General Overhauling Engineering: A Family's Request for a Streamlined Upgrade System

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Eh? More than one of the engineers actually insist that you do so. And many players would consider 1000ly as just like popping down the road to the chemist.

These requirements were all created when you had to jump 50 times in one direction to get 1000ly distance. This was a serious commintment of doing nothing else than press "j" over and over and see the loading screen a hundred times. A voyge to the bubble was also an extreme commitment. There were no megaships, no boost, no synthesis superfuel, no neutron highways. There was nothing - just your crappy average 25-30 ly jump range. At the time all the requirements were totally out of whack.

 

[Northpin]

In my first year (2017 I think?) they then had the bright idea of buffing passenger mission payouts. Because sightseeing missions counted towards exploration, a good proportion of players yomped Explorer Elite very quickly.

Guilty as charged - I got Elite in trading and exploration several days distance between them by chaining Robigo runs - excellent source or credits, materials, and Empire rep.
I treated those like doing laps - like a F1 racer - trying to optimize the runs to get the best lap timers

 

[Northpin]

This was a serious commintment of doing nothing else than press "j" over and over and see the loading screen a hundred times.

Yes, you can make it look like that - a commitment to do nothing

Or you can do it like this, and actually play the freaking game?

Show us your interesting discoveries!

@Caramel Clown If I knew that you were "collecting" them before, I'd send a handful I found your way. Found a couple extremely fast with very wide but short cones that were just insane. Ah, yes. Butterflies in my own naming scheme :)

forums.frontier.co.uk

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Yes, you can make it look like that - a commitment to do nothing

Or you can do it like this, and actually play the freaking game?

Show us your interesting discoveries!

@Caramel Clown If I knew that you were "collecting" them before, I'd send a handful I found your way. Found a couple extremely fast with very wide but short cones that were just insane. Ah, yes. Butterflies in my own naming scheme :)

forums.frontier.co.uk

I pressed "j" a hundred times and it sucked. Heart and Soul nebula was nice. Getting there was OK once. Getting back really sucked. There, played it already. All done. At least I didn't have to do it all over. Iirc the feat carried over and unlocked the engineer later on. Not that I ever used it. I couldn't be arsed to visit the same PoIs over and over to collect the mats.

 

[Jack Winter]

Yes, you can make it look like that - a commitment to do nothing

Or you can do it like this, and actually play the freaking game?

Show us your interesting discoveries!

@Caramel Clown If I knew that you were "collecting" them before, I'd send a handful I found your way. Found a couple extremely fast with very wide but short cones that were just insane. Ah, yes. Butterflies in my own naming scheme :)

forums.frontier.co.uk

But you don't understand, the game is about engineering hundreds of ships as fast as possible. Only a dimwit like me would go to Colonia and back in a ship with D rated unengineered thrusters..

 

[Northpin]

I pressed "j" a hundred times and it sucked. Heart and Soul nebula was nice. Getting there was OK once. Getting back really sucked. There, played it already. All done.

Well, fair enough - if you dont enjoy a game, you dont play it (you just stalk the forums, the players and the devs)

And you did quit before i even started to play the game, more than 5 years ago

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Well, fair enough - if you dont enjoy a game, you dont play it (you just stalk the forums, the players and the devs)

And you did quit before i even started to play the game, more than 5 years ago

As did many others. You see, maybe it wasn't the players whining all the time, but players leaving the game in frustration that led to all the reworking of those acid grindy requirements?

 

[Felix DiCestria]

Rush B my friends (the B stands for Beagle point).

Most games will either have fast travel (limited or full teleport depending on how kind they are) so the only games that really come close are games where traveling is the point like Kerbal Space Program (lets you time warp) or Death Stranding (the cutscenes are longer than the longest time you spend traveling when not exploring/building out routes). I may have spent that much time stuck in mud in the swamp on the first map in Spintires, but that was a skill issue and on me mostly (I'm gonna make a rule that it doesn't count since I wasn't technically moving/traveling!).

