I'll be the one to say an idea like this could really revitalize the game. Brand it Dangerous among the gamer community like it deserves to be called.
"You came in that thing? You’re braver than I thought"
- Thread starter silvio076
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I have no idea what happened, and it is none of my business, but you with 12 years in, and myself with 15 , intended it to be a career, and having it cut short by a permanently disabling injury is not failure.
Discussions like these remind me why I wish Elite Dangerous was a single player game - because at least when I played the X-series of sims I could add on as many mods as I wanted to get the experience I wanted. 
We all have such differing takes on what constitutes immersion that is worthwhile and just wasting time
We all have such differing takes on what constitutes immersion that is worthwhile and just wasting time
These examples /ideas give a way to worry about the system's ship (yes, very important: NO time sink). The difference between "a waste of time" and a "pleasant" diversion is how often it occurs.
For that reason I partially agree with Chrystoph: real mainteinance can be boring if it happens every minute, but sometimes...for example the interdiction: sometimes it is a variation on the theme, good or bad, but if it happens on every jump :O OMG...help...
For example, we can fix by ourself (maybe in future it can be a space-leg "mini-game" inside/outside the ship) or we can hire an NPC to accomplish the job. NPC may have 3 stats with a grade of competence (pilotage, artillery and mainteinance). So, if you want to "play" with numbers and make some tasks, you can do it, otherwise we have our brave NPC...well, but now I don't know how to do with the single crew ship, sorry
The "must" is the multiple choice, a little bit like the docking-computer or the collector limpet drone for example.
These examples /ideas give a way to worry about the system's ship (yes, very important: NO time sink). The difference between "a waste of time" and a "pleasant" diversion is how often it occurs.
For that reason I partially agree with Chrystoph: real mainteinance can be boring if it happens every minute, but sometimes...for example the interdiction: sometimes it is a variation on the theme, good or bad, but if it happens on every jump :O OMG...help...
For example, we can fix by ourself (maybe in future it can be a space-leg "mini-game" inside/outside the ship) or we can hire an NPC to accomplish the job. NPC may have 3 stats with a grade of competence (pilotage, artillery and mainteinance). So, if you want to "play" with numbers and make some tasks, you can do it, otherwise we have our brave NPC...well, but now I don't know how to do with the single crew ship, sorry
The "must" is the multiple choice, a little bit like the docking-computer or the collector limpet drone for example.
Just as you suggest, for me its a balancing act. You want Module Wear to be a big enough deal to help shake things up for the player-from time to time-without it occurring so quickly that it becomes a constant chore. Module Quality should play a part, as should engineering, & combat/environment damage should accelerate it. Most Stations & Settlements.....& even some outposts.....would offer either full or partial maintenance checks, maybe both, whereas those who either can't or won't utilise these services can always do it themselves......but to far less an extent.
Definitely agree that having an NPC crew member to take care of this kind of thing for you would also be fantastic.
Yes you certainly left a few off, there was of course the guy who wanted to have loading and unloading cargo take a realistic amount of time, with animation of forklifts and NPC's working away to watch as you waited. He didn't take kindly to me suggesting that whenever he loaded/unloaded he just set himself a realistic timer and wait for that period before he launched again. No he wanted to a inflict it on everybody.
Now I am not saying there isn't a game where this would work, but since the majority of activities in ED actually involve these things it becomes difficult to make an attractive game for the masses that doesn't have them sitting around for hours every day just waiting. We know how much people hate waiting, just read all the complaint threads on SC and travel time. To actually implement this sort of thing you would need to introduce enjoyable and meaningful gameplay to take up the time. I mean in real life it wouldn't matter, just back from a long trip? offload and load cargo, refuel ship, carry out maintenance, while you wait hit the gambling dens, have a meal, hire a woman (or man, lets not leave the ladies out) of loose repute, in real life there would be many things to do to pass the time, but this is a game. Yes I do like a little bit of realism in my galaxy, but there are limits, we need to be aware of that.
This is really starting to seem like that Star Trek game from the early 90s where you outfitted the ship, recruited the crew, then the computer ran a simulation in real time to tell whether you succeeded or not.
