Hi Frontier,
Please see my list of requests to improve the game:
1. When reaching an orbital, when the inside of the station starts rendering, it 'pops' from nothing/black, to full render, and it breaks immersion - please don't show the inside immediately, just fade from the black empty inside to the full render over about a second, to make it look like your eyes are adjusting to the light or something.
2. Please add a key to enter the system map (F6?). Pressing F6 again should take you back to the cockpit, and not into the galaxy map as is currently the case whenever you leave the system map. One keypress in, one out.
3. Galaxy map - store all routes from our position within 100 ly, and recalc them in the background, whilst we're in hyperspace; any routes we request beyond that, can just top up the calcs we already have already. Scrap the current route planner and rewrite it so it plots the route to dest, and not in every direction - this processing should be near instantaneous.
4. Store all current settings within galaxy map (some are missed at present, like economy/fasted route), as well as routes selected.
5. Abandoning a mission that allows abandoning as part of the script, is relatively unclear if you have already abandoned it, as the abandon button remains - clicking it again, totally abandons the mission without an 'are you sure?' - this tends to be an issue if you've abandoned it once and logged off, as later re-reading the title of the missions suggests you can abandon it again. Just add some text in the log entry making clear the choice to abandon was already chosen, and then rename the title to say something like, "Agreed to alternative mission offer: take cargo to XXX instead". This fix is mainly for new players, as it is confusing.
6. Unless I'm mistaken, there are no keys to cycle through the local nav points; without this, ED doesn't allow us to cycle all targets, like most sci-fi games I can recall, and feels like an oversight. I'm guessing this was a design decision, due to the number of targets (nav points/events + ships) was too high, but removing nav/events completely doesn't seem the best ideal - please just add another pair of keys for forward/backward nav/event, and a 'nearest nav/event' key.
7. In the left-hand panel, in the nav list, the icon for the circular orbitals is wrong, it shows the icon for the coriolis station. The coriolis icon and the smaller outposts are correct.
8. When you have the AFM installed, in the right-hand panel it shows its ammo count as 3600/0, when full, instead of 3600/3600; I was either in an eagle/viper or cobra at the time. This unit is pretty useless in my opinion - I'm not sure what the thinking behind it was. It's not automatic, and it doesn't repair engines; I'd rather it wasn't even in the game if it's not going to slowly repair everything when activated, like we'd expect.
9. Please add a recovery ship - if you become imobilised with no engines, and are in a populated system with at least one base, you should be able to send out a distress signal and pay a variable fee and wait for a recovery ship to come out and tow you back; at present it seems we can't call for help and have to auto-destruct which is silly.
10. Add mission threads to the game; I'm surprised the mission generator wasn't central to the release version, it wasn't prioritised high enough. I've been playing fairly solid and all I'm seeing are regular missions, and the nearest a military mission comes to interesting, are the permit missions that go nowhere. I expected as a minimum, the depth of missions from First Encounters, with all the custom military hardware you got with them; disappointed so far, hope this degree of mission is all added very soon, it's central to the game.
11. When buying a new ship, please give us the full trade-in value as if we'd manually sold all the parts on the old one, so that 10% doesn't get eaten up as it does now; if it was fully documented in the process, everyone would just manually sell it all, but it's hardly fun, so just give 100% value for simplicity please.
12. The current set of weapons is the most un-fun, and unclear I've seen in a game; I can't explain it, but the improvements within a model range, or the ability to tell if an upgrade is better, are hard to interpret (this also goes for shields) - this is probably down to a complete lack of info or any figures on the weapon description (similar to this, the graphics for the shield bands on the console don't help compare different shields either). The ammunition costs seem to be prohibitive to them being an option as well, which is also not-fun, and discounts me bothering to persevere with them at present.
13. Please ensure ALL NPC's that interdict have a shield; it's a joke when a sidewinder attacks me and is saying I'll meet my doom, when I'm in a fully kitted out cobra and he has no shield. It's just.. wrong... I don't expect to be interdicted by anything unless it has at least a realistic chance of killing me.
14. Please add quick keys like previous Elite games, to show outward views for Left, Right, and Rear and maybe also 'Below' perhaps, just for completeness, since landing at stations seems to imply we're meant to be landing vertically all the time; I know there's a big discussion about seeing your own ship from outside, but this is just basic camera views from inside, so not related. It doesn't offer any tactical advantage, but is more fun, and what we're used to with the previous games.
15. If we're meant to be using that ramp thing to aid landing, by kind of approaching down it, then can you reverse the arrow on it to make it look like that's the direction we're meant to be travelling? Please add simple running lights as well, and leave the number permanently visible during landing routine.
I am hopeful these niggles can be resolved, as I want ED to be equally enjoyable as SC will be; enjoyment and missions/storyline in both titles will keep me coming back for more!
