I'm pretty sure this post is going to spark a massive heated debate on both sides of the PVP issue, but I have a simple solution that could easily solve the entire thing. There's a massive imballance between pvp and pve builds due to engineering and the time investment required to fully outfit every part in your build with the required upgrades. On top of the time sink, we have the fact that the upgrades are just so much more powerful than their non-engineered counterparts. This completely decimates people who may have chosen not to buy the horizons pass. Instead of arguing over game modes, we should look at the ballance issues that adding engineering has brought to the table and find ways to reduce the grind required to fully engineer a ship so that more people are better able to survive against fully engineered ships. I am in support of an open PVE mode, but that's not the point of this thread, so let's talk ballance. I'm looking for suggestions here on how to make stock ships a bit better and reduce the reliance on engineering for more casual players who may not have the 10-30 hours to grind out all the rare materials they need to max out their ship, and keep in mind, that's just for one ship.
Solving the pve/pvp problem.
- Thread starter GlitchedVision0101
- Start date
I don't really see a pve/pvp problem. I play in solo or a private player group. I really don't want to build a death machine and go fly in open. If I did want to do that I'd build my "kill everybody" ship in solo and switch to open when it was ready. Personally I believe ED is far more enjoyable when I don't have to worry about that and can go about my business without someone trying to kill me just because they can.
Remove engineered weapons. (but that won't happen now)
Add a sensible C+P mechanic that tracks player kills when they aren't flying with a bounty, in a combat zone or for powerplay. If the Pilots Federation becomes aware of a player-killer then they should be banned from inhabited, lawful systems for increasing time periods, and a bounty issued for their destruction.
Until the game can punish players for destroying unarmed traders or explorers going about their business, it'll go on unchecked. block their docking rights for a day, a week, a month, etc etc outside of anarchy systems and add some consequence. Pirates will them be more inclined to let the victim go, not just blow them up. And don't let the bad guy just pay this off for a credit amount, force them to live with it for a while!
But also improve relations with the pirate outposts for 'bad' players to give a benefit to actually play the villain...
The PvE mode is entirely different conversation, it has nothing to do with PvP because the players that want it don't want combat in the first place. That's best discussed here anyway: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/472757-Open-PvE-Mode
Add a sensible C+P mechanic that tracks player kills when they aren't flying with a bounty, in a combat zone or for powerplay. If the Pilots Federation becomes aware of a player-killer then they should be banned from inhabited, lawful systems for increasing time periods, and a bounty issued for their destruction.
Until the game can punish players for destroying unarmed traders or explorers going about their business, it'll go on unchecked. block their docking rights for a day, a week, a month, etc etc outside of anarchy systems and add some consequence. Pirates will them be more inclined to let the victim go, not just blow them up. And don't let the bad guy just pay this off for a credit amount, force them to live with it for a while!
But also improve relations with the pirate outposts for 'bad' players to give a benefit to actually play the villain...
The PvE mode is entirely different conversation, it has nothing to do with PvP because the players that want it don't want combat in the first place. That's best discussed here anyway: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/472757-Open-PvE-Mode
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I'm for C&P refinement but there are trolls who use the unshielded suicide tactic on players leaving a station to negatively effect their experience. This leaves the result of having an innocent player shot, killed, and sent to the reaches of the detention center.
Engineering is a nice idea but I still think it needs a balance pass to better reduce the grind and make it a bit more accessible to newer players while reballancing the drawbacks to put them a bit more on par with a rated modules to provoke more strategy and build diversity.
There is no PvE/PvP problem. Both is working fine, and they never had the balance as good as it is now. Engineering generally favors the defender, so make use of that, if you are playing in open. If you have a problem with PvP, don't engage in PvP, until you learned the basics.
Don't speed. That was easy, wasn't it?
Don't speed. That was easy, wasn't it?
The best defense is to learn how to fly your ship. Not trying to be condescending here. I was in my engineering ship at dezhra getting data, some ____ tryed to ram me. I just hit up thruster's and he missed me. Decided to land to end this, just before the slot I saw him coming in from behind. Hit the down thrusters so he missed me and rammed the station. You don't have to be all powerful. My ship surely wasn't.
Oh Yeah, Don't speed. LOL
Oh Yeah, Don't speed. LOL
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I'm a casual player and over the years I've managed to engineer up my whole fleet of 4 ships. There's no rush, I've just done it bit by bit and learned from my mistakes (and the occasional success!) along the way.
I also don't see a problem that Frontier can fix here. It's all down to the player to choose a game-mode that suits how they play, to manage their own expectations and accept the consequences of their decisions. I don't find that particularly difficult, tbh.
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Engineers should offer modifications (sidegrades) rather than upgrades. That has always been the issue and has been mentioned by literally everyone, even mostof the PvP community agrees with this. But no suggestion is worth anything as long as FDev doesn't do anything about it. It's simply not enough to just read through suggestions, that's the easiest part, to implement them is the action/doing part and that is lacking tremendously as of late.
