Some things I don't think have come up as suggestions yet

[TehWardy]

Hi Guys,
I'm new here so please go easy on me if some of this sounds really wrong / not in the general direction of ED but I'm really trying to think a bit outside the box here whilst also leaning on concepts I have loved from other games.

So one thing I've noticed is that eve is the standard to beat for this type of game (MMO Space Sim).
In ED's favour is the cost ... I would however be prepared to pay a monthly fee if some of the features we see in eve we could see in ED for example:

Space based installations:

• Why just stations, why not Colonies with Trade Hubs, Factories, Refineries, Mining Outposts, Warehousing?
• Mining outposts could be built on large asteroids perhaps?
• Have facilities specialize like we would in the real universe.
• Also what about station linking, could we have a mining outpost link to a refinery, then link that to a factory, then link that to a trade hub to build processes that output commodities on the market. I feel like this is how things would happen in real life.

Player based construction:

• The galaxy is big ... really big, so why not allow player created structures (stations, point defences, refineries, factories)?
• Also on that front player based corporations / factions.
• Add the ability to gather the resources for and construct my own ship.
• Maybe then make ships tradeable like everything else.
• Add more ship types, massive haulers for carting ships around, battleships, colony ships, ect.

Instancing:
Please, please, please just get rid of it and finally fix the networking!

• One thing I really love about eve, no instancing it's just 1 big map, and when you enter a system you enter the same system everyone else does. Why can't we have that with ED (big architectural ask I know but you guys are good with big data right ... you do have the biggest map ever seen)?

• On that note, if we did do that then there could be a lot of traffic so bigger stations would be really cool.
• In a galaxy this size should you guys really be concerned about too many people being in 1 place, surely you can organize your nodes better than this?
• This would able more interesting faction level warfare, i think we can all agree 10 ships in a "conflict zone" does not make a war ...

Trade is one area that really lacks in ED:
Lets say I am out working with friends mining.
Typically you might have 1 person digging rocks maybe 2 collecting the rocks and then 1 hauling the rocks back to a station for sale ... see the problem here?
ED prevents us doing that.
Both cargo and money should be tradeable i think.

• Trade and storage of resources in stations with someone also in that station.
• If we are that advanced that we can build space ships can we also manage money transfer wirelessly to contacts?
• I would also like to see markets perhaps based on regions & constellations & systems, training may determine how far you can perform a trade operation from your ship ... untrained perhaps only the station you are in, level 1 in the system, level 2 in the constellation, level 3 in the region.

Training / skill trees:

• Add an extra dimension to the game with training.

I know again i'm pulling from eve and I'm not suggesting go that extreme but right now if I have the money I can buy anything and use anything, perhaps when I have the rep with a faction I can gain the rights to train / specialize in their customized versions of things like ships, guns, other fittings.
Flying a sidewinder requires a completely different way of thinking to flying say ... a large battleship ()

Exploration:
Thinking about ED and the general theme we have going on, exploration is one of the founding conceptual ideas.

• Flying around the galaxy is great but doesn't pay so where's my exploration incentive?
• If I could found a new colony or something perhaps add things like trade routes.

UI:

• All these floaty wrapped panels are awesome but if we have all this projection tech in our ships can we at least have say ... a windows like environment so I can drag panels around and position them where I think they would be best for me (i mean, this is the 3300's right!)?
• Orange ... really? Can we at least be able to change that if literally nothing else happens with UI? Orange is the reason I won't buy some cars, I hate that color it's cheap and grimey.

Automation:
This is the one thing that has IMO never been cracked in an MMO but would blatantly be in place in a circa 3300 galaxy ...

• In the games X, X2, X3 and their various add-ons it really adds a great dimension to the game that would be mind blowingly cool and put the cutting edge eve in a old news pot for me.
• Some rudimentary scripting perhaps, this might allow us to do thinks like program in travel on our ships for long journeys?

A huge ask, i bet there would be some insane technical hurdles to beat here.

In short:
I'd like more to do, and the stuff I do should have a bit more depth to it.
That said, it's amazing tech and looks dam good at Microsoft events on a 100 foot screen, and on my home pc at 4k.

