How is Frontier preserving the Uniqueness of our ship in Beyond?

[DarthRavadge]

So it seems to me with this new engineer system that we are losing something important. Before secondary rolls made it so that no two ships had the exact same stats. Now once you reach the max upgrade on a component it will be identical to everyone else that maxed it out. Most serious players will have done this in under two weeks for their entire fleet.

Gone will be the days of record breaking FSD jumps. No longer will your racing eagle/courier be the fastest. No longer will your shields be able to take just a little more punishment than the next guy. What we will have is a ship modified from a parts magazine. Not something that you tuned to be truly your own.
This makes things much duller as now we will essentially just have "S" class modules.
Never once did I complain if I ran into a ship with better upgrades. I just said to myself, "Damn, that guy was tough. Nice ship!"

Now we will have Call of Duty in space. Same ships. Same Guns. But we have to cater to those PvP guys who can't handle getting downed by a slightly tougher opponent despite screaming "Come at me bro!" all day long.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

I don't mind. I'm a communist, after all.

 

[GunnerBill]

So it seems to me with this new engineer system that we are losing something important. Before secondary rolls made it so that no two ships had the exact same stats. Now once you reach the max upgrade on a component it will be identical to everyone else that maxed it out. Most serious players will have done this under two weeks for their entire fleet.

Gone will be the days of record breaking FSD jumps. No longer will your racing eagle/courier be the fastest. No longer will your shields be able to take just a little more punishment than the next guy. What we will have is a ship modified from a parts magazine. Not something that you tuned to be truly your own.
This makes things much duller as now we will essentially just have "S" class modules.
Never once did I complain if I ran into a ship with better upgrades. I just said to myself, "Damn, that guy was tough. Nice ship!"

Now we will have Call of Duty in space. Same ships. Same Guns. But we have to cater to those PvP guys who can't handle getting downed by a slightly tougher opponent despite screaming "Come at me bro!" all day long.

I see your point and sort of agree - the romance will be lost. But so much variation wasn't very realistic at all, there's only so much variation you can get out of a bit of machinery.

What's not been explored however is a gradual or even step change improvement in engineering outcomes over time. Think of motorsports, team & engine manufacturers advantages come and go as new tech is increased & developed/evolves.

I think this individuality could be brough back but in an entirely logical fashion by emulating this.

So the current G5 FSD upgrade should be better than last years, perhaps the current "best" G5 upgrades should be from a specific engineer with others lagging slightly behind. This could change over time as engineers RnD gives results.

You could mission play industrial espionage to learn secrets from one engineer to gain favour with another...

 

[SuBSynk]

So it seems to me with this new engineer system that we are losing something important. Before secondary rolls made it so that no two ships had the exact same stats. Now once you reach the max upgrade on a component it will be identical to everyone else that maxed it out. Most serious players will have done this under two weeks for their entire fleet.

Gone will be the days of record breaking FSD jumps. No longer will your racing eagle/courier be the fastest. No longer will your shields be able to take just a little more punishment than the next guy. What we will have is a ship modified from a parts magazine. Not something that you tuned to be truly your own.
This makes things much duller as now we will essentially just have "S" class modules.
Never once did I complain if I ran into a ship with better upgrades. I just said to myself, "Damn, that guy was tough. Nice ship!"

Now we will have Call of Duty in space. Same ships. Same Guns. But we have to cater to those PvP guys who can't handle getting downed by a slightly tougher opponent despite screaming "Come at me bro!" all day long.

They have undermined the entire concept of the engineers (Braben said "unique" ships) whilst introducing pointless & gamebreaking power creep.

End result = many unbalanced core game aspects like police/station responses, unacceptable disparity between those with/without Horizons & placing themselves in a situation that is difficult to undo or recover from.

 

[StiTch]

Nothing in ED is about uniqueness.

You are not special. You are not a unique snowflake. We are all blazing the same trail as each other. We're the all singing, all dancing BGS number shifters of our galaxy.

 

[DarthRavadge]

I see your point and sort of agree - the romance will be lost. But so much variation wasn't very realistic at all, there's only so much variation you can get out of a bit of machinery.

What's not been explored however is a gradual or even step change improvement in engineering outcomes over time. Think of motorsports, team & engine manufacturers advantages come and go as new tech is increased & developed/evolves.

I think this individuality could be brough back but in an entirely logical fashion by emulating this.

So the current G5 FSD upgrade should be better than last years, perhaps the current "best" G5 upgrades should be from a specific engineer with others lagging slightly behind. This could change over time as engineers RnD gives results.

You could mission play industrial espionage to learn secrets from one engineer to gain favour with another...

