Question regarding ship building and game mechanics

[Kayvan]

I agree. I know it's kind of par of the course for games in general, but I really dislike that kind of exponential price scaling.
Well, I suppose it may be necessary from a game design standpoint, to balance out the fact that player characters don't have to worry about things like taxes, loans and interest, or insurance premiums. But still.

The entire economy is bonkers, but to be honest I still prefer the current "free money" approach to the grind of old. In fact, back in those early years, reading about how grindy ED was, and how long you had to work for every credit, was one major reason that kept me from getting the game for such a long time. I only bought it after I heard that progressing through the ships would not take forever anymore. No-one told me at the time that engineering existed or how it worked.

 

[metatheurgist]

It took me around 3 months to get a Corvette, once I set my mind on it doing combat (the worse way of making money at the time) which was the thing I could tolerate doing regularly. I'd hardly call that forever.

 

[Darkfyre99]

I agree. I know it's kind of par of the course for games in general, but I really dislike that kind of exponential price scaling.
Well, I suppose it may be necessary from a game design standpoint, to balance out the fact that player characters don't have to worry about things like taxes, loans and interest, or insurance premiums. But still.

That wasn't necessary to balance out the absence of things like "taxes, loans, etc..." because ships also had operational costs in those days, and they scaled with the price of the ship. That's what sparked the first income buff in the first place: without relying on a literal gold bug, the largest ships couldn't make a profit. It's a pity that it was accompanied by Frontier removing operational costs as well.

The entire economy is bonkers, but to be honest I still prefer the current "free money" approach to the grind of old. In fact, back in those early years, reading about how grindy ED was, and how long you had to work for every credit, was one major reason that kept me from getting the game for such a long time. I only bought it after I heard that progressing through the ships would not take forever anymore. No-one told me at the time that engineering existed or how it worked.

Personally, I always felt that progression fairly fast for small ships, and seemed to be fast enough for most medium ships. There was money to be had if you ignored the conventional "wisdom" of the day, and learned how the economy worked. It was when you got to the largest ships that things got slow, and that's thanks to exponential price growth. The only reason I stayed in my Cobra III for so long was because I was having far too much funding a private, covert war with the Federation, and not actually improving my ship.

It was the same with Engineering 1.0. The conventional "wisdom" of the day was probably the least optimized route to getting yourself a well engineered ship, and ignored all the advantages you could get out of concentrating on doing G3 engineering in favor of focusing on G5. After all, 5 should always be better than 3, right?

 

[Jmanis]

The entire economy is bonkers, but to be honest I still prefer the current "free money" approach to the grind of old

I'm the opposite insofar as it completely devalues and disincentivises other activites which are more complex and mechanically more fun. The gross imbalance in reward is enough to strip that fun off entirely for me. But that's also getting way off topic.

 

[Brrokk]

In my early days I got quickly into a Cobra. Most of my credits then went on upgrading it for some months, and I learned engineering at the same time. Eventually it was as good a it could be and I had the money to buy an Asp. This opened up bigger cargoes, passenger missions and rares trading, but it was still a while to the next step. I remember admiring pictures of FdLs and Pythons wondering which way to go.

Eventually I had both of those and then the game seemed to really speed up. Anaconda, Cutter and Corvette all happened quicker than I expected, probably because of now knowing game mechanics and being able to identify gold rushes.

I quite liked the rate of progression I had. I guess it's quicker these days.

 

[Darkfyre99]

I'm the opposite insofar as it completely devalues and disincentivises other activites which are more complex and mechanically more fun. The gross imbalance in reward is enough to strip that fun off entirely for me. But that's also getting way off topic.

^^^
This.

I've been playing this game since the original Alpha, so I'd lost my ship to resets a lot of times, both to wipes by Frontier, and intentionally on my part because I wanted to experiement with another approach. In fact, I'd reset all my progress during the Gamma the day before Frontier announced that they wouldn't be wiping the game anymore, and we would keep our progress after the game went live. By that time, I'd done the progression from Sidewinder to Python several times, and the Anaconda once... which was enough to convince me that I didn't like the handling of the latter.

Which was why I wasn't in a hurry to supersize my ship after release. I liked the number of decisions being "poor" brought to the table, especially when it came to "charity" missions. I find there's something visceral about being asked to donate personal weapons to an independent co-op of confederation faction in a system under the thumb of a cruel Federation corporate state, and then having to weigh their need against my own financial situation. If I help them today, will I be able to afford that power distributor upgrade tomorrow? Which is what made the game so much more interesting than it is today.

