USSs should bd dropped. NPCs should be harder and hunt in packs

[Alpha November]

USSs are not working as a game mechanic for me; the FD intention is to provide travel encounters and locations for missions but USSs are not a natural method of achieving this in my view, they look like buoys fixed in the ocean rather than flotsam and jetsam you just come across.

I would prefer a mechanic where your ship's collision avoidance system operates when it feels some mass is hazarding your ship - where it detects something ahead of your SC path and slows you or drops you out of SC. to me this would form a more natural method of coming across a random event. In the very oldest elite you would mini-jump in from the local star and would be dropped out whenever one or more ships were on your path (at which point combat might occur if they weren't friendly). The rate of randomness would be dictated by the local system governance, anarchies would provide a lot of encounters with pirates (and other stuff liked wrecked ships) and safe systems very few encounters.

Mission objectives should be located around locally known destinations (found by asking at the local ports), like the far side of a moon or a wrecked imperial warship orbiting planet A.

NPCs should be more numerous, more hostile and tougher dictated by the governance of the local system. In safe systems; encounters are generally friendly with the occasional attack (fast police response). Anarchies, either continual attacks from lone wolves and small groups or single coordinated attack from a large ship (Python or something) and group of smaller ships (maybe up to 12 at a time) - in an anarchy you can expect no help from the authorities except very close to the station. Getting cargo into an anarchy should be a huge undertaking but with the upside that the station there will pay 3+ times the going rate.

I'm not a fan of supercruise either but that's enough text for one post.

Anyway, just a few ideas to spark some debate.

 

[wenkman]

I don't use USS any more except for missions *but* i used them heavy in the beginning in a sidewinder when i didn't want to hunt at a nav-point and could not afford an interdictor.

I could scoop up some stolen goods, fight 1:1 against NPCs an sometimes assist local feds and make some more bounty. Slow but safe.

Think of them as "low threat tutorial instances".

 

[Alpha November]

I don't use USS any more except for missions *but* i used them heavy in the beginning in a sidewinder when i didn't want to hunt at a nav-point and could not afford an interdictor.

I could scoop up some stolen goods, fight 1:1 against NPCs an sometimes assist local feds and make some more bounty. Slow but safe.

Think of them as "low threat tutorial instances".

I'm not speaking for FD of course but I think their idea was that you should be using the USSs if only to enliven the numbing SC experience - this is part of the problem, they're so poor that most people ignore them unless they have to try and find a mission objective. Something should enliven the travel experience that flows naturally from the way the game plays. USSs are not it.

 

[BBcokeley]

USSs are not working as a game mechanic for me; the FD intention is to provide travel encounters and locations for missions but USSs are not a natural method of achieving this in my view, they look like buoys fixed in the ocean rather than flotsam and jetsam you just come across.

I would prefer a mechanic where your ship's collision avoidance system operates when it feels some mass is hazarding your ship - where it detects something ahead of your SC path and slows you or drops you out of SC. to me this would form a more natural method of coming across a random event. In the very oldest elite you would mini-jump in from the local star and would be dropped out whenever one or more ships were on your path (at which point combat might occur if they weren't friendly). The rate of randomness would be dictated by the local system governance, anarchies would provide a lot of encounters with pirates (and other stuff liked wrecked ships) and safe systems very few encounters.

Mission objectives should be located around locally known destinations (found by asking at the local ports), like the far side of a moon or wrecked an imperial warship orbiting planet A.

NPCs should be more numerous, more hostile and tougher dictated by the governance of the local system. Safe systems, encounters are generally friendly with the occasional attack (fast police response). Anarchies, either continual attacks from lone wolves and small groups or single coordinated attack from a large ship (Python or something) and group of smaller ships (maybe up to 12 at a time) - in an anarchy you can expect no help from the authorities except very close to the station. Getting cargo into an anarchy should be a huge undertaking but with the upside that the station there will pay 3+ times the going rate.

I'm not a fan of supercruise either but that's enough text for one post.

Anyway, just a few ideas to spark some debate.

