Problems Identified
Rescuing passengers and items from burning stations gives no rewards and has no effects beyond the standard ones. You get rep and influence with that faction but nothing else.
As a result there is no incentive to do these rescues over any other missions. Beyond the novelty and the feelgood factor, which don’t last, they make no difference to the wider game.
We are the PDES, the Post Disaster Evacuation Service. Before Operation IDA and others deliver commodities to attacked stations to restore their services we are the people who go in and rescue passengers and items while the stations are still burning. We would like our efforts to mean something too, which is currently not the case.
Unlike Operation IDA, with targets to aim at by knowing what commodities need delivering, we have no such targets and therefore no tangible results of our efforts that we can use to encourage others to join us.
Regardless of how many rescues take place the stations burn from Thursday to Thursday and we understand this cannot be changed. However, this does not mean there should be no effect at all.
This is a missed opportunity for the game, the playerbase and groups like ourselves. A few small changes would allow us, those who deliver commodities and those who fight the Thargoids to work together in a more coherent way that would enhance the experience for everyone.
Suggestions for Improvement
1. Implement passenger targets for each burning station. In this way PDES would have targets as Operation IDA does, with visible in game effects to help recruit.
2. The Search and Rescue Contact as it stands has no useful function in terms of goals or gameplay. It is time consuming to collect these items from burning stations and many people engineer their ships specifically for it. To discover that doing this only affects an entirely arbitrary figure for the whole galaxy with no wider relevance, a figure that apparently exists but which nobody will reveal, comes across as an insensitive dismissal of the effort involved. It is not an encouraging message.
Targets for escape pods and the like could be implemented along with passenger targets. The EDMC plugin developed by PDES shows this can already be tracked.
Adding these targets to the game is a straightforward and easy way to indicate progress. They will not reduce the time the station burns for but such targets could be easily connected to the targets for commodities to be delivered afterwards. A faster response would therefore reduce the commodities needed to restore the station, perhaps by a few thousand or so. This represents the idea that fewer facilities are lost by more timely rescues while still giving groups like IDA plenty to do.
Once implemented these targets would be like any other. Targets for burning stations could be announced along with the current commodity targets for stations that are recovering, then run without further manual intervention. The commodity targets for the stations once they have stopped burning could be announced as usual the following week, adjusted to reflect the part played by rescues.
Benefits to the game, the playerbase and the developers
1. One of the biggest dilemmas of a game like Elite is trying to encourage a sense of continuity so that actions by players have meaning in the game, but without forcing a narrative on them that is scripted like a quest driven RPG which would defeat the object of an “open world”. It is a delicate balance but the above suggestions would achieve that balance for this part of the game, achieving a big result with minimal effort.
Implementing them would create a “story” that would require no manual running by the devs, building on what exists in a simple and obvious way without forcing narratives on it.
2. If more was done to tie together those who fight off the Thargoids, those who do rescues from burning stations and those who deliver commodities to restore station services, it would allow groups that are at present dissociated from each other to work together, grow their squadrons, recruit new members and encourage coordination between them.
Again, this would create new opportunities for “meaningful interaction” by small additions to what already exists, in line with how the game already plays so no radical rewrites would be necessary. This would add continuity, community and role playing opportunities to what are at present isolated exercises. It would be preferable to the abstract concepts we have at present which offer little or no incentive to achieve them, and which people are unlikely to dedicate themselves to without there being more to it than vague statements about "helping."
Since most players agree that the burning stations have been done really well with excellent sound and atmosphere, to have no real consequences of rescuing anything from them seems like a massive own goal from both a business and a gaming perspective that fails to fully capitalise on such a well received idea and one of the few things players agree on.
I hope these proposals will be taken into consideration by the devs to make this part of the game more engaging for players, and with their permission would like to repost to various Discords and Reddits etc. to get further suggestions and feedback from others.
Meanwhile all criticisms and suggestions from the good people of this forum are welcome, as long as they are constructive.
Thanks in advance for any response.