 

[Hellrider]

When I started game (6 years ago) I was able to buying and outfiting conda in less than 1 month (and actually- more than 1 week of this month was about exploration), without any "optimal" guides, or looking for goldrushes. Just trade, different types of missions and a little of combat.
Looks like some players have vastly different definitions of "forever", or "grind:dangerous" wasn't true at all even 6 years ago
Now when I look at rewards from all activities, which year after year were "improved" I feel like playing elite on creative mode

And when I see, that people in some places STILL complain at grind (oh boy, engineering, you have to play game and do different things for unlocks), my conclusion is simple: ignore any opinions about difficulty or "griiiind", because they usually are massively overrated.
But guess, that it's partially created by fact, that when I start new game I'm not thinking about powergrinding and speedrun to the best, the biggest, the most expensive toys. In elite I had fun even in sidewinder. If I don't like game since start skipping grind to better toys dont help.

 

[Morbad]

Everyone's got cutters and carriers

I sold my CMDR's Cutter about a week after I bought it back in 2016. Toyed with it enough in subsequent betas to know how to shoot them down (and when not to bother trying), but beyond that the ship holds no interest for me.

Had an FC in the beta, which was enough to permanently dissuade me from bothering with having my CMDR obtain one in the actual game.

Heatsinks have very specific applications. Mostly:

• you are using modules that generate nasty heat spikes, like shield cell banks or - nowaydays mostly - AX weapons.
• you're a smuggler or similar stealth operator and want to sneak past the guards. This might technically also work against pirates, but then you should use a ship that runs cool to begin with.
• for an explorer it can make sense, to get out of a pickle like when you run into a close binary or something

For a space trucker there is typically no reason to do it. If you expect to get shot at, shield boosters are usually a better use for the slots.

Heatsinks are about twenty seconds of silent running equivalent, each, without having to lower shields and all trucking has the potential to turn into smuggling, if hostiles are around.

In general, i find there's two sorts of mission ships:

• ones optimised for a very specific activity.
• ones optimised for taking as many different types of missions as possible.

I normally start with a combat ship then I think, "how can do this other thing I want to do with as few compromises as possible". Sometimes that extra thing is 550 tons of cargo and it makes for interesting builds.

When I started game (6 years ago) I was able to buying and outfiting conda in less than 1 month (and actually- more than 1 week of this month was about exploration), without any "optimal" guides, or looking for goldrushes. Just trade, different types of missions and a little of combat.

My CMDR was in a Viper Mk III for the better part of three months and I already had a pretty firm grasp on the game from the betas. Of course, much of that was due to the Viper Mk III being the best all-round combat ship in the game (aside from the comically over-powered pre-nerf Python--and I miss the days when FDev was actually willing to solve imbalances via subtraction, rather than runaway inflation--which was way beyond my CMDR's means in January 3301) until 1.2. I was able to get into a Vulture and then an FDL relatively quickly once they became available...well at least after the price was cut in half on the FDL.

 

[husky of snow]

So I joint my first power play faction to get prismatic shields for my python, type nine, and the cutter when I get the ship. Did this last night.....and just found out power play could be getting a rework later this year.....and the thargoids war...the thing I've been working towards this whole time...will be wrapped up in the next update, and it's almost here

 

[Hellrider]

You still have few months for PP

 

[Jmanis]

.and just found out power play could be getting a rework later this year.....and the thargoids war...the thing I've been working towards this whole time...will be wrapped up in the next update, and it's almost here

.... uh.... what? Thargoid war isn't going anywhere anytime soon. You don't just introduce a major mechanic to the game and blow it away that quick.... and FD have never moved that fast... because PP update? That's been talked about for yeeeears now. If that happened this year, i rekon @Rubbernuke would eat his hat.

You might be thinking of the "major feature rework", which was meant to have more details revealed earlier last year, and finished end of last year.... neither of which has happened so i wouldn't invest much in that.

Edit: wait, didn't see therre was an announcement after i slept about new pp. Still don't see how we'll be ending the war next update though.

 

[Jmanis]

In elite I had fun even in sidewinder. If I don't like game since start skipping grind to better toys dont help.

The activities don't change regardless of if you have a big engineered ship or not. If you aren't enjoying the game activities before you do engineering and get a big ship, it's not going to be any different after.

 

[husky of snow]

.... uh.... what? Thargoid war isn't going anywhere anytime soon. You don't just introduce a major mechanic to the game and blow it away that quick.... and FD have never moved that fast... because PP update? That's been talked about for yeeeears now. If that happened this year, i rekon @Rubbernuke would eat his hat.

