Fleet Carriers - Patch 3 - Known Issues

["Red" the Pirate]

<snip>

Ok, I may have worded that a little funky for the sake of a quick joke.

But my point stands. As far as I can recall, the January update was one of the very few updates that actually focused on bug fixing. A "few" of the long-standing bugs are still present, as well as a whole bunch of other bugs that have been recently introduced. The point of the betas was not only to test the new features, but to squash a lot of the bugs before they hit the live servers. Did that work? Yeah, for the most part. But uh... Tritium seems to have just about disappeared of the face of the galaxy though...

 

[Ian Doncaster]

But my point stands. As far as I can recall, the January update was one of the very few updates that actually focused on bug fixing. A "few" of the long-standing bugs are still present, as well as a whole bunch of other bugs that have been recently introduced. The point of the betas was not only to test the new features, but to squash a lot of the bugs before they hit the live servers. Did that work? Yeah, for the most part. But uh... Tritium seems to have just about disappeared of the face of the galaxy though...

Yep. They did the betas, they caught a lot of the bugs related to the new content, they fixed the most serious ones, and then they made a few tweaks between the final beta and live and broke the BGS. Having fixed that, they then put out a minor patch to fix a few of the residual issues from carriers and some stuff that wasn't as obvious in beta with the lower carrier counts ... and broke a bunch of related stuff that would have been instantly obvious if they'd had even a day's beta test of the minor patch.

At least they're beta testing the major patches again... they really need to either give their patches a final internal check that's more comprehensive than they currently do, or figure out a way to run a quick public beta of even the minor ones.

I kind of understand when the minor patches break further stuff - it's a big game, and checking even all the commonly used stuff when there's probably only a day or two between the code being finalised and them pushing it out to try to meet the demand for fixes to the previous bugs is going to miss things. But that means they need a way to deal with it that's better than going through several weeks of minor patches until it works.

 

[S0rkvild]

Hey Commanders,

We have an update on our progress on the OP!
Thanks

What about broken megaship looting / scenarios? Are you going to fix these issues (present since FC release) as well?

webapp

issues.frontierstore.net

Is megaship looting broken?

It broke a lot of content. You can not complete the raiding missions anymore either. It should be fixed in a patch related to FCs .As the introdution of FCs also broke it!

forums.frontier.co.uk

 

[through the hole backwards]

Are you people in the FD office actually qualified to run a game? I have no faith in your ability to do your jobs.

 

[Just Ice]

What about broken megaship looting / scenarios? Are you going to fix these issues (present since FC release) as well?

Pfff there are mission breaking bugs much older then FC release.

Like "destroy xx infected ships from faction xxx".
Mission USS spawns ships from every possible faction - except mission target faction.
I am pretty stubborn and have spent hours killing destroying zillions of ships to have the right one finally spawned - without any success.

 

[chetan1987]

Hey Commanders,

We have an update on our progress on the OP!

Thanks

Thanks! needed tritium fix!

 

[optiplex]

First message: We know something is bugged, but we need to look at stuff to come up with a patch.

Second update: We looked at stuff, and am working on a patch.


this is good news! means, they are trying to communicate. let's be patient and wait until they complete the work, and then we will know what's all in it.

To little to late, after playing this game for years i am finally at that stage. I am sick to the back teeth of p1ss poor updates and lack of communication when its needed. FD well done at least you excel in annoying your player base.

 

[TCTowers]

I don’t know about other Commanders, but I personally would be more than happy to spend a few hours in a patch beta test to help make sure it was all good before it was released. This would strengthen the bond between the playing community and the Devs, showing a far more engaging attitude.
Surely this would be a far cleaner way to get things implemented, and would also be accompanied by far less salt...and we all know how bad salt is for you.

 

[Mastadon623]

I don’t know about other Commanders, but I personally would be more than happy to spend a few hours in a patch beta test to help make sure it was all good before it was released. This would strengthen the bond between the playing community and the Devs, showing a far more engaging attitude.
Surely this would be a far cleaner way to get things implemented, and would also be accompanied by far less salt...and we all know how bad salt is for you.

I'd be up for that.

 

[Harley Quinn]

Of course this is a temporary workaround - for those who are really stuck in space with no Tritium onboard and don't want to wait till FD fixes "normal", predictable Tritium mining.

Dropping to several hotspots/overlaps combos and shooting a few salvos of prospector towards yellowy glowing rocks is not SO time consuming, and as my example shows, can give surprising but useful results.

My Void opal run that produced no void opals, did produce 260 trit and for the last hour I ignored the trit as I had more than I needed to fill the tank. Seems Trit is good in any other hotspot except a trit one

Oh and they were nearly all SSDs

 

[Malcolm Tucker]

They love announcing stuff don't they.....