CMDR Phill P, Squadron Coordinator PDES
Rescuing passengers and items from burning stations gives no rewards and has no effects beyond the standard ones. You get rep and influence with that faction but nothing else.
As a result there is no incentive to do these rescues over any other missions. Beyond the novelty and the feelgood factor, which don’t last, they make no difference to the wider game.
We are the PDES, the Post Disaster Evacuation Service. Before Operation IDA and others deliver commodities to attacked stations to restore their services we are the people who go in and rescue passengers and items while the stations are still burning. We would like our efforts to mean something too, which is currently not the case.
Unlike Operation IDA, with targets to aim at by knowing what commodities need delivering, we have no such targets and therefore no tangible results of our efforts that we can use to encourage others to join us.
Regardless of how many rescues take place the stations burn from Thursday to Thursday and we understand this cannot be changed. However, this does not mean there should be no effect at all.
This is a missed opportunity for the game, the playerbase and groups like ourselves. A few small changes would allow us, those who deliver commodities and those who fight the Thargoids to work together in a more coherent way that would enhance the experience for everyone.
Suggestions for Improvement
1. Implement passenger targets for each burning station. In this way PDES would have targets as Operation IDA does, with visible in game effects to help recruit.
2. The Search and Rescue Contact as it stands has no useful function in terms of goals or gameplay. It is time consuming to collect these items from burning stations and many people engineer their ships specifically for it. To discover that doing this only affects an entirely arbitrary figure for the whole galaxy with no wider relevance, a figure that apparently exists but which nobody will reveal, comes across as an insensitive dismissal of the effort involved. It is not an encouraging message.
Targets for escape pods and the like could be implemented along with passenger targets. The EDMC plugin developed by PDES shows this can already be tracked.
Adding these targets to the game is a straightforward and easy way to indicate progress. They will not reduce the time the station burns for but such targets could be easily connected to the targets for commodities to be delivered afterwards. A faster response would therefore reduce the commodities needed to restore the station, perhaps by a few thousand or so. This represents the idea that fewer facilities are lost by more timely rescues while still giving groups like IDA plenty to do.
Once implemented these targets would be like any other. Targets for burning stations could be announced along with the current commodity targets for stations that are recovering, then run without further manual intervention. The commodity targets for the stations once they have stopped burning could be announced as usual the following week, adjusted to reflect the part played by rescues.
Benefits to the game, the playerbase and the developers
1. One of the biggest dilemmas of a game like Elite is trying to encourage a sense of continuity so that actions by players have meaning in the game, but without forcing a narrative on them that is scripted like a quest driven RPG which would defeat the object of an “open world”. It is a delicate balance but the above suggestions would achieve that balance for this part of the game, achieving a big result with minimal effort.
Implementing them would create a “story” that would require no manual running by the devs, building on what exists in a simple and obvious way without forcing narratives on it.
2. If more was done to tie together those who fight off the Thargoids, those who do rescues from burning stations and those who deliver commodities to restore station services, it would allow groups that are at present dissociated from each other to work together, grow their squadrons, recruit new members and encourage coordination between them.
Again, this would create new opportunities for “meaningful interaction” by small additions to what already exists, in line with how the game already plays so no radical rewrites would be necessary. This would add continuity, community and role playing opportunities to what are at present isolated exercises. It would be preferable to the abstract concepts we have at present which offer little or no incentive to achieve them, and which people are unlikely to dedicate themselves to without there being more to it than vague statements about "helping."
Since most players agree that the burning stations have been done really well with excellent sound and atmosphere, to have no real consequences of rescuing anything from them seems like a massive own goal from both a business and a gaming perspective that fails to fully capitalise on such a well received idea and one of the few things players agree on.
I hope these proposals will be taken into consideration by the devs to make this part of the game more engaging for players, and with their permission would like to repost to various Discords and Reddits etc. to get further suggestions and feedback from others.
Meanwhile all criticisms and suggestions from the good people of this forum are welcome, as long as they are constructive.
Thanks in advance for any response.
CMDR Phill P, Squadron Coordinator PDES
