Whenever there is a fighting CG they’re always such a blast but they don’t seem to happen that often. The current one has been great fun and brought a lot of commanders together in a way you just don’t get with delivery CG’s. Bring us together in combat, or against each other in combat more often, I beg of you! “CG to deliver materials to X” just doesn’t cut it with a lot of commanders - I have no interest in them but I accept others do, so balance them out with just as many combat as delivery CG’s and you’ll have many more happy pilots.
Please do more combat CG’s, especially X vs Y where you can fight for either side
- Thread starter FatFreddysCoat
- Start date
I'd like more competitive CGs, whatever the type. Even hauling ones could still have that added. Right now it feels like turning the pages of a story that's already written.
Without any real conflict or competition between players (directly or indirectly) or even any worry that a CG might fail there's not as much reason for players to be invested in these.
Without any real conflict or competition between players (directly or indirectly) or even any worry that a CG might fail there's not as much reason for players to be invested in these.
Conflict CGs shouldn't exist. FD should just force a war (like they already can) and run the usual BGS mechanics for it.
Having the victor determined purely by # of bonds handed in is dumb, when the normal BGS mechanics tracks a side's progress across a range of mechanics, such as:
This was a one-sided conflict, so it wasn't really a conflict, just an exercise in farming cash. It was genuinely impossible for the Scythes to win, not just because there was only one CG which supported the Feds only, and not just because the narrative supported the feds, but because the BGS war tracker was locked-down for the war, so even if players supported Scythes, it was never tracked.
This recent CG was as dry as the desert. But let's be realistic for a second... FD are never going to stop doing conflict CGs because... well.. y'know what, I don't know why. But lets pretend they never wake up to that fact... how can this sort of CZ be made better? Let's run the scythes narrative again...
- First trivial solution... MAKE IT A DAMN CONFLICT WITH THE OPTION TO SUPPORT BOTH SIDES. One-sided CZ CGs are just plain ridiculous, and all the following suggestions should assume that both sides are supportable.
- Another option. Narrative support goes to the Feds like we had, but the Scythes offer triple rewards on bonds.
- Or; Feds offer triple rewards (because they're a big superpower), but if the Scythes win, they'll produce a new blight-resistant strain of Onionhead in Rockforth-fertilizer-style quantities with similar profit margins.
- Feds win, onionhead is removed from the game. Scythes win, no change.
- Feds win, new Military-Economy Outpost set up for future security. Scythes win, more stations become a source of Onionhead.
This is just five minutes of thinking about ways to have actual conflicts with meaningful consequences behind who you choose to support by applying both positive and negative consequences from supporting either side.
Having the victor determined purely by # of bonds handed in is dumb, when the normal BGS mechanics tracks a side's progress across a range of mechanics, such as:
- Combat Bonds handed in (measured by a CZ CG)
- Bounties handed in (not measured by a CZ CG)
- Conflict Zones cleared (not measured by a CZ CG)
- Missions Completed (not measured by a CZ CG)
- Scenarios Cleared (not measured by a CZ CG)
^^ This. Despite all my issues above, there's so much FD could do which would make these more hard-fought... give players real decisions to make about who they support.
This was a one-sided conflict, so it wasn't really a conflict, just an exercise in farming cash. It was genuinely impossible for the Scythes to win, not just because there was only one CG which supported the Feds only, and not just because the narrative supported the feds, but because the BGS war tracker was locked-down for the war, so even if players supported Scythes, it was never tracked.
This recent CG was as dry as the desert. But let's be realistic for a second... FD are never going to stop doing conflict CGs because... well.. y'know what, I don't know why. But lets pretend they never wake up to that fact... how can this sort of CZ be made better? Let's run the scythes narrative again...
- First trivial solution... MAKE IT A DAMN CONFLICT WITH THE OPTION TO SUPPORT BOTH SIDES. One-sided CZ CGs are just plain ridiculous, and all the following suggestions should assume that both sides are supportable.
- Another option. Narrative support goes to the Feds like we had, but the Scythes offer triple rewards on bonds.