That is an interesting idea. Perhaps different part manufacturers could add more variation too. A core dynamics peice would have different base stats than a Gutamaya piece of the same type (thrusters from two different companies for example). Maybe even small local faction manufacturers.

 

[zombieapocalypse]

Nothing in ED is about uniqueness.

You are not special. You are not a unique snowflake. We are all blazing the same trail as each other. We're the all singing, all dancing BGS number shifters of our galaxy.

Is that you Tyler Durden?

 

[Jex =TE=]

Before Eng's was made and just announced I said this is exactly how it would go. That eventually all ships would be the same so now we're back to E-A rated. The gameplay doesn't change one iota. Even with the old Eng system, almost everyone that engineered would be end up exactly the same.

Nice to see FDev forcing players to use the Engineers though as it appears the AI are now using modded ships. Mac users, non Horizons users and people that don't want to grind for Eng's - tough I'm afraid. FDev don't care about you it seems.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Different types of Multicannons are a thing. So some will have overcharged, some will have long range and some will have something else. And then you will have the special effect on top. Looks pretty varied then what we had before engineers was a thing.

 

[CMDR Zadian Lichtfrost]

So it seems to me with this new engineer system that we are losing something important. Before secondary rolls made it so that no two ships had the exact same stats.…

The engineering system never created really unique ships. There is variation in a few numbers below god-roll level, but that's it.

The moment players knew what secondary rolls where possible they all went for the same ship with the same god-rolls for the same modules with the same modification.

 

[VR andysonofbob]

99% convinced the OP is trolling. Especially with the COD reference. (Obvs COD and the like with their loot crates!)

Yeah,

As someone who values player skill over anything else, I think it is high time the old way had it's day.

Combat and racing. Even scales. More excitement iyam!

 

[zombieapocalypse]

To be fair, it's probably quite hard to design a system that doesn't involve some degree of min-maxing.

Personally, I'd like to see far more interesting modifications with far bigger trade-offs. The kind of things that would encourage or suit genuinely different play styles and tactics. Modifications that would really make you think twice before installing.

Like being able to sacrifice engine or FSD size/capability for increased cargo capacity. Or adding another hardpoint slot but losing several utility slots or an important internal slot in the process (or vice versa). Or increasing total speed at significant cost to manoeuvrability and/or boast. Increasing power plant capacity or FSD range at the cost of significant heat increase and/or the potential for random failures. And so on.

 

[GunnerBill]

That is an interesting idea. Perhaps different part manufacturers could add more variation too. A core dynamics peice would have different base stats than a Gutamaya piece of the same type (thrusters from two different companies for example). Maybe even small local faction manufacturers.

Yes and that too.

Variation by design.

 

[Cmdr Ultra]

The only way uniqueness can exist now is a huge variety of weapons and modules for players to choose from.

Alien tech, Tech Brokers just more and more stuff in the game. More content is the key.

 

[Mephane]

Frankly, I don't like any form of uniqueness in video games that is the result of RNG. I don't want to be unique in having a 5% higher or lower value on some stats due to RNG. Uniqueness should always come from player choice alone - what ship you choose, what loadout you equip, paintjobs, ship kits, weapon colors etc. - all contribute to your ship feeling like it is really yours.

 

[Dbrn47]

Experimentals, module classes and choices, paint jobs and ship kits. About it.

 

[Lily from anim.o.v.e]

if w ehad better ship skin deisgn tools, we could achieve true uniqueness by style, but this is probably never going to happen

 

[Morbad]

To be fair, it's probably quite hard to design a system that doesn't involve some degree of min-maxing.

Why would you even want to?

Min-maxing is eminently plausible and something most of us do to a fair degree in the real-world, especially in lean times, or if we have any reason to compete.

The only way uniqueness can exist now is a huge variety of weapons and modules for players to choose from.

Had plenty of uniqueness before engineers.

Yes, anyone could built the same ship as anyone else, but not everyone could fly them, and I flew plenty of very effective setups that I never saw anyone else duplicate, because they favored something else, or were simply ignorant of the potential of a non-cookie cutter build.

 

[bootsam]

Skill in flying should be the primary reason for victory between 2 identical ships. Not engineering. It should not be that low skilled players should be able to use a highly engineered ship to beat a highly skilled pilot in a less engineered boat. High skilled players in highly engineered ships were practically invulnerable. Low skilled players in low engineered ships were and are just victims for those who knew the latest meta. Personally I thought engineers drove a wedge between the player base and thus most of us just went Solo/PG. I hope the changes improve things.

 

[Wilhelm Fröschl]

The problem was uniqueness is by design reliant on RNG. If you remove the randomness, how do you make ships unique?
So it's a tradeoff - people largely rejected the RNG aspects of "RNGneers" and here we go. You really cannot have it both ways.