This is a repost of Borg184. In the subreddit it got 645 points and 200 comments. So it resonates with a lot of people an the developers should make such changes to the game.
This is gonna be a long rant. Fair warning. I'll try to tl;dr to the best of my ability at the end, but if you've got the time to read, then I've got the time to rant.
So let me preface all of this by saying that I do still love Elite. It's an amazing game with limitless potential, and I can only hope that in time it will realize that potential. I've clocked in more than 400 hours on Steam alone, and many more unrecorded hours before the game was even on Steam.
All of this said, however, Elite is not without it's problems. Being someone that has played almost entirely by himself and worked his way from the ground up in a sidewinder, all the way to having 16 ships and more than a Billion credits worth of assets, I've played the game a lot. Not saying this makes me a master game designer, but I think it does offer at least a perspective shift.
Let's start with what everyone is currently angry about. Money, and the uselessness of missions.
I agree, fully, that missions in their current state are near useless. Currently it seems like the only reason you'd do missions is to grind out rank with a superpower, or perhaps you found a rare system where the missions actually pay decently.
So how can this change? Simple.
Make missions scale.
Missions become persistent, lasting for days, possibly even weeks dependent on the size of the Mission. Almost like mini-CG's.
- Missions are now for much, much larger orders. Instead of 20 tons of Biowaste, we're talking 40,000 tons.
- Missions are persistent, lasting for an upwards of days on end if need be.
- You personally determine how much of the mission you want to fulfill, on a sliding scale. If your Sidewinder can only take 4 tons of Cargo, you can still take those 4 tons, vs an Anaconda, who can do the exact same mission, but get paid more for it, as he is able to take more with him.
- Reward scales with risk. Only taking 4 tons is a much smaller reward than taking 400, for example.
- Ontop of this all, mission rewards do need to be buffed to make them worthwhile.
This allows missions to be much more flexible, and stops the Mission board from being so damn cluttered with the same missions over and over again. This kind of scaling approach would work for very nearly every type of mission, not just delivery missions.
- Combat Missions would ask you how many ships you wanted to kill, versus their overall goal of say, 5k dead ships by the end of the week.
- Sourcing Missions would require x amount of a certain commodity by a certain deadline. Deliver as much as you want.
- Data Delivery Missions would need, say 500 messages delivered to a nearby system, but for security reasons, they are only letting you take 20 at a time.
Admittedly, there are certain types of missions that would not support this format. Settlement Generator, or Assassination Missions, for example, are kind of one and done missions. They could be kept around in their current form.
Now, let's talk Ranks. The only other reason people do missions besides the endless goal of getting money.
Currently, the Federal/Imperial Rank grind is an absolute horrorshow. Having set my sights on a Federal Corvette, I've been, very, very slowly working my way up the ranks, trying out a multitude of different systems that are fabled for rank grinding. But this shouldn't be the case.
Let's look instead at a
Rank Rebalance.
Currently the only way to gain Federal or Imperial rank is by doing missions for local factions that are aligned with the appropriate superpower. And even then, the progress is very slow. Now, I don't so much have a problem with the ranks being a slow process. Sure, not every commander flying around should have the Rank of Rear Admiral. It just wouldn't make much sense, now would it? But I do believe this system can be improved.
- Make Ranks attainable by playing the damn game.
- Every action you do, at an appropriately aligned starport, should progress you towards the next rank. Turning in Federation Bounty Vouchers, trading goods at a station controlled by the Federation. Just playing the game normally should grant you a small progression towards the next rank.
- Ranks would likely need to be rebalanced slightly to make them more appropriate for this sort of leveling, but I believe that the ultimate end goal is not necessarily to allow people to rank up faster, rather just to allow them different methods of being able to rank up.
This would make it so that Donation missions and Data Delivery missions aren't the only valid ways to gain rank anymore. Equally, I believe that ranks should be rebalanced so that Donation missions were actually representative of what you were giving. Giving a million credit donation to a faction is a very, very large donation coming from some random pilot. It should reward you as such, not just give you another 1% the way that every other donation mission does.
