Felix Lighter
Member
That's easy enough to say, but Frontier has in the past gimped features due to that same kind of criticism and I have no faith that they won't crumble again.
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Elite Dangerous: Horizons |OT| Just scratching the surface
- Thread starter Anton Sugar
- Start date
That's easy enough to say, but Frontier has in the past gimped features due to that same kind of criticism and I have no faith that they won't crumble again.
If they don't crumble on the multicrew teleporting thing then I don't think they'll crumble on this. I think they (hopefully) learned their lesson from the last time.
Not Spaceghost
Spaceghost
What the hell was that last segment, docking on the outside of a mega ship the size of a small station?
I'm really excited about that.
I'm really excited about that.
Mengy
wishes it were bannable to say mean things about Marvel
Wow, they actually gave ship control from exterior views? Awesome.
NICE! Is it a medium or small pad ship?
Anton Sugar
Member
Mega ship = that giant ship in the PS4 trailer.
Can dock on some. Like a (smaller?) orbital space station with engines. They'll serve different purposes and have different looks eventually. Have weapons around the "hull" too.
Can dock on some. Like a (smaller?) orbital space station with engines. They'll serve different purposes and have different looks eventually. Have weapons around the "hull" too.
Caesar III
Member
I don't get the hype either. It does look nice but what do I do with it!? I don't care 
Whatever Pad 13 is at Jameson Memorial. Looked medium to me.
Seems to me the megaships will be essential when the Thargoid war hits. Either for evacuation out of the bubble or for refugee efforts. Maybe even troop deployment.
Not Spaceghost
Spaceghost
But it is a camera drone! If you move the camera too far away it says "signal lost" lol.
YES. I've been waiting for this since I got the game! FINALLY a good camera system!
Mengy
wishes it were bannable to say mean things about Marvel
Pad 13 is a small pad, I think. I'm pretty sure it is. Interesting....
I wonder if they are making the Dolphin the long range passenger ship, designed to carry small groups on deep space journeys. All of those deep space passenger missions only have like groups of 3-7 people tops, a small passenger ship with a good jump range would be a perfect for them...
Anton Sugar
Member
Summary. Meant to make this a thread, whoops.
Holo Me (character creator)
First screen
reddit:
Camera Suite
New camera
More screens
reddit:
Saud Kruger Dolphin
Mega Ship
reddit:
Possible ship naming? Check top right corner: "PLACEHOLDER SHIP NAME"
Holo Me (character creator)
First screen
reddit:
Camera Suite
New camera
More screens
reddit:
Saud Kruger Dolphin
Mega Ship
reddit:
-​Have docking capabilities
-A range coming. First of many types.
-Will be capable of transporting ships?
-Vid of ship called 'Fisher's Rest' (Carrie Fisher ref then I guess
Possible ship naming? Check top right corner: "PLACEHOLDER SHIP NAME"
Caesar III
Member
This looks interesting. Jump Range is key here indeed. Let's see
Caesar III
Member
Will be interesting if others can see where you are looking at (when using Look Around, VR or Eye Tracking)
SpongeBob NoPants
Member
I'm guessing that you've forgotten the fact that Elite had a rear-view camera over thirty years ago.
We have rear and side cameras on cars NOW. Why wouldn't we in the game?! I mean, it's not like piloting a football field sized ship blind is a good idea.
I am so stoked for this new camera system. I cannot wait to get my hands on it.
Dreams-Visions
Member
So the commander creator looked really great. I expect to have few problems creating a black man at least close to as handsome as I am. The monetization avenues seem pretty clear on it as well.
Looking forward to multicrew.
Dolphin is fucking ugly, in line with most of Frontier's designs.
Looking forward to multicrew.
Dolphin is fucking ugly, in line with most of Frontier's designs.
RadioactiveLobster
Member
The goal is to have those pictures in the UI (Station services board) replaced with character creator based avatars in the future and I recall reading somewhere that they want to make it so your custom character is seen in certain places.
Plus you'll be able to see others in Multi Crew.