Oh that reminds me ...

• Can the game client window be made drag and drop resizable?

I have 2 4k screens and the client can't run fullscreen (that's a windows 10 bug) so I have to run in a window, then I have to pick a fixed resolution from the options rather than dragging out to a size that suits me ... what a waste of pixels on my other screen
Perhaps dragging out the screen to a different aspect ratio would show more or less of the cockpit of my ship.


And Finally:
Thanks guys ... what an awesome start to what promises to be a great game and educational experience for those wnating to see close up the far reaches of the milky way!!!

 

[Indy Original]

Hey there TehWardy! Some of what you suggest is already planned for the game (in fact some of it is already there!), but there are also a few things that have already been ruled out, I'm afraid. I don't know everything, but here is what I DO know:

Why just stations, why not Colonies with Trade Hubs, Factories, Refineries, Mining Outposts, Warehousing?

Colonies like this are almost guaranteed to happen, because they were also in Elite 2, back in the 1990s! So I'm sure that there will be colonies in this game too... although they probably won't be implemented until the planetary landing expansion, and that might be more than a year away. Here's some footage from the Elite 2 intro to be going on with, complete with original music! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbegNmKRZUM

Mining outposts could be built on large asteroids perhaps?

Concept art for asteroid stations has been around since the earliest days of Elite Dangerous, so hopefully it will only be a matter of time before we see them. And in relation to your later point about player-built structures, the developers did hint at being able to buy an "inflatable space station" module, which could be deployed inside a hollowed-out asteroid to turn that asteroid into a small but perfectly serviceable base! However, that was a long time ago, and they have not mentioned it since, so nobody knows if they are still planning to include this or not. What I can tell you is that the developers do NOT want players to ever own the big, city-sized stations, or to form large-scale factions... it seems that they want this game to be about flying your ship, not empire-building. So basically, no matter how rich or powerful you get, the developers NEVER want you to become the President... but you CAN become the NPC President's top pilot, potentially!

There was also a 'community goal' a month or so ago, where players were asked by one of the in-game factions to supply metals to a star system that was building a new space station - and when enough metals had been delivered, construction on the space station began, and you could visit the system and see the half-finished station while it was being built. I don't know if the 'building site' is still there, and to be honest the whole thing was a bit under-whelming - and it's not the same as being able to build your own structures anyway. But it is already in the game, so if they can improve it or expand upon it, who knows?

Have facilities specialize like we would in the real universe.
Also what about station linking, could we have a mining outpost link to a refinery, then link that to a factory, then link that to a trade hub to build processes that output commodities on the market. I feel like this is how things would happen in real life.

If I understand you correctly, this is already in the game - look on the system map, and you can see the economy type of each station (Industrial, Agricultural, High-Tech, etc). Also, I think that if you supply lots of raw materials to an Industrial station, for example, that station is supposed to produce more machinery etc as a result... but I'm not sure if this is actually working as intended yet or not. Even if it is, I think it should be made a bit more obvious, since you had not even noticed it!

Add more ship types, massive haulers for carting ships around, battleships, colony ships, ect.

The biggest flyable ship in the game at the moment, the Anaconda, is going to be able to carry at least one Sidewinder or a number of tiny Condor fighters... it can't yet, but it will be able to soon, as seen at about the 50 second mark in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAwmbvRJkzM I suppose it's not quite the same as a giant ship for transporting multiple vessels like you suggested in your post, but it's a start!

As for battleships, again, the developers don't want players to become too powerful, so the colossal capital ships that you can sometimes find in the game will never be player-controlled. However, so many people requested the ability to own and control a battleship, that the developers are going to introduce smaller, Corvette-class battleships, that will be available to players who gain a high enough rank in the game. The only thing we know about them is that they will be the biggest ships you can fly... so, larger than an Anaconda, therefore!

And Colony Ships? Well, they were mentioned in the manual to the original game in 1984, so maybe one day we will see them actually implemented into this game! (I doubt it will be soon, however!)