Euro Truck Simulator 2 probably has some routes that can take that long, but while I haven't played it in years it's probably not required for progression to do those long routes and I have no idea how the community there feels about what the ideal mission length is.

EDIT: Actually X series games and NMS would be good comparisions too, I don't remember travel in X3 being excessively long, but getting to the end of NMS could take a while unless you use the stargate stuff (haven't played it in a long time so I don't know how much has changed there).

Any subsim, though they'll usually have time compression...

 

[Jack Winter]

As did many others. You see, maybe it wasn't the players whining all the time, but players leaving the game in frustration that led to all the reworking of those acid grindy requirements?

Or maybe it's the result of developing the game for 10 years, partly listening to feedback, partly taking decisions based on game balance, partly developing new stuff, and partly improving older stuff. I think feedback can only be good, though there are some that are in the habit to present their feedback as the gospel truth when in fact it's just another opinion among many. I expect that it's this style of writing that leads to a certain amount of friction and ridicule here on the boards.

 

[Northpin]

But you don't understand, the game is about engineering hundreds of ships as fast as possible

Well, apparently i did devised, outfitted and fully engineered a mining./bounty-hunting long range Anaconda for the Explorer's Anchorage CG (including unlocking the FSD booster) in a single Saturday, and Sunday by noon i was in EA system (by its proper name: Stuemeae FG-Y d7561) 25000+ LY from the bubble

If that's not Fast... (that was happening while i was a less than 4 months old player)

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Or maybe it's the result of developing the game for 10 years, partly listening to feedback, partly taking decisions based on game balance, partly developing new stuff, and partly improving older stuff. I think feedback can only be good, though there are some that are in the habit to present their feedback as the gospel truth when in fact it's just another opinion among many. I expect that it's this style of writing that leads to a certain amount of friction and ridicule here on the boards.

If you have the time to do that. Usually what players prefer is having a finished product when they have to pay at release date and not a period of 10 years to have a fleshed out game. If you look at ED the takeaway is that you better not buy at launch but after maybe after the product hits shelf half live point.

 

[Jack Winter]

If you have the time to do that. Usually what players prefer is having a finished product when they have to pay at release date and not a period of 10 years to have a fleshed out game. If you look at ED the takeaway is that you better not buy at launch but after maybe after the product hits shelf half live point.

That may or may not be, but here we are nearly 10 years later. Some people have played the game and moved on, others are still playing it. Many are probably ok with the game and think it's quite good, others get bored and move on, others hang around on a forum to complain about it.

I for one am happy that they keep developing it, and that it wasn't just a few releases over a year.. Then done and finished, time to develop another game and make more money.

 

[Shurimal]

the only games that really come close are games where traveling is the point

I'd argue that space travel is a big part of Elite. It's a "life as a spacer" game, and travelling is quintessential part of life in space.

I don't remember travel in X3 being excessively long

If you used the time acceleration feature. If you didn't, the average distance between gates is something around 50 km and a typical M6 is around 120...130 m/s fully upgraded. Which works out roughly 6...7 minutes spent in a sector while travelling through it. And sometimes (especially in the early game) you have to go through 10 sectors to reach your destination--even with time acceleration it takes quite a while.

Any subsim, though they'll usually have time compression...

I once did real-time overnight travel in the Mediterranean in SH3. Once. Getting woken up every few hours because the watch spotted a ship or an aircraft got old, fast.

 

[Felix DiCestria]

I once did real-time overnight travel in the Mediterranean in SH3. Once. Getting woken up every few hours because the watch spotted a ship or an aircraft got old, fast.

Operation Drumbeat, even with x64,000 compression France to Boston/New York/Florida and back takes a while.
Pacific Theatre, anything from Pearl is an epic journey.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

I'd argue that space travel is a big part of Elite. It's a "life as a spacer" game, and travelling is quintessential part of life in space.

