Rage inducing suggestion

[ASC]

Hello Commanders!

Most engineered upgrades represent a significant outlay in time and effort and we don't feel that the results should be diminished...

But then why should anything else that takes time and effort to acquire be lost on ship destruction? Exploration data is the obvious example. Some commanders spend months or years on exploration trips and they could lose all their data at any time. Why do you consider their time to be less valuable?

So isn't this really an argument for making engineering upgrades easier to obtain so the loss isn't so significant? Either by making rare materials easier to find or by removing the RNG element from crafting so fewer materials are needed in the first place. Everything else is lost on ship destruction (or has a rebuy cost) so why not mods and materials too?

 

[Sandro Sammarco]

Hello Commander ASC!

I don't think that these two things are quite the same.

Exploration data has to be delivered once. The risk/reward is that the more time you spend out in the black collecting it, the more risk you incur if your ship is lost.

An engineer upgrade is a permanent thing that you craft to give you a permanent benefit. Getting it is a task. You *can* still lose it, if you cannot afford the re-buy cost, just like any other permanent module or ship.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

I would look forward to do a bit different approach to crafting - make it less luck like and more 'do your own search' (call it grind if you will) AND introduce loss of modules then. Currently as luck is involved with RNG element I will agree losing modules permanently is a bit of bummer.

Anyways, it is not that current approach is that bad, but I would like to see more persistent damage to ship to make things more interesting in future, to have a bit more depth. Without getting overly complicated though.

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Hello Commander ASC!

I don't think that these two things are quite the same.

Exploration data has to be delivered once. The risk/reward is that the more time you spend out in the black collecting it, the more risk you incur if your ship is lost.

An engineer upgrade is a permanent thing that you craft to give you a permanent benefit. Getting it is a task. You *can* still lose it, if you cannot afford the re-buy cost, just like any other permanent module or ship.

But due of credits coming so easily, especially with engineered ships, isn't a bit false disadvantage? Owners of such ships never really runs out of credits.

Losing stuff for your ship due of negligence should be a thing imho.

 

[ASC]

Hello Commander ASC!

I don't think that these two things are quite the same.

Exploration data has to be delivered once. The risk/reward is that the more time you spend out in the black collecting it, the more risk you incur if your ship is lost.

An engineer upgrade is a permanent thing that you craft to give you a permanent benefit. Getting it is a task. You *can* still lose it, if you cannot afford the re-buy cost, just like any other permanent module or ship.

Thanks for the reply.

I'd say that an upgrade is only a permanent thing because you decided to make it one.

You do have a good point about exploration data only being delivered once (and then it's permanent.) And as you say there is risk involved - you can lose it at any time before it's sold. But there is effectively no risk on the path to engineering upgrades because materials can't be lost ever and upgrades can't be lost unless you have chosen to fly without a rebuy, and who does that?

Personally I wouldn't want upgrades to be lost on destruction the way things are. I think it would only make sense if they were purchasable with credits and were added to your rebuy. But that's a change too far.

 

[Be4st]

Hello Commander ASC!

I don't think that these two things are quite the same.

Exploration data has to be delivered once. The risk/reward is that the more time you spend out in the black collecting it, the more risk you incur if your ship is lost.

An engineer upgrade is a permanent thing that you craft to give you a permanent benefit. Getting it is a task. You *can* still lose it, if you cannot afford the re-buy cost, just like any other permanent module or ship.

That could be phrased the same as losing RNGineered modules. "The risk/reward is that the more time you spend gathering materials and rolling a single item 100 times to get that overpowered roll, the more risk and butthurt you incur losing it if your ship is lost." Getting exploration data is also a task and the frustration incurred losing data to a loss should be felt elsewhere. I do like Kuroshio's idea though. Having Engineered items should increase the cost of your ship's rebuy cost.

May I ask why the Engineers can't duplicate stats across multiple modules, but the insurance technically can? I can't think of the correct word, but continuity is coming to mind. Basically, if the guy who creates/invents something can't get consistent stats when inventing an item of his own design, then how is the insurance company doing it?

 

[Hydrino]

That could be phrased the same as losing RNGineered modules. "The risk/reward is that the more time you spend gathering materials and rolling a single item 100 times to get that overpowered roll, the more risk and butthurt you incur losing it if your ship is lost." Getting exploration data is also a task and the frustration incurred losing data to a loss should be felt elsewhere. I do like Kuroshio's idea though. Having Engineered items should increase the cost of your ship's rebuy cost.

May I ask why the Engineers can't duplicate stats across multiple modules, but the insurance technically can? I can't think of the correct word, but continuity is coming to mind. Basically, if the guy who creates/invents something can't get consistent stats when inventing an item of his own design, then how is the insurance company doing it?

Because it's a game and this is a QoL decision. Very little about the game is "realistic" and a lot of it isn't logically consistent either. But it needs to be fun.

I did find the comment about exploration data relevant as per above. I think Sandro should think on that more.

 

[ASC]

You do have a good point about exploration data only being delivered once (and then it's permanent.) And as you say there is risk involved - you can lose it at any time before it's sold. But there is effectively no risk on the path to engineering upgrades because materials can't be lost ever and upgrades can't be lost unless you have chosen to fly without a rebuy, and who does that?.

It's probably poor form to quote myself, but I've thought on this a bit more.

I think that for engineering to be equivalent to exploration, then your data and materials would be at risk until you 'deliver' them (i.e. use them for crafting), and then you permanently have the benefit of the upgraded module. So engineering data and materials would be lost on ship destruction, but upgraded modules wouldn't be.

And also what Be4st said.

