The "problem" with the current Thargoid attack gameplay

Jex =TE=

Banned
I suppose it could be argued that there's been some cleanup of external wreckage so as to facilitate rescue efforts, but that wouldn't answer why there's still wreckage inside the station where it's more of a hazard.

So yeah, a few wrecks would definitely add some colour. Heck, I'd add a couple of burnt out Pythons and Sideys inside​ the station.

And make them move dynamically so people could play the role of moving these hulks out the way so rescue ships could land quicker. There's a lack of thought and knowledge on game design. This thread shows us what could have quite easily been done from multiple voice actors to dyanmic debris and damage modelling to time limits and numbers with some Galaxy Wide emails being sent out with things like "there's only an hour left before the reactor blows and we STILL have 50,000 people to get off the station (FDev doing it would make it 50,391 lol ;)) We BEG all ships in the vicinity to help us now!"

Something like that - omg how many people are going to turn that down? I'd leap at the chance for it. Talk about a CG that ticks all the right boxes and when the Thargoids hit another station, even though we can expect the same, it'll be different and still have meaning.

Imagine if they hit 2 or 3 at the same time and having some kind of managment tool to coordinate with other players. Where you could see where you're needed and then having hospital ships parked outside but then a Thargoid attack hits them "HELP WE'RE UNDER ATTACK!!!" Everyone would passout due to something exciting actually happening in the game to a dark room. The lights out, just the monitor on and your dashboard flashing red, the sounds muffled....30 seconds of oxygen left????

LOL :)
 
I don't know. Maybe it will come out a few days later as the news spreads. Also I am not in-game so can't really comment. I was just replying to the person that thought galnet was only available in stations, but that is local galnet, not galactic galnet.


No, I've been in the game for several hours yesterday to complete both CGs, but nothing in GalNet. Only the same you'll find in the GalNet App or in the internet :(
 
And make them move dynamically so people could play the role of moving these hulks out the way so rescue ships could land quicker. There's a lack of thought and knowledge on game design. This thread shows us what could have quite easily been done from multiple voice actors to dyanmic debris and damage modelling to time limits and numbers with some Galaxy Wide emails being sent out with things like "there's only an hour left before the reactor blows and we STILL have 50,000 people to get off the station (FDev doing it would make it 50,391 lol ;)) We BEG all ships in the vicinity to help us now!"

Something like that - omg how many people are going to turn that down? I'd leap at the chance for it. Talk about a CG that ticks all the right boxes and when the Thargoids hit another station, even though we can expect the same, it'll be different and still have meaning.

Imagine if they hit 2 or 3 at the same time and having some kind of managment tool to coordinate with other players. Where you could see where you're needed and then having hospital ships parked outside but then a Thargoid attack hits them "HELP WE'RE UNDER ATTACK!!!" Everyone would passout due to something exciting actually happening in the game to a dark room. The lights out, just the monitor on and your dashboard flashing red, the sounds muffled....30 seconds of oxygen left????

LOL :)

I apparently can't rep you again, and no-one is more surprised by that than I am :)
 
NeilF;6287036ps: said:
And a minor comment along these lines - Maybe if a station is damaged by a Thargoid attack, any CMDRs who left their ships onboard should face a rebuy screen next logon :) This is suppose to be Winter in Elite Dangerous is it not? ;)

OP I like your ideas, they are spot on, but perhaps, rather than a rebuy (Pilot Federation replaced your ship due to non human aggression beyond a pilots control), a player loses all their missions, bounties and more importantly any stored modules etc, that were in that station. Does that seem a bit wishy washy?
 
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I assume at these stations there's also a load of dead ships floating around too, right? Surely there's a ton of ships to defend these station as well? No, where are they then?

Standing instructions for Viper pilot enforcement at stations:

You must defend the station at all costs:

Misfire by a pilot meets instant death.
Noob commander caught in the grille - use as target practice
Discover a minor bounty? Treat as serious criminal until dead
Illegal passenger - execute all on board by destroying the ship

In the event of an attack by aliens - High Wake out !
 
