The combat focus of the game

[Ian Doncaster]

Seeing how Frontier was always wanting to release console versions, maybe they just wanted to appeal to the “sit on the couch and shoot at things” crowd.

I think the console players are just as split into combat and non-combat as the PC players, in practice. e.g. for all the talk of how CQC was introduced for the consoles, it's the PC platform where it actually has most of its players. Also, I suspect very few people are "combat" or "non-combat" - most probably do a bit of both.

I certainly agree that combat is much more instantly marketable, though I think that works both ways, too - people are much quicker to see the combat applications of a tool than the non-combat ones.

Exploration is going to be a tricky one for them - I suspect at this stage whatever changes they make at the very least a significant minority will hate them.

 

[Brrokk]

...
Exactly. Why don't we have an exploration SRV that instead of shooting rocks would have a "stone cruncher" builtin. So you pick up the whole rock into cargo, and the extractor crunches it to core elements and you get a high yield output of materials. Shooting rocks is probably the worst and most inefficient way of extracting things. It's like cooking an egg sunny side up by throwing it into a nuclear reactor...

I agree, I'd like more realistic and less "combative" mining. To be fair to FD though, mining lasers are straight out of 1984 Elite. (Sideways firing so I could still have military lasers front and back).

 

[Jack Schitt]

I too was surprised to see there were no upgrades for - for example - fuel scoop besides being shielded or other exploration-wise useless treats. No increased scooping capability.

Fuel scoops do seem like the obvious candidate for Engineering tweaks; there are a few numbers that could be offset against other numbers to favour different exploration styles.

• High throughput scoop. Increases scoop rate by up to 50% depending on coronal density; the deeper the dive, the greater the increase at the expense of more heat generation.
  
  
• Compression scoop. Reduces the overall maximum scooping rate but allows the scooping process to begin further from the star, and reduces the depth required for maximum throughput.
  
  
• Jet cone enhanced scoop. Allows for safer (faster or longer-range) overcharging at white dwarfs and neutron stars, at the expense of a reduced scooping rate at main sequence stars.
  
  
• Wide spectrum scoop. Allows for slow and limited scooping from some dwarf star classes, at the expense of slower scooping from main sequence stars.
  
  
• Tuned scoop. Combines the advantages of the high throughput and compression scoops at the expense of being unable to scoop at all from M class stars.
  
  
• Hawking scoop. Slowly collects particles from the very narrow scooping zone near the event horizon of black holes. Causes supercruise buffeting and requires a full fifteen minutes of constant scooping at maximum cruise rate (leaving the scoop zone early flushes the particles and resets the timer). If successful, permits a one-off jump of 10,000 ly*

^[SUP]*I may be kidding with that last one.[/SUP]​

 

[Valorin]

• Hawking scoop. Slowly collects particles from the very narrow scooping zone near the event horizon of black holes. Causes supercruise buffeting and requires a full fifteen minutes of constant scooping at maximum cruise rate (leaving the scoop zone early flushes the particles and resets the timer). If successful, permits a one-off jump of 10,000 ly*

^[SUP]*I may be kidding with that last one.[/SUP]​

Black Hole farming confirmed!

 

[RamirezKurita]

I suspect that it's less that FD favour development of combat related mechanics, but instead that combat content is quick and easy to produce compared to other content types. From what the devs have implied whenever they talk about mission improvements, the current spaghetti code behind the BGS is extremely difficult to work with such that improvements to trading or missions are almost impossible without rewriting large sections of the BGS; I sometimes get the impression that the spaghetti has grown beyond FDs capability to manage and build upon. Meanwhile, coding in things like full atmospheric simulations that then lead into macroscopic procedural life is quite tricky I'd imagine, similar to modelling more in-depth stellar phenomena to give exploration more of a zing to it being quite difficult; simply adding in atmospheric planets with life on them would likely involve more research and coding than many entire games would, let along compared to bolt-on features in games.

 

[askavir]

I suspect that it's less that FD favour development of combat related mechanics, but instead that combat content is quick and easy to produce compared to other content types.

^^^ This is most probably the main reason. Unfortunately, this approach doesn't make ED bring much to the table that we didn't already have in other bazillion games.

 

[Valorin]

I suspect that it's less that FD favour development of combat related mechanics, but instead that combat content is quick and easy to produce compared to other content types. From what the devs have implied whenever they talk about mission improvements, the current spaghetti code behind the BGS is extremely difficult to work with such that improvements to trading or missions are almost impossible without rewriting large sections of the BGS; I sometimes get the impression that the spaghetti has grown beyond FDs capability to manage and build upon. Meanwhile, coding in things like full atmospheric simulations that then lead into macroscopic procedural life is quite tricky I'd imagine, similar to modelling more in-depth stellar phenomena to give exploration more of a zing to it being quite difficult; simply adding in atmospheric planets with life on them would likely involve more research and coding than many entire games would, let along compared to bolt-on features in games.

That's a lot of assuming. Actually we don't know the code and I wouldn't want to start making assumptions of what would be if this and that would be like something else.
And many ideas of how game mechanics for other things could look like are based on systems which are already in the game. The whole mission system doesn't even have to be touched for that. Scientific vessels instead of launching fighters, POIs including scientifically interesting places like freshly crashed meteors or something, taking samples from the surfaces of planets, implementing a science center, like the newly added Search and Rescue in station menus to hand in stuff. That can all be build on things we have right now. No need to speculate about code we know nothing about.

 

[Loki The Coyote]

Í'd definitely agree.

IMHO nothing wrong with bringing out toys for folks that enjoy combat against Thargoids or enjoy combat in general...
But there's quite alot of things that would (finally) deserve far more attention. Especially in the light of all previous combat-focused developments.

For example, we got all those landable Planets and even after the entire Season has ended, there's still essentially almost nothing to do down there on uninhabited worlds.

Engineers still don't even have a single Blueprint for Mining Lasers and even the Scanners/Limpets came very late to the show, often only offering the generic mods quickly slapped onto most non-combat Modules just so we have anything at all there.
But of course 20+ Weapon mods at Day 1.

In a Game world spanning some 80000LY and currently offering some 2.4*10E127 km² of unused real estate on Planet Surfaces, pewpew just only does so much.

this...

seriously took the words right outta my mouth.. was about to say almost exactly the same thing.

if exploration was a bit more interesting, I 'd do it a lot more.... In fact it's why I bought the game to be honest, I was blown away when I heard there was a whole 1:1 scale virtual galaxy to 'explore'... then, once I got my hands into it, I was very underwhelmed to say the least.

I now focus on combat, which isn't necessaraly a bad thing I guess as I quite enjoy it, but it's not why I bought the game... I keep waiting for the other aspects of it to be improved to the point where it's actually interesting at least, but so far it's been extremely stale... this is legit the only game where I feel I need to fire up netflix or a youtube documentary while I 'play' so it doesn't feel so much like a damned chore ... at least during any acivity other than straight up combat.

it's a shame really, so much wasted potential here.