I honestly hope they add in Pilots Federation Profiles that you can look at kinda like a giant space phonebook and see all the stats, ships, etc... for players.
Dreams-Visions
Member
Not to mention legs. Presumably people will be able to congregate inside stations some day like in Destiny or Playstation Home, I guess? We'll see.
Agreed. And far too often lacks certain things you may take as granted from other games. Sensible game design sometimes being part of the latter.
Yes, finally. The debug camera was a travesty.
I like the faces. Not photo realistic but convincingly human and with plenty of character. Did they say a word about long hair?
I've not forgotten, I never played the original. Just making a comment on how insane the community is.
Super long unkempt hair isn't in. They wanted to keep it realistic in the sense that someone had to fit it in a helmet.Agreed. And far too often lacks certain things you may take as granted from other games. Sensible game design sometimes being part of the latter.
Yes, finally. The debug camera was a travesty.
I like the faces. Not photo realistic but convincingly human and with plenty of character. Did they say a word about long hair?
lastplayed
Member
Looks like a double decker train.
I guess, but for what I do with the game this patch seems like it's gonna be a whole lot of nothing.
In other news:
Thanks, Bill.
frontieruk
Member
I'm PC beta'd up so I'll drop in.
Dubbedinenglish
Banned
They'll call it...Spacebook
Not Spaceghost
Spaceghost
Oh man that's a wonderful roll! I just finished unlocking bill over the weekend and now i'm trying to get my triple PA FdL with some good rolls.
Working on getting cascade pack hounds to for the 2 other medium slots which at the moment are just frags.
I have 500k! I can afford me a brand new ship!
Now to find a place to buy one. I know I could search for it online now and get a direct point towards a location but I feel like feeling it out myself. Going to hit up my Galactic Map and head off to a new system with some big ol' space stations in them.
I think after that point, I'll start picking a line out to the Neogaf system, just to be over there and say hello to it. I think I'd like to get on the path of doing passenger missions, I just like the rhythmic appeal of picking people up and doing a big ass LY tour. I need to read up on some more ship mechanics though like fuel scooping and actually attempt to land on a planet at some point too.
I need to get on a group too. Mobius is at its size limit so hoping that gets resolved soon.
Now to find a place to buy one. I know I could search for it online now and get a direct point towards a location but I feel like feeling it out myself. Going to hit up my Galactic Map and head off to a new system with some big ol' space stations in them.
I think after that point, I'll start picking a line out to the Neogaf system, just to be over there and say hello to it. I think I'd like to get on the path of doing passenger missions, I just like the rhythmic appeal of picking people up and doing a big ass LY tour. I need to read up on some more ship mechanics though like fuel scooping and actually attempt to land on a planet at some point too.
I need to get on a group too. Mobius is at its size limit so hoping that gets resolved soon.
Dreams-Visions
Member
Nah bruh. Take from someone with 1800 hours in the game. You don't search for ships and parts by "feeling it out" unless you don't mind wasting literally hours of your time going from one station to the next in search of ships or certain parts and possibly never finding what you're looking for for days.
It would be like getting in your car and driving street to street, then getting out of your car and walking around the block to see if there's a gas station present, then getting back in your car and doing the same at the next block. There's a reason maps were created, then gps after that. Don't throw away your time this way. There are plenty of other game mechanics that will sap your free time.
Use the tools.
Oh I mean I am going to sift out a map and look for a system with a big station in and a shipyard. Rather than going to a web browser "here is the cheapest Cobra Mk3" route. I feel like it'll give me a bit of an aim and a purpose. I'm kind of liking finding out about the universe right now. I'm sure flight fatigue willl set in and my opinions will change!
The commander creator **looks** amazing, and it's (always) nice to be able to customize your own avatar, however, personally, for me, it just doesn't actually add anything to actually playing the game (sim).
The camera on the other hand is something that I've wrestled with since day one, the current debug camera is terrible to control, at least on an XBO pad, so I am glad that has had some improvement.
I would like some more quality gameplay elements added, or at least a bit more depth added to the ones we already have.
