ANNOUNCEMENT Fleet Carriers - Content Reveal Announcement
- Thread starter Stephen Benedetti
- Start date
Too much de-neigh-al makes you hoarse.
Assuming you're talking about Robigo passenger missions? It's broken because the only reason Robigo and other mission "hotspots" exist is an edge-case in the mission generation algorithms.
This gets off-topic, but here's why:
Mission boards, regardless of the quantity of factions present, try to generate up to 100 missions, maxing out at about 20-30 per faction... so a board with 2 factions will usually have 40-60 missions. No more than about 100 are generated, because it results in excessive latency in boards rendering them non-functional.
When attempting to generate missions, it only generates the types of missions it can generate. There are restrictions on when missions can generate; these are:
So for example, "Assassinate Known Pirate" missions target a random anarchy faction, in a random system, within 10LY.
For typical systems, this means you have a very diverse set of potential destinations, targets and requirements. For a typical system, 33% of passenger missions will be "transport"/"Bulk Passenger" missions, and you might find only one or two missions that go to the same destination.
For Robigo, there's only one system, and one target which meets the set of requirements for that sort of mission to generate. But it'll still try and generate 40-60 odd missions. As such, you'll end up with 10-20 missions in a single board generation, because all other generation factors are static (as there's no pool of randomness to call on).
It's exploiting an edge case in an otherwise random scenario. Instead of playing with a proper roulette wheel, where there's black and red squares and the numbers 1-26, and you get 10 spins resulting in a set of 10 random numbers with random colours, you're setting the wheel to be all black, with just the numbers 1 or 2 on it, and wondering why you're geting paid out for picking 2 so often.
In other words, it shouldn't generate "Enough missions to fill the board, to a static figure"... it should generate a quantity missions based on the number of available destinations and types of missions available to it.
When attempting to generate missions, it only generates the types of missions it can generate. There are restrictions on when missions can generate; these are:
- Distance of a potential target system
- Available commodities within a certain range
- Government type, to a degree
- A few other things, but they become less relevant
So for example, "Assassinate Known Pirate" missions target a random anarchy faction, in a random system, within 10LY.
For typical systems, this means you have a very diverse set of potential destinations, targets and requirements. For a typical system, 33% of passenger missions will be "transport"/"Bulk Passenger" missions, and you might find only one or two missions that go to the same destination.
For Robigo, there's only one system, and one target which meets the set of requirements for that sort of mission to generate. But it'll still try and generate 40-60 odd missions. As such, you'll end up with 10-20 missions in a single board generation, because all other generation factors are static (as there's no pool of randomness to call on).
It's exploiting an edge case in an otherwise random scenario. Instead of playing with a proper roulette wheel, where there's black and red squares and the numbers 1-26, and you get 10 spins resulting in a set of 10 random numbers with random colours, you're setting the wheel to be all black, with just the numbers 1 or 2 on it, and wondering why you're geting paid out for picking 2 so often.
In other words, it shouldn't generate "Enough missions to fill the board, to a static figure"... it should generate a quantity missions based on the number of available destinations and types of missions available to it.
These edge-cases have existed since the dawn of time with ED, and FD have constantly put effort to patching them out. It's not "The BGS doing the thing",,, it's an edge case breaking the RNG.
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Pop a video up of it being done.
+1 for giving it a crack for me, and yeah, I agree value is subjective, which has kinda been my point since the beginning. Based on the current reveals, I don't think it's worth 5b, and nobody has really explained how they'll get their 5b value out of it; only that "it's pocket change" which makes me think those people won't get what they want out of it (a big cash cow, basically) and those who don't think it's worth it, simply won't use it.
In other words, people seem to think it's fine, because they've loaded up using an unbalanced mechanic, which FD was stupid to use as a meter-stick for costing the FC. I would hope FD have a good understanding of the typical income rates of all their game's activities, and aren't just going YOLO average commander balance. If they don't have a good handle on typical activity income rates, then there's really no hope for the future game design. It's why we end up with silly things like the Meta-Alloy or Thargoid Tissue Sample CGs, where it's just assumed they can be collected as easily as market-available goods.