PG and solo massively limit finding new friends and playing with others. However, the pvpers have CQC. If they would just go on there more often it'd be worth playing.
Oh? I thought Mobius had 3 groups of 20,000 players each?
How are you going to persuade them to do that?
You can still join Mobius and be a d-bag troll. You just get banned if people report you. Also: I've not heard of them before, so thanks for the info.
We shouldn't have to. It's there, they should use it.
Because you said so?
Because it's there.
The big thing to remember is that you don't need to max out your ship to survive a PvP encounter. To fight back and win, sure, you'll want every advantage you can get. But if you're just trying to survive, you don't need a maxed-out ship, because you only need to survive the 30 seconds or so needed to escape rather than the 10 minutes needed to get through all their shields. Grade 3 blueprints give 60-75% of the performance at <5% of the materials cost, and that's more than enough to survive.
So, here's the easy way to do it:
- fit a properly-sized A-rated shield and at least 2 shield boosters (more, if your ship has space)
- trade at 5 black markets
- unlock the Dweller (a small cash donation)
- upgrade your Power Distributor to grade 3 charge enhanced (to get told about Lei Cheung, but it's a nice mod to have anyway)
- trade at 50 normal markets
- unlock Lei Cheung (a little bit of easy Gold hauling)
- upgrade your shields to grade 3 reinforced / thermal resist
- upgrade your shield boosters to grade 3 resistant / heavy duty
Your ship should now be resilient enough - with decent flying - to escape almost any PvP encounter. Pips to 4-2-0, fly evasively (boost, but past them rather than away from them, and use lateral thrusters to dodge), high-wake as soon as you can
Total materials cost (estimated, for thermal resist shields and 2 resistant shield boosters at G3, and the charge enhanced distributor):
- 10 Specialised Legacy Firmware
- 10 Chemical Processors
- 5 Modified Consumer Firmware
- 5 Chemical Distillery
- 5 Grid Resistors
- 15 Phosphorous
- 10 Conductive Components
- 5 Focus Crystals
- 25 Distorted Shield Cycle Recordings
- 15 Germanium
- 10 Selenium
(larger ships should also fit a bunch of heavy duty shield boosters, which is more Grid Resistors, more Distorted Shield Cycle Recordings, some Hybrid Capacitors and Niobium. If the spare materials from collecting the above aren't sufficient, it doesn't add a lot more to the time needed to get them too)
Time to obtain materials (one possible approach):
- 1 mission offering Modified Embedded Firmware as a reward, traded down at a material trader, will get you more than enough of the Firmwares.
- 1 mission offering Biotech Conductors as a reward, traded down, gets you the Conductive Components and enough spare for the Processors and Grid Resistors too
- 1 mission offering Exquisite Focus Crystals as a reward, traded down, gets you the Focus Crystals and enough spare for the Distilleries
- the Distorted Shield Cycle Recordings will show up (or data you can trade for them will) just by scanning ships in supercruise while doing the rest of it
- visit a single volcanism site on a world with Selenium, collect all the crystals there. This gets you the Selenium, and enough materials to trade for any Phosphorous or Germanium as well.
Various trade, exploration and combat mission types offer those high-end materials: just get allied with a faction and see what they have.
If you like PvE combat, the Chemical components and Focus Crystals can be easily obtained quickly by fighting medium-sized NPC opponents. If you do surface scan missions for the materials you'll get plenty of miscellaneous data as a side effect, and the Grid Resistors can often be picked up as a reward for an "on the side" data courier mission. If you visit signal sources, a lot of them will have these items in (or a single High-Grade Emissions will usually give enough materials to trade in for the *entire* manufactured materials requirement). I've given the approach that I think would be easiest for a combat-averse trader but there's more than one way to do it, including some potentially quicker than this one.
3 missions, one volcanism site, and a few trade trips for the engineer unlocks. That's it. That's all you need to have a ship which can escape any attack, NPC or Player. It doesn't need to be easier than that. I reckon, from a fresh account, I could have all the materials I needed - and considerably more - just by taking advantage of opportunities that came up while getting the "trade at 50 markets" requirement.
...
The problem isn't engineering. The problem is that Elite Dangerous is a game where skill, experience and knowledge have major impacts on survivability. I know how to make an invincible ship with some cheap materials and sensible flying. A beginner won't, and a beginner still won't know how to make an invincible ship if engineering is made ten times easier.
So is Open.
In CQC you have like-minded players wanting the same thing you do: combat. In Open you're forcing your view on how the game is played upon others.
FD have said anything is acceptable in Open. So, killing: OK robbery: OK
If FD were smart they'd improve Powerplay and give combat focussed players a team v team environment to play in.
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