The camera on the other hand is something that I've wrestled with since day one, the current debug camera is terrible to control, at least on an XBO pad, so I am glad that has had some improvement.
I would like some more quality gameplay elements added, or at least a bit more depth added to the ones we already have.
Nah man, Dreams is right. It will be plenty enjoyable if you manage your time and money correctly.
While that's actually the case, I feel it adds a ton of personality to the game. As for content... The mega ships ought to provide content, but it's Frontier and Elite after all.
Scan, shoot, scoop, repeat. (And watch a thousand loading screens in between)
I fear that with combat ship balance approaching more and more MMO like dimensions lately (10 minute TTK, "lvl 40 ship can't touch lvl 80 ship"), the hopes of intersting military missions are dwindling also. Interesting, as in ships have a purpose with a rock, paper, scissors mechanic to them. Essentially, what you'd expect from flight sim missions, with fighters tasked to hunt bombers or protect them, bombers tasked to attack bases or capital ships and all that jazz.
In Elite, every combat ship is your typical MMO warrior. The distinction is not so much in purpose, but in "level". Wherever possible, you'll alwys go for th biggest, baddest engieer modification touting murder boat there is. No purpose to a Viper or Eagle from a point onward, as anything they can do, the big ones can do better.
This is what I worry about reading on here. I see most people are on a journey to a given efficient setup, the same ship everywhere.
It'd be great to see some paper scissor stone things going on with some more mid/low tier ships.
I like how fighters have made bigger ships have more options but I'd like to see rent-a-wing as a thing. Want to roam the galaxy as a suite of Cobra and Viper, hire some drinking buddies.
Rock paper scissors may make mathematical sense but it is not necessarily fun. I firmly believe in a tier list of ships as this allows you to use expectation as a weapon. That and having played eve for a decade, I can say firmly that their tiericide campaign, while seeming like a good idea, actually robbed the game of fun. I fear the day that your only choice is rock or paper or scissors.
Also there's a pretty huge gradient to the possible loadouts, especially in pvp, particularly when it comes to weapon choice. Yes, a lot of people use the fdl (myself included most of the time), and for good reason. But it's not as though they cannot be beaten, and with the biweave change there's been a pretty huge swing towards biweaves and hull tanks.
Really the only cancer thing in combat right now is healing beams.
What else would you put in place instead of the current power-creep determined combat balance?
If you would want to build interesting structured combat missions or create a sim-like feeling, it's absolutely essential. As I said, fighter, bombers, bases/capital ships. There's no such thing in Elite's missions to determine the choice of craft, because the whole game has only various sizes of scissors, with the smaller ones becoming essentially useless, due to power-creep and non-diversification.
I realize that it's necessary for the game Elite currently is, but it also locks the game into the current path and will hamper any sensibly strucured missions ala X-Wing vs. Tie-Fighter. We can't really have engaging missions, if all missions are designed to the lowest common denominator of ships. Resulting in what is essentially a game of playing courier or "kill X" with zero depth beyond "find, shoot, return". You can't have anything larger than the big 3 up to "mega-ship" jumping unexpectedly into a player combat mission, if the player has potentially no means whatsoever of dealing with it, being in a meagly Viper.
Ships I see with a regularity (PVP): FDL, FAS, FDS, Clipper, Courier, Vulture, Vette; occasionally a cutter/conda, and sometimes people lulsing about in V3s or winders. The AspX can be made a viable combat ship, and sometimes the rogue python shows up.
Ship fits and roles become far more interesting when your intention is to shoot another player, especially if they're expecting it and planning to shoot you back. What is or is not the best or most efficient becomes a little more muddled, because there is no singular best fit, and the player's ability to fly their chosen fit well is a huge portion of putting numbers and efficiency to use - the idea that there is some sort of entropic efficiency occuring with combat fits isn't true.