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I think GalNet itself is fine. People are just not very found with taking their time to read. Some will use GalNet Audio for sure, because it allows to listen to it like radio. And that's a good thing.

Others however needs more direct approach - environmental signaling.

Let's take Thargoids attacks - make NPCs chat about events. 'OMG you heard that? They got Obsidian Orbital this time! Who's gonna save us?'. You got the gist. And that's how everything should be treated like.

We need hints, gossips, ideas...they need to be just casually threw in. Like ideas how to gain profit, where to look for resources, for goods, etc. There have been excellent NPC scripts, like ships amassing for attack at the edge of system, etc. Having interesting texts to say.

GalNet is fine. It is just one source of information. Game needs more informal ones, which you see during your travels.

Long story short - when refactor/redesign NPC dialog texts next time, hook this up with event/hint system/information bits commanders would enjoy to get.

edit: also GalNet would benefit from interface redesign, grouping breaking stories in one segment and regular business news (aka PP, aka station status) on another, so they don't fight for attention and prorities.
+1

And to piggy back off of this, Galnet needs a more orderly and structured UI. Right now all the news is just splashed onto the first page in one big info dump. If newspapers and official news websites did this then nobody would bother reading them either because it's too cluttered. Galnet needs some category tabs in order to place news items that are related to each other together such as:

- Powerplay
- Galactic Politics (good place to put the archived Salome story)
- Local System News
- Thargoids (stations attacked, Thargoid sightings, etc)
- Economy Report
- Community Goals
- Palin and Alien Research
- Anti-Xeno Defence News (All known info on the anti-Thargoid initiatives, weapons and modules)

As well as a "Breaking News" section where the most recent happenings in the game's story are detailed. This should be the place to go for players who just want a quick glimpse of what's going on right now and what stuff is immediately available to get involved with.
 
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+ Rep OP.

This is not game play by any stretch of the imagination just lazy work by Frontier...

I have little to no interest in the Thargoids story any more after waiting for so long only to be confronted by content that is clearly designed to be a group activity. While I have no issues with playing in open I would like some content that I don't have to be in a wing or soon a squadron just to take part.

Right now exploration is far more interesting even with all the shades of beige!
 
OP you hit the nail on the head it's the one thing that annoys load's of cmdrs feel that we can't do a thing about it if in a split second and a server tick over the station is attacked, destroyed and the attackers vanish in that tick.

If we could all fight them it would play out a lot different but we can't if one tick later it's all over.
 
Hi there,

If I may; how should Beyond address this in your opinion?

I'd personally honestly like to know, because I keep seeing people declaring that nothing in game ever says anything about story (To perhaps draw a slight straw man, "Hey FDev, if I weren't on Reddit or watching Obsidian Ant's awesome series of videos, I would never know this had happened") but it's often detailed in GalNet (I will concede sometimes not until shortly after the event, but normally not long).

This obviously points to an issue whereby vast numbers of people aren't reading GalNet for whatever reason (which perhaps will be improved by already planned Beyond features such as GalNet Audio).

I have had very little to do with GalNet myself, past hooking up API calls which separated the Local and Global news bulletins into their respective UI screens way back in 1.3 and can offer no etas or guarantees of any of what you ask for actually being implemented, but I'd be interested to know.

Thanks,
Dom


There are several issues for me (player since premium beta). Most is about presentation.

1) The relevant news are buried between generic weekly PP/CG updates. There is no "breaking news".

2) There is no sorting and no search function, and no archive. If i want to look up the systems & coordinates for alien bases i need the article from when they were found. There is no way i can do that in game. I am not playing every day, every week, every month.

3) The writing is often lackluster, also there are no cool details, there are no pictures, just a block of generic text.

4) There is no copy and paste, no links. Let's say something is found in Col 107 Sector AA-P d6-58 on planet A 2 a, at some coordinates. How am i supposed to get that string into my galmap? Memorize it? Copy it on paper?
 

