Nice! I do wonder also what will replace 'CC' in V2- the underpinnings can't really change (population / wealth etc).
Rubbernuke.exe has stopped working
- Thread starter Rubbernuke
- Start date
Im not sure they will, our ideas of 'Major Overhaul' and Fdevs may be entirely different, we will have to wait and see if they release any spoilers anytime soon.
O7
Though in Powerplay terms, they arguably didn't assume this enough - the narrative rivalry between Hudson/Winters and the various Imperial Power heads (which gets rather more Galnet time than "oh, yeah, the Empire and Federation don't exactly get on") is completely irrelevant to how Powerplay itself has worked out, and that's not just because Powerplay's mechanics make same-superpower attacks trickier.
I hope they do, because it opens the door to potentially interesting things- for example value being based on whats inside the system (such as surface bases, shipyards, resources) or states from the BGS (so that as things change you have to properly maintain systems to keep them profitable).
Its why I wish that for powers that are Imp or Fed they are condensed down into one bloc BGS wise- that way you can't get ZYADA / FUC like distortions and remove puppets.
So for power / power (and thus s.power) BGS buffs its one set of perks but at a player level the perks chosen could be from Patty, Aisling etc.
Yeah... this is why I'd prefer to see Powerplay powers divorced from narrative figures, and emerge from the factions.
Coz... before PP, players leaned into the factions. They didn't care or even know who say, Torval was. They cared about Lugh and stuff. My own group cared about this person:
... as the day to day visual rep of our activities.
So when Powers came in, FD injected a bunch of identities and went "hey, you Iike factions, you'll love these!"... uh... ok. In leadup to release, we saw Patreus and went "Cool, how can we get the faction supporting him, since there's alignment?"... oh... we can't. He's not located near us, and supporting him is literally down- tools and shunt merits around elsewhere, which does nothing for our faction.
No thanks. Then throw in their plot armour and suddenly players realise they've got no influence in the world around them... with the narrative arc not aligning with what goes on in Powerplay.
But Ani Leonard? If her faction propped up as a power... super cool. If Lugh's faction became a power, I'm sure players would've got behind that hard. And if those factions then fell out of power, so what? We'd care, and it'd create meaningful experiences for us... and other groups who had a vested interest bringing her down it's meaningful too... but for everyone else it's bau.
I'd actually love to see the current PP reps go on to be reps for different facets of the major superpowers. Like... you could imagine a faction rising to a power, and influence by that power through military activities weighs in to some superpower influence mechanic in a military sense, headed up by Patreus. That would generate a much more meaningful connection to those figures without bucking narrative plans... regardless of which powers rise and fall, Patreus remains the Imperial Naval guy.
Bottom line for me: i never wanted our faction to become powerful in its own right. I wanted it to make the superpower more powerful... and i think powers are a key to building that connection to superpowers.
I think players were all prepared to care about the Powers, they sounded intriguing to me. Then they turned out to be empty figureheads and there was basically no sensible gameplay involved in supporting them.
If a carrier owner offers trades at minimum or maximum prices those will be shown on the right hand side of the commodities menu and in the commodity prices tab of galmap.
This can make it a pain to locate decent sources or markets and the carriers in question frequently only have a single tonne order/not open to public/not actually in the system when you arrive.
You generally learn to ignore the carriers whilst commodity trading.
I thought they removed (or didn't include) the carrier tab in galmap when we moved to 4.0
As such unless you know where a carrier will be it's an educated guess as to where they are.
After seeing how the Background Simulation for the Thargoid war works and how those states affect the various systems. I have a lot more confidence that Fdev can replace powerplay with something a lot more engaging. Despite all the complaints I had about the Glaive and the Orthrus, the implementation for the Thargoid war has been quite impressive.
The Krait Expectations expedition continues! This morning was my fourth session searching for life on this little world. The void life families I was searching for? Bacterium, Fungoida, Osseus, and Tussocks.
Wanting to protect my sanity, I decided to search from the hardest to the easiest, and devote no more than one session for each. I lucked out on finding Bacteria in the first crater I landed in. The hunt for Fungoida in the mountains led me to plenty of Osseum, but no Fungoida themselves.
After a second fruitless search, I made my way to the dark side of the planet, where the only patch of tussocks could be found. I landed in the middle of the blob, and what did I find there, amongst the tussocks?
And now, the completionist in me is at war with the desire to move on. I scoured the immediate area (after sampling the tussocks, naturally) on foot, in the SRV, and from my ship. Decisions, decisions..
