List of suggestions for Elite Dangerous

[Dr EviI]

I tried Elite Dangerous a couple of times in the past with all kind of different version but I always skipped after a short time because I did not liked the game (played Eve Online, X-series and Freelancer for several years). It offered me too few content and was boring, difficult and frustrating at the same time.
Now, with the actual game version some very important changes/features were added. The biggest one is a little c1 module named "cruise assist". I dont understand why FD took so long to add this to the game. It was absolutely no fun to shoot over your target destination a couple of times and it became frustrating a lot. I think that this module should be fitted to all ships by default, so new players dont become frustrated so fast.
The second best feature are the engineers from the Horizon addon. They add so much content and force players to finally discover the universe for rare metals. Before I tried the engineers I was just sitting at the nav beacon shooting pirate ships for money. This is not how you should play Elite for a long time!

But even when I finally enjoy Elite, I still have some important suggestions that should be added to the game:

1. As mentioned above, the Cruise Assist module should be fitted to all ships by default
2. A fighter pilot should stick active with the ship you have added the fighter hangar. Right now the pilot becomes inactive whenever you change the ship without a warning. Later I switched back. I often forgot to set the pilot to active after switching the ship and then I notice too late that my fighter has no pilot. That is stupid, frustrating and makes no sense.
3. I read often that even inactive pilots take some % of your money. That makes no sense (ok it does, but not from a game perspective), especially if you lose your pilot when you die. So you can only have one trained pilot at the time and then always when he dies you have to start from scratch to train him. That is bad.. for example I died by crashing into a base building when landing at a moon and my pilot died - sucks. I want to have some backup pilots which I have trained so I can replace my last pilot.
4. Risk vs reward: actually, mining is very easy but gives by far the best reward for me. While I like mining I think that missions should offer bigger rewards. At least the higher/more dangerous missions.
5. Right now deep core mining only works with one kind of asteroid. That feels to artificial. Add more deep core asteroids to the game with different shapes.
6. Remove missions with extremely high kill counts - instead make the pirates of more rewarding missions attack in groups or in bigger/better ships. It is not fun to kill 50 pirate ships while each one is no threat at all.
7. Progress in the universe: systems should offer some progress. For example there should be some very secure systems where a lot of police is active and just a few pirates. Then there should be more dangerous systems where better and more pirates are around. So far, the same level of pirates are all over the galaxy. So it does not matter if I let the police kill the pilotes and I just mae one shot or if I go to an anarchy system. In fact it offers me less bounty because it takes much longer to hunt them.
8. New mission type Escort: You have to escort one or more traders to a specific destination and while you do this you will be intercepted by pirates
9. New mission type destroy convoi: You have to destroy a convoi before it gets to his destination
10. New bigger class of enemy ships which you can only attack with several pilots. Some kind of frigates which are 3-5 times as big as an Anaconda. Maybe with some special weapons which can shoot fast nimble fighters worse but which can kill bigger ships much easier.
11. In some missions you should be able to hire NPC wing men which then take a part of the reward so solo players can do difficult missions or attack (9) as well
12. More kind of enemies on planet surfaces like other vehicles
13. The SRV should be fittable or give us more kind of SRVs with different purposes (more combat related, more exploration realted and a mixed one)
14. Default keyboard and controller controls!!! It took me several hours to set up the controls for the SRC, DeepScan and so on. This is the only game where there was no default setup for my XBox controller at all!
15. Some new looking space stations. Just the three types become repetitive very fast.
16. New space ships/class. I know that carriers will come and that is awesome. But I miss a class bigger than the Anaconda but way smaller than a carrier (see 9).
17. More things to discover on planets! I love to discover new things.
18. Add some really big asteroids to the asteroid belts. Some with caves and so on (like in Star Wars).

Even when this list is pretty long, I enjoy the game and cant wait to see the future!
Fly safe!

 

[Ian Doncaster]

[*]As mentioned above, the Cruise Assist module should be fitted to all ships by default

It's part of the default loadout for all newly-purchased ships.

(Personally, I hate it, because it takes minutes longer to get to the station than I can do flying manually, so I wouldn't want one that I couldn't remove - but I agree it's good that it's there for people who want it)

[*]Remove missions with extremely high kill counts - instead make the pirates of more rewarding missions attack in groups or in bigger/better ships. It is not fun to kill 50 pirate ships while each one is no threat at all.

Well, there are the assassination missions instead (especially the "wing" ones) - but I agree the massacre missions could be smaller. A ten ship mission is still potentially a lot of shooting, and players who want to shoot fifty can just take more than one mission.

[*]Progress in the universe: systems should offer some progress. For example there should be some very secure systems where a lot of police is active and just a few pirates. Then there should be more dangerous systems where better and more pirates are around. So far, the same level of pirates are all over the galaxy. So it does not matter if I let the police kill the pilotes and I just mae one shot or if I go to an anarchy system. In fact it offers me less bounty because it takes much longer to hunt them.

The high-security, medium-security, low-security, anarchy systems do have different mixes of pirates (they have much higher ranking, and are more common, in the low-sec/anarchy systems) and police (police turn up almost instantly in high-sec with high-end ships, but take several minutes in low-sec). But I agree it's still too subtle.

[*]New bigger class of enemy ships which you can only attack with several pilots. Some kind of frigates which are 3-5 times as big as an Anaconda. Maybe with some special weapons which can shoot fast nimble fighters worse but which can kill bigger ships much easier.

Have you looked at Combat Zones recently? If you go to a high-intensity CZ and sign up to fight against Federal or Imperial forces, you can get a big ship like that showing up on the other side.

There's also the civilian megaships and installations in various systems, which you can get missions to attack or defend, either from the mission boards, or just by showing up near them and waiting for a fight to start.

[*]Add some really big asteroids to the asteroid belts. Some with caves and so on (like in Star Wars).

There's a few of these in already, being used as improvised stations. They're rare, though - it might take a bit of looking around to find one.

 

[Dr EviI]

(Personally, I hate it, because it takes minutes longer to get to the station than I can do flying manually, so I wouldn't want one that I couldn't remove - but I agree it's good that it's there for people who want it)

Do you know that you can drive as fast as you want with the crusie assist? You just need to get into the blue line short before arriving. If timed well, you dont lose a single second to the old way. You just dont miss your target anymore (ok sometimes you still do if you fly way too fast and forget to throttle down)

The high-security, medium-security, low-security, anarchy systems do have different mixes of pirates (they have much higher ranking, and are more common, in the low-sec/anarchy systems) and police (police turn up almost instantly in high-sec with high-end ships, but take several minutes in low-sec). But I agree it's still too subtle.

Thats goodto hear!

Have you looked at Combat Zones recently? If you go to a high-intensity CZ and sign up to fight against Federal or Imperial forces, you can get a big ship like that showing up on the other side.

I know them, but thats not what I want, because these ships are too static. They feel artificually integrated into the game. What I want are completely free ships which act as like other ships and which you can destroy and which fly around and so on.

Thanks for your answers

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Do you know that you can drive as fast as you want with the crusie assist? You just need to get into the blue line short before arriving. If timed well, you dont lose a single second to the old way. You just dont miss your target anymore (ok sometimes you still do if you fly way too fast and forget to throttle down)

I tend to use spiral/gravity-brake approaches which are themselves quite a bit faster than blue-zone ones, especially for planetary bases (which I visit a lot of). I don't start braking until about 0:04 on the timer.

Plus, if I leave the cruise assist out, I can fit something else in that slot instead - an extra limpet controller, or hull reinforcement, or a surface scanner.