Random ship malfunctions (e.g. interrupted hyperspace jump)

[Vikestart]

Update: I realise that this might not work out as well as I had initially thought. I'm actually most interested in more hyperspace misjumps/interruptions. Someone else made a thread with that suggestion. I definitely think that's an interesting idea.

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Original post:

As we're all too familiar with, no technology is flawless and everything's prone to malfunction/glitch at some point.

All the machinery and tech are running too smoothly in Elite: Dangerous. Nothing unexpected ever happens.

I think that should be changed. These should be very rare events, so they don't become annoying and frustrating. However, every now and then, something should glitch out or stop working.

Some examples:

• Frame Shift Drive malfunctioning in the middle of a jump, causing the ship to be thrown out of hyperspace in the middle of nowhere, similar to what happens when Thargoids interdict us in hyperspace.
• Sensors suddenly cutting out.
• Ship user interface flickering/disturbances (nothing too serious).
• Etc.

Most of these issues would go away on their own, while some would require a reboot of the ship systems, which would be a new function added to the Ship-tab on the right hand panel.

Engineered modules could also have a higher chance of malfunctioning. Not by much, but just a little bit.

Weapons and shields should be exempt from this mechanic and never glitch out as that would be extremely annoying if that happened in the middle of combat. Also nothing that would cause you to lose cargo or precious progress. This mechanic is meant to only serve to add flavour and variety, not frustration.

 

[here_it_comes]

If it were uncommon enough that it weren't an irritation, it would be just be mistaken as a bug and not as an immersive mechanic. Which mean s it would just increase irritation re ED's notoriety for immortal bugs.

Unexpected and seemingly without cause malfunctions are realistic, but not good game mechanics

 

[Chrystoph]

The game has this function, but you have to have module damage.

For the rest of your discussion, the Most likely place for that to happen IS combat, or have you never heard the term, Misfire.

 

[Vikestart]

If it were uncommon enough that it weren't an irritation, it would be just be mistaken as a bug and not as an immersive mechanic. Which mean s it would just increase irritation re ED's notoriety for immortal bugs.

Unexpected and seemingly without cause malfunctions are realistic, but not good game mechanics

Not really an issue at all.

The ship would give you a big warning that a module has malfunctioned. Noone would mistake that for a bug.

As for the frequency; it would have to be so rare that it might only happen once in a week of playing for hours every day.

The game has this function, but you have to have module damage.

For the rest of your discussion, the Most likely place for that to happen IS combat, or have you never heard the term, Misfire.

These malfunctions would be completely unrelated to module damage. More like glitches.

 

[Fake Newts]

This sounds terrible. Either it'd be common enough to be extremely annoying or rare enough to be occasionally annoying. Existing malfunctions, while relying on a layer of RNG, are based on module integrity and therefore have player agency and choice behind them in a way that can potentially be interesting. Elite needs more systems with player agency not more numberwang.

If you want random stuff to break for no reason other than whimsy just alt tab and play around with your Nvidia drivers or something, please.

 

[here_it_comes]

The ship would give you a big warning that a module has malfunctioned. Noone would mistake that for a bug.

Given that module malfunctions are a regularly seen mechanic that directly results from module damage, it would indeed be seen as a bug when it happened despite no module damage.
Rightly so.

 

[xzanfr]

Possibly tie it in with module integrity to give you a reason to service the ship regularly, and affect modules where the integrity is lower due to engineering.

 

[Vikestart]

Given that module malfunctions are a regularly seen mechanic that directly results from module damage, it would indeed be seen as a bug when it happened despite no module damage.
Rightly so.

I suppose that would depend heavily on the User Interface implementation.

You're just assuming there's no UI info, which is NOT the case.

Like I said, that problem would easily be relieved by displaying a heads-up message about the malfunctioning module, then show a "Malfunctioned, need reboot" tag in the modules list.

Without any UI aid, it would be bad yes. With the proper UI info, it could be good.

 

[here_it_comes]

The only way you could ensure people don't see it as a bug is for the malfunction notification to explicitly say that it's not due to damage, but for no reason. And then you're back to irritating gamers.

 

[Micha]

Random glitches - definitely not. No matter how rare, you're sure to get one sooner or later in combat with the ensuing loss of ship due to no skill-based fault of your own. Can't see that going down well with the competitive combat crowd.

Slow module degradation (faster if engineered) should have been part of the game from the start, but will be VERY difficult to implement now. Not because of technical reasons, but rather because it would affect all explorers who are far out. Having this from the start would have prevented the trivial long-range galactic exploration though which would have made FDev's job much easier to place new content into the galaxy. But again, that ship has launched..

 

[Vikestart]

This sounds terrible. Either it'd be common enough to be extremely annoying or rare enough to be occasionally annoying. Existing malfunctions, while relying on a layer of RNG, are based on module integrity and therefore have player agency and choice behind them in a way that can potentially be interesting. Elite needs more systems with player agency not more numberwang.

Random things happen in the game all the time already.

NPCs interdict you randomly. Star systems are random.... Most of this game is random...

And again, these glitches would be small things, like getting thrown out of hyperspace or the lights/UI flickering a bit. Not huge things like losing ship power, or your shields going down, or your weapons stop working. Not talking about things that would turn the tide of combat or interrupt gameplay for more than a few seconds.

If you want random stuff to break for no reason other than whimsy just alt tab and play around with your Nvidia drivers or something, please.

What a stupid answer. News flash; you're not the centre of the universe and it's okay to want things that you don't want.