Both cargo and money should be tradeable i think.
Trade and storage of resources in stations with someone also in that station.
If we are that advanced that we can build space ships can we also manage money transfer wirelessly to contacts?

You already can abandon cargo, so that a friend of yours can scoop it up (if you 'jettison' it the cargo will be marked as stolen, but if you 'abandon' it, it will be safe for your friend to collect). The developers are apparently worried about gold-farming exploits, however, which is why they have not yet allowed players to transfer money directly from one ship to another. They are also worried about players stockpiling goods in order to play the markets, which is why there is no option to store resources in stations... as far as I know they have not ruled it out, but it isn't something that they really want to do.

Flying around the galaxy is great but doesn't pay so where's my exploration incentive?

You can sell your exploration data at any station with Universal Cartographics, provided that you are more than 20 light years away from where you gathered the data in the first place. Basic scans are not worth much money, especially if you don't find anything exciting... but if you buy a 'Detailed Surface Scanner' and go scan some Earth-like or Metal-rich worlds, you can make a fair amount of cash (especially if you are the first person to discover them!)

Orange ... really? Can we at least be able to change that if literally nothing else happens with UI? Orange is the reason I won't buy some cars, I hate that color it's cheap and grimey.

Presumably we will be able to change the colour of the UI in the game at some point - but until then, you can change it yourself by following the instructions found here: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=73419

Automation

I'm afraid that in the Elite Lore, mankind has banned Artificial Intelligence (owing to several SkyNet-style disasters in the past), so automation is practically illegal throughout human space! However, there are docking computers already in the game, so it's possible that we may get an auto-pilot one day.

(Also, again in the lore, some of the rouge AI are unaccounted for, and may have flown out into space to start their own colonies... they are not in the game yet, but I'm sure they will be one day, and when that day comes maybe we will see some real automation options for those players willing to risk trading with them...?!)

And Finally:
Thanks guys ... what an awesome start to what promises to be a great game and educational experience for those wnating to see close up the far reaches of the milky way!!!

Yes, the developers want to keep adding to this game for years to come, and I can't wait to see how it evolves over time! Maybe I'll see you out there... someday!

 

[TehWardy]

Hmmm ...

When I say "station linking and specialization" I mean "physically connect stations together chaining them like a business process".
The idea being that you would build a refinery, build a factory, build a mine, then connect them together in a complex array of stations.
The stations we have at the moment are pretty generic each station has "stuff that's most easy to get near by" but it doesn't specialize in the same way.


Dumping cargo in to space is not trade ... I don't think that's a good comparison ... also how would I dump money to a friend to pay for said cargo?


I recently read the stuff about mining outposts built in to asteroids, the concept art looks impressive ... would be really cool to see if they can pull that off for sure !!!


When I mentioned "incentives for exploration" I was fully aware that you can sell cartography data but this is not really worth the time it takes to gather when I can get the same amount of money as I would from say an hour of travel as I could in 10 minutes of combat.
Making all forms of income provide similar reward for a similar amount of effort is likely one of the challenges the devs have not yet solved.

On automation ... i see your point, but maybe autopilot and remote control could still be considered legal in the lore of elite?
I don't expect full on combat drones ... or do I ... there's already a black market?
Maybe some things like that are outlawed in controlled space but its a big galaxy out there ... what if I could get this type of tech by manufacturing it myself in my own factories built in a system I / my corporation controls?

I got in to ED because of the big idea the dev guys had around the map, now I want to keep up with the big ideas throw everything out there, I get that the key is really about the little guy out on his own in the void but I think given that we are circa 3300 a few creature comforts wouldn't do any harm right?

I mean ... is automated station construction by drone considered to be illegal AI? (I would very much hope not)

 

[VanQ]

Most of your ideas sound like you want to play X, so go and play X!

And about the Exploration: ITS NOT ABOUT THE MONEY, its about the things you can find! So open your eyes and actually SEE the awesome stuff out there, instead of just honking your horn...

