Greetings commanders, today I bring you some thoughts, suggestions and ideas that came up after delving deep into ground combat in Odyssey and making it all the way to Elite Mercenary Rank, I tested every loadout combination on High Conflict Zones which have the most experienced and best equipped soldiers to fight, also all the weapons and suits used were at Grade 5. I will start first with my thoughts on how weapons are currently implemented into the game and some ideas on how to make them better or just more fun to use and then I will talk about Conflict Zones and what could be improved to bring the best experience on everything Odyssey can offer. Keep in mind I do know there are a lot of issues with Odyssey that need fixing and have a bigger priority than this, these are just suggestions. Also I wont cover engineer mods due to the fact they have no influence on the problems I will talk about here.
So here we go...
--- Weapons ---
- Right now we have 11 weapons split into 3 different damage types which are Kinetic, Thermal and Plasma. The concept of having Kinetic to deal with Health, Thermal for Shields and Plasma as a middle ground for both works pretty well, however there are some very noticeable balance issues especially with Plasma weaponry due to their projectile speed making them not very effective to use over Kinetic and Thermal weapons.
- Plasma
- The Plasma Shotgun (Manticore Intimidator) and the Plasma Pistol (Manticore Tormentor) are sitting on a fairly balanced position, since they are close range weapons they dont rely too much on the projectile speed to take out targets, however the Plasma Sniper Rifle (Manticore Executioner) and the Plasma Assault Rifle (Manticore Oppressor) suffers greatly from the slow projectile speed and in most combat scenarios are extremely hard and ineffective to use due to the constant movement of the enemy. An easy way to make these two weapons more balanced and fun to use would be to increase the projectile speed by 25%-50%, this would make target trailling much easier and it would greatly improve the weapon performance in the battlefield while keeping the somewhat slow projectile speed to balance it out with Kinetic and Thermal weapons. A max ammo reduction to the Executioner could be applied to balance with the increased projectile speed, but the Oppressor REALLY needs the increase in projectile speed, it is by far the most underperforming weapon in our arsenal.
- Thermal
- Thermal weapons are by far the most versatile weapons right now, they tear Shields very quickly and deal a decent damage to Health and they are also hitscan weapons, so that means their projectiles hit the target instantly. I believe the Laser Pistol (TK Zenith), the Laser Assault Rifle (TK Aphelion) and the Laser Carbine (TK Eclipse) are in a very balanced situation right now, they offer a great support for Kinetic and Plasma weapons while also being able to handle well on their own.
- Kinetic
- Kinetic weapons contrary to Thermal weapons are only effective at taking down the Health of your target, trying to damage Shields with Kinetic weapons will consume a lot of bullets so in a situation where you have no means to take out Shields effectively you cant rely on them to get you out of a bad situation. The first weapon I want to cover is the Rocket Launcher (Karma L-6) it is the only weapon that deals Explosive Damage and it has all the perks of a rocket launcher such as small ammo capacity, slow reload and slow projectile, however what it doesnt have is that sweet area of effect for the explosion, while at Grade 5 it is the most damaging weapon of all 3 types it suffers greatly from not being able to deal with enemies that are clustered in a small area and this is way more noticeable due to the mechanic of shots not doing overkill damage (For example you need 2 rockets to kill a single enemy despite it dealing way more damage than the target has in Shield and Health combined) and i'm fine with this mechanic since it brings some balance to heavy damage dealers such as the Plasma Sniper Rifle and the Rocket Launcher itself. However in multiple occasions I had 3-4 enemies very close to each other in a tight room and even 2 rockets were not able to kill them, it usually killed 1 or 2 and take half Health of the rest even though it was supposed to kill all of them. An easy way to make this weapon more effective and fun to use would be to increase the radius of the explosion by 25%-50% and perhaps reduce its Maximum Ammo to balance it out, this way the Karma L-6 can actually be used for taking out multiple clustered targets and it would still be a viable option for heavy single target damage. As for the Kinetic Carbine (Karma C-44), the Kinetic Assault Rifle (Karma AR-50) and the Kinetic Pistol (Karma P-15) I believe they are in a very good spot regarding balance, they do their job really well on taking out Health and the Karma AR-50 and a TK Zenith is my favorite combat loadout, the only thing I would change for these 3 weapons would be to add a slight increase in Damage vs Shields, so they can be a bit less dependable on something else to take the target shield before you can actually do some damage.
