What is bad.. and how to improve it

What is bad.. and how to improve it

MISSIONS, they suck. No worthwhile reward (although reputation boost is nice). Not go there kill one anaconda get reward, christ who thought of that?​



  • ​​EXPLORATION - Missions for exploration (on a different tab maybe). They send you out to seek out earth like planets, new rings to mine etc. Great rewards for them.
  • COMBAT - Make instanced zones (like the ones in eve online), lots of enemies, sometimes you might have to bring friends. Have timed events happen in them, triggers, mission objects, fun!
  • SMUGGLING - Maybe increase reward on these too. Have ways to help pirate factions growth.
  • TRADE - Increase the reward (like a lot). I actually quite like them as they tie in with improving what the local faction need at the moment to fight famine, war etc.
  • MINING - New missions that actually track what you mined, make you seek out a particular ore/mineral type and reward you handsomely.


TRADE is broken! We know this already. It's something i liked doing a lot in other games and spent days studying markets. In this it's really trashy no depth to it.



  • ​Improve how you manage the economies.
  • Detailed analytical data for each of the systems factions, on how well they are doing in each area of trade. What are they growing in? What products do they need?
  • Ways you can affect the local systems economies and show this in the data. Goods supply (It gives people incentive to get involved in the persistent growth aspects)
  • Stocks and shares in independent factions (based on local growth, maybe cap amount you can have). Could give people a reason to fight over growing groups.
  • Reduce cargo size on all ships? Maybe to limit the amount of money made in trade overall. More reward will be given if you seek out trade opportunities rather than doing A->B->A all your life. This would eliminate the need for tools like elitetradingtool and its variants.
  • Improved UI , showing all products (see prototype trade ui for elite dangerous) also look to other games like EvE they do trading better than anyone


MINING is really bad! Now I love mining, if I had it my way i'd be doing it half the time and the other half missions / interacting with people. Now I know the developer has said it's in its infancy, but I am sure they won't improve it for a long time. This is because mining has a small piece of the player base pie, but you can make it really great, there are lots of people who would actually enjoy it if it was more involved/rewarding. Just look at what Star Citizen are doing with their mining system. It looks amazing



  • Drones to help you collect ore, no more scooping unless maybe a really rare thing get's chipped off that you have to scoop.
  • Increase the % yields to big ass numbers to make it profitable.
  • Have some dynamic gameplay, chunks fall off , different parts of the asteroid have different value. Equipping more than one laser might actually help you mine faster.
  • The scope for mining is huge just look at other games and other threads here for suggestions.
  • Make the act of mining affect the local economy, what you sell to the stations will have a much bigger influence on economy growth. Only if it was mined material (track it with a 'mined' tag on the metal/ore in the cargo)


Tell me what you think! Personally I will probably work on getting my faction reps up then shelve this game and hope for the best for now
 
I agree on the following: Missions could definitely be more diverse. Rewards for missions should remain mostly non monetary, although those few that do give a big monetary reward should stay that way. More effect to faction influence
Trade: Trade prices should simply reflect the demand of the system and its supply without hard barriers to price. If a system is not getting a good it has demand for, the demand should continue to rise, and if it gets high enough this should result in political upheaval. If a supplied good does not get bought the price should go down and if it is not bought, major political effects. This could create new industries on some worlds for example. If a extraction economy cannot get food, someone will eventually start producing food of some kind on that world and we will see a slow change in the economy
this alteration will make trading much more dynamic, especially on the smaller worlds....seeking out the killer trade will give big rewards....buy also similar boosts in risks as desperate citizens turn to piracy...

mining does need a boost, the system is bogus. Simplest fix is that "shooting" an asteroid lands your vehicle and initiates mining operation. The size and class of the refinery simply adjusts the rate and quality of ore you mine and ores go directly into cargo hold. Of course whilst you are mining you are vulnerable to pirate attacks and it will take a few seconds to shut down mining operations and leave the asteroid before you can deal with the pirate. The addition of a "mining scanner" so you can scan an asteroid for types and qualities of ores in a particular asteroid....and another kind that tells you general make up of a mining area which makes mining more about the hunt for the ores, and danger whilst doing it.
More heavily defended areas could even have a "tax" for the protection provided....tho these areas would have lower yields.....

Other things that are broken is the credit rewards for trading and bounty hunting.....they are far too big. Bounties should be large, but then operating a bounty hunting ship should also be expensive. Bounties should reflect not only the crimes of the transgressor, but also the risk to get such bounty successfully.

Fuel costs for bigger ships should be far more expensive....perhaps not as expensive as they were, and repairs for ships should also be upped again, they are too cheap. Repairs for combat vessels should be Extremely expensive, you have a lot of high tech stuff in those vessels so module repair should be high and scale with module rating and size, whilst hull repair should be pretty cheap. The changes FD has made recently to fuel and repair have been way way too drastic and merely a bone thrown to those people who did not want to do the work, just wanted their stuff now
 
Fuel costs for bigger ships should be far more expensive....perhaps not as expensive as they were, and repairs for ships should also be upped again, they are too cheap. Repairs for combat vessels should be Extremely expensive, you have a lot of high tech stuff in those vessels so module repair should be high and scale with module rating and size, whilst hull repair should be pretty cheap. The changes FD has made recently to fuel and repair have been way way too drastic and merely a bone thrown to those people who did not want to do the work, just wanted their stuff now

If this game had a tenth of the content and features it ought to have, I'd be more inclined to agree. However, as it currently stands, trudging through the brutal, tedious, empty, and hilariously superficial grinding required to access and maintain a good one-third of this game's small number of ships isn't fun. Players that don't have the opportunity or the inclination to put in countless tedious hours shouldn't be restricted to the small handful of uninteresting, lower-tier ships available to them. And, as it currently stands, it'll still take a casual player a fair amount of time to reach some of the game's higher-end ships.

Accessibility is the name of the game. Progressing toward an unattainable goal is, I suspect, far more toxic to the game's longevity than providing casual players with a means to reach the ship they want within a reasonable span of time. The highest-tier ships, such as the Anaconda, should be more difficult to obtain (and they still are -- hundreds of millions of credits to properly outfit and maintain an Anaconda after 1.2 makes it a pipe dream, just as it was beforehand).
 
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I am a casual player, I have a fully equipped FDL after being busted down to a sidewinder from a 31mil ASP and I have only been playing since december. If you want to grind then you can only blame yourself, I find running an Adder, eagle or cobra just as much fun and most often even more enjoyable than the big ships so I often buy one to play around in. I grind because I want an anaconda, still a long way to go. But I am sure it wont be as much fun as these smaller ships, they never are
 
I agree mining missions would be good, and as far as we know drones are being looked at. But I completely disagree with your assertion that that mining is really bad. You might not like it but it's actually a very good design, including the scooping requirement. And you make out it is not profitable, which I'm sorry but that's wrong. Not as profitable as QUICKLY as you might like perhaps, but to simply say it is unprofitable is wrong. It depends on how much value you place on your time because with mining you spend time to make money as opposed to trading where you simply spend money to make money. Which might simply mean that mining is not for you rather than it needing as much improvement as you think.
 
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