Hello.
I second both CSH and Yates' suggestions.
I've been doing base sabotage missions for some random bunch of pirates in the middle of god knows where. Because I wanted the money. I now feel entirely dirty and not in a good way, either. Still, no NPCs appear to have been physically harmed by the experience, virtually speaking - and it's been an interesting diversion from my usual routine. I also have more money now.
The whole base-raiding thing really does seem a little tame, even allowing for prior SRV and skimmer experience and the fact that I wasn't attacking the most well-defended installations. I haven't done this sort of thing for ages, quite possibly even since just before or after the
Horizons beta, but at no point did I feel any hint of danger at all. I shouldn't feel entirely safe while I potter about, figuring out how to do the missions. That's a bit more lightweight than I want. It needs a bit more
oomph, for want of a better expression.
• I've said it many times, but ED really would benefit from better, faster mechanisms for SRV drop-off and pick-up. The current methods are so slow and unreliable it sucks all the urgency out of proceedings, both before we begin the raid and during what should be a tense escape.
• Honestly, skimmers are far too easy, their behaviour too predictable, both in the open areas and in and around structures*. They are, at best, briefly amusing, yet dull - which is a shame, because they're a lovely bit of design work that deserves better. As the OP suggests, larger zones and more aggressive anti-trespassing behaviour would certainly help. At the moment, they're like terribly polite, toothless watchdogs which might give us a nasty suck if we make a special effort to annoy them.
• The turrets are definitely too easy. I was expecting to have to dodge and weave to avoid being obliterated, but the best approach seems to be to drive up smartly, stop and shoot them at point blank range, while they're shooting me. I don't think they took more than a single shield-ring off my SRV, despite my wilfully-stupid plan.
*(It's possible that skimmers with better AI have tested poorly - perhaps due to stronger AI running frustrating rings around players' SRV turrets, which exhibit very twitchy and unreliable controls on my low-end system. If this is the case, I would suggest cranking it up a bit anyway, while compensating with proper turret control, similar to what's onboard our ships. That way, the emphasis can be pushed more toward managing systems that remove respawning skimmers, until the skimmer-generator - or it's power source - can be located, targetted and disabled. It's a proper time- and power-based pressure then, rather than an unimportant countdown, which the player can always run down and reset without consequence.)
As per usual, I've probably already suggested fixes for pretty much everything you've mentioned. Lol
I can't currently view most of my posting history at the moment (No idea why), and the relevant ideas are probably long since locked. Lol
A quick recap (and update) of some of my suggestion, are;
Faster SRV Deployment/Collection
A prerequisite for this idea, is allow assigning of NPC crew for all ships with a spare seat, regardless of SLF capability.
Then, when flying low(<1km) and slow(<150m/s), you can board your SRV, and open the hangar and be lowered out, and order your crew to maintain the course and heading.
When you're ready to release the SRV, you hit "release" (or cancel to come back in).
Your crew will boost off and pull up in to orbit, and you will need to control your decent and land safely. Or explode.
To be picked up in an equal high octane manner, rather than recall your ship, if it has a crew member on board, you can also request "extraction".
They will then return to your position, and attempt to hover with the hangar directly above your SRV, even if it's moving.
And you(and they) need to maintain this 'lock' for a short time(no button pressed needed), before being scooped up, and brought inside to resume control of your ship.
While this idea could be done without crew, it does feel like a more advanced manoeuvre that only a pilot could accomplish. And would give you another good use for NPC crew on non SLF capable ships.
I also suggested NPC ships being able to deploy additional skimmers to bolster their defences, instead of rail gunning your SRV in to orbit.
As well as mix up the skimmer spawning to use the other types more.
There's at least two other skimmers that aren't used in POIs, Goliaths and the shielded pulse laser ones. Having these spawn at higher ranked missions and POIs with valuable goods, would make sense.
As for turrets, they're actually all backwards.
Anti-air turrets need to be extremely dangerous to ships, and adjusted so they can't be targetted from the air ever, but made incredibly 'soft' for the SRV weapons. This could be done by applying a partial "dome" shield to AA turrets, which doesn't connect with the ground, so your SRV can go/shoot under it. But a ship can not.
So you can use the SRV to take out anti air more effectively.
But then make surface turrets incredibly dangerous to SRVs, but they can be targetted from the air, so you can use your ship to take them out. These could have "ring" shields, which protect from side assaults, but not from above.
Obviously the perfectly poor shield design is purely for gameplay and makes no sense what so ever. Lol
I also included some ideas about hacking various terminals (and even individual items) to manipulate skimmers and turrets to either attack each other, or shut down.
CMDR Cosmic Spacehead
