Hy Mates.
This post is about new ideas to reduce grind, specially for engineers, and how to minimize the occurrence of meta loadouts in pvp.
So, let's talk about engineers first.
I think the concept was great, but it ended with the same "problem" as of all MMOs. Grinding, wasting time doing repetitive things only to achieve an objective that hasn't much to do with the effort involved.
Spending hours to collect materials and use them in a sort of roulette to get module upgrades from engineers.
This is NOT what it should have been. Upgrading modules should be the reward for quest events. Simple.
You would meet an engineer and he would offer you a quest for a certain upgrade. It could be anything, from simple delivery missions to a long jump across the galaxy, to a risky smuggling or dangerous assassination.
Then, after finishing this quest and returning to the engineer, you would get a specific upgrade, with well thought and balanced pros/cons, never a crazy random roll.
Yes, you wouldn't spend so much time doing it, you wouldn't grind, but then again, you would be really playing the game, and having fun.
Now the second part: special effects on weapons - this is always prone to meta, no matter the way you tweak the values. Why? because the majority of these special effects affect the target, instead of affecting the weapon efficiency. Heck, even plasma slugs are a free ticket to exploits.
So, what could you have instead of the actual mess?
Weapons with rarity level. The rarest the weapon, the more slots for upgrades it could have. Some could be found in wrecks, or from destroyed enemies, with some upgrades already set.
Engineers could stack different upgrades on a weapon and thus make it custom to each player's taste.
The concept of each upgrade would be simple, and certainly sureproof:
Ex: rail gun sturdy upgrade - armour piercing +10% / Thermal load -5% /mass +40% /integrity 50% (based on max sturdy upgrade level 5)
This is an example for weapons with max 5 slots for upgrading.
Oh, and special effects? These would be unchangeable, a signature of the weapon's rarity. And they all should be based on the weapon itself - like visual changes, rate of fire, extra ammo, damage type change etc...
and they should always have a setback 100%
ex: chain-feed multi-cannon - rate of fire +50%, thermal load +100%, no reload time
gamma core missiles - trail colour green, explosion area +50%, turn rate -50%
precharge rail - trail colour change, press to charge power, fire on release, thermal load +100% during charge, capacitor load +100% during charge.
Now, another idea to reduce metas would be to add more modules to the game.
Instead of a shield cell module, you could have a shield recharge module that would suck up your system, engine, weapons capacitor to recover the shield.
Then you could have a capacitor recharge module, that would spend energy cells (cargo) to restore your capacitor.
This change would force ships modded for combat to have space for cargo too, and that would limit how many recharges they could get to their shields. (no synthesis, please)
Synthesis could also be a separate module, like a small robotic factory to create all the things necessary from existing materials.
Then, a module to store materials, instead of the magic-like material storage.
You could have an extra shield module- the deflector - it would spend your weapon's capacitor charge to activate a soaking shield that would degrade fast ( like, be up for 10 seconds, and even less, depending on the damage sustained). While this shield was up, no weapons could be fired, of course.
You could have a refrigerator module, to cope with the ship's heat.
An electronic warfare module, designed to garble sensors in the area.
A stealth module, able to hide a ship from sensors and radar for some time (it could work using the capacitor's charge)
And so on...
These are just ideas, of course. Maybe things to add in mods, once the full game is released. If... ever, Frontier allows a mod community, of course.
Cheers.
This post is about new ideas to reduce grind, specially for engineers, and how to minimize the occurrence of meta loadouts in pvp.
So, let's talk about engineers first.
I think the concept was great, but it ended with the same "problem" as of all MMOs. Grinding, wasting time doing repetitive things only to achieve an objective that hasn't much to do with the effort involved.
Spending hours to collect materials and use them in a sort of roulette to get module upgrades from engineers.
This is NOT what it should have been. Upgrading modules should be the reward for quest events. Simple.
You would meet an engineer and he would offer you a quest for a certain upgrade. It could be anything, from simple delivery missions to a long jump across the galaxy, to a risky smuggling or dangerous assassination.
Then, after finishing this quest and returning to the engineer, you would get a specific upgrade, with well thought and balanced pros/cons, never a crazy random roll.
Yes, you wouldn't spend so much time doing it, you wouldn't grind, but then again, you would be really playing the game, and having fun.
Now the second part: special effects on weapons - this is always prone to meta, no matter the way you tweak the values. Why? because the majority of these special effects affect the target, instead of affecting the weapon efficiency. Heck, even plasma slugs are a free ticket to exploits.
So, what could you have instead of the actual mess?
Weapons with rarity level. The rarest the weapon, the more slots for upgrades it could have. Some could be found in wrecks, or from destroyed enemies, with some upgrades already set.
Engineers could stack different upgrades on a weapon and thus make it custom to each player's taste.
The concept of each upgrade would be simple, and certainly sureproof:
Ex: rail gun sturdy upgrade - armour piercing +10% / Thermal load -5% /mass +40% /integrity 50% (based on max sturdy upgrade level 5)
This is an example for weapons with max 5 slots for upgrading.
Oh, and special effects? These would be unchangeable, a signature of the weapon's rarity. And they all should be based on the weapon itself - like visual changes, rate of fire, extra ammo, damage type change etc...
and they should always have a setback 100%
ex: chain-feed multi-cannon - rate of fire +50%, thermal load +100%, no reload time
gamma core missiles - trail colour green, explosion area +50%, turn rate -50%
precharge rail - trail colour change, press to charge power, fire on release, thermal load +100% during charge, capacitor load +100% during charge.
Now, another idea to reduce metas would be to add more modules to the game.
Instead of a shield cell module, you could have a shield recharge module that would suck up your system, engine, weapons capacitor to recover the shield.
Then you could have a capacitor recharge module, that would spend energy cells (cargo) to restore your capacitor.
This change would force ships modded for combat to have space for cargo too, and that would limit how many recharges they could get to their shields. (no synthesis, please)
Synthesis could also be a separate module, like a small robotic factory to create all the things necessary from existing materials.
Then, a module to store materials, instead of the magic-like material storage.
You could have an extra shield module- the deflector - it would spend your weapon's capacitor charge to activate a soaking shield that would degrade fast ( like, be up for 10 seconds, and even less, depending on the damage sustained). While this shield was up, no weapons could be fired, of course.
You could have a refrigerator module, to cope with the ship's heat.
An electronic warfare module, designed to garble sensors in the area.
A stealth module, able to hide a ship from sensors and radar for some time (it could work using the capacitor's charge)
And so on...
These are just ideas, of course. Maybe things to add in mods, once the full game is released. If... ever, Frontier allows a mod community, of course.
Cheers.