Wanting to protect my sanity, I decided to search from the hardest to the easiest, and devote no more than one session for each. I lucked out on finding Bacteria in the first crater I landed in. The hunt for Fungoida in the mountains led me to plenty of Osseum, but no Fungoida themselves.
After a second fruitless search, I made my way to the dark side of the planet, where the only patch of tussocks could be found. I landed in the middle of the blob, and what did I find there, amongst the tussocks?And now, the completionist in me is at war with the desire to move on. I scoured the immediate area (after sampling the tussocks, naturally) on foot, in the SRV, and from my ship. Decisions, decisions..
...but I still wonder why one should embark on an activity which was designed/oriented for PvP and then go playing in modes which are enclosed to PvP.
If the design was meant for PvP then it should have required PvP and therefore not even possible to do in solo (could be done in PGs though). Once you introduce gameplay that can be done with pure PvE then there is no reason to lock it out of PvE only modes.
Problem with making it PvP only, its just too easy to game the system. A few players colluding could massively influence the results by intentionally getting killed over and over and over again. Its not like death means anything really if you are prepared for it and that death furthers your goals. Credits for rebuys are easy to come buy.
They wont make anything PvP only as its a waste of time even trying, all folks will do if forced into Open is just 'block' the opposition.
O7
Or just give up playing the game as it would have changed radically from the game they bought.
Thats not really true though- a hypothetical Open only PP in a V1 context has the collusion potential removed (piracy) and really is simple: you do mega light PvE and take the product to a capital or desginated system, with stuff happening inbetween (other players or NPCs trying to stop you). In fact its unusual for ED in that nearly all of V1 has hardly any abstraction.
Being killed over and over is bad because only players can move merits, hence why its easy in solo (rubbish NPCs) but harder in Open with peer level ships (granted you still have an overly generous block plus networking).
As far is it goes V1 is really 99% Open only with a dysfunctional solo mode bolted onto it, made worse by PP not being kept current with EDs ongoing development.
If FD go the BGS route then it would allow for all the PvE advances in the last eight years. This prices in adversarial NPCs (so lacking in V1) making Open not required to make things 'work' because you are going from point to point 'British Bulldogs' like action to system level BGS PvE.
Hauling with the chance of piracy isn't pure PvP. If you have hauling then its a PvE activity that can become PvP, but its still a PvE activity, and that isn't what i'm talking about when i say it needs to be a PvP activity - that is, kills against opposing players are the only thing that matters.
If you can haul to win, then its PvE, so it is possible to do in any mode, therefore should be doable in any mode.
Which is why I advocated that players who gain their merits in open get counted in the Background Simulation at 100%, while those who fly in pvt or solo, (or flip to pvt/solo half way thought a trip) affect the simulation by 1%. Pvt/solo players would still get the merits for their modules.
It all came down to the fact that the NPCs were a credible enough threat to balance open vs non-open issue. That and the 5th Column issue.
Welcome to the Hotel California 
Open being harder is a complete red herring, it isn't (welcome to the Hotel lobby).
Ive done fortification in Open and not seen a single sole, the reason folks do it in Solo or PG is to avoid the muppets and hackers, that's all.
O7
To expand upon what @Rubbernuke is saying, currently there's a teeny tiny chance I might be interdicted in Open if I want to make a fortification run in an iCutter between Cubeo and, say, Runapa. Because of this, I might equip my ship in such a way that it'll take two extra jumps to get there, and I also might bring along 8% less cargo, compared to what I might do in Solo.
This could result in an astonishing 16% fewer fortification cargo units being delivered per hour. Which, in this case, amounts to an extra 15 minutes to fully fortify that particular system. Mostly thanks to needing to make ten runs, irregardless of cargo capacity.
Keep in mind, this system is one of the worst to fortify that I know of for Aisling Duval, being both distant from Cubeo and a relatively long Supercruise run. Or, given that this is version 1 we're talking about, I could simply trust my own skills, and how unlikely the matchmaking system is going to instance me with a hostile player, and simply do the run in Open the same way I'd do run the run in Solo, and get the same results. Especially since it would take about six players doing nothing but flying opposition for nearly three hours to maximize the chance of intercepting me. And that chance is drastically lower if I play outside of my local prime time.
And since I'm pledged for an outbound fortification power, at the beginning of the cycle, they'd also have to cover 72 other systems, each with several stations between them.
Which is why Rubbernuke is advocating for having NPCs provide opposition towards fortification instead of players.
I haven't read his proposal on this, but how could NPCs actually do anything since everything is instance dependent? If you're not in an instance there are no NPCs to do anything. Or its about NPCs spawning when players are there?