How FD undermined their own creation

[Sylow]

Nah,

Having engineered a couple of hundred (yes, really) modules in the last couple of weeks, I've come to the conclusion that everything up to G4 engineering is frivolously trivial for anybody who's dipping into a diverse range of gameplay elements.

You'd have to willfully ignore opportunities to obtain mat's and scans in order to not have everything necessary for G1 to G4 upgrades immediately to hand.

G5, OTOH, does require a bit of effort, and that effort is usually tedious.
Given that G4 mod's currently (as a rule) equate roughly to what people could previously expect from G5 mod's, the current engineering system is mostly plain-sailing.

Unfortunately you ignore one completely different aspect: unlocking the engineers. I mean, i also recently engineered a ship and found it to be not that much hassle any more. But that's because i have all engineers unlocked and the essential blueprints pinned. In contrast, a new player still has to climb the long path of unlocking them all. And some of them really still don't seem to be any fun or quickly done.

I think you make a good point, although personally I would have preferred sidegrades rather than straight upgrades. It is only a problem in freeform PvP though, where there is a strong desire to make a ship as safe as possible at the expense of utility.

Personally, I think the only problem with Engineers is that there's almost never a down-side to a mod' - at least when used knowledgeably.

I also agree with these two statements. Engineers were said to allow us to fine-tune our ships. That sounded a lot like "give here, take there" and get a better ship by shifting things wisely. Instead we got several hundred (!!!) percent more of survivability and a lot of other things stacking up, with no negative aspect to the ship at all. It's merely "grind for power", no more, no less.

At least the lottery and stuff are cut down. Engineers now are much better than they were at launch. In the way that having a cold is better than having tuberculosis. But "better than when they were launched" just means they are "meh!" now, which indeed is a huge step up from being terrible. Unfortunately FD wouldn't dare to smack engineers hard with the nerfbat to bring things in order. Especially not as long as some players are ready to cry loudly at even the thought of balancing being done ever so slightly.

 

[Roybe]

The greatest single aspect of ED is without doubt Stellar Forge and the recreation of a 1-1 galaxy with all the variety that RNG can muster with 400 billion potentially unique outcomes.

Unfortunately, almost every single decision made about exploring it has been wrong and has undermined the glorious scale and variety of our home, the Milky Way.

Blunder 1. The Open Galaxy
By making travel unrestricted, FD immediately and irrevocably removed the wide possibilities of path-finding as an exploration mechanism.
A huge amount of gameplay could have been built around the idea that hyperspace routes between systems need to be established before they can be used.
Imagine a hard frontier around the bubble of explored space, as there was on a smaller scale during Beta. A key gameplay mechanism could have involved some form of route discovery to both push the frontier outwards, and improve transport links inside the bubble.
Instead, the #1 attraction in the entire galaxy, the centre of it, was reached before the game even officially launched.
Rather than an exercise in path-finding led expansion, travelling our galaxy became an exercise in endurance.

Blunder 2. Ever-Increasing Jump Ranges
Space is big, really big, you wouldn't believe... you get the idea. Prior to Engineers, jump ranges maxxed out at about 40ly. The top range from 30-40ly was in a sweet spot that gave the galaxy a structure - the difference between the core, the spiral arms, and the gaps between them was clearly noticable and represented a genuine navigation challenge.
Possibly due to pressure from this community, instead of addressing the very poor jump ranges of certain ships, engineering grossly exagerrated the jump ranges of ships that were already the best at it.
Sure, getting around the bubble is now a lot more convenient, but the cost was the removal of any texture in the galaxy.
Prior to this change, a trip to the next spiral arm posed minor route finding problems, and the further out you went, the more tricky it got. This is arguably, the only navigation problem the game has ever contained. Removing it trivialized the scale of the galaxy, and made it a generic unstructured clump of stars instead of an interesting stuctured spiral requiring route planning.
That route finding gameplay does still exist, but now it is very much a fringe activity out on the extreme edges of the galaxy, with a rapidly diminishing set of unreachable locations.