- Or; Feds offer triple rewards (because they're a big superpower), but if the Scythes win, they'll produce a new blight-resistant strain of Onionhead in Rockforth-fertilizer-style quantities with similar profit margins.
- Feds win, onionhead is removed from the game. Scythes win, no change.
- Feds win, new Military-Economy Outpost set up for future security. Scythes win, more stations become a source of Onionhead.
This is just five minutes of thinking about ways to have actual conflicts with meaningful consequences behind who you choose to support by applying both positive and negative consequences from supporting either side.
Last edited:
Ah, but letting the players choose which direction the Narrative goes is problematic, when the Narrative is already pre-ordained. The future has already been written. "Blaze your own trail" doesn't count with Interstellar Initiatives; this is FD blazing its own trail, and putting up barbed-wire fences to make sure their trail is the only one that gets followed.
And I think FD knows its playerbase well enough to know that if they want the Feds to win against onionhead-growing anarchists, then they have to bias the universe towards making sure the Feds win.
And I think FD knows its playerbase well enough to know that if they want the Feds to win against onionhead-growing anarchists, then they have to bias the universe towards making sure the Feds win.
Well, I think the inspiration to this particular Interstellar Initiative might have been people complaining about famine being so rare. Might even add mechanics to cause famine, who knows? In general, I agree that a CG centered around combat where FD plays no favorites might be interesting. Could, for example, have two well established minor factions go against each other in several systems. The loser gets wiped out and the winner takes over the assets, becoming even bigger.
And yet, not a single famine was caused... because that's not how the famine state works.
Besides market effects, blight only seemed to decrease happiness
also if they could make Small Seismic Charges a community reward that too would be fantastic
While all these improvements sound nice, wouldn't it be even nicer if um....it actually worked? The combat zone CG was nearly impossible to actually participate in anyway, on either side. In my experience I stood about a 25% chance of actually finding an active and correctly spawning non-bugged CZ to fight in over the course of last week.
Yes, this.
I got on to play one 4 occasions and only 2 of them did I actually get to hand in any bonds. The other times not a single instance of the combat zone worked. These things have been bugged since anyone can remember. Embarrassing that they keep using them in timely content as if they aren’t aware.
I'd suggest "fixing conflict zones" isn't the issue, rather the problem is somewhere else and it just happens to impact conflict zones most notably.
Rationale being there seems to be a big split in player experience, with players having czs either work 100% of the time, or almost never.
I'm in the first camp... czs in the recent II worked every single time, and I've never had problems like those described since 3.3 dropped. Of course, reports of experiences like mine will be outweighed by complaints to the contrary just because people don't complain when things just work... and based off the cg results, there was overall no problem with people fighting in CZs.
Not saying there is no problem, just that the problem is likely not with CZs themselves, but some other issue (netcode or something?)
And That would be the one that somehow failed
For science, when you’re having 100% success rate, are other CMDRs present?
They work 100% when it’s solo or nobody else (human) is there.
In solo.
Tbh though i didn't want to make that assumption off the bat.
If it is the distinction, then I'm definitely going with "Not a cz problem" as there's so many cases where things stuff up wrt instancing etc. in open... the problem is definitely not bound to just conflict zones.
Only reason i mention this is we're still wearing the consequences of several "fixes" where the wrong thing got fixed, but it was what got asked for.
CGs shouldn't need to exist...a more comprehensive BGS should incentivise organic participation in dynamic hotspot activities.
That said, until the game is capable of handling that sort of thing, I think it should be possible to oppose any CG...this story on rails stuff we've had for the last five years is exactly the opposite of player agency.
Yeah... on player-agency, UA-bombing Jacques was still the most interesting thing I've ever had a finger in (regardless of your view of that activity...)
Even though Jacques was probably going to misjump anyway, the fact it got acknowledged and cited in Galnet and local galnet articles on Jacques itself showed that at some stage, FD had the agility to incorporate player actions into the universe.
Other things like the "Facece" stuff (where "... the Imperial Navy's military HQ got seized by Alliance forces") got kinda "Nope'd" by FD, it at least happened, triggering an activity to flip it back.
There just isn't even that opportunity with these things.