If you used the time acceleration feature. If you didn't, the average distance between gates is something around 50 km and a typical M6 is around 120...130 m/s fully upgraded. Which works out roughly 6...7 minutes spent in a sector while travelling through it. And sometimes (especially in the early game) you have to go through 10 sectors to reach your destination--even with time acceleration it takes quite a while.

I once did real-time overnight travel in the Mediterranean in SH3. Once. Getting woken up every few hours because the watch spotted a ship or an aircraft got old, fast.

X4 still has the SETA, time dilation accelerator. However they adopted the highway from the previous X and established different drive types.
A travel drive accelerates to very high speed a bit like the supercruise. The ship doesn't steer well in this mode. Different drives accelerate faster in combat, have higher travel speed or sport sprint acceleration during travel mode or have extended boost capability. Given the size of sectors a Terran drive gets you fastest from point a to b due to the extreme travel mode acceleration. There are faster drives but over these usual distances a terran drive outsprints every other drive.

Some couple hundred hours playtime in and I haven't really used SETA to speed up time - travel mode simply is enough. And cruising through multiple sectors uses the highway as accelerator.

Then you can also unlock teleportation. Only your character teleports - not your ship, so you need a ship or station at the destination. All these together and you don't need time dilation anymore. The only time I use it is maybe to speed up some timed event. Maybe I track a ship that is docked, then I hit SETA until it undocks.

 

[Killerskullmk]

I don’t know if this will make any difference, but I’ll leave it here, hoping someone from Frontier Dev. would read it.
I picked up four copies of ED for my family, and we were excited about the game. I worked my way up to a Vulture, loved the little ship, and decided to plan the upgrade route that would end with a nice cosmetics pack to reward myself and support the Devs. Each one of us had a similar plan. I went online to look up information, and the reality of the game reared its ugly head.
My family and I went from “We have to support the Devs!” to uninstalling the game.

Two Proposed Solutions:
-Remove engineers and implement a clear progression and upgrade system for each ship.
-However you implement this, allow all materials to be traded between players; this way, those who want to explore can trade with those of us who want to blow up ships and rocks.

Bonus (Make mining relevant):
-You already have the technology to implement trade within fleet carriers, and all you need to do is add the ability to process ores and construct parts of ships or entire ships that players could sell.
-Add complex PvE content to guarantee we lose ships and keep the economy going.

Final thoughts: ED is a brilliant sandbox with excellent flight mechanics, but you lost revenue from a family willing to spend money on your game because engineering killed it. Please don’t give up on this gem of a game. All the systems are already in place; they only need a bit of refining. We hope to return to the game once engineering has been completely overhauled.

Thank you, and God bless.

I see engineering with good eyes, I believe that doing something like a line of progression is largely outside the scope of the elite, I personally think that engineering is good in the way it is, but it still needs to be improved, to this day we have modules and weapons that are not has engineering.

Regarding cosmetics I also agree with you, the ideal is that they almost always launch new skins or even separate the sticker and the color as separate things, give the player the ability to customize the color and sell us the stickers.

Regarding mining, of course there could be a slight improvement in prices from time to time,

Sharing materials in a certain way is possible on the fleet carrier and on foot, except for ship modules and equipment on foot, it seems good to me.

New PVE content is always welcome, why not a new super large challenging settlement, new challenging ship missions... it's always cool.

The Elite really is a gem to be polished, it all depends on Frontier's willingness to listen to the community.

 

[Disemboweled Ego]

I'd argue that space travel is a big part of Elite. It's a "life as a spacer" game, and travelling is quintessential part of life in space.

Yes and that's something that makes Elite unique, but it shouldn't be pushed as "a 2h trip is NOTHING" in a gatekeeping way.

The particular crystal shards site visit is actually a case where it's worth the visit assuming you want to fill up on every material and not worry about it ever again unless you engineer dozens of ships in which case it might take several visits across a career spanning thousands of hours.