In PVE? Sure. But that's nothing to do with ship balance. You drop any amount of defensive engineering on any ship and PVE combat becomes trivial. The NPC flight routine is already predictable, and their weapon load is usually comical, am I really worried they're gonna work their way thru my 6k ehp? No. Because everything in PVE combat is predictable, yes you can distill a most efficient way to farm that predictability. But what you're asking for is only going to reinforce that predictability but on a larger scale.
As soon as you start pigeon-holing, the game will be less fun. Combat being decided from the outset because player 1 has platform X which beats player 2's platform Y which is beaten by player 3's platform Z may be "balanced," but it isn't fun. I believe that there should be a power creep tier list. The drama of combat is born of surmounting expectation with talent. There should always be a clerically best and worst ship, with tiers in-between. Let it be the fits, with a far greater variation and application, which determines whether that platform be a rock or a paper or a scissors, but don't remove the tiers, that accomplishes nothing.
Meh it's all a matter of perspective at the end of the day. Because of the reasons mentioned above, I don't give a hoot about the PVE end of things so long as I have a way to make money that isn't absurdly time consuming. if they gave the computer half a mind to fly ships well, especially wings working together, players would never strand a chance - see NPC 2.1 AI.
Ship fits and roles become far more interesting when your intention is to shoot another player, especially if they're expecting it and planning to shoot you back. What is or is not the best or most efficient becomes a little more muddled, because there is no singular best fit, and the player's ability to fly their chosen fit well is a huge portion of putting numbers and efficiency to use - the idea that there is some sort of entropic efficiency occuring with combat fits isn't true.
In PVE? Sure. But that's nothing to do with ship balance. You drop any amount of defensive engineering on any ship and PVE combat becomes trivial. The NPC flight routine is already predictable, and their weapon load is usually comical, am I really worried they're gonna work their way thru my 6k ehp? No. Because everything in PVE combat is predictable, yes you can distill a most efficient way to farm that predictability. But what you're asking for is only going to reinforce that predictability but on a larger scale.
As soon as you start pigeon-holing, the game will be less fun. Combat being decided from the outset because player 1 has platform X which beats player 2's platform Y which is beaten by player 3's platform Z may be "balanced," but it isn't fun. I believe that there should be a power creep tier list. The drama of combat is born of surmounting expectation with talent. There should always be a clerically best and worst ship, with tiers in-between. Let it be the fits, with a far greater variation and application, which determines whether that platform be a rock or a paper or a scissors, but don't remove the tiers, that accomplishes nothing.
Meh it's all a matter of perspective at the end of the day. Because of the reasons mentioned above, I don't give a hoot about the PVE end of things so long as I have a way to make money that isn't absurdly time consuming. if they gave the computer half a mind to fly ships well, especially wings working together, players would never strand a chance - see NPC 2.1 AI.
Not Spaceghost
Spaceghost
So this little rant comes from a pvp perspective:
I really do hate that with this inflated health pool situation the smaller ships have effectively no real roles in combat situations unless you're just pve-ing.
The courier is now relegated to being a healing beam support ship in wing fights, when before it could actually deal decent damage.
Right now having the most amount of hard points is way too important because otherwise you're looking at fights longer than 10 minutes, and that's with optimal time on target.
I'm always flip flopping on whether engineers are good for this game or not.
Pros:
-Fun weapon diversity, a lot of things that previously were never used are seeing a lot of use now, and things that were only seldom used are getting more use. The bonus effects allow you to do all sorts of interesting things too
-Dirty Drive tuning mixed with distributor upgrades makes flying ships SOOOO FUN
-Power plant upgrades and shield / hull upgrades allow for ships to be fit completely different than intended which allows for a lot of interesting flexibility and depth when fitting a ship.
-Jump range gets a great boost which helps combat ships get around, but ship transfer has mitigated that a good bit.
Cons:
-Inflated fucking health pools are a goddamn disaster, chances are unless your opponent and you have previously decided on a fight to the death the other person is going to be able to high wake out no problem once their shield breaks. It leads to long encounters that stop feeling exciting and just feel like a test of endurance to see who fucks up first.
