You want immersion?

[Sztripi]

So I have posted this on one of the sub forums. It has been suggested to me to post it as a thread. I will describe two encounters.

First encounter: A pirate interdicts and attacks me (in SOL no less for crying out loud), 7 system authority ships show up, yes 7. He doesn't flee he fights to the death. Then the authority ships scan me. That all. Familiar?

Second encounter: I detect several ships and go in to investigate them. A large transport vessel is being attacked by two pirates when I arrive. I receive a message from one of the pirates to not to dare to interfere or they will eat my heart. The pirates continue ignoring me and keep attacking the transport. The transport is sending out messages for help. And not randomly. When their shield fails for instance "Mayday our shield are failing help somebody". The messages are more and more frantic. So I decide to help them. I open fire on one of the pirates. They send me a message that they are going to dance on my grave. After that only ONE of them attacks me the other keeps pommeling the transport ship. So we dance around for a bit when suddenly an Imperial Cruiser jumps into the fray. It (the cruiser) immediately destroys one of the pirates the other at once starts fleeing, and gets away easily (the pirate ships are fast as you would think). The cruiser turns to me and sends me a message: "There is nothing to see here, civilian. Move on." So I jump out.

So I ask all of you which one is better?

The first ED year 2014.
The second Space Rogue year 1990.

After more than 20 years I still remember what happened.

 

[charognard]

I hope second option will come in ED

 

[Arindor]

The second encounter sounds awesome, and one would expect ED to be like this now after all the spiel FD has made about ED during the last few months. In fact I do expect ED to be like this on 16 Dec. Fingers crossed!

 

[Sztripi]

I am hoping to.

At the present however everybody fights to the death. No surrender no quarter is given ever under any circumstances.

 

[Lanar Drexel]

More than once I have had a pirate say he had enough and try to bug out, they don't always want to fight to the death do they?

 

[Unfluffydave]

Second encounter: I detect several ships and go in to investigate them. A large transport vessel is being attacked by two pirates when I arrive. I receive a message from one of the pirates to not to dare to interfere or they will eat my heart. The pirates continue ignoring me and keep attacking the transport. The transport is sending out messages for help. And not randomly. When their shield fails for instance "Mayday our shield are failing help somebody". The messages are more and more frantic. So I decide to help them. I open fire on one of the pirates. They send me a message that they are going to dance on my grave. After that only ONE of them attacks me the other keeps pommeling the transport ship. So we dance around for a bit when suddenly an Imperial Cruiser jumps into the fray. It (the cruiser) immediately destroys one of the pirates the other at once starts fleeing, and gets away easily (the pirate ships are fast as you would think). The cruiser turns to me and sends me a message: "There is nothing to see here, civilian. Move on." So I jump out.

So I ask all of you which one is better?

The first ED year 2014.
The second Space Rogue year 1990.

After more than 20 years I still remember what happened.

You can rewrite that as

I jumped to the nav point and 2 wanted ships were attacking a Lakon -9, I received a message "I'm going to boil you" from one of the Wanted ships. The Lakon was sending help messages pleading "The hits keep coming" so I decide to help and open fire on the wanted ships. We dogfight for a while and the local feds jump an anaconda into the nav beacon and quickly dispatch one of the wanted ships, the other flees. I am scanned by the feds and sent a message "Thank you for your cooperation, go about your business".

You can spin the tale any which way you like.

 

[charognard]

Since gamma (or beta 3 can't say) When i accept to be intercepted by pirates, generally after the fight cause i kill them quickly, 1 or 2 security vessels jumps into my instance

 

[Titus Balls]

The player is able to travel from one solar system to another using the ancient Malir Gates' wormhole, a form of 'Star Gate'. A mini game of travelling through rings must be successfully completed first before the player can reach his intended system, a failed mini game will cause an aborted interstellar travel.

Man, imagine we could fly in hyperspace/witchspace and have something like this happen.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Rogue

Sounds amazing, seems like a certain CR might have come along to spoil this party too.

 

[Meritz]

More than once I have had a pirate say he had enough and try to bug out, they don't always want to fight to the death do they?

Of course they don't. I had a few escape, slippery buggers.

 

[charognard]

Of course they don't. I had a few escape, slippery buggers.

At gamma start, i have been intercepted by a viper pirate, starting to shoot me, after, i manage to kick his ass, and he jumps away with 25% structure...