 

[Indy Original]

When I say "station linking and specialization" I mean "physically connect stations together chaining them like a business process".
The idea being that you would build a refinery, build a factory, build a mine, then connect them together in a complex array of stations.
The stations we have at the moment are pretty generic each station has "stuff that's most easy to get near by" but it doesn't specialize in the same way.

Physically connect? You mean with pipelines or something? Or do you mean build a mine, then expand it by building a refinery on the side, then expand it again with an industrial complex, until you end up with a huge station composed of visibly different sections? Well, I suppose that would be more realistic, yes - and David Braben has hinted at larger stations coming, although I don't know if this was what he had in mind. But wouldn't this also make the station largely self-sufficient? I mean, they would not need to import raw materials from other star systems, for example, because they have their own mine... so trading raw materials to a station like that would never be very profitable, and no one would do it. And since trading from one station to another is a big part of Elite Dangerous, making the stations more self-sufficient might not be a good idea... sometimes, too much realism is a bad thing?

Dumping cargo in to space is not trade ... I don't think that's a good comparison ... also how would I dump money to a friend to pay for said cargo?

You might not be able to dump money, but you can dump other cargo - I know that there are some players who use canisters of Gold or Palladium as a kind of currency, and they trade with each other that way. It isn't ideal, and you are not the only person who has requested improvements... but as I say, the developers are worried about gold-farming exploits, so this is the best we have at the moment. Will they implement a better system one day? Only time will tell.

When I mentioned "incentives for exploration" I was fully aware that you can sell cartography data but this is not really worth the time it takes to gather when I can get the same amount of money as I would from say an hour of travel as I could in 10 minutes of combat.
Making all forms of income provide similar reward for a similar amount of effort is likely one of the challenges the devs have not yet solved.

Balancing is certainly an issue, and there have been a whole host of threads on the subject as I'm sure you can imagine - but I'm not sure I agree with making all forms of income equally profitable. I think of exploring as being a 'low-risk, low-reward' kind of activity, since explorers will very rarely be in any danger - whereas bounty hunting or piracy should be much more 'high-risk, high-reward' activities (and currently, they really aren't!)

There are other incentives that the developers could offer, to encourage people to explore... for example, missions offered by the military, where you have to go into a hostile star system and scan their planets to find a secret enemy base, without being apprehended! That would be pretty cool - and if your mission was a success, you could gain rank in the military, and it would unlock more missions, etc...

But it's like VanQ says, exploring is about traveling the galaxy and enjoying its beauty... the money you get from it is just a bonus, really. If you don't find exploring fun, that's okay, you don't have to do it - but there are other people who do it by choice, they don't need an incentive at all! Everybody is different, and the fact that Elite caters to so many different people, without having to bribe them with financial incentives, is one of the things I like most about it.

On automation ... i see your point, but maybe autopilot and remote control could still be considered legal in the lore of elite?
I don't expect full on combat drones ... or do I ... there's already a black market?
Maybe some things like that are outlawed in controlled space but its a big galaxy out there ... what if I could get this type of tech by manufacturing it myself in my own factories built in a system I / my corporation controls?

Anything is possible, and I suppose the NPCs are already automated, so it probably would not be too hard for the developers to add stuff like this into the game. But they definitely want players to actually play the game, rather than just watch a film while Elite plays itself in the background, so any automation that they do add will be to augment your gameplay, rather than replace it. (In the original game, the Federation was supposedly trying to develop an unmanned combat drone, using captured alien technology... so perhaps they will be implemented into Elite Dangerous one day, and you can tell them to protect you while you concentrate on flying your own ship, etc)

I got in to ED because of the big idea the dev guys had around the map, now I want to keep up with the big ideas throw everything out there, I get that the key is really about the little guy out on his own in the void but I think given that we are circa 3300 a few creature comforts wouldn't do any harm right?

I'm sure they have a lot planned, but they tend to keep very quiet about it until they are ready to release it - the 1.3 update is supposed to be coming out soon (early May?), and we still know virtually nothing about it! Maybe some of the things you are hoping for are already on their way? Just keep checking the forums, and if you see something you like or don't like, say so... the developers do actually listen, even if they don't always agree!

