Let's imagine playing ED without inara, eddb, or other 3rd party sites.
- Thread starter St0rmFury
- Start date
Yep this is indeed utterly boring, you should be able to buy modules from where you are and have them delivered to you.
I was not aware of these two sites. Added to my bookmarks, thanks.
@Riverside mentioned Alioth. The reason Alioth is good specifically for Asps is because Irkutsk Station in the Alioth system has a 20% discount only on Asp Explorers and Orcas. It's the biggest discount offered on ships, anywhere in the galaxy; better than either Shinrarta or LYR, but it's only offered for those two ship types. Of course, money for a basic Asp hull isn't as big a deal these days as it was back when the discount was added (you save an entire 1.33 million credits on an Asp), so it's really only worthwhile going to the trouble if you plan on doing a lot of dying and rebuying while in your Asp.
And the only way to discover the existence of this discount using only in-game tools would be to hop from station to station, comparing prices, and happening to notice that the prices in Irkutsk were 20% lower. People who were playing the game back when the discount was added, over five years ago, would have seen the Galnet article, but that article is now buried deep in the archives where you can't find them in-game. You might happen to stumble upon this factiod while browsing the forum, specifically if you were researching permits and how to get them and found the thread about permits. And of course, this knowledge is kind of useless to you if you haven't yet attained the Alioth permit and you were hoping to get into an Asp immediately, since it'll take some time to build up the rep to attain the permit.
And the only way to discover the existence of this discount using only in-game tools would be to hop from station to station, comparing prices, and happening to notice that the prices in Irkutsk were 20% lower. People who were playing the game back when the discount was added, over five years ago, would have seen the Galnet article, but that article is now buried deep in the archives where you can't find them in-game. You might happen to stumble upon this factiod while browsing the forum, specifically if you were researching permits and how to get them and found the thread about permits. And of course, this knowledge is kind of useless to you if you haven't yet attained the Alioth permit and you were hoping to get into an Asp immediately, since it'll take some time to build up the rep to attain the permit.
To be fair DNA-decay mentioned it before I did
Getting the Alioth permit is something a lot of players would naturally tend to do I think, along with ranking up their Fed & Imp ranks. The AspX (and Orca IIRC) discount was pretty easy to discover in that respect imo.
True, and doubly so now that Alioth also has an Engineer to access. But I was assuming, since the OP seems to be buying their first Asp, that they're a relative newbie and/or are not too far advanced in the permit-unlocking department. Most people these days have already bought an Asp (or have the spare funds to buy one at full price but decided they don't want/need one) long before they get their Alioth permit.
This one's less obvious, as Irkutsk is the most remote station in the Alioth system - a system where all the stations are quite remote, by galactic normal standards. 7786 Ls is about 7700 Ls too far for many players. If your main interest is getting in to Alioth and getting out again ASAP, you'll never choose to visit Irkutsk, and since Alioth is permit-locked, you'll never get a mission asking you to go specifically to Irkutsk.
Hmm, between this and the thread title it's not entirely clear if you're posing a hypothetical or actually looking for ship parts.
To the later... I can tell you i Sola Prospect in the Brestla system stocks all standard ship modules.
To the former... I played for my first 6 months without external resources, it made for some slow progress but I did enjoy searching through systems in the Bubble and seeing all the things. It was trying to advance engineering beyond Farseer and Martuk that brought the experience to an end. Things got ridiculous when searching for obscure commodities and materials.
I reckon nowadays joining a squadron would be the way to keep to only in-game resources for longer. That said, squadron bookmarks make the line between in-game and external resources somewhat blurred.
(Now, imagine a time before any of the external game resources existed.)
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What I was implying was why not have a find nearest button, if someone else has made a popular third party tool to do it then it's needed in-game.
I did think the premise was obvious ,
Even corolis has a show stations that sell this build which links to eddb and you can also set the discount so you end up in LYR space .
Yes, and Fleet Carriers let you bypass the issue to some extent as well by buying a module pack with the module you want, buying the module, and selling the pack again.
The fact that it's trivial to bypass the "finding modules" problem if you know how is probably why threads like this don't come up all that often - it's outdated design and it makes it harder for them to make an actually good Outfitting UI [1], but as you say you can guarantee access in Shinrarta and mostly guarantee access in Colonia so it's not often a big deal in practice.
It also means that no-one has actually tried to reverse engineer how module selection actually works - Colonia's is so atypically set up that I couldn't anyway - which might be rather more useful to know than an EDDB search in theory, but in practice "Shinrarta".
[1] I quite like their Odyssey attempt now some of the initial issues have been sorted and it certainly addresses some of the issues with the Horizons one, but there are limits to what they can do.
Unthinkable. Exploring without EDSM? Not for me.
The way I approach the game is not to know facts or details (ironically the Alioth stuff above is an exception to that), but to have rules of thumb and apply general principles; to use intuition based on experience. I certainly understand why many don't have the time to approach the game the way I do, googling for answers has become the default coping strategy for lots of aspects of life, and if I have tried & just can't be bothered I'm certainly not religious about my approach to not google the answer.
I've just finished (subject to testing) building an AX ship, the Squadron I'm in are going to give big Thargoids a go and it's something I've never done before but because I've been around a lot I know there are Guardian modules, and AX modules. I found the Guardian modules no problem, there is a tech broker filter on the galmap that gave me a clue and going to have a look told me enough that I could unlock them. AX stuff was less obvious. I tried the human tech brokers & didn't quite find what I was looking for and was about to just go to founders when I stumbled across some at a ground base.