'We dropped the ball'

'We don't know where the ball went'

'We're close to finding it, honest'

'We'll let you know when we do find it'

 

[AtomicJuggler]

I don’t know about other Commanders, but I personally would be more than happy to spend a few hours in a patch beta test to help make sure it was all good before it was released. This would strengthen the bond between the playing community and the Devs, showing a far more engaging attitude.
Surely this would be a far cleaner way to get things implemented, and would also be accompanied by far less salt...and we all know how bad salt is for you.

Good for you, but a few hours is not sufficient to test a game like that and too long a process to implement from their part for 3 platforms (I guess).
Personally, I'm fed up testing betas (twice last time).
Besides, most of the (visible) bugs where fixed AFTER release, not before.
Also, the way the issue tracker is 'processing' bugs and the frustrations I've had with it...
Sorry, no more betas or issues on the tracker for me.

 

[TCTowers]

Good for you, but a few hours is not sufficient to test a game like that and too long a process to implement from their part for 3 platforms (I guess).
Personally, I'm fed up testing betas (twice last time).
Besides, most of the (visible) bugs where fixed AFTER release, not before.
Also, the way the issue tracker is 'processing' bugs and the frustrations I've had with it...
Sorry, no more betas or issues on the tracker for me.

I appreciate what you are saying, but surely, say a days beta of multiple players testing it would be more “sufficient” than no beta and new bugs being repeatedly introduced?

 

[TCTowers]

Good for you, but a few hours is not sufficient to test a game like that and too long a process to implement from their part for 3 platforms (I guess).
Personally, I'm fed up testing betas (twice last time).
Besides, most of the (visible) bugs where fixed AFTER release, not before.
Also, the way the issue tracker is 'processing' bugs and the frustrations I've had with it...
Sorry, no more betas or issues on the tracker for me.

As for the implementation, even a single platform beta would surely flag up issues that would be persistent through all platforms?
(I am not overly knowledgable on this so it’s more of an inquiry)

 

[Just Ice]

My Void opal run that produced no void opals, did produce 260 trit and for the last hour I ignored the trit as I had more than I needed to fill the tank. Seems Trit is good in any other hotspot except a trit one

Oh and they were nearly all SSDs

That's even better, it means that you don't need to have xxx/Tri overlap to mine 250+ tons of Tri.
You can refill your FC in any HS that generates SDDs- except Tri HS, of course

 

[whiteroad]

Overlapping Hotspots Commodity Distribution
With Patch 3 we implemented a change that was primarily intended to bring down the effects of multiple overlapping hotspots, especially on rarer commodities (such as Low Temperature Diamonds). We're currently looking at data from the live game to determine the actual impact that it is having and will review this based on our projections. If the data does not meet our expectations we will be making changes accordingly.

Tritium
One of the most noted points of feedback we've seen so far is that the rarity of Tritium has been negatively impacted. We'd like to make it clear that any negative impact on locating and mining Tritium is unintentional and the intention is for Tritium to remain as accessible as it was prior to Patch 3.

UPDATE: We are investigating the issues above, and are working on a patch. We will update you with the date for this patch as soon as we have it. Thank you for your continued patience.

Since you proivded hysterically limited information in the "update", I will analyze every word in detail in order to deduce what you really are saying.

1. "We are investigating" - meaning you spent the whole day looking for and at data and discussing whether the result is wrong without getting to a finished decision on how to solve it. I would like to think you could have gotten as far as actually starting to write a patch but #3 below leeds me to think you didn't. Unnecessarily cryptic and non-open way of saying it but at least you said something. Is the community manager role really about saying something without saying anything meaningful? Then you are doing great.
2. "issues" plural means that there are more than one issue. Since both the changes on console and the "limited purchasing orders" was only information I feel I have to deduce that you indeed are acknowledging Tritium as well as "overlapping hotspots commodity distribution" (hotspot nerf) as undesired results of Patch 3. Since you didn't bother to specify I will reach my own conclusions and claim you said you screwed up with both topics
3. "the date for the patch" means that you will attempt to fix at least one of the two issues. Which is sort of good news but if you didn't you might as well just remove all the fleet carrier functinality so not really surprising anyone. You will patch it sometime in the future, but you don't even want to say if
   1. this is the top priority,
   2. if it'll go out when you feel the fix is solid and tested,
   3. if it'll go out in the next biweekly patch,
   4. or the next biweekly patch after you found something that may work. The last one seems plausible since you have recently done a few experimental bug fixes in patches. I wish you luck as preparation (including code reviews, solid inhouse testing and beta-testing) doesn't seem to be your style, even though I don't believe in luck much...
4. "as soon as we have it" so basically you are just the messengers for the devs and don't have any real influence at this point, you just get handed information. I don't know why I'm even replying to you then, but I guess it seemed fun to take apart your one line of "info"
5. "We will update you with the date" - You obviously have no idea how long these mistakes are going to take to fix and you are hell bent on not rolling back the patch, even if that means many players being limited to whatever activities they can do around the fleet carrier they are currently on, since they can't effectively move their carrier and maybe their entire fleet of ships much anymore. I understand there may be some significant difficulties in rolling back, but it was your choice to deploy without a roll-back plan together with inadequate testing. My guestimate is you crippled 40-60% of gameplay with this and it's possible the drop in player numbers are along those lines, but you would know that by now, unlike us that are left guessing. How do you plan on getting people back??
6. "Thank you for your continued patience" Well, we don't really have much option, you aren't making us part of anything, not even beta testing of patches. Our only choice is to play limited or not play at all. And of course complain, you partially created this complaining monster of a community ;-)