 

[TehWardy]

Physically connect? You mean with pipelines or something? Or do you mean build a mine, then expand it by building a refinery on the side, then expand it again with an industrial complex, until you end up with a huge station composed of visibly different sections? Well, I suppose that would be more realistic, yes - and David Braben has hinted at larger stations coming, although I don't know if this was what he had in mind. But wouldn't this also make the station largely self-sufficient? I mean, they would not need to import raw materials from other star systems, for example, because they have their own mine... so trading raw materials to a station like that would never be very profitable, and no one would do it. And since trading from one station to another is a big part of Elite Dangerous, making the stations more self-sufficient might not be a good idea... sometimes, too much realism is a bad thing?

Yeh basically, modular construction.
I don't see how that would make a station basically self sufficient, lets think about it for a minute ...

So I build a mining colony inside a large asteroid.
I now need people, and food, and ways to make people want to stay, so I build a farm, a trade hub perhaps and some form of housing.
Ok that done, now I want to refine the materials I mine, hmmm, now I need perhaps resources to combine with what i'm mining to produce something new.

Not gonna get that here though am I?
This is where trade comes in and well placed stations.

It would also be great see stations rise and fall with wars and even large pvp battles.

building on that, making it possible to travel further in to the unexplored reaches of the galaxy may require the construction of outposts unless the ED galaxy is literally full of stations every X number of jumps already?
Seems to basically take the wonder out of being able to explore if I already know everything has been explored already.

 

[SpartanBeef]

building on that, making it possible to travel further in to the unexplored reaches of the galaxy may require the construction of outposts unless the ED galaxy is literally full of stations every X number of jumps already?
Seems to basically take the wonder out of being able to explore if I already know everything has been explored already.

Can you clarify this? I'm not quite sure what your saying.

Players can already explore pretty much everywhere using fuel scoops.
in the lore humans only occupy a small "bubble" of the galaxy, approximately 500LY across. Beyond that there's nothing. No inhabited planets, no stations.

It would also be great see stations rise and fall with wars and even large pvp battles.

Absolutely. I suspect(hope) that update 1.3 will help with this aspect of the game as the devs mentioned that

Mike Brookes revealed the first details about the upcoming Powerplay content update, promising a whole new method of interacting with the galaxy and more information in three weeks' time.

Powerplay is our biggest content update yet, adding a number of game-changing features to Elite: Dangerous and offering you new gameplay options whether you prefer the life of a trader, explorer or combat pilot. Some of the new features will be massive; others will be smaller, but no less meaningful.

Yeh basically, modular construction.
I don't see how that would make a station basically self sufficient, lets think about it for a minute ...

So I build a mining colony inside a large asteroid.
I now need people, and food, and ways to make people want to stay, so I build a farm, a trade hub perhaps and some form of housing.
Ok that done, now I want to refine the materials I mine, hmmm, now I need perhaps resources to combine with what i'm mining to produce something new.

If i understand that right the station your mentioning is basically self sufficient. It has food, housing, minerals, presumably water processing. The only thing it can't do is refine minerals, because it needs other minerals to act as catalysts which it will struggle to get hold of as it has nothing to trade for them. Its self sufficient but not very economically viable.

 

[TehWardy]

Can you clarify this? I'm not quite sure what your saying.

Players can already explore pretty much everywhere using fuel scoops.

I had forgotten about fuel scoops ...
Although if most of the galaxy is empy ... why not allow players to build what they want and wage their own PVP corp / faction wars in the empty space?

If i understand that right the station your mentioning is basically self sufficient. It has food, housing, minerals, presumably water processing. The only thing it can't do is refine minerals, because it needs other minerals to act as catalysts which it will struggle to get hold of as it has nothing to trade for them. Its self sufficient but not very economically viable.

To a point yes ... it can sustain itself in a reasonably limited fashion but what's the point in outputting something that has no use and it won't be possible to have a station that can literally do / supply everything.