Jex =TE=

Banned
If we ignore actual deformation of the hull (ie, physical damage) and leave it at just colourisation, then our ships' hulls can already have colour changes applied - paintjobs and decals. So it's certainly doable to have Thargoid green goo applied. I have no idea how much additional coding would be required, though, as it would have to be an additional layer on top of the existing one (hull+paintjob+decal+goo), plus it would need a certain amount of randomness in appearance, I think.


This is weird, we're agreeing on stuff..!

LOL I know.

And you're exactly correct and it's not hard to think it up either. You could run an algorithym to dynamically shape it or simply model 100 different goos and place a few of them - you could even rotate them for more variation. You could also panel model the station and have a bunch of panels rendered from a pool to randomise the damage or work in damage modelling with cascading atrophy.

They managed to make entire planets PG - a space station would be a lot easier.
 
The bottom line is the 'narrative' doesn't run in real time. So if the community fill the station with its needs, they cash in but FD could implode the station just the same. It is their narrative.

It would be great to see that no one took part in the CG, left the 'narrative' completely alone and see what their next move was.

I long for the day when someone jumps into a system and see's Thargoid throngs attacking a station, and poops themselves. Not just a Thursday 'oh and by the way, this station is now damaged'.
Or maybe is milling around in the void somewhere and comes across and fleet of Goids on the way to the bubble. Or even a recon Goid ship that jumps out, and you wake scan and follow.

Meanwhile in reality .......

+1 Rep
 

Jex =TE=

Banned
I apparently can't rep you again, and no-one is more surprised by that than I am :)

LOL it seems I can't rep you back again either!

However, there have been some cases where we were in agreement though not many :)

Standing instructions for Viper pilot enforcement at stations:

You must defend the station at all costs:

Misfire by a pilot meets instant death.
Noob commander caught in the grille - use as target practice
Discover a minor bounty? Treat as serious criminal until dead
Illegal passenger - execute all on board by destroying the ship

In the event of an attack by aliens - High Wake out !

All the passengers are murdered????

just *facepalms*
 
+1

And to piggy back off of this, Galnet needs a more orderly and structured UI. Right now all the news is just splashed onto the first page in one big info dump. If newspapers and official news websites did this then nobody would bother reading them either because it's too cluttered. Galnet needs some category tabs in order to place news items that are related to each other together such as:

- Powerplay
- Galactic Politics (good place to put the archived Salome story)
- Local System News
- Thargoids (stations attacked, Thargoid sightings, etc)
- Economy Report
- Community Goals
- Palin and Alien Research
- Anti-Xeno Defence News (All known info on the anti-Thargoid initiatives, weapons and modules)

As well as a "Breaking News" section where the most recent happenings in the game's story are detailed. This should be the place to go for players who just want a quick glimpse of what's going on right now and what stuff is immediately available to get involved with.

I would rep you but you left out the most important one:

- Celebrity Gossip
 

Jex =TE=

Banned
The bottom line is the 'narrative' doesn't run in real time. So if the community fill the station with its needs, they cash in but FD could implode the station just the same. It is their narrative.

It would be great to see that no one took part in the CG, left the 'narrative' completely alone and see what their next move was.

I long for the day when someone jumps into a system and see's Thargoid throngs attacking a station, and poops themselves. Not just a Thursday 'oh and by the way, this station is now damaged'.
Or maybe is milling around in the void somewhere and comes across and fleet of Goids on the way to the bubble. Or even a recon Goid ship that jumps out, and you wake scan and follow.

Meanwhile in reality .......

+1 Rep

FDev have made CG's "win" when they didn't get enough players so it seems the story is on rails and you get to watch. You can do stuff too but it's won't affect anything or the outcome.
 
The bottom line is the 'narrative' doesn't run in real time. So if the community fill the station with its needs, they cash in but FD could implode the station just the same. It is their narrative.