You might be thinking of the "major feature rework", which was meant to have more details revealed earlier last year, and finished end of last year.... neither of which has happened so i wouldn't invest much in that.

Edit: wait, didn't see therre was an announcement after i slept about new pp. Still don't see how we'll be ending the war next update though.

The next update, the one coming next month, was stated to be ending the thargoids war

 

[Jmanis]

The next update, the one coming next month, was stated to be ending the thargoids war

U18 we can bring the fight to the Titans... that doesn't sound like the end of the war to me? But again, it would be ridiculous for FD to simply "stop" everything and suddenly you can't do anything with Titans and Spires anymore. I'm confident they'll continue to exist in some form, because you don't just throw away that much work.

 

[husky of snow]

U18 we can bring the fight to the Titans... that doesn't sound like the end of the war to me? But again, it would be ridiculous for FD to simply "stop" everything and suddenly you can't do anything with Titans and Spires anymore. I'm confident they'll continue to exist in some form, because you don't just throw away that much work.

I will admit, I haven't heard the announcement.

I listen to a few elite dangerous news sources. The way it was explained, at least to my understanding, is we will be pushing Titans out of the bubble

 

[tolm]

I’m hoping the Thargoids become a “faction“ in the new PowerPlay rework … keeps ’em in the game and means we won’t have wasted all our time building AX ships as they’ll still be opportunities to use them based on who you side with … would also allow people to work with the Thargoids if they so choose …

 

[Jmanis]

I will admit, I haven't heard the announcement.

I listen to a few elite dangerous news sources. The way it was explained, at least to my understanding, is we will be pushing Titans out of the bubble

Yeh.. so my two reads of that are, if we can force a Titan out that:

• the war gets maintained by having replacement Titans arrive to anther system after some delay, much like they did originally; or
• we push them out, and some of the permit locked sectors which are (highly suspected to be) Thargoid occupied are unlocked, revealing more spires and titans... but in such a denisty that pushing them back from there is very difficult.; or
• the war does end, but a thargoid "invasion " led by a single Titan becomes a smaller- scale occurrence under bgs mechanisms

The other part of this is that PP2 being so close might suggest that they're incorporating Thargoids into it as a power, since the base mechanisms would lend themselves very nicely to PP (they can't ditch merit grinds fast enough imo), with a few tweaks. That could even lend itself to becoming allied with Thargoids... but that's a pipe dream atm.

Either way, i don't see the ability to go camp out a Titan going away with these updates. I think FD would disappoint a lot of people if it did.

 

[husky of snow]

So the way I understand the update, sources have called it the end of the thargoids war. Also, from the atmosphere I'm seeing, people are getting tired of the war, so many of the last updates have been war related, and a lot of people are tired of the thargoids war being the only thing that happens in the updates. Just the feeling I'm getting from different elite channels

 

[tolm]

Yeh.. so my two reads of that are, if we can force a Titan out that:

• the war gets maintained by having replacement Titans arrive to anther system after some delay, much like they did originally; or
• we push them out, and some of the permit locked sectors which are (highly suspected to be) Thargoid occupied are unlocked, revealing more spires and titans... but in such a denisty that pushing them back from there is very difficult.; or
• the war does end, but a thargoid "invasion " led by a single Titan becomes a smaller- scale occurrence under bgs mechanisms

The other part of this is that PP2 being so close might suggest that they're incorporating Thargoids into it as a power, since the base mechanisms would lend themselves very nicely to PP (they can't ditch merit grinds fast enough imo), with a few tweaks. That could even lend itself to becoming allied with Thargoids... but that's a pipe dream atm.

Either way, i don't see the ability to go camp out a Titan going away with these updates. I think FD would disappoint a lot of people if it did.

100% agree on the Thargoids becoming a Power option: I think that would be a great way to keep them in the game without requiring as much effort on maintaining the “war” narrative.

 

[aRJay]

.... uh.... what? Thargoid war isn't going anywhere anytime soon. You don't just introduce a major mechanic to the game and blow it away that quick.... and FD have never moved that fast... because PP update? That's been talked about for yeeeears now. If that happened this year, i rekon @Rubbernuke would eat his hat.

You might be thinking of the "major feature rework", which was meant to have more details revealed earlier last year, and finished end of last year.... neither of which has happened so i wouldn't invest much in that.

Edit: wait, didn't see therre was an announcement after i slept about new pp. Still don't see how we'll be ending the war next update though.

How to end the war

1. The Thargoids just leave for no reason we can work out, maybe we were largely irrelevant to what they were really here for.
2. Many new maelstroms are seen on their way to the bubble.
3. Someone negotiates a treaty.