- Grenades
- I will talk briefly about Grenades since they just do what they are supposed to do but there are some things that could improve their use a lot. Currently my biggest issue with Grenades is how unreliable they can be due to the fact they bounce too much when you throw them making hiting sweet spots of multiple clustered enemies a pretty hard task, my suggestion for Grenades would be to reduce the way they bounce so you can more reliably land them properly more often and also add levels of Throwing Strenght to them, for example a single fast press of the Throw Grenade hotkey should send it in a very short distance of 2-4 meter while holding it (which also has the animation already, you can see it by pressing G and holding) should throw it farther, there could also be a timer on them so you gotta throw it quickly or it will blow on your hand, these simple tweaks could greatly improve the way grenades are used in game.
--- Ground Conflict Zones ---
- Now to talk about Ground Conflict Zones, which is by far one of the most fun features in Odyssey so far, however there are many things that could be improved to provide a really immersive combat experience.
- Settlements and Vehicles
- The first point I would like to talk about is the lack of any kind of Vehicles in Combat Zones and while I completely understand some Settlement Layouts just cant simply support vehicles such as SRV's running around BUT it can and should support Skimmers and Goliaths. Yes, the flying drones that hang around settlements making security patrols, having these guys appear on Conflict Zones would give a total new feel to it, especially the Goliath, which is heavily armored and armed.They could be deployed by special events such as the ones that happen on Space Conflict Zones, for example the combat coordinator would alert of a squadron of Skimmers approaching and then a Goliath scouted by 4 Skimmers shows up and engages the enemy targets, this could also make the opposing team spawn special troops equipped with the Karma L-6 to deal with the threat until the Goliath is destroyed. I'm not sure if Frontier intends to create more vehicles such as the SRV but even having both allied and enemy ones just running circles around the settlement enganging targets would be very fun. Imagine having to destroy a Radar Truck that is jamming comms or a small tank deployed nearby in some sort of turret mode is now launching barrages of missiles and engaging targets at a long distance, dealing with these things would be challenging and fun and this bring us to the next topic: Objectives and Events.
- Objectives and Events at the Conflict Zone
- One of the major things that I think would make ground CZs even more fun would be having different objectives other than just Capture the Point, while it is fun to hold your ground inside buildings or outside taking fire from all sides it gets kinda old too quickly, having different objectives showing up similar to how Space Conflict Zones work would be a great addition and make every battle feel different. As I mentioned above things such as a Radar Truck blocking comms protected by enemy soldiers or perhaps having to recover the data from a nearby crashed ship (there are crashed ships props in some settlement variants that are at war, they even have hatches that can be opened with the Arc Cutter) or maybe even having to deal with a Spec Ops squad of Elite soldiers packing engineered gear would make battles more unpredictable and challenging and it could have a greater impact in the battle (more points deducted from the total reserve) than just capturing points. These of course should still stay as "normal" objectives with the events happening as extra stuff that can be done, so a CZ could still be completed by just capturing points but actually engaging in those objectives either by defending or attacking could make it easier or harder for the CZ to complete. Having these events happen randomly or depending on you available points reaching certain thresholds would be interesting, for example dropping at 750 available points could have a chance of spawning Skimmers and Goliath Backup.
- Settlement Defences
- Another point that always bothered me is why settlement defences are not turned on against the invaders, this actually makes no sense, apparently only anti air turrets engage you sometimes, while i understand it might be for balancing purposes there are other ways to deal with that while also adding some gameplay involved, for example depending on the Security Rating of the Settlement (which means more defenses such as turrets, anti air weapons and counter measures) the attacking team could spawn with a few more soldiers to compensate the already present defenses and have some sort of priority level on taking them out as soon as possible, also Command Rooms or anywhere where the defense panels are located could actually become optional objectives that appear from time to time to actually try to seize control of the settlement defences and disable it for a brief period of time, this would allow for more tactical choices during the battle and even allow commanders in wings to support with their ship and not be disturbed by hostile anti air turrets or counter measures for a small period of time. A real event that happened with me and a friend was that we were on a Wing and he tried to land at the same CZ as me but his ship was just pummeled by the anti air defenses. Having a way to control these sort of things would add more depth to the combat and also make it more challenging and fun.
--- Stuff I would like to see someday ---
- Oh boy, Odyssey has so much potential, I really hope Frontier can sort out all the issues and eventually make it a great expansion, so right now I will comment on some things i would like to see in the future of Odyssey, and of course, this is just my opinion on what would be fun to have:
--- Conclusion ---
- If you got here then thank you so much for reading, I firmly believe Odyssey can be still be made into a great experience and these are some suggestion i thought could help to improve this experience, Elite Dangerous is my favorite game of all time, never a game got me so hooked before, so after 2k+ hours in already i hope i can make another 2k or even more, thank you all and feel free to also share your thoughts either about this post or the game in the comments.
o7 Commanders
So here we go...
