Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
Another hauling ship isn't much good to a player looking for a fighter escort.
If you want more people in Open, the best way to accomplish it are QOL features to make Open more desirable.
- Thread starter DemiserofD
- Start date
Oooh! There's an idea. An area that is locked to open only. A new bubble on the other side of the galaxy, like Mirror, Mirror. The dark alternate bubble, where CMDRs kill each other with abandon.
But once you go in, you can never leave!
Pragmatically speaking, a fighter escort isn't much use in this game. There's not much you can do to stop a team mate from getting killed, even before you account for the difficulties of dropping in on the instance.
The ability to wing up in normal space and slave your FSDs to a single ship so that the simulation treated the wing as a single object in Supercruise/Hyperspace would be so much goodness. Be cool to see a jump-optimized Phantom winged with a barely-jump-capable freighter and its two combat escorts.
Slaving FSDs to each other would be quite interesting to see and would simplify a lot of the instancing issues that wings have, but I also don't see them being lifted up to the capabilities of the longest jump range in the wing. It's more likely, and a lot more balanced, for them to instead be restricted to the lowest jump range and the lowest SC maneuverability in the wing.
I'd think it'd be easier to code the SC Maneuverability and Jump Range off the ship you slave to (and let that pilot resolve interdictions and so forth). Limiting jump range and SC maneuverability to worst-in-wing would discourage winging with Type-10s and newer pilots that don't have A-rated engineered Jump Drives. I don't consider lowest-common-denominator "balanced," but even if that were the standard I'd argue the benefit of simplified instancing would out-way the concern that someone somewhere was jumping a few lightyears farther than his FSD normally allows. One thing to consider: a counter-balance to the benefit of using the best jump range is the sub-optimal cargo/combat capability of a jump-optimized build. You weaken the trade or combat capability of the wing to take advantage of better exploration capability. That sounds like a reasonable balance to me.
Cheers Ramirez!
If F D want more people in Open Play it is very easy for them to do so - just up the ARX limit for Open Play. Of course that will cost them potential earnings so you know it won't happen.
That's the system we have right now. And it's not perfect. I would play in Open consistently if there were some benefits associated with it, be it substantial mining or arx rewards.