I agree with your iea on how to change it, little random events you coud attempt to 'dodge' instead of having to forcibly go there with the 6 second counter and a 1000yrd stare.
.
any way,with multiple npcs'si disagree, I mentioned in another post how terrible that can go down, but it also falls into the imbalance of the ships as they stand and the Cr/Insurance loss ratio as it is.

 

[Alpha November]

I agree with your iea on how to change it, little random events you coud attempt to 'dodge' instead of having to forcibly go there with the 6 second counter and a 1000yrd stare.
.
any way,with multiple npcs'si disagree, I mentioned in another post how terrible that can go down, but it also falls into the imbalance of the ships as they stand and the Cr/Insurance loss ratio as it is.

I'm not suggesting that you would always encounter packs of NPCs except where the system governance is so chaotic that pirates own the space around the stations.

 

[schuesseled]

Uss's aren't bad because they aren't dangerous they are bad because unless you have to go to one, why the heck would you.

 

[Alpha November]

Uss's aren't bad because they aren't dangerous they are bad because unless you have to go to one, why the heck would you.

Agreed..

 

[starjump]

Was hoping to see small/larger groups of bad guys hanging around stations, and in the outskirts of more "respected" stations. When you come in on them they will tell you to stop cause they want to check you out. If you feel up to it or have a pal with you, take em on, otherwise run and try to come in to a anarchy/pirate station from another angle. I remember in Freelancer how fun it was to be chased by a gang of pirates and they would show up in places you had to go, and not just at certain points (nav beacons, USS).

 

[Ʃsh]

I like the idea as long as it doesn't make SC even more tedious. Currently super-cruise is more or less the second worse part of the game, first worse being finding stolen goods for specific missions with 17h long expiry timers...

 

[Shads]

its annoying when you have to find your bounty target twice. 1st time just to get directions then the actual system. How does this improve the fun exactly? Why cant I just go directly to my target?
Also there are far too many dummy USS funeral processions, wedding, cannisters, trade ships, random guys doing nothing in particular, random guys offering you alternative options to every damn mission in your log. You can spend a whole evening trying to track down one assassination target or killing enough pirates to fulfil a bounty mission. THIS IS NOT FUN!

 

[wenkman]

The dropping out of sc when to near an invisible USS could (how do you say get on your nerves) when you aim for a nice and slow trading run.

But what about USS-Scanners?

Tweak the random events a little and let us scan for ship types and count inside. That should be explainable tech ingame.

I think the "mission event coordinates found through contacts on stations and otherwise" is cool.

 

[KillaWabbit]

USSs are not working as a game mechanic for me; the FD intention is to provide travel encounters and locations for missions but USSs are not a natural method of achieving this in my view, they look like buoys fixed in the ocean rather than flotsam and jetsam you just come across.

I would prefer a mechanic where your ship's collision avoidance system operates when it feels some mass is hazarding your ship - where it detects something ahead of your SC path and slows you or drops you out of SC. to me this would form a more natural method of coming across a random event. In the very oldest elite you would mini-jump in from the local star and would be dropped out whenever one or more ships were on your path (at which point combat might occur if they weren't friendly). The rate of randomness would be dictated by the local system governance, anarchies would provide a lot of encounters with pirates (and other stuff liked wrecked ships) and safe systems very few encounters.

Mission objectives should be located around locally known destinations (found by asking at the local ports), like the far side of a moon or wrecked an imperial warship orbiting planet A.

NPCs should be more numerous, more hostile and tougher dictated by the governance of the local system. Safe systems, encounters are generally friendly with the occasional attack (fast police response). Anarchies, either continual attacks from lone wolves and small groups or single coordinated attack from a large ship (Python or something) and group of smaller ships (maybe up to 12 at a time) - in an anarchy you can expect no help from the authorities except very close to the station. Getting cargo into an anarchy should be a huge undertaking but with the upside that the station there will pay 3+ times the going rate.

I'm not a fan of supercruise either but that's enough text for one post.

Anyway, just a few ideas to spark some debate.

