New currency in Odyssey

[Nadreck]

A new currency would be rather immersion-breaking. Yes we have multiple currencies today, but they can be exchanged. Currencies regulate the flow of goods and services.

I can just about accept Engineering, the Engineers are independently wealthy hobbyists who don't need cash. But I hope that suits and other basic items can be bought with credits (and be much cheaper than a stock Sidewinder).

There are a few things that might be more expensive than a ship. For instance, perhaps it's difficult and expensive to miniaturise a shield generator to fit on a suit, or the powerplant for it (which would probably have to be nuclear). And modern jetpacks are close to the limits of non-nuclear power supplies.

And then there's the concept of "restricted military tech". Perhaps you'd have to run military (or illegal) missions to earn "military credits" that can be used to buy restricted tech.

 

[Ydiss]

A new currency would be rather immersion-breaking. Yes we have multiple currencies today, but they can be exchanged. Currencies regulate the flow of goods and services.

I can just about accept Engineering, the Engineers are independently wealthy hobbyists who don't need cash. But I hope that suits and other basic items can be bought with credits (and be much cheaper than a stock Sidewinder).

There are a few things that might be more expensive than a ship. For instance, perhaps it's difficult and expensive to miniaturise a shield generator to fit on a suit, or the powerplant for it (which would probably have to be nuclear). And modern jetpacks are close to the limits of non-nuclear power supplies.

And then there's the concept of "restricted military tech". Perhaps you'd have to run military (or illegal) missions to earn "military credits" that can be used to buy restricted tech.

No matter how much you force the narrative to explain making a personal device more expensive than an entire space ship (can't see how that can't just as easily, subjectively, destroy immersion but I digress), there's still inflation that destroys any sense of progression except for brand new players.

There's no logical reason engineers has nothing to do with credits. It's purely game play reasons.

Like magic shields.

 

[Chainguns]

FD were ponderous in balancing their economy (careers), allowed ludicrous credit leaks to go on gushing for months or years. Passengers were silly until 2018. Mining was silly since 2018 but the hammer only came down with the instance reset trick giving near 1 billion credits per hour, as if the previous 500 million was fine. Even now I could probably get 3 Anacondas per hour with painite maps.

So going forward FD have no option but to ringfence the broken currency by keeping it in the space side of the game, while starting afresh with a new currency in the land side of the game. Let's hope they learned something and will keep a closer eye on the new currency, pretty sure no-one would be happy with an obvious 'waste money here lol' feature within Odyssey along the lines of Fleet Carriers in Horizons or with having to constantly check reddit to see if this week some leak has sprung up and it's worth jumping in to take advantage of it before the hammer comes down.

 

[Rat Catcher]

Assemble Your Crew

Social hubs spread throughout the galaxy give Commanders the ideal place to plan their next move. Form alliances, procure services, and even find expert support in highly coveted Engineers. These public outposts also help you acquire and upgrade weapons and gear to perfect your playing style.

This - from the principal Odyssey announcement - is what I consider suggests that a whole new tree of engineers will be intoduced. As current engineering mats are effectively 'currency' already, a heap more to collect (inferred in the last livestream possibly) would certainly fit in as a new 'currency'.

 

[myothershipisacobraiv]

lore weirdness. as long as they don't come up with something stupid then it's ok.

I think they should essentially base the lore on the truth. create a new monetary unit with a new name and basically say that interstellar civilization wants a separate currency to keep more conventional planet-dwelling things away from the spacefaring side of civilization because of all the baggage that side contains and the result of influence of larger-than-life disparate organizations. Elite is a space trading game future but that doesn't mean it needs to fit in some orwellian cyberpunk dystopia box. They could say this is how society solves the crazy inflation involved with things like Cutters and Coriolis and so on.

We all know credits behave pretty weirdly in some ways, partly because of the influence of the years Elite's been going and partly because of lack of planning. They're doing this to give themsevles a clean slate upon which to develop. So I think it's a good idea as long as it's not blatantly stupid from a lore standpoint.

 

[Nadreck]

I think it would be very silly if a spacefaring billionaire couldn't immediately buy the best personal kit that (conventional) money can buy. If cheaper stuff exists, it should be for poor NPC's, and that's what gives players an edge.

So any additional upgrades beyond that would have to be justified as "not commercially available" for some reason. Military, experimental, unreleased prototype, engineered... whatever.