Problem solved, I googled AX weapons & found a thread on this forum from 2017 saying that they are sold at Military economy ground bases. Sure enough, I was docked at a military economy ground base, that's a rule of thumb I can remember (albeit not intuit). I didn't need to enter my search parameters into a spreadsheet, that's a boring (but undeniably effective) way to play imo.
So as long as any proposed change allows general principles to be intuited rather than solely relying on a list of known facts, I don't really mind how it works. Give the player hints, don't just tell them (imo), or at least allow the player that plays that way to continue to be able to.
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Yes, this is key for me as well.
The problem for me with the current outfitting is that there appear to be no intuitive rules beyond "large high-tech/industrial might have better chances" and maybe "Boom/Investment helps".
Odyssey outfitting works far better in this respect, I think - you buy a basic E-rated suit/weapon which you can get pretty much anywhere, and then you do things to upgrade it to A-rated and customise it. (It has other issues, of course, but finding the base module is straightforward)
Your post is pretty near how I have always approached Elite Dangerous.
I can't recall ever using 3rd party tools in my 1500+ hours of play, especially for things like trade and ship builds. I gathered bits of knowledge as I traveled and played, for the most part. Just playing, working Trade or Mission running and checking the station services as I stop here and there, I've learned a few places that are generally well stocked for modules. A sort of personal network of favorite star ports. If perchance I can't find a module I want, I just head out with the best I can get. The rest comes within a few stops or so as I'm running trade or a mission or something.
For me, this kind of play really helped establish a sense of connection with certain areas of the bubble (and not a tiny area, just little bits spread here and there, even 100+LY apart). It's a very real feeling for me to be out in "unknown" yet populous areas of the bubble, and have that old sense of "I have no idea where to find...." I'm a stranger there, and it's really like starting over again. When I make my way back into "home" territory, it always does feel like coming home.
Somehow this never felt like a waste of time for me. More like developing my CMDR character within the game world, even though everything was happening inside my head, and not in a "LvL" stat in-game.
It must be said that some aspects of Elite Dangerous just haven't worked well for me in this gameplay style. Mostly these are story type elements, where Galnet doesn't have some info or whatever, and I would have to Google to get on the trail and take it from there. And even after Google, this can sometimes be tougher territory compared to general gameplay, at least in my experience.
EDIT: And one place that 3rd party was useful to me was ship build planners. Something that any ship dealer should offer. Heck I can even outfit a Christmas Fruit Cake on a baker's website and know what I can build before I build it!
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I can definitely relate to your description of a connection with a certain area of the bubble, and feeling like a stranger in other regions. Going outside my 'territory' I am less effective until I have built up that local knowledge, and I am reliant on checking things like faction influence levels daily to spot trends (the inara inf over time charts are great, they really tell the story of a system and I wish the game had that kind of detail).
I don't mind that others use external tools, certainly it's more convenient than everyone recording their own data & making spreadsheets of everything (I don't write anything down, if I forget or overlook something that gives any opposition a sporting chance) but I find it reduces the sense of accomplishment from solving a puzzle if I just google the answer without at least trying to figure it out for myself first.
I look at DCS World and how they do 3rd party add ons. I know Elite is different and not built module based, but the developers of DCS have a close relationship with 3rd parties who make tools for their game. For example, there is a radio add - on that is free. Once it is downloaded and installed you can have community based servers for voice communication during in game missions, fully integrated into the gameplay and DCS. It even gets a logo at the main menu as a module (similar to officially released content).
I guess my point is imagine if Fdev had more of a partnership mentality with the 3rd parties, instead of some weak API access. Imagine having coriolis integrated into your outfitting screen as a tab, or EDMC addon that integrates those plugins...
Edit: I understand this is unrealistic, due to probably how Elite was developed and FDev business model... A man can dream though... a man can dream
I guess my point is imagine if Fdev had more of a partnership mentality with the 3rd parties, instead of some weak API access. Imagine having coriolis integrated into your outfitting screen as a tab, or EDMC addon that integrates those plugins...
Edit: I understand this is unrealistic, due to probably how Elite was developed and FDev business model... A man can dream though... a man can dream
OP.
It's fantastic that you're playing the game this way, on my 1st and 2nd playthrough to Elite, I did the same. On my 3rd, I played without accepting any missions (exept permit unlock missions) and my 4th (current) playthrough, without using any "L" ships.
I'm thinking when I get Odyssey, I might wipe and combine all 3 methods - no 3rd party tools, no missions and no "L" ships.
Wanna team up!?
It's fantastic that you're playing the game this way, on my 1st and 2nd playthrough to Elite, I did the same. On my 3rd, I played without accepting any missions (exept permit unlock missions) and my 4th (current) playthrough, without using any "L" ships.
I'm thinking when I get Odyssey, I might wipe and combine all 3 methods - no 3rd party tools, no missions and no "L" ships.
Wanna team up!?
One of the impressive things in this game's community is how hard people will argue that not having any useful information is 'part of the fun'.
When I want to buy something, be it in real life or a game, I do not want to simply wander the interstates, stop in whatever large town I find and walk into the store asking "do you have _______". Nobody does. Even people just barely having developed the printing press advertised what they had available in the most expedient and far-reaching way possible to them. But Elite players will insist that one of the best parts of the game is just flying here and there to see what's in stock, rinse and repeat until you finally find something you wanted.
When I want to buy something, be it in real life or a game, I do not want to simply wander the interstates, stop in whatever large town I find and walk into the store asking "do you have _______". Nobody does. Even people just barely having developed the printing press advertised what they had available in the most expedient and far-reaching way possible to them. But Elite players will insist that one of the best parts of the game is just flying here and there to see what's in stock, rinse and repeat until you finally find something you wanted.
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Play your own way, I'll play mine.
