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

[Erimus Kamzel]

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.

Uniqueness could have come via some sort of ships log, which every ship in the game would have. The idea was proposed a long time ago, but with hindsight it would take up an obscene amount of data to create unique history logs of every player ship in game. Plus its more of a semi-RP semi-cosmetic approach, and doesn't involve physical stats. A different way to approach the same issue though.

Adding 'personality' and uniqueness to ships : Link (to a very old thread)

 

[Deleted member 110222]

I'm glad myself. Very glad.

 

[WR3ND]

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

Yeah, we can still play the game the way we want how we want. If some others want to min/max meta builds, well, that's their problem.

My combat loaded Vulture explorer ship is still going to be more efficient at exploration than a Diamondback Explorer for my style of play, but something tells me most other people are still going to use the Diamondback for exploration instead.

Oh well; their loss.

 

[Ian Skippy]

I agree. We went from 'too much randomness' to 'essentially none'. Not sure what sandro means with 'a small reduction in variety'.

Anyway, it is why I keep all my old modules, even when they are objectively worse.

 

[Jex =TE=]

Yeah, we can still play the game the way we want how we want. If some others want to min/max meta builds, well, that's their problem.

So before Engineers, presumably you flew around with only E - C rated modules?

 

[Jimbodiah]

With the new system the casual player can get the same result as the type of guy that does 500 rolls on his dd to impress his little friends. So it's a huge improvement to make the game more enjoyable. It takes a special kind of snowflake to then go on a tyrade about having unique ships. Sounds to me you just want to be one of the few to have high rolls and not have every other player come so close as they will in 3.0

 

[askavir]

Given that the "uniqueness" of our ships was completely invisible to alll except FD's database admins, as nobody could even notice whichever uniqueness was in all the other ships, that "uniqueness" was all but completely worthless.

We might have had meaningful uniqueness if enginnering had been something like tweaking sliders that pushing a slider further into "better" would move another or others further into "bad", with obvious advantages and disadvantages to every kind of tweak. So you might have been able to tweak a superfast ship, but which in turn woldn't have power for many big guns or faster but with less turning rate, and so on... But the decision was made to deny player choice and consequence, and go with RNG straight upgrades, so there's that.

 

[WR3ND]

So before Engineers, presumably you flew around with only E - C rated modules?

By meta, I don't mean effective. We all have different preferences, priories, and ways of approaching the game.

I mostly fly the same ship I flew before Engineers, by the way, though I did roll a tier 5 FSD mod for it.

 

[AH_ImADot]

Oh, boohoo. Now you might actually need to pit your skill against another player, instead of just throwing your over-engineered ship at them. Sounds like better fights to me. But then again, I guess many PvP players don't care about fun fights, but only about quick kills with little risk or skill needed.

 

[Ian Skippy]

With the new system the casual player can get the same result as the type of guy that does 500 rolls on his dd to impress his little friends. So it's a huge improvement to make the game more enjoyable. It takes a special kind of snowflake to then go on a tyrade about having unique ships. Sounds to me you just want to be one of the few to have high rolls and not have every other player come so close as they will in 3.0

Get of that horse mate. Plenty of us have crappy mods but still like the concept of them creating a unique ship.

 

[Jex =TE=]

By meta, I don't mean effective. We all have different preferences, priories, and ways of approaching the game.

I mostly fly the same ship I flew before Engineers, by the way, though I did roll a tier 5 FSD mod for it.

Yes but I'm assuming you had A rated components right? How is that any different than having G5 components now? Instead of grinding for money to afford them, you now grind for materials. Nothing has changed in the game except Fdev reset your ship to E rated.

 

[Dutchman141]

I totally agree with the OP.

I have a Python with a great god roll on it's Dirty Drives and to me it makes it a special ship.
I have couple other ships like that too.
With the new engineering that's no longer possible, everyone can get what I have when doing enough rolls.

The new system is more generalizing then specializing imho.

 

[WR3ND]

Yes but I'm assuming you had A rated components right? How is that any different than having G5 components now? Instead of grinding for money to afford them, you now grind for materials. Nothing has changed in the game except Fdev reset your ship to E rated.

E rated? What? I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.

Oh, in terms of modding... non-modded would be E rated. OK... So what? Not sure what that has to do with people having different preferences, priorities, and ways of approaching the game.