 

[Watcher]

At gamma start, i have been intercepted by a viper pirate, starting to shoot me, after, i manage to kick his ass, and he jumps away with 25% structure...

Yes, had the same happen to me yesterday. Shame since I could have used the bounty to pay for the hull repairs..
The police showed up just late enough not to have been any help

 

[LunarJetman]

Part of the problem is that there is no personality to anything whatsoever in Elite: Dangerous. Every ship you encounter is just a faceless, mindless entity.

 

[Lanar Drexel]

It sounds like the base game is there, all that is needed is for them to stick in a bit more dialogue and maybe some randomised scripted events.

 

[alexios]

I am hoping to.

At the present however everybody fights to the death. No surrender no quarter is given ever under any circumstances.

Is this gamma-specific? I haven't had time to play since Beta 3.05 (!), but I distinctly remember pirates jumping away the moment they were too damaged. Or trying to. And some wanted vessels also jettisoned a little bit of cargo to slow you down while they charged their FSDs.

 

[Meritz]

At gamma start, i have been intercepted by a viper pirate, starting to shoot me, after, i manage to kick his ass, and he jumps away with 25% structure...

A Sidewinder jumped out on me as he started to explode - I heard the small explosions before the big boom, then poof. Wonder what happened to that guy.

And that's Gamma. NPCs flee. Not all of them, but plenty of them do.

 

[Oppenheimer]

uss should be - uss/distress signal/beacon/or whatever
you should get radio messages asking you for help like in the video
this uss is really nonsense

 

[Belisarius]

Sounds interesting.
They would have to tweak the normal mechanism ((that allows you to only attack (without getting wanted yourself) after getting attacked yourself or having scanned the vessels with a Bounty Scanner [or whatever this device was named]) for the purpose of the USS scenarios, of course ... so you can also attack in aid of other ships

 

[Janichsan]

At the present however everybody fights to the death. No surrender no quarter is given ever under any circumstances.

Definitely not. See below.

Part of the problem is that there is no personality to anything whatsoever in Elite: Dangerous. Every ship you encounter is just a faceless, mindless entity.

Are they? Have you ever looked at the text messages in the top left? I recently investigated an USS on my way to a station, where I found three ships milling about: a Sidewinder, an Eagle and a Cobra. I started scanning the Sidewinder and immediately got a message from him that I better should sod off. When my scan was complete, I found he had a bounty on his head, so I attacked him. The other two ships also got hostile towards me and while we were locked in dogfight, all three kept peppering me with threats. I first killed the Sidewinder, then the Eagle and while I was whittling down the Cobra's shields and hull, his messages clearly became more panicked, before he finally fled when his hull was down to 15% or something with "This can't be happening" as his parting words.

It's not in your face and not necessarily impressive, but the AI ships clearly react to what's happening to them.

 

[Lanar Drexel]

Another thing, wasn't it stated somewhere that you don't die when your ship is destroyed, you eject and get to another ship. If this is true it could be made more clear by having enemy ships, player or npc, jettison a fast unkillable escape pod or similar as they explode that jump away after a second or 2. Could even have the npc say something like "Curse you!" or "You haven't heard the last of me!" from their little pod. That way fighting to the death would make more sense since it is only a loss of property.

It could even be taken a step further to make assassination missions more brutal by making the pod linger for longer and be destructible. It would really make you feel like you just ended that poor guys life rather than just another ship kill.

 

[Unfluffydave]

Another thing, wasn't it stated somewhere that you don't die when your ship is destroyed, you eject and get to another ship. If this is true it could be made more clear by having enemy ships, player or npc, jettison a fast unkillable escape pod or similar as they explode that jump away after a second or 2. Could even have the npc say something like "Curse you!" or "You haven't heard the last of me!" from their little pod. That way fighting to the death would make more sense since it is only a loss of property.

It could even be taken a step further to make assassination missions more brutal by making the pod linger for longer and be destructible. It would really make you feel like you just ended that poor guys life rather than just another ship kill.

This reminds me of the mobs in Anarchy Online called Leets. If you killed them they spouted lines like "I'll get my main" amongst others, basically taking the mickey out of smack talkers. Elite Dangerous does take itself a little too seriously at times, having NPCs spout some similar insult as they die would put some humour into the game.