Blunder 3. The Full System Scanner
Space is big, really big, you wouldn't believe... oh, I already said that. Yup, even individual systems are big. Supercruise was a late change to the original design but it is absolutely essential to getting even the slightest sense of the vast distances even within a system.
Yup, it is not fully fleshed out, it seems like a timesink in very large systems, and there isn't enough to do on one of those trips to Hutton Orbital. But just think about Hutton Orbital - the most iconic outpost in the game - only because it is so far away.
The glory of Stellar Forge is the variety it creates, some systems are big, some systems are tiny, and everything in between. There is no lack of choice available, and the truth is that if you don't like long SC trips, you can easily avoid them.
What's that got to do with the FSS - it's the wrong solution to something that isn't actually a problem.
The problem with SC isn't so much the time it takes to get to secondary stars, it's the lack of things to do on the way there.
Instead of making an in-flight scanner, the FSS brings us to a standstill, removes us from the cockpit, and then commits the worst offence of all - it flattens out every system into the same generic sized strobing blue sphere containing the same generic blue blobs.
System discovery becomes an exercise in camera panning where distance is irrelevant - somehow the developers surrendered to the idea that SC is a problem and created a mechanism to avoid it instead of adding it as something to do while you travel.

So where does that leave us.
A galaxy where almost every trip is a straight line due to excessive jump range, where there are almost no geographical barriers to negotiate (except permit locks), where we don't even need to move within a system to discover its content.

That's an awful long way from the original vision set out in the dim and distant past that was the DDF.
Sadly ED hasn't come close to its potential, and from day one, was heading in the wrong direction.
That direction has become more embedded as time passes and with the confirmation that the FSS is the final word, with no alternatives to be offered, the generification of the galaxy is now complete.

Game over man, game over

This program has been fighting with its own identity from the start...is it a game? Or a simulation?

Your 'problems' limit the games ability to be enjoyed by the time poor..you know...the parent with two jobs, 3 kids, and about 2 hours to do something for themselves..a couple days a week.


The only thing the FSS changed was the time to gather basic information, rather than honk and move on....you still have to fly to the planets to do a surface scan. If anything, the game gives a much better reason now to fly somewhere and do a planetary scan than it used to...with 'things' to be found on the planetary surface.



Pathfinding? Sounds like more grind to be able to do something, somewhere, while we wait for someone to find those node thingies...

Oh..yeah, the FSS also allows you to find semi-permanent things to do...which were completely random...and never to be found easily prior to it.

Sadly, E: D hasn't lived up to the expectations you created for it. Sorry...you might want to look at programming your own game to get those in your game. The game is what the game is...and the developers are making the game as they see it needs to be made.

 

[Stealthie]

Unfortunately you ignore one completely different aspect: unlocking the engineers. I mean, i also recently engineered a ship and found it to be not that much hassle any more. But that's because i have all engineers unlocked and the essential blueprints pinned. In contrast, a new player still has to climb the long path of unlocking them all. And some of them really still don't seem to be any fun or quickly done.

Nah, that's pretty trivial too.

I mean, I guess if you're used to the sort of instant gratification that a game like Candy Crush provides, you might be upset at the effort required but I don't really consider spending an hour or two unlocking an engineer to be especially significant.

"Oh, but why should I have to spend any time doing something I don't want to do???"

You don't have to. If you don't want to do it, don't.

 

[kilvenny]

Base building has the potential to create exploration content, especially if building happens outside the bubble. If it's tied to factions or conflict with Thargoids then again it will create more interaction. If the Thargoids become active in a more visible fashion then exploration automatically becomes more dangerous.

I personally don't want ED to become a survival game, NMS provides that, ED is about flying space ships. However if we can walk around our ships then repair mechanics become a possibility adding a variation to exploration.

My biggest issue is the in system SC travel that is literally point and do nothing. The FSS should have been part of the SC moving experience and you should have needed to locate micro jump points and its range limite to the microjump points. A system would still feel large, but not a complete waste of time.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Nah, that's pretty trivial too.

I mean, I guess if you're used to the sort of instant gratification that a game like Candy Crush provides, you might be upset at the effort required but I don't really consider spending an hour or two unlocking an engineer to be especially significant.

"Oh, but why should I have to spend any time doing something I don't want to do???"

You don't have to. If you don't want to do it, don't.

The problem is that the peashooters just aren't fun, so you basically have to grind the crap to get on the same level as magic AI again.

 

[Stealthie]

The problem is that the peashooters just aren't fun, so you basically have to grind the crap to get on the same level as magic AI again.

You don't, though.

Unlocking the engineers, itself, isn't an especially big deal and, let's face it, unlocking them does give players something to achieve in a game that's pretty thin on tangible achievements.

With that done, as I originally said, you can obtain almost every G1-G4 mat' during routine gameplay so you should never really be struggling to apply G1-G4 mods unless you're deliberately avoiding certain aspects of the game.