Next up on the chopping block is exploration, because it's going to tie into my next topic after this. This is not all originally my idea, so I'll credit the appropriate people. Exploration is boring. Simple as that. Jump, honk, check system map, scan anything worthwhile, repeat process. Now, unfortunately, there's not much that you can do to improve this process without adding tedium, however you can at the very least add meaning to the process. While I would love to see just about this entire list added to the game, I realize that that may be asking for a lot, and probably won't happen for a while, if ever. But here's a smaller change you can make now.
Scanners.
Scanners at the moment are kind of silly. We have ship sensors, 3 different grades of discovery scanners, 1 detailed surface scanner, a kill warrant scanner, manifest scanners, frame-shift wake scanners... We've got a lot of scanners, alright? Consolidate them all, and add some new ones.
- (Original idea by /u/MHebel, and likely others. Apologies if incorrectly attributed.)
- Give the Sensor slot of a ship it's own sub-slots. These sub-slots could vary depending on the size and grade of the module, with a 1E sensor only having 1 slot, while an 8A sensor might have an upwards of 7.
- These sub-slots can fit all of the sensors mentioned above, and more. Giving people a reason to put something other than D rated sensors on their ship.
- Would work just like an SRV or Fighter bay, having several slots that you can throw in whatever sensor you wanted in.
And I also have some ideas for different types of sensors. Again, not entirely my idea, but a good basis.
- (Original idea by /u/ToCoSo.)
- Surface Mineral scans. Generates a heatmap per planet, akin to this, which will come into use in a later idea. Capable of showing different locations for different material types. Rocky, icy, metallic materials would all have their own heatmaps per planet.
- Anomaly Scanners, akin to this, which would tell you an approximate location of PoI's on planetary surfaces. Crashed ships, mining bases, all sorts of things could show up on these scans.
- Long Range/Military sensors, which are capable of boosting your current scanning range, or perhaps adding a boost to the scan times of Kill Warrant/Manifest/Wake scanners.
- In addition, reduce the power usage of high ratings of these scanners. Kill Warrant Scanners shouldn't take up half of my power plant just for an extra 2 km range.
Jesus. Still with me? Good God this is a long post. I've got 40,000 characters and I may very well use all of them. Anyway, moving onwards.
Now, for perhaps the Largest and most glaring issue, at least for me, at the moment. The entire lack of End-game content. Right now, End-Game content is just 4 ships of varying usefulness. Yes, they're nice prizes, and I'm not saying that this needs to be changed, but there needs to be more. Millionaires in real life don't just get all their money, go buy a really nice car, and say "Alright well that's that, I've made it now. I can stop.". No, they use their money to make even more money. That's how millionaires become billionaires. This is something that, at the moment, Elite lacks entirely. And it's such a damn shame, too, because there's so much you could do with the end-game. But I have my own idea.
So prepare for another long winded discussion about what I like to call...
Factions.
Alright. You're a rich guy. You've gotten your Anaconda. You're working your way towards your next ship of choice, be that the Vette, Cutter, or Beluga. But after you get that... Then what? What is really left in the game for you to do, besides go sightseeing maybe? What if there was another option, that allowed you to Directly impact the galaxy, and make some money in the process.
This is where Factions come in.
- Give Players the ability to create their own, player-run factions, much akin to NPC controlled minor factions.
- Creating a Faction should cost a lot of money. It should be an End-game goal. Somewhere along the lines of 300-500 million credits just to lay the foundation of one. Not everyone and their brother should be able to afford a Faction.
- Factions will work differently from NPC Minor Factions, yet similar at the same time. Once a Faction has been created, the creator can invite other players into the Faction for free. This finally gives Elite an equivalent of a "guild" from nearly any other MMO that exists today.
- Faction owners can start to put their money to work for them, and the good of the whole Faction/Galaxy. Faction owners will be able to build their own Outposts, Stations, Mining Facilities, and Surface Bases. I'll get into this more in a moment.