--- Weapons ---
- Right now we have 11 weapons split into 3 different damage types which are Kinetic, Thermal and Plasma. The concept of having Kinetic to deal with Health, Thermal for Shields and Plasma as a middle ground for both works pretty well, however there are some very noticeable balance issues especially with Plasma weaponry due to their projectile speed making them not very effective to use over Kinetic and Thermal weapons.
- Plasma
- The Plasma Shotgun (Manticore Intimidator) and the Plasma Pistol (Manticore Tormentor) are sitting on a fairly balanced position, since they are close range weapons they dont rely too much on the projectile speed to take out targets, however the Plasma Sniper Rifle (Manticore Executioner) and the Plasma Assault Rifle (Manticore Oppressor) suffers greatly from the slow projectile speed and in most combat scenarios are extremely hard and ineffective to use due to the constant movement of the enemy. An easy way to make these two weapons more balanced and fun to use would be to increase the projectile speed by 25%-50%, this would make target trailling much easier and it would greatly improve the weapon performance in the battlefield while keeping the somewhat slow projectile speed to balance it out with Kinetic and Thermal weapons. A max ammo reduction to the Executioner could be applied to balance with the increased projectile speed, but the Oppressor REALLY needs the increase in projectile speed, it is by far the most underperforming weapon in our arsenal.
- Thermal
- Thermal weapons are by far the most versatile weapons right now, they tear Shields very quickly and deal a decent damage to Health and they are also hitscan weapons, so that means their projectiles hit the target instantly. I believe the Laser Pistol (TK Zenith), the Laser Assault Rifle (TK Aphelion) and the Laser Carbine (TK Eclipse) are in a very balanced situation right now, they offer a great support for Kinetic and Plasma weapons while also being able to handle well on their own.
- Kinetic
- Kinetic weapons contrary to Thermal weapons are only effective at taking down the Health of your target, trying to damage Shields with Kinetic weapons will consume a lot of bullets so in a situation where you have no means to take out Shields effectively you cant rely on them to get you out of a bad situation. The first weapon I want to cover is the Rocket Launcher (Karma L-6) it is the only weapon that deals Explosive Damage and it has all the perks of a rocket launcher such as small ammo capacity, slow reload and slow projectile, however what it doesnt have is that sweet area of effect for the explosion, while at Grade 5 it is the most damaging weapon of all 3 types it suffers greatly from not being able to deal with enemies that are clustered in a small area and this is way more noticeable due to the mechanic of shots not doing overkill damage (For example you need 2 rockets to kill a single enemy despite it dealing way more damage than the target has in Shield and Health combined) and i'm fine with this mechanic since it brings some balance to heavy damage dealers such as the Plasma Sniper Rifle and the Rocket Launcher itself. However in multiple occasions I had 3-4 enemies very close to each other in a tight room and even 2 rockets were not able to kill them, it usually killed 1 or 2 and take half Health of the rest even though it was supposed to kill all of them. An easy way to make this weapon more effective and fun to use would be to increase the radius of the explosion by 25%-50% and perhaps reduce its Maximum Ammo to balance it out, this way the Karma L-6 can actually be used for taking out multiple clustered targets and it would still be a viable option for heavy single target damage. As for the Kinetic Carbine (Karma C-44), the Kinetic Assault Rifle (Karma AR-50) and the Kinetic Pistol (Karma P-15) I believe they are in a very good spot regarding balance, they do their job really well on taking out Health and the Karma AR-50 and a TK Zenith is my favorite combat loadout, the only thing I would change for these 3 weapons would be to add a slight increase in Damage vs Shields, so they can be a bit less dependable on something else to take the target shield before you can actually do some damage.
- Grenades
- I will talk briefly about Grenades since they just do what they are supposed to do but there are some things that could improve their use a lot. Currently my biggest issue with Grenades is how unreliable they can be due to the fact they bounce too much when you throw them making hiting sweet spots of multiple clustered enemies a pretty hard task, my suggestion for Grenades would be to reduce the way they bounce so you can more reliably land them properly more often and also add levels of Throwing Strenght to them, for example a single fast press of the Throw Grenade hotkey should send it in a very short distance of 2-4 meter while holding it (which also has the animation already, you can see it by pressing G and holding) should throw it farther, there could also be a timer on them so you gotta throw it quickly or it will blow on your hand, these simple tweaks could greatly improve the way grenades are used in game.
--- Ground Conflict Zones ---
- Now to talk about Ground Conflict Zones, which is by far one of the most fun features in Odyssey so far, however there are many things that could be improved to provide a really immersive combat experience.