Sure, there might be times when you (in your casually G4-modded ship) might meet an NPC in a G5-modded ship, or even a PvPer, but so what?
Without engineering, there's still going to be times when you're outgunned or outflown by players and NPCs.

Honestly, I have a sneaky feeling that a lot of the moaning about engineering is just people attempting to rationalise why they had their butt handed to them.
"Oh, he only exploded me because he was flying a super-engineered ship".
Nah.

 

[VR SenseiMatty]

Yes, because the majority of players have a couple of hours a week to play the game and don’t want a simple gameplay content accomplishments to take months, or years, of real world time due to a small amount of players with endless hours to do nothing but play a game crying about the game feeling too small!

I want to play the f’ing game content, not stare at my screen waiting to travel or waiting for travel, doing nothing or barely anything, for most of my limited gameplay sessions. I want to have something to do.

There are 400 billion stars. Even if you could pick any of them and insta-jump to it, it would take thousands of years to map them all. The distance is arbitrary and our limits to travel are there simply to create time sinks into the boring and unimaginative game mechanic called traveling in this game.

True about the time sink, but rather than reducing travels I would prefer to have more things to do during these travels.
I like the idea of galaxy regions with big gaps of stars that leads to special places. This would make the navigation plan much more involved on the player side. Remember the famous Kessel run in less than 12 parsec...

 

[Dommarraa]

Yes, because the majority of players have a couple of hours a week to play the game and don’t want a simple gameplay content accomplishments to take months, or years, of real world time due to a small amount of players with endless hours to do nothing but play a game crying about the game feeling too small!

I want to play the f’ing game content, not stare at my screen waiting to travel or waiting for travel, doing nothing or barely anything, for most of my limited gameplay sessions. I want to have something to do.

There are 400 billion stars. Even if you could pick any of them and insta-jump to it, it would take thousands of years to map them all. The distance is arbitrary and our limits to travel are there simply to create time sinks into the boring and unimaginative game mechanic called traveling in this game.

If you think about the possibilities that were undermined, you might see that your 3rd paragraph is actually agreeing with the OP.

If FD had not made every system available to jump, the process of resolving unknown systems into jump points would have provided additional game play. Maybe not gameplay that you might have enjoyed, but game play for some people. You could just follow along as you do at the moment, travelling to pretty photo opportunities, or being proud of going to some distant place that took genuine effort for someone else to open up for you.

Probably by accident (almost certainly), or maybe by design, the original jump range limits between 15ly and 35ly actually fit quite neatly with the distribution of systems in most of the galaxy. With 15ly you can get most places but it is a bit of an effort. With 35ly, you can get virtually anywhere with a little foresight and an eye on your fuel gauge. Different areas of the galaxy DID have a different feel about them. With 70ly, you can plot to any system within 20kly, and excluding Permit Zones, do that that boring thing you hate so much all the way there without a second thought.

In a game where exploration is 20 times harder/longer, a sense of achievement will be gained 20 times closer. As you say, the distance is arbitrary, its the fun and effort required to achieve a task, even if it is "only" flying out to Maia because any further and your ship falls to pieces. If Maia is the benchmark, and you achieve it, then you have achieved it.

Nobody is suggesting that anyone should have anything taken away from them. The deal is done, the die is cast, the horse has bolted, the omelette it made, the toothpaste has left the tube, but what the OP is pointing out that it could have been so much better to begin with had they not backtracked/dumbed down, and has been made worse by subsequent changes.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

You don't, though.

Unlocking the engineers, itself, isn't an especially big deal and, let's face it, unlocking them does give players something to achieve in a game that's pretty thin on tangible achievements.

With that done, as I originally said, you can obtain almost every G1-G4 mat' during routine gameplay so you should never really be struggling to apply G1-G4 mods unless you're deliberately avoiding certain aspects of the game.

Sure, there might be times when you (in your casually G4-modded ship) might meet an NPC in a G5-modded ship, or even a PvPer, but so what?
Without engineering, there's still going to be times when you're outgunned or outflown by players and NPCs.

Honestly, I have a sneaky feeling that a lot of the moaning about engineering is just people attempting to rationalise why they had their butt handed to them.
"Oh, he only exploded me because he was flying a super-engineered ship".
Nah.