It would be great to see that no one took part in the CG, left the 'narrative' completely alone and see what their next move was.

I long for the day when someone jumps into a system and see's Thargoid throngs attacking a station, and poops themselves. Not just a Thursday 'oh and by the way, this station is now damaged'.
Or maybe is milling around in the void somewhere and comes across and fleet of Goids on the way to the bubble. Or even a recon Goid ship that jumps out, and you wake scan and follow.

Meanwhile in reality .......

+1 Rep

I made that suggestion in another thread, and not because i wanted to come across as counterproductive or troll-ish, but as an honest alternative.
I wonder how much influence on events players would have by not taking part.
What if we actually did "let them burn", as suggested in another thread ?
Could this be a much bigger player impact on FD's story plans than jumping through their hoops ?
Or would they just drop the whole thing and shrug ?
It would be rather interesting to see what would happen if we threw FD that curve ball.;)
Not going to happen, i know. But i find that question far more exciting than where the Thargoids strike next or how we can stop them....because that's already decided anyway.
 
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Hi there,

If I may; how should Beyond address this in your opinion?

I'd personally honestly like to know, because I keep seeing people declaring that nothing in game ever says anything about story (To perhaps draw a slight straw man, "Hey FDev, if I weren't on Reddit or watching Obsidian Ant's awesome series of videos, I would never know this had happened") but it's often detailed in GalNet (I will concede sometimes not until shortly after the event, but normally not long).

This obviously points to an issue whereby vast numbers of people aren't reading GalNet for whatever reason (which perhaps will be improved by already planned Beyond features such as GalNet Audio).

I have had very little to do with GalNet myself, past hooking up API calls which separated the Local and Global news bulletins into their respective UI screens way back in 1.3 and can offer no etas or guarantees of any of what you ask for actually being implemented, but I'd be interested to know.

Thanks,
Dom

Compare the accessibility of the story, lore, background, and fluff in Mass Effect or Civilization: Beyond Earth, to that of Elite Dangerous. Or heck, Doom. Just a few examples out of many, there.

Gal-net by itself is simply not enough.
 
You know, categorization might work a great deal even if nothing else is done.

I agree (and have heard of) show don't tell. That is a staple of visual entertainment story telling. It is a lot harder to do, too. The categories, however, would go a long way toward me reading more because I largely skip GalNet because it is mostly auto generated statistical text. Like the newspaper is mostly the financial section.
 
Hi there,

If I may; how should Beyond address this in your opinion?

I'd personally honestly like to know, because I keep seeing people declaring that nothing in game ever says anything about story (To perhaps draw a slight straw man, "Hey FDev, if I weren't on Reddit or watching Obsidian Ant's awesome series of videos, I would never know this had happened") but it's often detailed in GalNet (I will concede sometimes not until shortly after the event, but normally not long).

This obviously points to an issue whereby vast numbers of people aren't reading GalNet for whatever reason (which perhaps will be improved by already planned Beyond features such as GalNet Audio).

I have had very little to do with GalNet myself, past hooking up API calls which separated the Local and Global news bulletins into their respective UI screens way back in 1.3 and can offer no etas or guarantees of any of what you ask for actually being implemented, but I'd be interested to know.

Thanks,
Dom

The problem is not only that all of galnet is presently text but that its hidden away in menus. Plus reading galnet is generally a tedious affair with most of the articles utter trash, such as stats etc..

It would be far better if we didn't need to leave the game so to speak to learn what is going on, and yes as it stands I consider the way galnet works out of game because its a seperate screen and seems unconnected to the real game.. It could be linked to the comms console somehow, displayed whilst we are in our cockpit, and the voice played too. Better yet, instead of text, make some sort of videos and display it in cockpit.. It might be the 3300s but I doubt TV is not still around. ;)

Could be integrated with the HUD, video displayed with some sort of transparancy, I'd also prefer for the galaxy map to work like this too.
 
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