You are looking at it wrong. Not to mention the odds of you ever finding anything would be enormous. Space is huge. A uss is by name what it is. It is just a signal that your computer is picking up that is unidentified. So in a way it is what you are wanting. There is no marker at all for USS's. Only a digital indicator on your HUD. If you turn your hud off you will never see them. If you just flew around and things were just floating in space think about how incredibly far you are from anything while in SC. 1ls is a huge distance form anything so if you are 1ls from the spacejunk or encounter etc. you would never run into it. So USS's are actually the best way to implement that type of feature. The ONLY problem I have with them is if I run into the wedding paty for example. That signal should no longer be a "UNIDENTIFIED" signal source for me now. Because my computer should be smart enough to tell that same signal again. This way I don't keep jumping into this useless scenario over and over.

 

[Venificus]

I like the idea as long as it doesn't make SC even more tedious. Currently super-cruise is more or less the second worse part of the game, first worse being finding stolen goods for specific missions with 17h long expiry timers...

That's what I found the most tedious towards the beginning, finding stolen goods within a small timeframe. I don't mind SC that much as I tend to crank up the volume then go on the tablet while keeping an eye on the game. I've been lucky so far not to get distracted!

 

[Alpha November]

The dropping out of sc when to near an invisible USS could (how do you say get on your nerves) when you aim for a nice and slow trading run.

But what about USS-Scanners?

Tweak the random events a little and let us scan for ship types and count inside. That should be explainable tech ingame.

I think the "mission event coordinates found through contacts on stations and otherwise" is cool.

Well, some of the problem arises because of the SC mechanic but I don't want to get into that alse I'll be writing a wall of text that no one will read

But, I'm not suggesting new events will be never-ending. In fact in safe systems I think you should scarcely ever get one. But in unsafe systems you should literally hack your way in from the star to the station leaving a trail of smoking ships behind you. Remember that I think mission objectives should be found out by asking at the local station for information about where the 'thing' is.

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You are looking at it wrong. Not to mention the odds of you ever finding anything would be enormous. Space is huge. A uss is by name what it is. It is just a signal that your computer is picking up that is unidentified. So in a way it is what you are wanting. There is no marker at all for USS's. Only a digital indicator on your HUD. If you turn your hud off you will never see them. If you just flew around and things were just floating in space think about how incredibly far you are from anything while in SC. 1ls is a huge distance form anything so if you are 1ls from the spacejunk or encounter etc. you would never run into it. So USS's are actually the best way to implement that type of feature. The ONLY problem I have with them is if I run into the wedding paty for example. That signal should no longer be a "UNIDENTIFIED" signal source for me now. Because my computer should be smart enough to tell that same signal again. This way I don't keep jumping into this useless scenario over and over.

You misunderstood me, I probably wasn't clear. You don't fly around looking for events, they happen during your journey to wherever you are going. Mission objectives should be found out by asking at the local station for information about where the 'thing' is. Then you go to that location where you will find it or something will happen that directs you onwards to somewhere else.

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That's what I found the most tedious towards the beginning, finding stolen goods within a small timeframe. I don't mind SC that much as I tend to crank up the volume then go on the tablet while keeping an eye on the game. I've been lucky so far not to get distracted!

But that isn't very good is it; that you have to go and find something interesting to do. The game should be interesting, that's what you paid for.

 

[xythum]

NPCs should be more numerous, more hostile and tougher dictated by the governance of the local system. Safe systems, encounters are generally friendly with the occasional attack (fast police response). Anarchies, either continual attacks from lone wolves and small groups or single coordinated attack from a large ship (Python or something) and group of smaller ships (maybe up to 12 at a time) - in an anarchy you can expect no help from the authorities except very close to the station. Getting cargo into an anarchy should be a huge undertaking but with the upside that the station there will pay 3+ times the going rate.

Exactly this. I remember in Elite and to some extent Frontier, a trip to an Anarchy system might take upwards of 45-60 minutes due to the constant battles against pirates - in Elite in particular, I'd sometimes drop into an Anarchy system to be greeted by 2-3 pirates waiting to relieve me of my cargo. Anarchies were dangerous. In Frontier, the possibility of meeting a 20/100MW-equipped Imp Courier who could blow you away before you could react meant that you really needed to be well-prepared.