I don't really compare the FC to a war-carrier. The base model is, to me, meant to be more like a glorified hauler, and then you upgrade it with the particular modules and specifications you need.
5b would be worth your FC tricked out with all the relevant gear to make it a Nimitz carrier... not as a glorified shipping container though.
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When you have people posting pics of their 40 billion credits, it's easy to see how the median has been pushed upwards to 5 billion.
Which raises a QUESTION for FD: How did you arrive at the figure of 5 billion credits for the FCs ? Is it a median figure of assets? Or something else?
Just went out mining.
Took two hours. Trigger finger had arthritis, and could not hold down the firing button. Put that into your income per hour equations.
Got interdicted, twice. Killed the Federal Deathship. Bounty was about 69 KCr.
Did pick up some niobium. Probably the most valuable thing I got, besides the 2 MCr of painite.
All in all, a typical Elite session, for me. I'll be interested to see what fleet carriers are like to not own one.
Took two hours. Trigger finger had arthritis, and could not hold down the firing button. Put that into your income per hour equations.
Got interdicted, twice. Killed the Federal Deathship. Bounty was about 69 KCr.
Did pick up some niobium. Probably the most valuable thing I got, besides the 2 MCr of painite.
All in all, a typical Elite session, for me. I'll be interested to see what fleet carriers are like to not own one.
Apparently you don't ' own ' them...You rent them and if you default on it.....puff....gone
Perfectly understandable grind is always bad.
So if after the reveal and the betas a FC appeals to you make a note not to be spending too much on ships and fines and SLF pilots and buy the FC when the money is available however long it takes, who knows something may come along that pays well and you enjoy to speed the process up.
Well they probably have access to the data on more commanders than Inara, but we are just assuming it is based on the money we have available and not something related to ship and station prices.
I remember getting uncomfortable holding down the trigger for mining lasers. I ended up configuring my X52 throttle-side thumb slider to be an alternate "secondary fire", so I could slide it up and not have to hold anything. That really helped!
I have the secondary trigger bound to a rotary button as well as an ordinary trigger when mining just turn that on and away we go, it is also useful for the KWS and is much less painful for my fingers.
If I stopped playing because of life (or even because other games presented a better time / enjoyment ratio) and I came back to my 5 Billion carrier investment just ... gone ... I would also be ... gone. Forever.
Elite is NOT a job and I shouldn't have to continue up-keeping it like one! Frontier! Remember WHAT you are! I do NOT work for you! This is supposed to be entertainment. If you want to introduce upkeep (credit siphon) then think about the upkeep being based on IN GAME time only!
Why do you want to manipulate Frontier's decision to estimate the price of FC of 5 billion? Based on post from players; Well, I have started a character and he has obtained 10 million with a side ship the first day with 2 tons of cargo. in 2 hours.
2 hours is a very basic time of entertainment that does not overwhelm and leaves other pleasures in life. Not obsess over having a FC
2 hours is a very basic time of entertainment that does not overwhelm and leaves other pleasures in life. Not obsess over having a FC
The 5 billion was surely calculated so that a sufficient number of FC occupy the space, and that a significant number of visitors can dock on it, to give life to this aspect of the game.
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On April 2 the features of the Fleet Carriers will be presented. During the streaming will be listed some of the features already introduced through the presentation post.
The latest news about Support Vessel (exploration, mining, bounty hunter and trading) dates back months ago and was not specifically mentioned in the recent announcement.
Will Fleet Carriers be modifiable with special modules to have these specific features?
Will the Support Vessels be purchasable as a real fleet in addition to Fleet Carriers?
Thank you.
The latest news about Support Vessel (exploration, mining, bounty hunter and trading) dates back months ago and was not specifically mentioned in the recent announcement.
Will Fleet Carriers be modifiable with special modules to have these specific features?
Will the Support Vessels be purchasable as a real fleet in addition to Fleet Carriers?
Thank you.
), I have another question:
Although you'll be focusing on the big ticket items, can you also give us an idea (maybe in notes after the stream) of the bug fixes coming / rebalancing in the patch please? With two betas it will be an excellent time to check the smaller things out too.