I don't mind unlocking engineers. Is a one off step for something new. I mind grinding the materials tho. The g dozen dozen materials with their same-sounding names which drop randomly and are never enough to get done what you want. I also mind the repeating way to engineer every module and its dog to get the ship back to being competitive vs environment. I do mind the amount of distance that need to be traveled to get stuff done. I mind the overly random nature of drops, instances and rewards. I mind the stupid "level-up" progress at the engineers.
It's all a useless waste of time to me. Because in the end - I'm not going for some PvP meta build - I would just like to have the same powerlevel as before and considering that, it's pretty much just useless waste of time to get me do stuff on a level I could already do without engineers. A superfluous grind just for the sake of it.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

In a game where exploration is 20 times harder/longer, a sense of achievement will be gained 20 times closer. As you say, the distance is arbitrary, its the fun and effort required to achieve a task, even if it is "only" flying out to Maia because any further and your ship falls to pieces. If Maia is the benchmark, and you achieve it, then you have achieved it.

That's true up to a point, but there is a limit to that as the game ages due to what it implies for system discovery.

At the moment maybe about 1 in 1500 to 1 in 2000 systems has been discovered. Because travel is easy, while some bits are more discovered than others, these are spread out over the entire galaxy.

The same number of systems discovered in a strict "closest to Sol first" order would get you a disk out to about 1500LY from Sol. So if the effective range limit was Maia, everything discoverable would now have been discovered - exploration would have been over a couple of years ago.

There would need to periodically be extensions in the effective range, by one mechanism or another - engineering allowing more resilient ships, or the construction of a substantial network of deep space stations for repairs - to allow players the chance to keep finding new systems.

(Which I think would have been fine, though in that parallel universe there's a thread going on where old explorers are complaining that it used to be a challenge to get to Maia and now people can get to Veil West in only a week, and it's not like the old days where you really noticed the gap between spiral arms because you couldn't get through it)

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

This program has been fighting with its own identity from the start...is it a game? Or a simulation?

Its both. A galaxy sim with a game added into it. A background civilisation sim with a game attached.

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

That's true up to a point, but there is a limit to that as the game ages due to what it implies for system discovery.

At the moment maybe about 1 in 1500 to 1 in 2000 systems has been discovered. Because travel is easy, while some bits are more discovered than others, these are spread out over the entire galaxy.

The same number of systems discovered in a strict "closest to Sol first" order would get you a disk out to about 1500LY from Sol. So if the effective range limit was Maia, everything discoverable would now have been discovered - exploration would have been over a couple of years ago.

There would need to periodically be extensions in the effective range, by one mechanism or another - engineering allowing more resilient ships, or the construction of a substantial network of deep space stations for repairs - to allow players the chance to keep finding new systems.

(Which I think would have been fine, though in that parallel universe there's a thread going on where old explorers are complaining that it used to be a challenge to get to Maia and now people can get to Veil West in only a week, and it's not like the old days where you really noticed the gap between spiral arms because you couldn't get through it)

Having exploration lead to changes to the galaxy would be awesome. Once explored star density reaches a certain threshold then outposts start being created, providing bases for further exploration.

 

[MadDogMurdock]

Having exploration lead to changes to the galaxy would be awesome. Once explored star density reaches a certain threshold then outposts start being created, providing bases for further exploration.

Typically, when pathfinders push the boundaries of a frontier outwards, settlers would follow behind them.

I'm still not sure why colonization isn't a BGS expansion state, but hey ho - the various strands that have been discussed just go to show how shallow many of the mechanisms are.

 

[Roybe]

Its both. A galaxy sim with a game added into it. A background civilisation sim with a game attached.

True...but the problem with this is that the user base wants more of the sim or more of the game...and neither is happy with the status quo. Thus the argument between the 'forum dads' and 'the COD kiddies'.....with both sides complaining about the failure of the programs 'potential'.

 

[MadDogMurdock]

That's true up to a point, but there is a limit to that as the game ages due to what it implies for system discovery.

At the moment maybe about 1 in 1500 to 1 in 2000 systems has been discovered. Because travel is easy, while some bits are more discovered than others, these are spread out over the entire galaxy.

The same number of systems discovered in a strict "closest to Sol first" order would get you a disk out to about 1500LY from Sol. So if the effective range limit was Maia, everything discoverable would now have been discovered - exploration would have been over a couple of years ago.

There would need to periodically be extensions in the effective range, by one mechanism or another - engineering allowing more resilient ships, or the construction of a substantial network of deep space stations for repairs - to allow players the chance to keep finding new systems.