 

[Vikestart]

Slow module degradation (faster if engineered) should have been part of the game from the start, but will be VERY difficult to implement now. Not because of technical reasons, but rather because it would affect all explorers who are far out. Having this from the start would have prevented the trivial long-range galactic exploration though which would have made FDev's job much easier to place new content into the galaxy. But again, that ship has launched..

Well, they could give a heads up of a few weeks before introducing such a change in a patch. Problem solved?

I agree that engineering should cause that. Engineering doesn't really have any downsides to it right now.

 

[SlickPBW]

In the original Elite you could force a mis-jump by pitching hard just prior to the jump. If a mis-jump occurred, the ship would end up in witch space where there was Thargoids.

 

[Greasetrap42]

Without any UI aid, it would be bad yes. With the proper UI info, it could be good.

If it was just random failure for no apparent reason, it would be realistic but extremely annoying for a video game and people would hate it.

I agree that if it was implemented really well it could be excellent and I would like it. If the cmdr needed to take care of the ship regularly, and verify systems operating properly before failure occurs, etc. There could be indicators that something is wrong that needs correcting soon. The probability of failures increasing as the ship is neglected. Perhaps the engineering mats could be utilized for repairs.

I have often thought AFMU and limpet repairs should only be capable of fixing a percent of a module, such that it slowly degrades. Station repairs would be better than AFMU but still not perfect. Eventually a module would become pretty bad and a cmdr would want to replace the module. Maybe keep the old one for backup, less important ships, or sell it for its remaining value or scrap.

Lots of players would hate these mechanics because people want things simple, easy, and focus on whatever gameplay they like the most. They might not want a realistic ship that requires attention.... they just want to go out and shoot stuff! (or whatever activity). Ed: And many players would feel it unfair that their engineered modules need to be occasionally replaced, claiming its just adding more grind to the game, blah blah blah.



Edit: But these ideas aren't part of the game, and probably never will be. The game is already released as it is, adding these types of mechanics... hard to do after cmdrs have ships they have been flying for years with minimal effort for upkeep & maintenance.

 

[Micha]

Well, they could give a heads up of a few weeks before introducing such a change in a patch. Problem solved?

Some people take many months, if not years, to travel these distances. Not everybody is an @Alex Brentnall crossing the galaxy in under 6 hours.. check out pretty much any of the past discussions around changing gameplay affecting explorers (a good one was the change from the ADS to the FSS) and the choices FDev had to go through to try and accommodate them.

All sorts of ways to work around this were suggested including teleporting everybody back to the Bubble etc. but people were not terribly happy with any of them. In the end the FSS was built into the ship but still explorers who previously had all exploration tools onboard were missing the new DSS.

Adding something like module degradation (time and/or jump based?) would mean certain death for explorers who are far out unless every ship also comes with a repair module built in - at which point the concept just becomes an occasional extra button push and waste of time.

 

[Fake Newts]

Random things happen in the game all the time already.

NPCs interdict you randomly. Star systems are random.... Most of this game is random...

I acknowledged that in my post. There's a difference in RNG that is influenced by your actions or used to create a space for you to fly in and RNG that just constantly rolls dice to break your ship for no reason.

If an NPC interdicts you you get to interact with that NPC, collect their materials, win the interdiction, you can also spot their intent from cruise and avoid it.

RNG to create gameplay is distinct from RNG for whimsy alone.

 

[varonica]

Random things happen in the game all the time already.

NPCs interdict you randomly. Star systems are random.... Most of this game is random...

Nope, nope and again nope! So much wrong here I am not even going bother trying to correct you, just suggest you go and watch some of the tech talks about how the galaxy works.

 

[Northpin]

As we're all too familiar with, no technology is flawless and everything's prone to malfunction/glitch at some point.

All the machinery and tech are running too smoothly in Elite: Dangerous. Nothing unexpected ever happens.

I think that should be changed. These should be very rare events, so they don't become annoying and frustrating. However, every now and then, something should glitch out or stop working.

Some examples:

• Frame Shift Drive malfunctioning in the middle of a jump, causing the ship to be thrown out of hyperspace in the middle of nowhere, similar to what happens when Thargoids interdict us in hyperspace.
• Sensors suddenly cutting out.
• Ship user interface flickering/disturbances (nothing too serious).
• Etc.

Most of these issues would go away on their own, while some would require a reboot of the ship systems, which would be a new function added to the Ship-tab on the right hand panel.

Engineered modules could also have a higher chance of malfunctioning. Not by much, but just a little bit.

Weapons and shields should be exempt from this mechanic and never glitch out as that would be extremely annoying if that happened in the middle of combat. Also nothing that would cause you to lose cargo or precious progress. This mechanic is meant to only serve to add flavour and variety, not frustration.

No (but i do wonder, do you play the game?)*

While potentially nice on paper they can get to game-breaking frustrating levels while in-game. Especially on long exploration trips when the possibility of losing weeks/months of data would be a really daft perspective to be left at RNG will.

*()
We do get malfunctions when module integrity goes below 80%, but a FSD malfunction will only reset the FSD and the current jump sequence. IT will not drop your ship in the normal space - potentially while one's in the neutron cone charging for the next jump, with deadly consequences.
And if you lose your shields in combat, you'll have a high chance to get module damage - and that means you will get malfunctions to weapons and even to power plant and thrusters

 

[varonica]

No to random deaths.

 

[VR micmacmoc]

Wasn’t there a misjump thing in the old Elite, occasionally sending you to a random part of the galaxy? I may be misremembering.