You literally ended up leaving the thing alone to play with itself for up to an hour. There was NO human interaction during that time except to watch the ship move on a map. The "upgrade" gave you TWO ships...
You literally ended up leaving the thing alone to play with itself for up to an hour. There was NO human interaction during that time except to watch the ship move on a map. The "upgrade" gave you TWO ships...
I do wish the game had a significant amount more flavor---crews actually existing on flight decks and doing things such as repairing and loading/unloading my my ship, for example, but I have to agree that I'm not terribly interested in it taking more time.
The ability to stay repaired is enough of a design decision that you can do it on the rescue-megaship, which for those that have not taken part, is a time in which you'll almost certainly have heat damage from being inside a damaged station and would really add to the intensity of flying sorties back and forth to rescue stranded people. And I'll be the first to admit that I'm not flying back in with a damaged ship, I repaired every single time.
That isn't to say that I wouldn't like some level of customizability or "falling apart" motif. I never repaint my T7, and it looks like a beater. I like it this way. I HATE that my brand spanking new Krait and Anaconda(and a number of others) have exposed wires and missing panels in the cockpit. Things like that should be the hallmark of hasty or in-flight repairs, not standard art. Rather, a ship that been run through the ringer might have exposed wire bundles all over the place, or a ship that has been tossed back together again in a moment on-board a rescue vessel to be able to handle another sortie. Ships that are repaired at normal starports should be much more pristine, with perhaps only modest signs of wear and tear.
So while I'm not interested in any kind of realistic time constraint, I do think it'd be great to actually see the effects of wear and hasty repair jobs for a level of personal feel in the game.
The ability to stay repaired is enough of a design decision that you can do it on the rescue-megaship, which for those that have not taken part, is a time in which you'll almost certainly have heat damage from being inside a damaged station and would really add to the intensity of flying sorties back and forth to rescue stranded people. And I'll be the first to admit that I'm not flying back in with a damaged ship, I repaired every single time.
That isn't to say that I wouldn't like some level of customizability or "falling apart" motif. I never repaint my T7, and it looks like a beater. I like it this way. I HATE that my brand spanking new Krait and Anaconda(and a number of others) have exposed wires and missing panels in the cockpit. Things like that should be the hallmark of hasty or in-flight repairs, not standard art. Rather, a ship that been run through the ringer might have exposed wire bundles all over the place, or a ship that has been tossed back together again in a moment on-board a rescue vessel to be able to handle another sortie. Ships that are repaired at normal starports should be much more pristine, with perhaps only modest signs of wear and tear.
So while I'm not interested in any kind of realistic time constraint, I do think it'd be great to actually see the effects of wear and hasty repair jobs for a level of personal feel in the game.
See, the thing there is that you're expecting that your idea of what you find a fun mechanic is the same as what everyone else should find a fun mechanic, and it's not. I don't want everything I do in the game, including repairing my ship, to be spiced up with an extra element of risk, or to cost more, or to be harder.
And the single fundamental issue with this game appears to be that there's no difficulty/gameplay option sliders, so if it is made one way for one person, it has to be that same way for everyone else. You and I appear to want very different games.
While I agree that the game could benefit from more immersive stuff I'd rather see cargo workers be it robots in federal systems and human workers in imperial systems. I'd also love to see forklifts and what not but I don't agree with realistic repair, load and unload time.
The game feels a bit dead in stations and on planetary stations. It could be remedied by cargo workers etc etc.
The game feels a bit dead in stations and on planetary stations. It could be remedied by cargo workers etc etc.
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How is playing the game as a multi-billionaire, with a fleet of pristine ships, even remotely fun? I am a "mere" multi-millionaire, & even that removes most of the edge from the game for me.
I would say that has a lot more to do with the sandbox nature of the game than anything to do with how wealthy people are. Accruing a large amount of money is not a contributor one way or another to the lack of impact on the environment.
The "lack of an edge" comes from the fact that you are not feeling engaged by the game.
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Discussions like these remind me why I wish Elite Dangerous was a single player game - because at least when I played the X-series of sims I could add on as many mods as I wanted to get the experience I wanted.
...and, more or less, we all agree on the feature requests to Austin: it is only a matter of priority