- Implement a scaling bonus modifier reward if the player fully maps the system as well as fully gathers all exobio in system (these would be separate bonuses). The scaling bonus increases low paying items significantly more than the already high paying items. For example, the 1 mill exobio gets x5 additional bonus while the 19mill exobio gets just x2. Mapping icy worlds that pays a measly 4k credits at best, gets x100 bonus while an earth like that pays 3.5 mill gets x2 bonus.
2- Exobiology and finding the stuff on the ground
This is a big problem for me: The render distance in the game and the size of the exobio items causes insane eye strain. Its like your eyes get carpal tunnel level of bad. Its quite shocking to see that in 2025 a game has an under 100m draw/LOD distance for objects in terrain ... this is equivalent to games from the late 90s like Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe (yes, im that old). To see that even under 100m distance I see rocks appearing out of thin air just 10m away on splotches on the ground which looked like an exobio location.
Suggestion:
- Make the exobio items be much bigger so they can be seen from farther away. The water geysers and rocky crags where the osseus exobios pop up are a good example of size they would need to be.
- Add a weapon made for exploration.. a 'probe' missile launcher. You fire the things into the ground and once they land, they will illuminate with the same on foot exobio scanner glow display, any exobios within its range. The range would be 500m per hardpoint size (aka S4 = 2km, S1=500m). This glow would be a heat layer overlay so you dont need draw distance and can use it from any altitude. The heat overlay will last 2 minutes. You can only have 1 probe active at any one time, firing a new one replaces the heat layer of the old one. Once you know where it is, you can fly down to its almost exact location and eyeball mk1 find it.
You can see how this would encourage exploration ships to load a large probe launcher and an S1... so you can narrow it down fast. You can make the launcher use materials to synth the probe ammo too to encourage players to mine the resources along the way.
3- Wishlist: If we use the 'always wear helmet' option when in our ship and we have the exobio suit.. can we please get the on foot HUD compass system along with the ship HUD? Would make it so much easier to fly the ship low while knowing where the last exobio sample was taken as well as driving the SRV.
4- Please add a new vehicle class that would be used for exploration : The HRV Grasshopper. (Hover Rover Vehicle)
This vehicle would be essentially an SRV without cargo scoop or cargo capacity whatsoever, no weapons and that has very slow ground movement speeds. This makes it a very lightweight craft with a more powerful thruster and engine capacitor system which allows it to focus on hovering for short periods of time. Think of it as an SRV that has 10x the hover time... but its not a flying craft. It does have to come down and recharge the capacitor. That is why its called the Grasshopper.
The way the Grasshopper flies is it locks the thrusters to fire downward only.. so you strafe up and tilt the ship forward to gain forward movement...tilt back to slow down for touch down. The directional strafes would be weaker than the SRV's but enough for minor course corrections if needed. This makes flying this ship be involved and pilot driven .. its not flown like a fighter down in the planet.
Such a vehicle would allow the explorer to go after exobio signatures farther from the host ship and access harder to land or drive through spots like mountains and such. Since it has no weapons or cargo it is extremely limited to just carrying the pilot places.
As an added bonus, this would enable Anaconda and other large explorer ship users to land where possible and have a generous range and enjoyable travel speed. It can also be used as an EVA craft in the future should you add EVA exploration of asteroids or shipwrecks.
As a side note: Whoever was the dev that designed the SRV ... I want to thank him or her for it. Its absolutely gorgeous and 100% fits the 'space age' look, feel and functionality. Please have this dev make the Grasshopper too!
5- The current embark/disembark system is incredibly irritating to use. Every time its look down, disembark, hit 5 to bring up exotool. When you do it many times in a row your brain zonks out.
- Suggestion: Can a keybind for embark/disembark toggle for srv and for on foot be added?
General Flight & Combat feedback:
- Unassisted flight is what I would use all the time because it does not have the childish flight experience akin to Starfox having an unwanted child with Descent. However, I cannot use it because I do not have dual joysticks (nor want to) , the keyboard input for unassisted flight is extremely poor (tap once ...and tapping opposite key does not set the rotation to cancel out, theres always a noticeable rotational drift movement still left).
Suggestion:
- Now, I understand you dont want to put automated rotations while vector flight is unassisted... but could you at least implement an 'auto cancel all rotations' keybind? Flight of Nova has this feature and its perfect ... it enables controlled flight without fully automating the rotations all the time.
- The keyboard control input needs to be improved. There is no way around this. If I tap yaw left once I expect tapping yaw right once to fully cancel the rotation. Again, Flight of Nova does this so please make it happen.
- Turret Weapons: Because of arm injury I cannot use joysticks nor can swirl/twitch use a mouse for flight when in combat. I fly both hands on keyboard and have a little throttle lever set up. Because of this, I must use only turrets for any combat setups. The problem is, turrets are horrible in output and cost. Its like you get double punished for using them. I understand that the firing arcs mandates it be balanced with lower dps but its over-nerfed as it is. Then on top of that having to pay a lot of money for a lower dps turret which, in the case of beams at least, spends half the time missing anyway.
Suggestion:
- Bring down the price of turrets and keep the lower dps but increase their range to 2x what they have now. This would compensate for the lower dps if you can keep damage running from longer range... not much but it adds up. Also, the beam lasers should have the same accuracy as the pulse lasers BUT make it so that the accuracy starts to drop based on heat levels. Say, past 70% they start to have the horrible miss rate they have now.
- Critical: Can you please put an option in settings or a keybind to enable or disable the ship's auto-leveling feature? Nothing is more irritating and frustrating when flying than to have your ship do something on its own you didn't tell it to do. I can't even fly the ship down or up a sloped terrain with the nose pointed at an angle so I keep stable altitude with the ground (because of said 100m/10m draw distance thing) while looking around with the headtracker... and suddenly the ship decides on its own to pull nose up or down and potentially slam me into the ground.
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