I'll stick with not playing at all for now as much of my intended game play was focused on fleet carriers, mining and scouting for mining locations. You also effectively poured most or all of my scouting work the last two months down the drain by destroying the hotspot concept, so I am a bit sad and salty about that. I thank you for your patience with us being salty and not having confidence in what you do. ;-)

@Stephen Benedetti feel free to ping me when you ACTUALLY fixed the problem not just give useless one liners about maybe fixing it sometime in the future. I don't believe there is anywhere I can subscribe to get information of ONLY when the two issues are fixed/improved AND deployed/released as patches to players. The bug reports will not let me know when anything is patched and the release notes will not be a sure way of knowing that these specific issues were fixed. I was going to spend some more time with Elite during my summer vacay but that's all ruined now. I'll propably check in by Christmas vacation if I don't here anything. Good luck, you'll need it!

PS. As a side note, I recently spent too many hundred £ to improve my experience in Elite by buying the best joystick and throttle I could buy. I only wish there was a way to pay you proper money to actually do good quality work as well. Obviously buying ARX didn't work.

 

[Cmdr Andrew Johnson]

Hey Commanders,

We have an update on our progress on the OP!

Thanks

Thank you @Stephen Benedetti for the update

 

[AtomicJuggler]

I appreciate what you are saying, but surely, say a days beta of multiple players testing it would be more “sufficient” than no beta and new bugs being repeatedly introduced?

I agree with you, pre-release betas should help... usually...

The problem here is that we had 2 long betas for the FC update (nearly 2 weeks each, lots of feedback and issues in the tracker) and yet the initial release was still broken in many ways.

The release of the FC update has been rushed less that 2 weeks after beta 2.

• How could have they had the time to look at the bugs found during the betas (especially beta 2) ?
• How is it possible that the initial FC release patch note do not contain a 'KNOWN ISSUES' section, did they thought ED had no issue at all??? (EDIT: I was wrong, there is a specific post regarding the known issues. I forgot it, my apologies)

Now, after 3 patches, a lot of bugs have been fixed but they introduced new ones (not counting mining nerf or the pre-FC bugs).

Do you really think another beta, or 10 betas, will change that ?

Right now, the game is the beta... at least until they fix most of the bugs...

 

[Nadreck]

So the people finding tritium are those looking for other stuff.

I'd rather not be so dependent on a fuel source that actively hides from us.

And cheap tritium in stations is showing a similarly malicious sense of humour. 5,000 tons of it just magically appeared at an outpost last night (I thought the daily tick was in the morning?). My tritium-starved alt had only just bought a Python, I had to quickly remote-engineer it in the Carrier (no time for the experimentals, just a quick FSD/thruster upgrade and GO GO GO...). Two Carriers already there, another 2 or 3 popping in on every trip, a desperate feeding-frenzy, maybe a couple of dozen when I sucked the last of it out of that outpost. I got most of it, I can only assume most of the others hadn't mastered the SA fast-drop.

But no cheap tritium in significant quantities since then.

Is this the way it's always going to be, from now on?

 

[ZiggyGG]

Greetings Commanders,


Thanks for your feedback on the latest patch! We understand that some of the changes had unexpected effects and want to address them:


Overlapping Hotspots Commodity Distribution
With Patch 3 we implemented a change that was primarily intended to bring down the effects of multiple overlapping hotspots, especially on rarer commodities (such as Low Temperature Diamonds). We're currently looking at data from the live game to determine the actual impact that it is having and will review this based on our projections. If the data does not meet our expectations we will be making changes accordingly.


Tritium
One of the most noted points of feedback we've seen so far is that the rarity of Tritium has been negatively impacted. We'd like to make it clear that any negative impact on locating and mining Tritium is unintentional and the intention is for Tritium to remain as accessible as it was prior to Patch 3.


Limited Purchasing on Fleet Carriers
Fleet Carrier purchase orders are now limited to a maximum order of 2bn Credits. This was omitted from the patch notes and we apologise for any confusion this has caused.


Console Players
A small update will take place tomorrow around midday for Xbox and Playstation users. This update won't contain any noticeable changes, but lays the groundwork for future bug fixes.



Finally, we would like to thank you all for your great feedback, we have been listening and watching and we appreciate your patience and support.



UPDATE: We are investigating the issues above, and are working on a patch. We will update you with the date for this patch as soon as we have it. Thank you for your continued patience.



o7 Commanders.

You broke the game because you wanted so much to need mining. Instead restore all the changes you made with patch 3 and increase payouts for the other activities to keep them on the same level. And also make so that rewards depends on ranks more then now.