What if Elite Dangerous Added Weak Drone Enemy Fighters?

[BlackSpaceCowboy]

1. I wouldn't want ED to be this arcade.
2. I repeat #1.

Consider almost every game you ever played. You almost always face lots of weak enemies that are easily dispatched until you face a boss battle or tougher enemy. Think of movies. The hero beats up lots of weak characters before facing the ultimate challenging villain. In the Matrix movies Neo takes out a bunch of nameless agents before finally facing Agent Smith.

But in Elite you just have combat against enemies that take a lot of effort to defeat. If you face two or three at once you usually won't survive. This makes the options for combat missions rather limited and repetitive.

I suggest adding some weak defense drones. It only make sense that drones would be used in the future to defend installations. We already have skimmers which are drones defending planetary bases. Why not have drones in space defending space installations and planetary installations? This would make for a far more interesting mix of missions where the difficulty is easily scaled by changing the number of enemies.

I also would like to see weak Thargoid drone fighters.

What do you think?

skip to the 6 minute mark for a space base defended by drones

[video=youtube;AtwguutQiws]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtwguutQiws[/video]

 

[Bomba Luigi]

I also would like to see weak Thargoid drone fighters.

Don't we have that already? Whacha call them, thargons or something like that.


Also things like sidewinder and eagle go down in seconds, and we have now fighters which can't take a lot of hits either. I do agree on the Idea of missions where you face multiple enemys, or general more multiple enemy encounters. It has been a very rare thing to see a npc in a wing interdicting me.

 

[Stealthie]

What do you think?

I think it's silly when films and games have the protagonist fight a bunch of weak enemies, and then a "boss".

Especially in "realistic" games, I always find myself thinking "Why wouldn't the big baddie just join in with the weaker ones to have a greater chance of success?"

ED actually makes a lot more sense.
The galaxy is just filled with characters of a given level of ability and it's a matter of luck (to some extent) who you tangle with.

If anything, I'd prefer it if they got rid of any "skill-matching" completely so that you might, possibly, come up against an Elite Anaconda (or two) even if you're flying a Sidey.
Force people to "un-learn" the idea of linear progression and realise that any combat could be fatal and fleeing is always a valid option.

 

[BlackSpaceCowboy]

ED actually makes a lot more sense.
The galaxy is just filled with characters of a given level of ability and it's a matter of luck (to some extent) who you tangle with.

If we're going to talk about realism then wouldn't there be a lot of drone defense ships in the future especially defending far flung outposts?

So we get realism and entertainment. You can't dispute that it's more entertaining to engage multiple enemies because all movies follow that formula. And you can't argue against the fact that in the future it makes sense to use lots of cheap drones rather than an expensive crew of pilots.

And there is a balance between fun and realism. If we really wanted to be realistic, computers would do all the aiming and shooting, right? And there would be no boost or speed limit. So, the realism argument is not a great one.

 

[Stealthie]

If we're going to talk about realism then wouldn't there be a lot of drone defense ships in the future especially defending far flung outposts?

So we get realism and entertainment. You can't dispute that it's more entertaining to engage multiple enemies because all movies follow that formula. And you can't argue against the fact that in the future it makes sense to use lots of cheap drones rather than an expensive crew of pilots.

And there is a balance between fun and realism. If we really wanted to be realistic, computers would do all the aiming and shooting, right? And there would be no boost or speed limit. So, the realism argument is not a great one.

That would seem to be rather circular logic.

The ED universe obviously doesn't have fleets of drone ships, just as it doesn't have the internet, public transport, mail-order, artificial gravity, complex navigation tools or a heap of other stuff that we have.

What it does have is a population of NPCs of varying difficulty.
That being the case, it makes sense that you should encounter any of them at random, rather than in order of ascending difficulty.

 

[askavir]

Nah, robots make very lame and uninspiring antagonists... Just look at skimmers, or Fallout 4...

 

[damon8r351]

I believe this is what's known as the inverse ninja law, aka the conservation of ninjutsu, where large groups of enemies are singularly very weak and easy to dispatch, whereas a single enemy takes more effort. And it's silly. Please leave it out of Elite.

 

[Drelthar]

It'd be cool to have outposts in space which launch a few of the ship launched fighters, have a couple turrets, and you have to take out a power generator/insert other task here or something.

Then a couple "real ships" drop in and try and repel you.

Basically a cool mission

 

[Kaocraft]

Yeah this would be a lot of fun. I had hoped we were getting something like this with the thargons, but rather than being a bunch of little, easily destructible drones you have to chase and fight, it's just a single entity in a cloud of particle effects. Maybe later the Thargoid scout ships will come into play and fill this role? Dunno. But overall yes the game would benefit tremendously from the addition of a range of unique enemy types which are designed first and foremost to be interesting and fun to fight.

 

[BlackSpaceCowboy]

Yeah this would be a lot of fun. I had hoped we were getting something like this with the thargons, but rather than being a bunch of little, easily destructible drones you have to chase and fight, it's just a single entity in a cloud of particle effects. Maybe later the Thargoid scout ships will come into play and fill this role? Dunno. But overall yes the game would benefit tremendously from the addition of a range of unique enemy types which are designed first and foremost to be interesting and fun to fight.

That'e exactly what I thought at first. I thought maybe the Thargoids would fill that void to give combat a bit of diversity.

It'd be cool to have outposts in space which launch a few of the ship launched fighters, have a couple turrets, and you have to take out a power generator/insert other task here or something.

Then a couple "real ships" drop in and try and repel you.

Basically a cool mission

I think that would be so easy to implement. It's just some small bases with ship launch fighters and defenses.

 

[CMDR Space Lurker]

I seem to remember going into something called a "Strong Signal Source" with my Cobra.. and being set upon by 8 dastardly Sidewinder Pirates... 'twas awesome... I got away with the bounty of blowin up one of them...

Now... I spend most of my time outside of the tiny bubble of civilization... so.. well. that encounter felt very much like what OP seems to ask for... you fighting many enemies... with my cobra I couldn't win.. but a player with a Vulture would be much better of...

Is this kind of scenario no longer available thorough current signal sources?=...