But the fact that it's seemingly worth the visit while still being a 1-2h trip* (+the farming itself) should just highlight how messed up the system is normally and how crappy it is to get lower quantities of those materials otherwise that players put up with this and are able to push this as a "normal quick trip down to the crystal shards that's no problem".

* Yeah, it's at least 1h even with a carrier back and forth.

If you used the time acceleration feature. If you didn't, the average distance between gates is something around 50 km and a typical M6 is around 120...130 m/s fully upgraded. Which works out roughly 6...7 minutes spent in a sector while travelling through it. And sometimes (especially in the early game) you have to go through 10 sectors to reach your destination--even with time acceleration it takes quite a while.

I didn't know about time acceleration in X3 or refused to use it for a long time, but I did have the fastest ship iirc.

than press "j" over and over and see the loading screen a hundred times

I guess that's more Desert Bus than the other sim games where you can fast forward time (at least plane sims should let you trim). Boiling it down to that level means the only comparable games would be cookie clicker type incremental games, but you know without the incremental or idle bits, just clicking a cookie to make linear progress.

I'm really just hating on travel here just because it compounds all the other problems Elite has at this point instead of being mechanically bad on in its own little corner while still adding immensely to the immersion and the sense of scale of the galaxy.

It does mean improving travel times would also improve engineering and various other activities at the cost of those things. For engineering there's other ways to improve it too where the side effects are kept more within the engineering/material gathering ecosystem.

 

[Shurimal]

Yes and that's something that makes Elite unique, but it shouldn't be pushed as "a 2h trip is NOTHING" in a gatekeeping way.

The particular crystal shards site visit is actually a case where it's worth the visit assuming you want to fill up on every material and not worry about it ever again unless you engineer dozens of ships in which case it might take several visits across a career spanning thousands of hours.

But the fact that it's seemingly worth the visit while still being a 1-2h trip* (+the farming itself) should just highlight how messed up the system is normally and how crappy it is to get lower quantities of those materials otherwise that players put up with this and are able to push this as a "normal quick trip down to the crystal shards that's no problem".

In-system and in-bubble travel times are measured in minutes so I don't think this is much of a problem. Of course it takes longer if one just points their ship to the destination, engages SC assist at 75% throttle and gets slowed down by every planet and asteroid belt between here and there. But more advanced travel methods are available and I think eventually everyone who has the ability to observe and willingness to experiment a little will discover them

As for the shard sites, one visit a year is sufficient unless you buy and fully engineer a ship every week. It's mainly tungsten that is the real bottleneck for combat ship engineering, but luckily it's grade 3 so can be traded from eg polonium with fairly good exchange rate. I usually set the shard site as a waypoint to or from some place I want to explore in that direction, so it's not an "extra" trip. Or go with a friend, it's quite fun that way, pulling SRV shenanigans and blasting the shards with rockets from a ship.

Of course grade 4 raw materials as mission rewards would be very welcome.

I didn't know about time acceleration in X3 or refused to use it for a long time, but I did have the fastest ship iirc.

Ah, the Teladi Kestrel... Fastest production ship in the game built by the guys/gals whos other ships are the slowest in the universe. Fun little pocket rocket to casually stroll through Xenon sectors. Just don't trust the autopillok with it or you'll end up as a smear on a station wall

 

[Disemboweled Ego]

In-system and in-bubble travel times are measured in minutes so I don't think this is much of a problem.

Yeah it's not a problem for individual jumps or individual super cruise travels, but it adds up if not just over long trips but if you have to make many smaller trips, like when gathering engineering materials.

So both making travel faster or making you have to gather less materials (so you have to also travel less) would both be ways to solve the engineering grind a bit as I said before just changing the engineering side has less side effects and might be the better way to go about it.

 

[alexzk]

Going 1000Ly out of the bubble isn't normal gameplay

For me, it's a short 30 mins trip after the breakfast. Nothing to talk about. When I travel with carrier I fly on regular ship 3000-5000 ly around carrier to the interesting places, just to see it and back.