Already this ability allows people to finally come together in large, officially supported groups. People like the Fuel Rats, the varying Exploration communities, and even people like The Code or SDC can have their own Faction officially supported in the game. This alone would be a pretty big step, but let's take it further.
- Faction owners can set out to build their own Outposts, Stations, Mining Facilities, and Surface Bases. Say I knew of a nice little HazRES in a system I like, but the nearest station to rearm, repair, refuel, and collect bounties at is thousands of LS away. I want my own outpost orbiting this planet, that I build, I control, and I maintain, that allows me, and the entire galactic community, much easier access to this particular HazRES.
- Building any of these buildings would be a complicated process that would be best solved with several players in the Faction working together, rather than something that any one person could do. Creating a new Outpost, for example, would open up a sort of Mini-CG for that particular faction.
- Building an outpost would cost several things. Money, Materials, and Time. Money to lay the foundation, hire workers, and such. It shouldn't be cheap, in any way shape or form. Several million for outposts, Several tens of millions for a proper station, while Planetary Bases would likely be slightly cheaper as they are more inconvenient to access.
- Upon initiating this Mini-CG, your Faction would be given a certain time period to gather all of the appropriate resources. Likely several specialty resources from across the bubble would need to be gathered and dragged back to where you're building this station, along with many bulk resources. Going out and getting these resources would of course be much easier with a group of people as opposed to just one person in an Anaconda.
- Once all the materials are gathered in the appropriate location, you just have to wait. Weekly server resets already occur for powerplay. There's no reason that this couldn't function like powerplay, where every Thursday upon the server resetting, Factions who have successfully managed to build something will have their buildings pop into existence.
Of course, there would have to be some sort of Balance to all of this, but I believe it would have the capability to make the galaxy much more alive. No longer would we wait on Frontier to hand-populate new areas of space, like Colonia or the Pleiades. Instead, like minded Factions could easily work together to create their own mini-bubbles, making their own Stations, Outposts, Planetary bases, and most importantly of all, Mining Facilities.
- Mining Facilities would work much like current Planetary Settlements do now. A building that you could build on the surfaces of Planets that you can land on (So only airless worlds for now, more coming in the future.) that, assuming they are placed upon resource rich areas (Go back up and read my scanner post for ideas on how that would work), would start to mine out the Planet for you.
- This would generate Minerals and Materials that your Faction could use in the construction of more buildings, outposts, and stations. Allowing you to be self-sufficient.
- Of course, these facilities can be attacked and potentially disabled, or even outright destroyed if not repaired for an extended period of time. Making you pay for security measures much like the ones already guarding Planetary Settlements. Sure, you can have a tiny warehouse defended by a couple of skimmers, but any old chap in a Viper can come along and ruin your day. While a huge, multi-building complex, guarded by multiple emplacements, missiles, and perhaps even an NPC pilot or two, would be a fight for any pilot.
Alright, so this idea is pretty complex already. And I realize I may be terrible at wording things out and you might have no idea what I'm going on about. But hopefully I got my point across. Now, onto some more detailed areas of Factions.
- Stations, outposts, and Planetary Settlements (Although not mining facilities) would generate Money for the entire Faction after they were operational. The amount of money they would generate would be proportional to exactly how feature complete they were. While a basic, just constructed outpost may only have a Shipyard for instance, you would later be able to upgrade it to unlock the different facilities that these stations can have. Bring X amount of Hydrogen Fuel, some Iron, and a bit of money to unlock refueling, for example.
- This Money would enter a Faction-wide bank account, similar to say a Guild bank in WoW, that people would be able to withdraw from.
- Members of a Faction would not be able to just join a Faction and instantly wipe out it's bank account. To prevent a huge Faction from inviting new players in and instantly filling their bank accounts to afford Anacondas, Factions would work on a level-based system, perhaps 5 ranks just like Powerplay. Starting ranks would either not be able to access the Faction's bank, or would only be able to withdraw a very limited amount. Higher ranks get more say in the Faction, and the ability to withdraw more of the Faction's money per week.
- The Faction Owner would have complete control of the Bank account, able to withdraw either unlimited or very high amounts of money from the Faction's bank to use. Fitting, after all he did pay the several hundred million to make the Faction in the first place.