Taking the concept of specialization further we could say that perhaps a manufacturing facility can produce say 2 products, and may require say 4 types of resources to be fed in to them in order to produce those products, perhaps 2 of which could never be found on this station due to its location.

X3 has a good version of this concept (not that i'm suggesting that the devs copy it, just that I liked the way it was done over there).

 

[Tryst]

Most of your ideas sound like you want to play X, so go and play X!

And about the Exploration: ITS NOT ABOUT THE MONEY, its about the things you can find! So open your eyes and actually SEE the awesome stuff out there, instead of just honking your horn...

I would have said it sounds like he wants this game to be a copy of Eve. Not gonna happen.

 

[TehWardy]

I'm just citing examples from those games because that's where they excel in certain areas.
The ED implementation of a feature does not mean "make the same game".

There's no harm in admitting that other dev teams did something well.

 

[Zieman]

There are some good ideas in the OP, for example more diversified/specialized station/outpost types.

One point I want to remind though: "Training / skill trees" are a BIG NO-NO. In E: D you don't play a CRPG character with set of skills you can add points to. YOU pilot the ship, YOU are the one with skills, YOU learn to do new thing and/or same old better.

 

[TehWardy]

One point I want to remind though: "Training / skill trees" are a BIG NO-NO. In E: D you don't play a CRPG character with set of skills you can add points to. YOU pilot the ship, YOU are the one with skills, YOU learn to do new thing and/or same old better.

In that case lets make our ships more customizable, so customizable in fact that each ship is potentially VERY different from another in ways that might mean that the learning curve really is there in the real world.

Although I'm not entirely sure what i'm suggesting here just yet ...

Maybe not skills but perhaps ... clearance to use a certain class / type of part.
And maybe tie that in to the security scans we get, so if I somehow manage to acquire a Federation part but don't have the rank to allow me to use that part I would be fined or if my reputation was low enough automatically fired upon.

 

[DocLooshkin]

My understanding from other threads (sorry, no link) is that weapon and module 'crafting' is a thing that's being worked on, on and off. Apparently, we'll get it if they can get it to work without breaking the game balance.

 

[Tryst]

I would like to see manufacture implemented at some stage though. Players could maybe manufacture ships, weapons, utilities and modules etc from raw materials either bought from the station(s) locally or sourced from mining. Ship prices can remain the same but manufacturing them, depending on how cheaply you source the raw materials, costs pretty much the same as buying the same ship yourself, (based on average regional prices), you make a marginal profit if you mine the ores yourself. Gold used for electrical circuits, Palladium, Titanium and so on used for the hull, synthetic fabrics and leather for the interior and so on, you get the idea.

When a player builds a ship or the modules etc, they can use them or sell them to the local shipyard. This would make ships and modules etc available to the shipyard that maybe were not available before but there are no more available than the player sells. Obviously, only certain stations will allow it, you cannot build ships where there isn't a shipyard etc.

I used to enjoy crafting in games, making your own gear/ships etc in games such as Everquest, Eve, WOW and Skyrim. I actually enjoyed that more than playing the level up game.

When first person walking becomes available, it could be even more exciting since you could actually go inside the partially made ship and work on the interior etc, using a block and tackle to lift the engines into position and so on.

 

[TehWardy]

I used to enjoy crafting in games, making your own gear/ships etc in games such as Everquest, Eve, WOW and Skyrim. I actually enjoyed that more than playing the level up game.

I know right!!! lol
This was part of my logic when I suggested station specialization and chaining.

My thinking being that I (or possibly a faction / corporation I was part of) could "build a chain of stations that could perform a chunk of a business process" combined with trade routing and other station chains I could effectively make life cheaper but essentially supply regions with components, parts, and ships.

It would require a somewhat realistic market though that would likely require a server based transactional system as opposed to a p2p based system that is effectively stateless like we currently have though.

 

[PorkChop]

manufacturing of weapons, ammo and ships needs to be implemented in this game. I would much rather see some sort of manufacturing / crafting system than planetary or atmospheric Landing

 

[cbdeakin]

Bigger ships could be a lot of fun. I think they are planning to add multi pilot ships at some point.