- Settlements and Vehicles
- The first point I would like to talk about is the lack of any kind of Vehicles in Combat Zones and while I completely understand some Settlement Layouts just cant simply support vehicles such as SRV's running around BUT it can and should support Skimmers and Goliaths. Yes, the flying drones that hang around settlements making security patrols, having these guys appear on Conflict Zones would give a total new feel to it, especially the Goliath, which is heavily armored and armed.They could be deployed by special events such as the ones that happen on Space Conflict Zones, for example the combat coordinator would alert of a squadron of Skimmers approaching and then a Goliath scouted by 4 Skimmers shows up and engages the enemy targets, this could also make the opposing team spawn special troops equipped with the Karma L-6 to deal with the threat until the Goliath is destroyed. I'm not sure if Frontier intends to create more vehicles such as the SRV but even having both allied and enemy ones just running circles around the settlement enganging targets would be very fun. Imagine having to destroy a Radar Truck that is jamming comms or a small tank deployed nearby in some sort of turret mode is now launching barrages of missiles and engaging targets at a long distance, dealing with these things would be challenging and fun and this bring us to the next topic: Objectives and Events.
- Objectives and Events at the Conflict Zone
- One of the major things that I think would make ground CZs even more fun would be having different objectives other than just Capture the Point, while it is fun to hold your ground inside buildings or outside taking fire from all sides it gets kinda old too quickly, having different objectives showing up similar to how Space Conflict Zones work would be a great addition and make every battle feel different. As I mentioned above things such as a Radar Truck blocking comms protected by enemy soldiers or perhaps having to recover the data from a nearby crashed ship (there are crashed ships props in some settlement variants that are at war, they even have hatches that can be opened with the Arc Cutter) or maybe even having to deal with a Spec Ops squad of Elite soldiers packing engineered gear would make battles more unpredictable and challenging and it could have a greater impact in the battle (more points deducted from the total reserve) than just capturing points. These of course should still stay as "normal" objectives with the events happening as extra stuff that can be done, so a CZ could still be completed by just capturing points but actually engaging in those objectives either by defending or attacking could make it easier or harder for the CZ to complete. Having these events happen randomly or depending on you available points reaching certain thresholds would be interesting, for example dropping at 750 available points could have a chance of spawning Skimmers and Goliath Backup.
- Settlement Defences
- Another point that always bothered me is why settlement defences are not turned on against the invaders, this actually makes no sense, apparently only anti air turrets engage you sometimes, while i understand it might be for balancing purposes there are other ways to deal with that while also adding some gameplay involved, for example depending on the Security Rating of the Settlement (which means more defenses such as turrets, anti air weapons and counter measures) the attacking team could spawn with a few more soldiers to compensate the already present defenses and have some sort of priority level on taking them out as soon as possible, also Command Rooms or anywhere where the defense panels are located could actually become optional objectives that appear from time to time to actually try to seize control of the settlement defences and disable it for a brief period of time, this would allow for more tactical choices during the battle and even allow commanders in wings to support with their ship and not be disturbed by hostile anti air turrets or counter measures for a small period of time. A real event that happened with me and a friend was that we were on a Wing and he tried to land at the same CZ as me but his ship was just pummeled by the anti air defenses. Having a way to control these sort of things would add more depth to the combat and also make it more challenging and fun.
--- Stuff I would like to see someday ---
- Oh boy, Odyssey has so much potential, I really hope Frontier can sort out all the issues and eventually make it a great expansion, so right now I will comment on some things i would like to see in the future of Odyssey, and of course, this is just my opinion on what would be fun to have:
- More weapon types, maybe a Kinetic Sniper Rifle? or a Beam Laser Heavy Weapon for Thermal? or even a Plasma Grenade Launcher? There are many cool options Frontier could go to improve loadout diversity and gameplay.
- Thargoid ground combat, now this would be awesome!
- More ground vehicles! Imagine a military vehicle SRV with a missile launcher and a multicannon especially designed for ground combat or a nimble small rover vehicle especially made to track down biological signals or tranverse quickly through the planet surface, or maybe a big truck with a big cargo capacity and equipment that can locate and dig special deposits on planet surfaces which can then be sold for a nice price, this could also introduce a new type of mining! There are so many cool stuff that vehicles can bring!
- Binoculars added to all suits, have you ever seen some weird structure on the horizon but you have no idea what it is? Could be a plant or maybe an alien strucuture or just some random rock, but sadly there is no way to take a look without actually going there to check it out, Binoculars would allow to check distant stuff and even do some recon in a settlement you need to invade, it would be such a useful tool!
--- Conclusion ---
- If you got here then thank you so much for reading, I firmly believe Odyssey can be still be made into a great experience and these are some suggestion i thought could help to improve this experience, Elite Dangerous is my favorite game of all time, never a game got me so hooked before, so after 2k+ hours in already i hope i can make another 2k or even more, thank you all and feel free to also share your thoughts either about this post or the game in the comments.
o7 Commanders
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