 

[Dbrn47]

It's all fun and games until you actually lose modules you've spent days or weeks engineering or have to spend even more time banking enough materials to engineer new modules just in case. This isn't X-Com, this stuff takes too much time to put together to just lose at any given moment. If it were to ever come to be, it would need several other systems in place to make replacing them less time intensive or it would need to come in the form of an optional mode. You can just roll it all into an Ironman mode where your save is just wiped the first time you blow up. Yea, I'm sure it sounds great to some people, but I don't want anything to do with it.

 

[Brian of Ardagh]

Because it's a game and this is a QoL decision. Very little about the game is "realistic" and a lot of it isn't logically consistent either. But it needs to be fun.

I did find the comment about exploration data relevant as per above. I think Sandro should think on that more.

It would be a great QoL decision if an Engineer's modifications could be applied to matching items during the same visit. You could present the Engineer with 2 Multi-Cannons and get the upgrade applied to both at the same time; that would be as logically consistent as the insurance company's ability to replicate stats when replacing. The cost would be double, of course.

Seeing as we have room for materials and data in our escape pods there should be room for all that exploration data as well. That would be a great QoL decision but I can see how that could potentially be abused.

 

[V'larr]

How about just don't *ROLL* for upgrades at all? All the Engineer upgrades are woefully imbalancing to the game, might as well attack the lame RNG system at the same time and give us a different way to customize our Engineer tweaking.

 

[Dbrn47]

How about just don't *ROLL* for upgrades at all? All the Engineer upgrades are woefully imbalancing to the game, might as well attack the lame RNG system at the same time and give us a different way to customize our Engineer tweaking.

Because it would take all of the emergent gameplay depth out of the Engineer experience. [haha]

 

[Genar-Hofoen]

It's probably poor form to quote myself, but I've thought on this a bit more.

I think that for engineering to be equivalent to exploration, then your data and materials would be at risk until you 'deliver' them (i.e. use them for crafting), and then you permanently have the benefit of the upgraded module. So engineering data and materials would be lost on ship destruction, but upgraded modules wouldn't be.

And also what Be4st said.

Yeah no thanks - that would be a step too far. It's bad enough losing all exploration data if your ship pops - that particular kick in the family jewels is pretty painful.

To also lose materials and data? Nope. No thank you. To lose the engineered modules as well? Nope. No thanks.

I play this game for pleasure, not pain. Are some players really this masochistic?

 

[Winterwalker]

I'd support the OP.

Whether people who want the galaxy, to be freely populated with fluffy bunnies will, is a different matter!

RAGE ON.

 

[Genar-Hofoen]

I laugh in the face of folk who think being 'hard' or 'tough' inside a videogame pixel universe, somehow counts for something

 

[Be4st]

Maybe we should pitch to Sandro that the game should be renamed to 'Elite: Safety Bubble' as people want everything easy. I don't want it easy. I don't want it hard. I want it slightly realistic in terms of difficulty.

 

[StiTch]

TL;DR "I have an inborn fear of player conflict and insanely believe I can discretely avert future spankings by making it impossible for other ships to sustain an engineered loadout".

Sorry OP, you knew this was a bad suggestion when you raised it. Which is why you gave it the title you did.

To some 2.1 is enough of a push as it is to get a single engineered ship that they plan to use on non-competitively for a long time. And to the competitive, engineering each loadout quite specifically is effectively a requirement for participation, in which case they'd be working days for a loadout that can be erased in a single fight.

Ask yourself who this benefits. If the answer is "only people that are scared to be in Open because of the fear of encountering an over-engineered ship", even if that includes yourself, then put the idea straight back on the shelf to collect dust. This doesn't bring integrity to the game, doesn't benefit competitive players, doesn't benefit casuals. Just a perceived benefit to the hysterical.

 

[ASC]

Yeah no thanks - that would be a step too far. It's bad enough losing all exploration data if your ship pops - that particular kick in the family jewels is pretty painful.

To also lose materials and data? Nope. No thank you. To lose the engineered modules as well? Nope. No thanks.

I play this game for pleasure, not pain. Are some players really this masochistic?

I didn't suggest losing engineered modules. The opposite in fact. Although perhaps you were responding to the OP.

And I wouldn't want to lose engineer data or materials as the game stands; I was responding to Sandro and pointing that his comparison to exploration wasn't a good one because there are no risks (beyond those present in any activity) to engineering.

The inconsistency bothers me a little. You have a magic bag that can hold 1000 items (and some people are calling for this limit to increase) that can't be lost, but your exploration data goes down with the ship.

There should be some risk in all parts of the game and I'd like to see data & materials be losable. But *only* if the RNG element was removed and mods were deterministic. If you only need enough materials for one spin (per module) to get exactly what you want then I think it would be acceptable.

 

[Genar-Hofoen]

I don't want everything easy - I simply don't want to be constantly punched in the family jewels when deciding to switch from real life, to a virtual world. Real life has enough of a kick to it, and constantly, thank you very much.

I've seen threads like these come and go, over the years. You get some people wanting the game to be so dark and unfriendly, it's like they literally want the game to actively punish you for playing it - the masochism is very apparent.

Then there's the folk who somehow think they're big and strong and tough - within a virtual pixel world of all things - and that this somehow makes them some kind of hero in real life. They bring that attitude over into the forums, adding passive-aggressive insults like 'bunnies' and 'safety bubble' - aimed squarely at other players, implying they're weaklings of some kind.

A lot of that is smack-talk, I suppose. Some of it is said in earnest, which is why I'll laugh in their face as frankly I think bringing your virtual pixel tough life over to the real world like that is kind of pathetic

 

[[VR] Merkir]

OP, the result of your idea is the same as buying upgrades for credits. Ie. buy a stock ship, upgrade the one module you want, then keep on dying and paying rebuy until you get the "roll" you like.

 

[Limoncello Lizard]

This is one of the worst ideas I have ever seen in this forum.