Just out of curiosity: did any of your suggestions ever make it in game, at least partially?
A few did, the one I'm most proud of was the recursive route planning that got galmap route planning from 1 up to 20 kylies.
EDIT: updated with link to the suggestion in 2016
Hi - A quick QOL improvement suggestion for long range route plotting... I am led to believe that the reason route calculations in the galaxy map are capped to 1000LY is to stop the route calculation grinding the computer to a halt calculating longer routes as distance increases possible...
forums.frontier.co.uk
On points, I don't think diminishing returns would do much. Bigger overhaul is needed. PVP (and arguably PVE too) really takes too long.
I agree, but I have been around this place for long enough to be concerned that some suggestions which on the face value look OK are something of a "paperclip maximiser".
Well built ship currently can facetank too much damage, especially from NPCs, which do not have optimized, cheesy engineered system loadouts.
I agree, NPC's in CZ's are too bullet spongey, PvP must be a nightmare if you are tackling a shield maxxed ship, however, negating shield stacking in broad terms renders most PvE ships very vulnerable, and given how fond of SCB's NPC ships are, there'd be no room for anything other than SCB laden shield tanks, with dire consequences for non-combat gameplay.
NPC loadouts need to be drastically improved, because now, regular pirate has very thin shields and hull both. Even combat fit CZ ships have much weaker defenses than players' vessels.
I actually find the NPC's in CZ's bullet spongey? In my 'Vette in a CZ it takes numerous railgun shots to pop an NPC eagle, its like four five minutes to take the hull down AFTER getting through the shields. Spec OPs Alphas? Ah Frack! I can feel my hair turning grey while I rain lasers and rail guns on them while they spam, and that's even with deathstar firepower...
I fully agree on "deathstar firepower" argument. And I don't understand intent behind letting you engineer weapons for flat out insane damage boost (each OC/efficient) with no drawbacks, along with ability to bend resistances and engineer hulls/shields through the roof at the same time...
IMHO, and if you want feel free to call me an armchair dev as others have, they goofed with engineers, letting the players run loose with such powerful mods destroyed all semblance of balance the game had, and may ever have. They spent a lot of time trying to rebalance it in 2016 with, erm, mixed results.
Essentially it's a case of "the genie is out of the bottle now", and it ain't going back. I think the rehash of engineers 3.0 with materials traders et al was a case of , we cannae turn this back, so we can at least make it easier to access.
If it could be clocked back a bit, removing shield stacking and returning focus on hulls may keep TTK in comprehensible limits, while focusing more on evasive maneuvers and heavier usage of utilities to keep yourself alive.
What can they do? And where do you stop, is a 900m/s viper working as intended? What about an 80+ LY Conda? Can you imagine the screams of horror if all these engineered weapons and modules players had put in hours were removed / nerfed? Especially given these things are "earned" through grind.
I mean, oversimplifying overhauls like that won't get us nowhere. Of course, when you do one thing, the rest must be put in line as well. You can't just r, with erm, emove SB stacking and leave all builds, including NPC as they are... By the way, when was the last time NPCs had any review and update of their loadouts?...
And to be honest, I don't think shorter TTK could kill PVP, or make it more boring, if I understood you correctly.
The only thing I can think that would work would be to smelt every engineering mod to weapons, shields and armour, returning all the materials used to the players and start again with offensive and defensive modules needing another visit to the latest iteration of engineers. But this time, a whole new The only thing I can think that would work would be to smelt every engineering mod to weapons, shields and armour, returning all the materials used to the players and start again with offensive and defensive modules needing another visit to the latest iteration of engineers, but a whole set of new, more sensibly incremental upgrades would be available rather than the insane damage upgrades, and the corresponding, equally mental, defensive capability upgrades.