Maybe you're still not understanding what a mean by meta builds. They're the presumed best builds to do certain things in. I often don't agree with that presumption. Take the Vulture vs. the Diamondback Explorer for exploration, for example. I think the Vulture makes for a much more efficient and capable basic exploration ship, leastwise for my preferred methods of exploration.

 

[Jex =TE=]

E rated? What? I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.

Well, with the new mods, any ship not using them is basically a base ship. Weak and rubbish compared to G5 modded ships. So al lthat has happened is everyone got their ships reset and anyone unmodded is effectively back at E rating. "A" rating would be G5.

Now you say you're not interested in modding so presumably, you weren't interested in A rating your ships (which was modding them without having to make rolls)?

But you were, I'm going to assume, so what's the issue now? Instead of grinding for money, you're just grabbing materials. so it's pretty much the same gameplay for the same gain in components. But now you're saying you're not interested and happy running around in what is effectively and E rated ship.

 

[WR3ND]

I wasn't saying I'm not interesting in modding, there just hasn't been much of a reason to bother with it. I'm not much for grinding in the game either way, preferring to do things in the game I find more enjoyable.

I'm not particularly interested in the min/max meta game. That isn't the same thing as modding nor making effective builds for my preferred play styles.

 

[Markoz]

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.

I'm inclined o agree, and under these circumstances, FDev may a well gives us the ability to buy the modules with them already maxed out on mods. At the end of the day, that's pretty much what it is equal to, except that we will still have that awful grind for materials for the mods.

 

[Lily from anim.o.v.e]

E rated? What? I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.

Oh, in terms of modding... non-modded would be E rated. OK... So what? Not sure what that has to do with people having different preferences, priorities, and ways of approaching the game.

Maybe you're still not understanding what a mean by meta builds. They're the presumed best builds to do certain things in. I often don't agree with that presumption. Take the Vulture vs. the Diamondback Explorer for exploration, for example. I think the Vulture makes for a much more efficient and capable basic exploration ship, leastwise for my preferred methods of exploration.

All he says is just that technically, Engineering is another Rating system layer ontop of the already exiting one. Which kinda technically is true. The oly difference is you don't pay it with credits, instead with material (because using a currency seems to become too mainstream in 3304AD)

And for me, games inventing "different currencies" for engame content are just those deisgn wise lazy devs who have no idea how to properly implement them into the current economy of their game. but then ED doesn't even have a proper one.

 

[Jex =TE=]

All he says is just that technically, Engineering is another Rating system layerontop of the already exiting one. Which kinda tehnically is true. The oly difference is you don't pay it with credits, instead with material (because using a currency seems to become too mainstream in 3304AD)

And for me, games inventing "different currencies" for engame content are just those deisgn wise lazy devs who have no idea how to properly implement them into the current economy of their game. but then ED doesn't even have a proper one.

Exactly this.

Replace credits with materials and it's E - A all over again. Flying around in an A rated ship is going to the equivalent of flying in an E rated ship now. You can "choose" to play that way but don't try going up against the AI which have modded components now.

Once everyone is G5, the game wouldn't have changed one bit. It will play exactly the same.

 

[Lily from anim.o.v.e]

Exactly this.

Replace credits with materials and it's E - A all over again. Flying around in an A rated ship is going to the equivalent of flying in an E rated ship now. You can "choose" to play that way but don't try going up against the AI which have modded components now.

Once everyone is G5, the game wouldn't have changed one bit. It will play exactly the same.

well, one thing the game now allows is tweaking the new A+++++ ratings isn't linear anymore, because you have serveral branches to go for range or efficiency, or cooling etc. So that tiny bit of individuality is still existing. but on many modifications there is basically just that one branch making sense. And the rest rather pointless, thats when it kinda reverses back to limear for some of them.

 

[Morbad]

Exactly this.

Replace credits with materials and it's E - A all over again. Flying around in an A rated ship is going to the equivalent of flying in an E rated ship now. You can "choose" to play that way but don't try going up against the AI which have modded components now.

Once everyone is G5, the game wouldn't have changed one bit. It will play exactly the same.

That's the way it's always been.

Engineers and the materials they use is just another economic system to replace the credit system they destroyed.