Now to keep a bit of progression to it all.
- Facilities built by Factions would need to follow a sort of upgrade path, starting with Outposts, or small Planetary Bases. You would need to upgrade these facilities, unlocking more features, before being able to unlock the ability to change them into Coriolis Stations, or Medium Planetary Bases. Further unlocking down an upgrade tree would unlock the ability to upgrade to your own Ocellus, Orbis, or Large Planetary Bases.
- Alternatively you would be able to just stick with say, an outpost, but fully unlock all of it's features, for instance. It would cost less than upgrading to a whole new class of Station, but with the limits of Outposts and Small Planetary bases only being able to land certain types of ships, for instance.
- Alternatively, add in upgrades specifically for player owned places. Outposts with a Large Landing Pad, or a Planetary Mining Facility that can also land ships. Just an idea.
- Everything that your Faction owns, should cost some sort of Maintenance every week, however, to prevent micromanaging, most Stations should be able to cover their own operating costs, and run a bit of a profit from the services used at the facility. (Even if the profit has to be generated, by say, NPC traffic.) Mining Facilities, however, should not Generate their own profit. They generate Minerals and Materials for the Faction to use, so they are money sinks. Everything in balance.
- Should this Maintenance not be paid, Starports may have certain functions shut down, akin to UA malfunctions, until paid again. Should Mining Facilities not be paid for, they will stop working outright, and stop generating Minerals and Materials for the Faction.
- Mining Facilities should be the only one of the list that should be able to be purposefully damaged or destroyed by players, again requiring the need for Security measures at them. Should a Mining Facility come under attack, when the end of the week reset comes, it will fall into a "disabled" state until repairs are paid for. If maintenance or repairs are not paid for for an extended period of time, these facilities should be removed from the game. This prevents long-dead Factions from holding onto good spots forever, and actually provides a slight sense of competition for certain areas of the Galaxy.
- As a balancing factor, Mining Facilities cannot be build within say, 50 km of each other. This prevents only mineral rich hot spots from being cluttered with so many buildings that your FPS dies.
Okay, so, that was long-winded. But in summary, I think Factions, and the ability to build your own Starports and Outposts would not only be a brilliant way to solve the current gap of missing end-game content, but would also make the Galaxy feel so much more alive. Imagine driving around a planet to find player owned mining facilities, or imagine the player-owned bubble that would undoubtedly pop up around Beagle Point, or Sag A*. The possibilities are, quite literally, limitless in a galaxy this huge.
Frontier, your game has promise. I love it, it's amazing and it honestly has the potential to compete with giants the likes of Star Citizen. But you're currently not fulfilling that promise, and it's painful to watch. I've seen so many other games with amazing ideas fall to developer folly, such as War Thunder, a game I used to love and play thousands of hours of, only to eventually quit because of the Devs purposefully increasing the grind and making the game less fun all around. I don't want the same thing to happen to Elite. Now I realize that you've got your hands full with your dev team, already working several updates ahead. I'm not expecting any of this to even be read, let alone actually acted upon, any time soon. But I hope that you wont fall for the same folly that so many other games have.
And now, just for some General things that I'd like to see changed, or updated, or added. In no particular order, just spouting off random things that I know could be improved.
General stuff.
- Wings, at the moment, are useless. Between stability issues and instancing issues, I fear that if Multicrew is building off of the Wing system, it will not be well received. Equally, wing payouts make no sense. People should be rewarded for playing the game together, in a group, not punished by only taking 25% of the profit in a full wing. Being in a wing in that regard literally only punishes you, and you're better off flying alone. Wings should give full profits to each member, and perhaps a bonus dependant on how many pilots are in a wing. Up to maybe 140% more if you're in a full wing.
- Please go take another look at ship balancing Frontier. Some of your balance choices make very little sense. Like the Federal dropship, a ship literally designed for operating on and around Planets, having some of the worst vertical thrust I've ever seen. Same with the Federal Gunship. Yes, I know that these are supposed to be large, lumbering ships that weigh several hundreds of tons, but you can still at the very least let them live up to their name. I don't expect to be doing loops inside my own exhaust with either of these ships, but I'd like to be able to slow down upon visiting a planet without Lithobraking.