 

[tolm]

Elite: Walking Edition needs to be part of the same game, not an entirely separate game with its own missions, currency and progression that just happens to be accessed via the same launcher ...

Any required restriction of progress to prevent rich existing players just getting everything on Day 1 can be achieved without the need to invent a new currency or by inexplicably making foot missions pay stupid amounts because foot equipment costs stupid amounts. Simply restrict the gear through having to “qualify” for it rather than invent a new currency:

• Do enough missions for the military? Congrats, they’ll now sell you advanced weapons and warfare suits
• Turn in enough life form scans? Congrats, you open doors with the right contacts to be able to buy advanced exploration suits and scanning/sampling gear
• Scavenge enough tech? The folks you’ve been scavenging for now trust you enough to let you have some of the experimental personal shield generators they’ve been building from all that scrap

All of which would then cost you credits, of course, but a sensible amount when compared to the price of a starship. It’s just the same as ranking up with any faction to unlock ships.

 

[Morbad]

I think it would be very silly if a spacefaring billionaire couldn't immediately buy the best personal kit that (conventional) money can buy.

Money in ED isn't conventional. The money supply is essentially unlimited, but prices are fixed. At this point, either everything is effectively free, in which case credits are just fluff, or some things are actually scarce, in which case no one would accept credits for them.

I don't like this situation, and I don't like these bolt-on currency systems, but without actual economic forces, this sort of thing is the only way to inject some sense of progression into the system.

 

[Danieros]

No matter how much you force the narrative to explain making a personal device more expensive than an entire space ship (can't see how that can't just as easily, subjectively, destroy immersion but I digress), there's still inflation that destroys any sense of progression except for brand new players.

There's no logical reason engineers has nothing to do with credits. It's purely game play reasons.

Like magic shields.

Frontier has wasted an entire scavenging career potential when they implemented engineering materials as such a disconnected gameplay loop. I literally just jump from USS to USS or planet to planet with the most barebones ship possible, with zero combat capability and zero cargo hold because there is no risk whatsoever. Now, suddenly they are talking about scavenging as a career for Odyssey but I doubt they're going to connect it with the engineering materials.

The inflation from the credit currency comes from the game's complete incapability to adapt to overused methods:

• Hotspots don't respond to player activity, once players found out the bubble overlaps, that's where everyone will optimally mine and the exploration game was pretty much over.
• Painite demand can be completely bypassed with the 25% rule, but even more absurdly.
• Mined commodities seem to follow a completely different demand mechanic that does not seem to exhaust it. Once a good trade route is found, it can be abused freely until the stacked faction states expire on the daily ticks.
• The price multipliers from stacked faction states continue even if a commodity has reached zero demand, killing the entire dynamic market idea. Today I was able to grind about 400m from an A to B loop.
• Mission Boards are generated for each player instead of a global pool, once players figured out optimal systems for mission stacking for whatever purpose, thousands of players flocked to these "meta" systems, and they could be freely abused (not even gonna touch the board flip exploit that existed for years when the mission list could be refreshed simply by switching game modes).

As a dynamic game, Elite is not really doing anything to stop static optimal methods which unfortunately simplify a lot of the intended gameplay careers and breaks progression.

I would love to see a good direction for this new Odyssey leg currency, but I don't really have a lot of faith considering the track record we have here.

 

[VR SenseiMatty]

would you want to experience odyssey with billions in the bank?
i dunno myself, was even contemplating wiping my save and starting from scratch
the only thing stopping me right now is the thought of having to get all those mats again for the ships

You don't need to wipe out your save to remove credits from your accounts. Do you want my FC coordinates? I can sell you Tritium for a very expensive price

 

[VR SenseiMatty]

Obsidian Ant said:
“Suits are obviously just one type of new on foot related item. Others will include various types of equipment in addition to weapons. For those of you wondering if you will be able to buy all of these with your current credits, the answer to that appears to be no. A new form of trading will be introduced where new valuable items will be required for the trade.”

Admittedly there is some room for interpretation there, but it doesn’t sound like the new form of trading, i.e currency, will be limited to engineering modifications.

Rather than new currency, it seems a new form of technology broker to me.

 

[Ydiss]

I would love to see a good direction for this new Odyssey leg currency, but I don't really have a lot of faith considering the track record we have here.

That's the thing though, it doesn't look to be a new currency. I guess we'll see.
At least scavenging on foot sounds a bit more risky than in space.