-Too many ways to plug holes in ships inherent weaknesses. This kind of contrasts with my point about all the upgrades allows you to fit ships differently than intended. Basically though because of engineer upgrades you're able to take a ship like the vulture whose weakness is its pitiful powerplant and upgrade it so that you can fit power hungry modules. You can give ships that were intended to be shield tanks the ability to be hull tanks and vice versa. You can give shields the ability to negate their inherent weakness to thermal damage and make them fully resistant to all types of damage, and finally you can give ships that aren't meant to be that fast and maneuverable, go fucking fast and turn on a dime. With DD5 on an FdL you have a ship that is more maneuverable and faster than a stock imperial eagle with 3A enhanced performance thrusters.
I can't help but feel like engineering needs a massive overhaul that's never going to come.
I really do hate that with this inflated health pool situation the smaller ships have effectively no real roles in combat situations unless you're just pve-ing.
The courier is now relegated to being a healing beam support ship in wing fights, when before it could actually deal decent damage.
Right now having the most amount of hard points is way too important because otherwise you're looking at fights longer than 10 minutes, and that's with optimal time on target.
I'm always flip flopping on whether engineers are good for this game or not.
Pros:
-Fun weapon diversity, a lot of things that previously were never used are seeing a lot of use now, and things that were only seldom used are getting more use. The bonus effects allow you to do all sorts of interesting things too
-Dirty Drive tuning mixed with distributor upgrades makes flying ships SOOOO FUN
-Power plant upgrades and shield / hull upgrades allow for ships to be fit completely different than intended which allows for a lot of interesting flexibility and depth when fitting a ship.
-Jump range gets a great boost which helps combat ships get around, but ship transfer has mitigated that a good bit.
Cons:
-Inflated fucking health pools are a goddamn disaster, chances are unless your opponent and you have previously decided on a fight to the death the other person is going to be able to high wake out no problem once their shield breaks. It leads to long encounters that stop feeling exciting and just feel like a test of endurance to see who fucks up first.
-Too many ways to plug holes in ships inherent weaknesses. This kind of contrasts with my point about all the upgrades allows you to fit ships differently than intended. Basically though because of engineer upgrades you're able to take a ship like the vulture whose weakness is its pitiful powerplant and upgrade it so that you can fit power hungry modules. You can give ships that were intended to be shield tanks the ability to be hull tanks and vice versa. You can give shields the ability to negate their inherent weakness to thermal damage and make them fully resistant to all types of damage, and finally you can give ships that aren't meant to be that fast and maneuverable, go fucking fast and turn on a dime. With DD5 on an FdL you have a ship that is more maneuverable and faster than a stock imperial eagle with 3A enhanced performance thrusters.
I can't help but feel like engineering needs a massive overhaul that's never going to come.
Camp Freddie
Member
One tip. Li-yong Rui. Systems controlled or exploited by him give a 15% discount at shipyards/outfitters.
You don't have to be a member of his powerplay faction. It's a bonus for everyone.
You probably know to look for high tech systems for better equipment selections.
His best shipyard is probably
Ray Gateway
That's my home base for exactly that reason. All my main ships but the Vette were bought there, the outfitting is pretty good and the market has a nice selection so more often than not I can just pick up a hold full of whatever the newest CG is asking for on the way to its system.
Hey all, recently confirmed account but long time lurker, yeah that 15% discount really helps when you start fitting some of the larger ships for the first time.
Now that it's been in the wild for a bit, was wondering if people's thoughts had changed or solidified on [SHIP TRANSFERS]? I have a few ships, I've wanted to use it (mostly to cart my tricked out FDL around to combat community goals), but every time I baulk at the cost.
Now that it's been in the wild for a bit, was wondering if people's thoughts had changed or solidified on [SHIP TRANSFERS]? I have a few ships, I've wanted to use it (mostly to cart my tricked out FDL around to combat community goals), but every time I baulk at the cost.
Someone found another set of ruins.
12,200 LY out.
Just looks like another gamma site, unfortunately.
12,200 LY out.
Just looks like another gamma site, unfortunately.