Hey folks,
I know this has been discussed before... but the more I play, the more it bothers me and the more I want it all to make sense... or at least have some semblance of a backstory to it all.
This review captures the issue very well.
For starters... what are NPCs doing at nav beacons and at Unidentified Signal Sources (USSs)? They just decided to drop out of supercuise in witch space and fly around in circles for fun?
Take Jump gates in EVE... I think the Nav Beacon could serve the same purpose... it could be the mandatory target for hyperspace jumps. There'd be loads of authority ships there in high security systems and a bunch of CMDRs there in anarchy systems waiting to jump you. At least there is some rationale here. As it stands, the Nav beacon is just some arbitrary point in space for the game to dump some NPCs into. Why don't FD feel the need to explain it to us... to contextualise it or give it some backstory?
Then there's the background sim... I really feel there should be some connection between the commodity market, the black market, civil war, faction influence etc. There are some connecting strings in there at the moment, but not enough to make it all coherent and/or self consistent. For example... a faction should only be able to wage a war, or civil war if they have enough supply of X, Y and Z. NPCs should be playing a role in actually supplying those things... and the availability of NPC fighters in a civil war scenario should also depend on the availability of supplies of weapons or metals... or whatever they need to build the ships. CMDRs could then impact conflicts by either taking part in the combat and depleting enemy ship resources, or by interdicting supply of critical war materiel. There needs to be a supply chain that underpins the activities in the game which CMDRs can influence.
Take the current community goal at Yembo... this is the exception instead of the rule. It should be the other way round... if there was a functioning coherent background sim, players could make their own community goals.
Maybe it's being addressed... or perhaps I'm expecting too much?
I know this has been discussed before... but the more I play, the more it bothers me and the more I want it all to make sense... or at least have some semblance of a backstory to it all.
This review captures the issue very well.
For starters... what are NPCs doing at nav beacons and at Unidentified Signal Sources (USSs)? They just decided to drop out of supercuise in witch space and fly around in circles for fun?
Take Jump gates in EVE... I think the Nav Beacon could serve the same purpose... it could be the mandatory target for hyperspace jumps. There'd be loads of authority ships there in high security systems and a bunch of CMDRs there in anarchy systems waiting to jump you. At least there is some rationale here. As it stands, the Nav beacon is just some arbitrary point in space for the game to dump some NPCs into. Why don't FD feel the need to explain it to us... to contextualise it or give it some backstory?
Then there's the background sim... I really feel there should be some connection between the commodity market, the black market, civil war, faction influence etc. There are some connecting strings in there at the moment, but not enough to make it all coherent and/or self consistent. For example... a faction should only be able to wage a war, or civil war if they have enough supply of X, Y and Z. NPCs should be playing a role in actually supplying those things... and the availability of NPC fighters in a civil war scenario should also depend on the availability of supplies of weapons or metals... or whatever they need to build the ships. CMDRs could then impact conflicts by either taking part in the combat and depleting enemy ship resources, or by interdicting supply of critical war materiel. There needs to be a supply chain that underpins the activities in the game which CMDRs can influence.
Take the current community goal at Yembo... this is the exception instead of the rule. It should be the other way round... if there was a functioning coherent background sim, players could make their own community goals.
Maybe it's being addressed... or perhaps I'm expecting too much?