(Which I think would have been fine, though in that parallel universe there's a thread going on where old explorers are complaining that it used to be a challenge to get to Maia and now people can get to Veil West in only a week, and it's not like the old days where you really noticed the gap between spiral arms because you couldn't get through it)

The rate of expansion would naturally slow as the sphere expands - I'd also expect spurs jutting out in certain directions, so I'm not convinced the unexplored frontier would ever be truly far away, at least not in the short term.

Even so, when did a 1000ly jaunt through explored space put off a dedicated explorer?

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

True...but the problem with this is that the user base wants more of the sim or more of the game...and neither is happy with the status quo. Thus the argument between the 'forum dads' and 'the COD kiddies'.....with both sides complaining about the failure of the programs 'potential'.

I want more of both. What's the point in adding to the sim if you don't add to the game part to interact with the sim.

It's probably why I haven't been too upset with most of the updates. They all have had something I like in them, some more then others.

 

[RamirezKurita]

That dead end might be novel the first time, I'm not so sure it would hold up well after that though.

My main concern about hazards right now from the descriptions is that it seemingly amounts to more of the same, only with a a bit more of a mandate rather than the prior option. Some of the more slot limited options would be out for long range expeditions, but I suppose the idea of needing to be prepared might make it seem worth it to those of you looking for hazards. We don't really have interesting ways of doing repairs yet either.

With the hazards themselves, I'm not sure what we'd be looking for. It doesn't seem fair to throw them at random, so we'd be back to looking at maps and scopes to avoid them in a system designed with that intent. If they're random, they can do damage or interfere with systems as options really, either of which seem to circle back to going into menus to fix your ship, possibly after harvesting more mats. Dunno, feels like engineering 4.0 but without the perks.

Seems like it would take a lot of thought to work well and not break long range travel for all but the most dedicated while still being of value to those looking for more.

As long as it is implemented properly, the hazards do not have to be random. They would only seem random if you were jumping to a system that you know nothing about, they could even add in some kind of "jump offset" setting for jumping to Nav Beaconless systems, which would require information gathering about the star in advance. An incorrect offset could simply result in crashing out of supercruise straight into the Star's Exclusion Zone, or could be something worse like dropping out of supercruise beyond the destination after the FSD performs an emergency drop from witchspace due to overheating.

If implemented well, every jump would become an extensive puzzle, involving multiple data pieces that would have to be combined into a final answer. We could even end up with major discussions between explorers about how to approach popular spots without suffering damage, or how to deliberately use incorrect values to end up at exotic destinations. Popular stars that are very stable and safe would become "gateway" systems that would see regular traffic, while ones that have unusually rapid stellar cycles, extensive planetary systems or multiple massive companion objects would become the stellar equivalent of reefs and shallows that are more than capable of taking a bite out of an unwary explorer.

Or a player could just throw caution to the wind and take a few percent hit on their systems every other jump on their way to the Coal Sack and back. Only the long-distance expeditions would require players to adopt a zero-tolerance policy for errors.

Sure, it would mean that the average newbie wouldn't be able to take his stock sidewinder out to Beagle point, but not everyone should be capable of such an expedition. A complete lack of challenge is not a good thing, as if everyone can effortlessly to 100% something then what is the point in trying to improve? There is already a full spectrum of different journey lengths in Elite that are possible to cater for all skill levels and investments, so why is there a need to dumb down the potential challenges? In order to visit all notable human settlements, the longest journey a ship would have to make would be the hops between the Colonia resupply stations. A newer player could still get the exploration experience by travelling out to Maia or the Coal Sack; places like Sagittarius A* and Beagle Point should be a challenge to build up to rather than just another grind. Similarly, adding extra challenge to exploration might reduce the potential variety of ships on ultra-long distance expeditions as not every ship can mount all the various modules, but the same could be said of high-volume trading and the internal space requirements it has or the firepower and survivability requirements for assassination missions.

In the end, as long as exploration is just a mirthful waltz through the cosmos, there's nothing to it beyond jumping and scanning. Adding challenge to medium and long distance exploration wouldn't be taking away content from anyone, as it is currently the same content as short distance exploration, it would be adding content for those that want to push themselves.

 

[Decksmeck]

The greatest single aspect of ED is without doubt Stellar Forge and the recreation of a 1-1 galaxy with all the variety that RNG can muster with 400 billion potentially unique outcomes.

Unfortunately, almost every single decision made about exploring it has been wrong and has undermined the glorious scale and variety of our home, the Milky Way.