 

[Zoltor]

I hope at very least, there are nes reward options for missions ingeneral that lets you earn this currency, and you are forced to do the odyssey on ground missions, to get any of the new currency.

 

[VR SenseiMatty]

I don't think it will be a new currency like credits.
According to the lore "credits" are a big units of currency. In our galaxy, the civilians use micro-credits (50 cents = 1 micro credit; 100 micro credits = 1 cr; ref.)
So when we have enough credits to buy a ship we should actually have credits to buy all suits collection with upgrades.
FDEV wants to introduce a new type of trading to introduce a new progression in the game, which is fine for me as long as this new type of trade is various and well balanced, instead of the current guardians loop that is, together with engineers, something terribly boring imho.

 

[CMDR Yates]

The ppl that say there is no grind in ED are the same that aways say here that ED is perfect without issues. They really need help soon before it's to late.

You're choosing to grind though. Grind is a choice to continue to do something you don't enjoy. A poor one.

It's a game, not your career.

Don't get swallowed up by sunk cost fallacy. The minute you get bored, do something else.

 

[Tifu]

But I'm guessing our ability to negotiate rewards (love that, long requested feature) might let us negotiate this alternative reward structure instead or in part with credits.

This is a Good Thing.

Agreed. One of my (few) issues with ED is that some things feel so detached. So rather than flipping through the UI in the cockpit, I would rather much prefer to be on foot and face to face bargaining for the best deal with the local NPC for some cool stuff.

Having another dynamic on the surface will partly address ED's reputation of "miles wide, a few inches deep" since one landable planet is pretty much like any other. You need a living, breathing NPC population to flesh things out.

I'm beginning to wonder if scanning for exotic fauna has anything to do with this alternative currency thing. It would make sense if there is a demand for alien plants.

 

[CMDR Yates]

I'm beginning to wonder if scanning for exotic fauna has anything to do with this alternative currency thing. It would make sense if there is a demand for alien plants.

I wonder if there'll be bio-weapons and stuff further down the line.

All the stuff added in the last year or two, with life at Notable Stellar Phenomena, the bio-research station at Colonia, anomalies, weird bio samples (some of which have never been found in game, but are mentioned in prohibited goods lists), the Thargoid enzyme explosives suddenly being made relevant to the story, and now genomics/xenobiology being added as whole new career type, might point to this stuff eventually being useful in some way.

 

[Tifu]

I wonder if there'll be bio-weapons and stuff further down the line.

All the stuff added in the last year or two, with life at Notable Stellar Phenomena, the bio-research station at Colonia, anomalies, weird bio samples (some of which have never been found in game, but are mentioned in prohibited goods lists), the Thargoid enzyme explosives suddenly being made relevant to the story, and now genomics/xenobiology being added as whole new career type, might point to this stuff eventually being useful in some way.

Makes a lot of sense to me

Plus CGs on rapacious corporate exploitation of indigenous alien fauna vs. the ragtag, valiant protectors of alien ecology

The bioweapons angle is interesting because it would be primarily useful on the surface, not so much in space. Ditto, healing accelerants based on alien plant life.

 

[CMDR Yates]

The bioweapons angle is interesting because it would be primarily useful on the surface, not so much in space. Ditto, healing accelerants based on alien plant life.

I was thinking along the lines of being able to launch our own swarms of Thargon-like organisms, or new energy weapons based on the anomalies, but actually that's a great point!

 

[Highhead]

Talking "credits" vs. new currency, I tried to understand, what a space suit should be "worth" (for me personally anyways) if it were credits. As I couldn't think of any reasonable figures myself, I tried to apply "real world" numbers to the "ED world".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Endeavour (2.2 bn) / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_suit (12 million) = 183.33 : 1

Taking a median ship cost of 15,892,235 in ED and applying the same value would give...
...1,139,829cr for the most expensive suit ("Best")
...86,684cr in median for a space suit (would probably fit lower midclass)
...169cr for the cheapest one (could limit to 1000cr - "Cheapest").

This would not sound unreasonable for me, personally: 11 Ships would be cheaper than the most expensive suit. Beginners will start with the cheapest one either way costing 1k cr.

I am quite certain, that this will not happen though (sadly) and my assumption is, that there will be a whole new level of grind introduced - rendering all your Horizon assets irrelevant and making you needing to earn all Odyssee-related assets with Odyssee gameplay (= totally new currencies). The only general currency will be ARX (but who knows, maybe there will be ORX).