- More ship Balancing. The Type-7 and Type-9 are both, at the moment, rather useless. The Type-7 should, without a doubt, be a higher end medium landing pad capable trader. Being VERY comparable in size to a Python, which has no issues landing on Medium landing pads. The Type-7 would fit this role just fine, instead of being relegated back to a multipurpose ship, the Python, that can do everything it can do, only better.
- Equally, the Type-9 is entirely useless. Shields that wont protect it from a stiff solar breeze, the maneuverability of a continent, the jump range of a particularly lethargic flea, and a trading capacity that just doesn't add up. Everything the Type 9 can do, the Anaconda can do better. It may hold slightly less cargo fully loaded, but the tradeoffs are worth it for the fact that it's not a Type-9. Make the Type-7 and Type-9 great again. Or at least vaguely useful.
- Smaller ships are, to an end-game player, almost entirely useless. Sure, they might be kinda fun to fly once in a while, but practically speaking, nobody flies their Adder once they get a Python. Nobody flies their Eagle once they get a FDL. How about a different ship that would make these smaller vessels useful again? A carrier class of ship, with specialized internal compartments that are only designed to carry smaller vessels, akin to how the Beluga has compartments that are only designed to carry passengers/cargo. The Carrier itself would have no weapons, but many utility mounts to allow for defense, and presumably a good jump range, on par or slightly behind the Anaconda's, maybe akin to the Cutter's. With, say, 2 Size 8 Compartments, and 1 Size 7, it would be able to hold a maximum of 5 smaller ships, (2 per Size 8, 1 per size 7, although the Size 8 and 7 Compartments would also be the only place you could hold a Shield Generator for instance, meaning if you wanted any reasonable protection, you'd have to give up some ships.) Being able to take ships smaller than say, a Cobra with you. Or perhaps ships that can fit on a small landing pad. With multicrew up and coming, this ship would make for quite the fun vessel to play. Bring it into a Combat Zone, drag out your tiny ships, and stay back away from the fighting. Or perhaps bring it exploring, park it in a system, deploy all the smaller ships to go explore the nearby systems with their own FSD's, while you stay parked in one system. Only real issue I could see with this would be designing such a carrier that could still fit into the mail slot. Maybe it's just a pipe dream, who knows.
- More specialized ships. A small exploration vessel with a large jump range but not a lot of internal space. The Panther Clipper. A small passenger ship for luxury cruises for only a small number of people. There's a lot of ideas you could run with here Frontier, and while ships are probably a pain in the to design, the community loves them.
I think that actually finally does it. I think that that's all I officially have to rant about on the topic of Elite. Jesus this took 4 hours to write. But for those who cannot be bothered to read through a gigantic mega-post, I'll post a paragraph or so tl;dr now to sum everything up.
tl;dr:
Scaling missions, allowing players to complete what kind of missions they want to, on their own terms. No more specifics, just whatever you personally feel like doing. Rebalance the Navy Rank Grind. Make it attainable by playing the damn game rather than only sucking a certain Faction's for long enough. Update the Sensor module to allow for more in-depth planet scanning, and less module clutter, consolidating everything into the sensor module of the ship and it's sub-modules, rather than having certain scanners be internalized compartments , some be on utility mounts, etc. The big one, Factions. Allow players to create their own Factions, letting them build and maintain their own Stations and Outposts throughout the galaxy. Allowing for much more in-depth end-game content, and an MMO-esque guild like system, allowing groups of players to work towards their own personal goals, and change the galaxy as they see fit. And last but not least, general rebalancing and fixing of some more specialized problems that make certain ships near useless.
In conclusion, I love Elite. I've played it since shortly after it released, and I've been sitting on these ideas for a long time. I want to see this game successful. I want to see it made great again.
A very hopeful,
CMDR Borg184
(I crossposted this on Reddit too. Here's the link to that thread.)
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