Blunder 1. The Open Galaxy
By making travel unrestricted, FD immediately and irrevocably removed the wide possibilities of path-finding as an exploration mechanism.
A huge amount of gameplay could have been built around the idea that hyperspace routes between systems need to be established before they can be used.
Imagine a hard frontier around the bubble of explored space, as there was on a smaller scale during Beta. A key gameplay mechanism could have involved some form of route discovery to both push the frontier outwards, and improve transport links inside the bubble.
Instead, the #1 attraction in the entire galaxy, the centre of it, was reached before the game even officially launched.
Rather than an exercise in path-finding led expansion, travelling our galaxy became an exercise in endurance.

Blunder 2. Ever-Increasing Jump Ranges
Space is big, really big, you wouldn't believe... you get the idea. Prior to Engineers, jump ranges maxxed out at about 40ly. The top range from 30-40ly was in a sweet spot that gave the galaxy a structure - the difference between the core, the spiral arms, and the gaps between them was clearly noticable and represented a genuine navigation challenge.
Possibly due to pressure from this community, instead of addressing the very poor jump ranges of certain ships, engineering grossly exagerrated the jump ranges of ships that were already the best at it.
Sure, getting around the bubble is now a lot more convenient, but the cost was the removal of any texture in the galaxy.
Prior to this change, a trip to the next spiral arm posed minor route finding problems, and the further out you went, the more tricky it got. This is arguably, the only navigation problem the game has ever contained. Removing it trivialized the scale of the galaxy, and made it a generic unstructured clump of stars instead of an interesting stuctured spiral requiring route planning.
That route finding gameplay does still exist, but now it is very much a fringe activity out on the extreme edges of the galaxy, with a rapidly diminishing set of unreachable locations.

Blunder 3. The Full System Scanner
Space is big, really big, you wouldn't believe... oh, I already said that. Yup, even individual systems are big. Supercruise was a late change to the original design but it is absolutely essential to getting even the slightest sense of the vast distances even within a system.
Yup, it is not fully fleshed out, it seems like a timesink in very large systems, and there isn't enough to do on one of those trips to Hutton Orbital. But just think about Hutton Orbital - the most iconic outpost in the game - only because it is so far away.
The glory of Stellar Forge is the variety it creates, some systems are big, some systems are tiny, and everything in between. There is no lack of choice available, and the truth is that if you don't like long SC trips, you can easily avoid them.
What's that got to do with the FSS - it's the wrong solution to something that isn't actually a problem.
The problem with SC isn't so much the time it takes to get to secondary stars, it's the lack of things to do on the way there.
Instead of making an in-flight scanner, the FSS brings us to a standstill, removes us from the cockpit, and then commits the worst offence of all - it flattens out every system into the same generic sized strobing blue sphere containing the same generic blue blobs.
System discovery becomes an exercise in camera panning where distance is irrelevant - somehow the developers surrendered to the idea that SC is a problem and created a mechanism to avoid it instead of adding it as something to do while you travel.

So where does that leave us.
A galaxy where almost every trip is a straight line due to excessive jump range, where there are almost no geographical barriers to negotiate (except permit locks), where we don't even need to move within a system to discover its content.

That's an awful long way from the original vision set out in the dim and distant past that was the DDF.
Sadly ED hasn't come close to its potential, and from day one, was heading in the wrong direction.
That direction has become more embedded as time passes and with the confirmation that the FSS is the final word, with no alternatives to be offered, the generification of the galaxy is now complete.

Game over man, game over

It is what it is, at this time. The solution now is to give new reasons to travel into a system. The FSS gives you an idea of what the system is.

Earth like planets in the bubble should be beehives of activity.

Those outside the bubble should be destination spots for travelers and scientists.

Discovering a new earth like world should be worth billions upon billions for a first discovered by tag and each discovery should spark a cascade of endeavors both civilian and military. It is a race.

Life bearing planets should always attract attention. Yet the search for sentient life is the holy grail of discoveries.

 

[iFred]

Add that stupid economy to the list as well. Creating goods by opening new instances is the most stupid thing I have ever faced.

 

[Schmack]

I dont agree with "first discoverer" of systems that you can plot a route to. How did that work in Beta in systems with stations? Pretty sure a populated system is discovered already...

For the rest, endurance trials for jumping are at least as legit as endurance trials for connecting dots.

The heart of this game is battle. Without it there is a museum of RNG systems.