I'm back! What's new? (Piracy? Exploration? CG's? ALIENS?)

[KaizoMK]

I began horizons, stopped playing, briefly picked it up again for VR, then dropped it again. So it's been a long time since I've played. What are some of the major changes to happen since then?

-I've actually literally decided to trek out to sag a* on a whim and I'm making decent progress. I'm also noticing small qol changes. I know amf's fixed canopies so I grabbed those, but I didn't know that you could scan planets and learn what materials they have on them, OR that the game will actually kindly tell you when you're at your last possible fuel star. What else don't I know?

-the hot topic right now seems to be piracy and changes. Is piracy viable now/soon? Can I viably pirate in a pve environment now/soon? Has piracy mostly been the same in the past year or so?

-CG's have left a bad taste in my mouth since the whole infection system fiasco, which was really interesting from a narrative perspective but the activities were essentially non-profit and ended up paying out a paltry reward at the time (I think later frontier made a plaque with our names on it somewhere? That was a nice touch.) Have CG's developed since the days of "do this rewarding activity for hours and probably get a nice bonus too"?

-ALIENS?? Do tell...

If I get back from sag a* in one piece I'm probably going to be rich, so anything exciting you can tell me about that I missed would be rad! It'd also just be useful to know what's improved and how, as that's something I've always been interested in regarding frontier.

 

[D.G.Cerberus]

You may have also noticed that at least in "Fastest Route" mode, there is no longer the 1000ly limit on plotting!

 

[zombieapocalypse]

Oh, everything! Tweaks to crime and punishment means that griefing and combat logging are a thing of the past, everyone plays in open now. Mining, trading and exploration have been completely reworked to increase depth and engagement. Engineering is no longer a grindy fruit machine. The arrival of the Thargoids has added narrative, danger and meaning to the galaxy. They've introduced atmospheric landings, space legs and more things to do on planets. And piracy is now the most fun you'll ever have in any game ever. Oh and cheese is a commodity now

 

[KaizoMK]

You may have also noticed that at least in "Fastest Route" mode, there is no longer the 1000ly limit on plotting!

I certainly did. I'm 350 jumps away from my goal, then I have like another 800 back? Haha.

Oh, everything! Tweaks to crime and punishment means that griefing and combat logging are a thing of the past, everyone plays in open now. Mining, trading and exploration have been completely reworked to increase depth and engagement. Engineering is no longer a grindy fruit machine. The arrival of the Thargoids has added narrative, danger and meaning to the galaxy. They've introduced atmospheric landings, space legs and more things to do on planets. And piracy is now the most fun you'll ever have in any game ever. Oh and cheese is a commodity now

I really hope you're not being sarcastic because that all sounds incredible. :O

 

[xzanfr]

Oh and cheese is a commodity now

Clearly a liar

 

[Sapyx]

I began horizons, stopped playing, briefly picked it up again for VR, then dropped it again. So it's been a long time since I've played. What are some of the major changes to happen since then?

-I've actually literally decided to trek out to sag a* on a whim and I'm making decent progress. I'm also noticing small qol changes. I know amf's fixed canopies so I grabbed those, but I didn't know that you could scan planets and learn what materials they have on them, OR that the game will actually kindly tell you when you're at your last possible fuel star. What else don't I know?

We'll see if I can address some of these questions point by point. FOr exploration, little has improved other than the notes you've already made, plus the route plotter. Oh, and "repair limpets" can now repair your hull, plus the hull of other ships, giving the Fuel Rats another thing to do out in deep space. Finally, the value of scanned objects has been rejigged; the most valuable things in the galaxy are now ELWs and terraformables, which are worth 600,000 credits apiece.

Col 70 Sector and a couple of other sectors in the Orion region have had permit-locks slapped on them, which can often trap newbies who find themselves "stuck" in the honeypot which the route-plotter can't calculate a way to escape from. There are more new things that can can be discovered on planets, persistent POIs containing shipwrecks (both human and alien), alien ruins, geysers, and plants that can survive in the vacuum of space. There are player groups that research these kinds of things; check out this megathread for much more information than I can write about here.

-the hot topic right now seems to be piracy and changes. Is piracy viable now/soon? Can I viably pirate in a pve environment now/soon? Has piracy mostly been the same in the past year or so?

PvE piracy did get a slight "improvement", with the advent of Low Temperature Diamonds - the most valuable thing you can currently mine. Finding them yourself is a downright pain, you can search for hours and maybe find one or two tonnes. But the NPC miners seem to have much better luck than we do; their holds are often full of the things. So stealing the LTDs from miners has become a viably profitable way of PvE pirating. But all the "changes to piracy" etc you're hearing about are all PvP focussed; it's all about increasing the distinctions between NPCs and CMDRs.

-CG's have left a bad taste in my mouth since the whole infection system fiasco, which was really interesting from a narrative perspective but the activities were essentially non-profit and ended up paying out a paltry reward at the time (I think later frontier made a plaque with our names on it somewhere? That was a nice touch.) Have CG's developed since the days of "do this rewarding activity for hours and probably get a nice bonus too"?

Ah yes, Bast. I was there. The "plaque with our names on it somewhere" is, unfortunately, a fiction; according to Galnet it was allegedly placed in the main concourse of White Hart station, but since we don't yet have space legs to walk down to the main concourse and actually see it, they might as well say there are pink unicorns down there, too. But as to your question, CGs have become a little more dynamic; players have found some ingenious ways of disrupting them involving the BGS, some of which FD have clamped down on and prevented, some of which FD have condoned and allowed to continue. They've also tended to get better at "balancing" them, such as having concurrent pro-Empire and pro-Fed CGs, and having simultaneous Trade and Protect-the-traders-Bounty-Hunting CGs. CGs remain the primary focus of PvP activity, though the new crime-and-punishment mechanisms may restrict this as it is supposed to severely punish griefers/PKers who kill innocent CMDRs for no reason.

-ALIENS?? Do tell...

There are two known spacefaring alien species that we now know of. The Thargoids, who created the objects formerly known as "Unknown Artifacts" and now known as "Thargoid Sensors". They're the big news, since they're the only ones currently flying around in ships and blowing stuff up. They only currently occur in the Pleiades region, where the "unknown artifacts" first turned up.

Then there's the Guardians, who are only known by ancient ruins scattered about the galaxy. There's an engineer who offers you a valuable but complicated mission to go and extract the data from them, and doing so you get the backstory of these aliens, who apparently extinctified themselves a million years ago in some kind of techno-religious civil war. Guardian relics are turning up all over the galaxy, not just near the Bubble. There was a whole "Guardians" update, but their story has been put on hold while everybody deals with the Thargoids.

There is speculation that the Thargoids are actually biological weapons created by the Guardians, who became sentient and turned on their masters.

The Canonn Institute is a player group that focuses on researching all things alien. Check out their 10th megathread.

Hope this helps.

 

[KaizoMK]

That's a lot of huge important info, thanks! I found a system with two undiscovered ELW so hooooooly crap is that a lot of credits. Definitely worth the 20kls travel, haha. I've mostly been honking and moving, figuring that 800 or so of those will net me decent credits.

 

[krylite]

Very neat interesting new things. The new T10, upcoming chieftan, fighters (which is my favorite new feature of horizons) burning stations (if you go to the galaxy map, there is a new option now to turn on damaged & burning stations flags(!)), the thargoid bases are really as spooky as a good sci-fi movie, rescuing refugees from burning stations is a thrilling experience; and the thargoids on first meeting are entertainingly scary. (you can also multicrew join up "thargoid hunting/researching" whereever you're at now too if you want). Have fun!