Many thanks.
Please see my list of requests to improve the game:
1. When reaching an orbital, when the inside of the station starts rendering, it 'pops' from nothing/black, to full render, and it breaks immersion - please don't show the inside immediately, just fade from the black empty inside to the full render over about a second, to make it look like your eyes are adjusting to the light or something.
2. Please add a key to enter the system map (F6?). Pressing F6 again should take you back to the cockpit, and not into the galaxy map as is currently the case whenever you leave the system map. One keypress in, one out.
3. Galaxy map - store all routes from our position within 100 ly, and recalc them in the background, whilst we're in hyperspace; any routes we request beyond that, can just top up the calcs we already have already. Scrap the current route planner and rewrite it so it plots the route to dest, and not in every direction - this processing should be near instantaneous.
4. Store all current settings within galaxy map (some are missed at present, like economy/fasted route), as well as routes selected.
5. Abandoning a mission that allows abandoning as part of the script, is relatively unclear if you have already abandoned it, as the abandon button remains - clicking it again, totally abandons the mission without an 'are you sure?' - this tends to be an issue if you've abandoned it once and logged off, as later re-reading the title of the missions suggests you can abandon it again. Just add some text in the log entry making clear the choice to abandon was already chosen, and then rename the title to say something like, "Agreed to alternative mission offer: take cargo to XXX instead". This fix is mainly for new players, as it is confusing.
6. Unless I'm mistaken, there are no keys to cycle through the local nav points; without this, ED doesn't allow us to cycle all targets, like most sci-fi games I can recall, and feels like an oversight. I'm guessing this was a design decision, due to the number of targets (nav points/events + ships) was too high, but removing nav/events completely doesn't seem the best ideal - please just add another pair of keys for forward/backward nav/event, and a 'nearest nav/event' key.
7. In the left-hand panel, in the nav list, the icon for the circular orbitals is wrong, it shows the icon for the coriolis station. The coriolis icon and the smaller outposts are correct.
8. When you have the AFM installed, in the right-hand panel it shows its ammo count as 3600/0, when full, instead of 3600/3600; I was either in an eagle/viper or cobra at the time. This unit is pretty useless in my opinion - I'm not sure what the thinking behind it was. It's not automatic, and it doesn't repair engines; I'd rather it wasn't even in the game if it's not going to slowly repair everything when activated, like we'd expect.
9. Please add a recovery ship - if you become imobilised with no engines, and are in a populated system with at least one base, you should be able to send out a distress signal and pay a variable fee and wait for a recovery ship to come out and tow you back; at present it seems we can't call for help and have to auto-destruct which is silly.
10. Add mission threads to the game; I'm surprised the mission generator wasn't central to the release version, it wasn't prioritised high enough. I've been playing fairly solid and all I'm seeing are regular missions, and the nearest a military mission comes to interesting, are the permit missions that go nowhere. I expected as a minimum, the depth of missions from First Encounters, with all the custom military hardware you got with them; disappointed so far, hope this degree of mission is all added very soon, it's central to the game.
11. When buying a new ship, please give us the full trade-in value as if we'd manually sold all the parts on the old one, so that 10% doesn't get eaten up as it does now; if it was fully documented in the process, everyone would just manually sell it all, but it's hardly fun, so just give 100% value for simplicity please.
12. The current set of weapons is the most un-fun, and unclear I've seen in a game; I can't explain it, but the improvements within a model range, or the ability to tell if an upgrade is better, are hard to interpret (this also goes for shields) - this is probably down to a complete lack of info or any figures on the weapon description (similar to this, the graphics for the shield bands on the console don't help compare different shields either). The ammunition costs seem to be prohibitive to them being an option as well, which is also not-fun, and discounts me bothering to persevere with them at present.
13. Please ensure ALL NPC's that interdict have a shield; it's a joke when a sidewinder attacks me and is saying I'll meet my doom, when I'm in a fully kitted out cobra and he has no shield. It's just.. wrong... I don't expect to be interdicted by anything unless it has at least a realistic chance of killing me.
14. Please add quick keys like previous Elite games, to show outward views for Left, Right, and Rear and maybe also 'Below' perhaps, just for completeness, since landing at stations seems to imply we're meant to be landing vertically all the time; I know there's a big discussion about seeing your own ship from outside, but this is just basic camera views from inside, so not related. It doesn't offer any tactical advantage, but is more fun, and what we're used to with the previous games.
15. If we're meant to be using that ramp thing to aid landing, by kind of approaching down it, then can you reverse the arrow on it to make it look like that's the direction we're meant to be travelling? Please add simple running lights as well, and leave the number permanently visible during landing routine.
I am hopeful these niggles can be resolved, as I want ED to be equally enjoyable as SC will be; enjoyment and missions/storyline in both titles will keep me coming back for more!
Many thanks.
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