In Eliteangerous, I have merrily sailed through an Anarchy system on a trade run/hard-to-find-goods-mission with no weapons, token "in case I bump into something" shields and - if I'm (un)lucky, perhaps one interdiction attempt by an easily-evaded NPC. Granted, it may have been less of an easy ride if I visited an Anarchy that happened to have human-controlled pirates on the prowl, but still - no sense of real danger or risk.

I remember once spending ages fighting my way to an anarchy system in original Elite, finally docking only to get the "rescue these people before their sun goes supernova" mission, which required me to go scoop some fuel to replace the fuel that had conveniently leaked from my tanks earlier and which the station couldn't sell me - so now I had to fight my way to the sun as well, through the horde of pirates who didn't seem too worried about the impending supernova... [/nostalgia]

 

[Philip Coutts]

Pirates should hunt in packs. One sidewinder is no problem at all but 3 would make you think...

 

[AV2012]

I don't think that would work. At the moment if you don't need the USS's you can just ignore them. At the current time there would be nothing more annoying than being forced to stop at them. I was farming USS's last night and found six sets of Bio Waste in a row. I was beginning to think the game was sending me a message!

There should be vastly more diversity in the USS's. At the moment the game seems to be randomly selecting the content from a pool of 10 or so possibilities. This becomes very tedious very fast. The trouble is, some of the missions can only be completed by grinding through USS's.

 

[wenkman]

But, I'm not suggesting new events will be never-ending. In fact in safe systems I think you should scarcely ever get one. But in unsafe systems you should literally hack your way in from the star to the station leaving a trail of smoking ships behind you. Remember that I think mission objectives should be found out by asking at the local station for information about where the 'thing' is.

That could offer some interesting decisions:
Want to travel undisturbed? Travel in low population, high security.

Take the shortcut through high population anarchy? Hey you asked for it.

Also, planetary and station blockades become possible.
What does the capital ship orbiting earth actually do? Sit there and (doesn't) watch other ships in sc go by. but with this mechanic: place big ships in a grid around a station and no one goes in without "talking" to them first.
Nobody needs to "bomb" some innocent plants, just place a fleet around the planet.

(Smuggling through with cold running included)

 

[Defacto]

I don't think USS's need more variety. I think that these... things (random encounters is what they are) should be removed completely. The USS-supported missions need to be supported by real game events. USS's should only appear when, literally, there is something sending out a signal you can't identify, which could be things like your ships intercepting encoded transmissions or things like that.

 

[Alpha November]

I don't think that would work. At the moment if you don't need the USS's you can just ignore them. At the current time there would be nothing more annoying than being forced to stop at them. I was farming USS's last night and found six sets of Bio Waste in a row. I was beginning to think the game was sending me a message!

There should be vastly more diversity in the USS's. At the moment the game seems to be randomly selecting the content from a pool of 10 or so possibilities. This becomes very tedious very fast. The trouble is, some of the missions can only be completed by grinding through USS's.

in safe systems I think you should scarcely ever get one. They wouldn't be continual. You would drop out if it were one or more ships in your way, else you would slow and be able to perhaps scan and find out some info to determine if it was worth investigating further. In unsafe systems you should hack your way in from the star to the station. Mission objectives should be found out by asking at the local station for information about where the 'thing' is. You'd then go directly to that place and find the thing or experience an event that would send you elsewhere.

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That could offer some interesting decisions:
Want to travel undisturbed? Travel in low population, high security.

Take the shortcut through high population anarchy? Hey you asked for it.

Also, planetary and station blockades become possible.
What does the capital ship orbiting earth actually do? Sit there and (doesn't) watch other ships in sc go by. but with this mechanic: place big ships in a grid around a station and no one goes in without "talking" to them first.
Nobody needs to "bomb" some innocent plants, just place a fleet around the planet.

(Smuggling through with cold running included)

Agreed, it could open up a lot of new stuff to do. And it would be a product of the logic of the game, it wouldn't be forced or unnatural.

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I don't think USS's need more variety. I think that these... things (random encounters is what they are) should be removed completely. The USS-supported missions need to be supported by real game events. USS's should only appear when, literally, there is something sending out a signal you can't identify, which could be things like your ships intercepting encoded transmissions or things like that.

OK, but you do need to 'come across' things to give some variety to travel - encounters, that sort of thing.