On the Horizon – Countdown to The Engineers Beta Livestream: Part 1 - Questions Needed

[Edward Lewis]

Hello all!

Tomorrow night is the first of our road to beta livestreams. We'll be talking through some of the stuff in the newsletter from Friday, displaying a few screenshots and hopefully showing a video or two!

I'll be joined by Mike Brookes, so if you've got any questions about the content we talked about in the newsletter last week... now's your time to get them cleared up by Mike - put them in the thread below and he'll pull out some questions before tomorrow's stream

https://www.youtube.com/user/FrontierDevelopments/live - 7PM BST on Thursday 21st - see you there

 

[Aewarin Jameson]

Great!

What kinds of things are we going to be required to do in order to find and talk to the Engineers ? (As in : treasure hunt // credits // reputation [and if so specific to the Engineer ?] // rating // etc)

 

[Edward Lewis]

Great!

What kinds of things are we going to be required to do in order to find and talk to the Engineers ? (As in : treasure hunt // credits // reputation [and if so specific to the Engineer ?] // rating // etc)

We might be able to touch on this, but mostly we'll be talking about things that have been in previous newsletters... like last week's! But yeah, keep the questions coming in, and Mike can decide on what gets talked about

 

[CMDR Ash]

Soo Excited! I'm going to be cheeky and ask two

In regards to the A.I changes, what new maneuvers or tactics can we expect to see from the pesky code commanders?

Will every engineer base be a unique design to showcase there individual tastes or will they have a standard layout?

 

[CMDR Heisenberg B. Damned]

The newsletter said:

"human-created POIs will also not be encountered as far out from human space as they are at the moment"

I think that's pretty welcome but are there going to be no POI's when far away from the bubble or are we going to be getting different POI's if out exploring?

If different do you have any hints on what non human-created POI's will contain?

 

[Apos]

Are Edmund Mahon's broken exploited system bonuses fixed with 2.1?

 

[Robert Maynard]

Looking forward to this one! Now.... What to ask....?

 

[Imeraxes]

Questin : Any news about POI in space like Antares wreckship, whith may be, CQC asset ?

Cheers, CMDR Iméraxes

 

[Alexander the Grape]

Awesome to hear! Looking forward to it already!
I have a number of questions:

1: Have credit/hour or materials/hour calculations been done for the new missions? Will they remain competitive with freelance bounty hunting/trading?

2: What weapon balance is underway? We know missiles will be affected, but what about other little-used or outclassed weapons such as cannons, or weapons such as the Railgun whose limited ammo as a balancing mechanism can now be offset by synthesis?

3: Will trading food to famine systems, weapons to wartorn systems, or medicine to outbreak struck systems make as much profit as a->b imperial slave routes?

4: can you explain the performance enhanced thrusters for class 2-3 drives mentioned in newsletter 120? Will this be a new module or a rebalance? Will it affect speed, acceleration, or pitch rate?

5: are the Engineers upgrades purely positive (+5 to power?) Or do they have downsides? And are their benefits addidative or multiplicative (in short, do they benefit small ships or large)?

6: Any thoughts on the continued combat dominance of the FDL and FAS over other combat specialists?

Any answered questions would be greatly appreciated, thanks

 

[Gedemon]

About POI are we going to get a way to know if we are near one while low flying ? (The actual mecanism of level flying at 2Km while waiting for them to spawn is boring)

We have very long range scanners (discovery for planets with a range of hundred of Ls) and the very low range wave scanner (material/POI from the srv with a few km range), is there a third scanner planned (general POI direction from ship in orbit at a few hundred/thousands km) ?

TIA

 

[VR Golgot]

Woot!

Two cheeky ones on crafting...

• Mike said normal mods are 'deliberate albeit with some procedural sprinkles'. What sort of unintentional variety should we expect? Different levels of success in the crafting? Unintended additional effects?

• Could we get some more info on the difficulty of crafting 'non normal' modifications like Regenerating Sequence? Are outcomes hugely randomised? Are there recipes that need to be discovered which improve success rates? What is it about them that makes them difficult to create, beyond rarity of blueprints / materials etc?
  

 

[Alec Turner]

Here's a few off the top of my head ...

- The 3D Beam Laser outfitting screenshot shows "Weapon mode: 0.00", what is that?

- "Scanning a nav beacon will give Commanders the exploration data for the system (if you don’t already have it)." - does that mean we no longer need to carry a discovery scanner in order to get data for systems with nav beacons?

- Is USS scanning a passive action (i.e. done by flying towards targeted USS in similar way to "discovering" a targeted planet or star) or will there be more to it than that? [apologies for my phrasing there, no criticism intended].

- There's been a huge reaction to the "healing laser" modification. I believe FD once stated that they had no interest in taking ED down the dps/tank/healer route. Have they changed their thinking now or are people just massively overreacting to a fairly innocent mod' that's one of many.

- The screenshot of the crashed DBX shows tyre tracks. Are those actual in-game tyre tracks or have they been added to that screenshot in post production? (only, if it's the former as suggested in the newsletter then, is it my imagination or has the detail and blending of loose surface rocks also been improved).

Really looking forward to this one chaps!

 

[punkerich]

Hi there,

i think some important questions regarding crafting are:
1. will we get storage? will it be possible to transfer modified modules to other ships?
2. will it be possible to undo modifications?
3. (sorry, coming again with this) will we get ship transfer services?

 

[JesusOnEez]

The newsletter said:

"human-created POIs will also not be encountered as far out from human space as they are at the moment"

I think that's pretty welcome but are there going to be no POI's when far away from the bubble or are we going to be getting different POI's if out exploring?

If different do you have any hints on what non human-created POI's will contain?

"human-created..."

Alien POIs confirmed.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Hi Michael!

As well as the graphical improvements to the ring systems, has any further work been done on planetary surfaces?

 

[CMDR Heisenberg B. Damned]

"human-created..."

Alien POIs confirmed.

Here's to hoping

I actually think crashed Alien vehicles would make more sense than the huge number of crashed human ships. Maybe not in such large quantities and maybe certain types in certain sectors - the races may not even be around still but on an airless planet a crash site would last a long time. But I guess we'll see what we end up with. Pretty much anything would be better than the long range tea smuggling POI's we have at the moment!

 

[wilkie79]

Just one question regarding the scanners in our SRV's.

When I perform a scan on an object like a rock, the information I receive from results is always blank. In 2.1, will we be getting information on objects we scan, such as the types of materials/chemicals inside a rock, quantity of content or a description? This also applies to other POI's that can be scanned.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Will the upgraded thrusters that will be available to small ships actually get different models like we saw in early concept art?

 

[Ryan P Bodfirst]

Hi Michael,

I'm wondering what options are available to us when we want to remove an engineer mod to make space for a different one? Can we sell them anywhere for example?

Thanks.

 

[Philip Coutts]

Will the engineers be neutral in terms of political allegiance? For example if I'm at a high rank with the Imperial Navy will that have a positive or negative effect with some engineers or do they not care?