Ellen Degeneres: Horizons - AI Now Earns More Than Human Crew

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Ellen Degeneres: Horizons - AI Now Earns More Than Human Crew

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Chrysophylax: Dec 28, 2006; ._.

khwarezm posted:

So is this game good or what?

The act of flying your ship around and shooting things is perfect. The other stuff, like the political game, bulletin board missions, ships' internals variety and some other game mechanics range from 'eh' to terrible. It's very much a 'make your own fun' game.

It has a ton of potential that the developer has yet to realize. However they are very very slow to do it. I'd say if this interests you at all, the newest patch offers a game mode where you hop on and just deathmatch or capture the flag with other humans, which some of us think is almost worth the price of admission by itself.

# ¿ Sep 14, 2015 03:31

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 12:45

Chrysophylax: Dec 28, 2006; ._.

Adult Sword Owner posted:

OH for fucks sake

I was putzing around a LES doing my bounty hunter thing when I see a fight going on in the distance. I boost and lock onto the guy taking it who is at about 5% hull with no shields. I accidentally tap my multigun which spins them but a round doesn't fire. He blows up from the other dude and suddenly all the cops are trying to kick me in the dick

a) the gently caress, I didn't even actually fire
b) how do I pay this without getting blown up?

e: reading up I guess that's my only choice or wait 6 days. Or kill myself in a Sidewinder I guess. This is a really garbage system

It's bad yeah, but if you're fast and you come out of supercruise facing the mailslot, I guarantee you the cops won't scan you, they won't have time. Or you could try an outpost, since they will have reduced or no cop presence.

# ¿ Sep 15, 2015 02:40

Chrysophylax: Dec 28, 2006; ._.

Cactus posted:

Does this mean it will be more worth my while waiting until the third expansion comes out and making one payment for both?

That'll likely be the case.

However I think this is a strange way to think about it. You may pay less in the future, but you pay now to access content and have fun now.

# ¿ Sep 15, 2015 21:26

Chrysophylax: Dec 28, 2006; ._.

# ¿ Sep 16, 2015 01:29

Chrysophylax: Dec 28, 2006; ._.

Paramemetic posted:

Normally I'd say power off the banks while guns are out, but eagles have hilariously low shields even in A class, you won't have a chance to turn off the guns and hit the banks.

Yeah, if you're getting shot at while in an eagle by something larger than a cobra, you'd best hope you have 4 pips in sys and are already in the process of running away, otherwise you barely have any time to react.

Tom Guycot posted:

I guess my problem is more the anaconda is already pretty useless for combat

Can you expand on this? I'm curious because I own an anaconda and I think it's by far the best RES farmboat.

Chrysophylax fucked around with this message at 17:05 on Sep 17, 2015

# ¿ Sep 17, 2015 17:02

Chrysophylax: Dec 28, 2006; ._.

Siets posted:

Can you or someone explain this in more detail? Haven't played since 1.1. I'm working on my Rank 5 at the moment.

With the way the different bonuses stack with ALD, you end up with 240% extra money per ship.

What you do at a High Intensity Resource Extraction site (RES, or HIRES) is keep resetting the instance (by exiting to menu and re-entering) until the first ship you see is a Clipper, Dropship or Python. This ensures you're gonna get a good, hard instance with high value challenging targets.

This'll net you 10-30 million per hour.

# ¿ Sep 17, 2015 18:14

Chrysophylax: Dec 28, 2006; ._.

Groggy nard posted:

I just cannot find a good combat build for a A7 Prismatic Shielded iClipper and I really need to of anime ladies power thing in time to make lodsa emone before 1.4 hits, anyone using a Prismatic iClipper that doesn't mind sharing their build?

You can't do anything proper with either A7 or A6 prismatics on a clipper, sorry. Even the A6 is too power hungry to take advantage of, and it has a weird interaction with the ship mass.

To expand, while you can power both A6 and A7 prismatics with guns out, you can't do cell banks. If you swap two of the boosters for chaff, the A7 prismatics give you 504MJ of shield, and a B6 bank, at the cost of useless chaff. A6 prismatics allow for 3 boosters and 1 chaff, for a total of 499.76MJ.

For comparison, 4 boosters A7 shield gives you 550 MJ, and plenty of power for banks.

# ¿ Sep 22, 2015 13:29

Chrysophylax: Dec 28, 2006; ._.

You could, but what you get in return isn't worth it, imo. Chaff on the 2nd largest ship barely works, but if you're RESing or something and you absolutely need a KWS or something, there may be a way to make it work better than a normal shield.

# ¿ Sep 22, 2015 13:47

Chrysophylax: Dec 28, 2006; ._.

Paradoxish posted:

It feels like they focus on technical aspects of the game over actual gameplay, balance and content design, either because they don't have the talent and capability to do those things well or because they honestly don't realize how important they are.

I think the bolded bit is the truth. It's criminal to not have some of the QoL things people have come to expect standard in their multiplayer games. Goes double if you think about them calling this game an MMO.

Someone at that company doesn't seem to understand what a game is, or that it's 2015 and not 1993 and people have come to expect much more out of their games.

Paradoxish posted:

"Bounty hunting" is literally Everquest-era MMORPG grinding.

For me at least, the fact that the flight model is so good makes the grind tolerable, and the whole concept good enough.

The problem starts to become evident when you think about things historically.

At first killing an NPC anaconda gave you 400 credits. Fighting was supported by trading. This whole idea is absurd and the fix, which they came around to, was to literally multiply by a factor of 500-1000 all the rewards. Still took months to do.

Then they give us more RES. Supposedly for harder AI NPCs, in tougher, larger ships. Instead, we get the dreaded pirate lord in a beam turret sidewinder (each of which costs 50 times the base ship's cost). Sometimes if you're lucky, you get a wing of these. People eventually learn to game the system and just quit to menu until you get a spawn table that's actually not completely stupid and pays more than 500k an hour. People start asking for either a fix for HiRES, that only spawns the good stuff, or a new RES that achieves the same. What do they do? New RES that has no cops (?) and still needs resetting to be good.

Combat Zones are worse still. Their only purpose is for you to help your chosen minor faction that happens to be in a war, and get a tiny bit of money while doing it. As in, I 100% believe the rewards are so absurdly low for the difficulty and effort involved that the actual reward in FDev's mind is propping up your faction.

Fixing this would be trivial and something you'd expect to see in a weekly patch. But it's been literal months of complaints with no solution.

There is also no concept of late game money or activities, although I'm not sure this isn't by design. But after you get a vulture, your earning power tanks since it stops growing past that point. Getting to a python takes an incredibly long amount of time.

Chrysophylax fucked around with this message at 10:33 on Sep 23, 2015

# ¿ Sep 23, 2015 10:18

Chrysophylax: Dec 28, 2006; ._.

lewtt posted:

Got the imperial clipper thanks to Lasagna-Duffles generous JUSTICE BOUNTIES, but this feels kinda lame for combat. I'm not sure how to take advantage of the speed other than just staying at max range and piddling away for minutes with pulses; the hull is too big to take advantage of speeding around and being hard to hit like a dedicated combat ship. With the vulture and courier I could just eternally ride the top/bottom of a python via thrusters and laser the power plant. What pro strat am I missing with the clipper?

You should take advantage of the clipper's speed to dictate range, and that doesn't necessarily mean plink from max range.

It's got excellent lateral thrusters, but with judicious main thruster use you shouldn't have too much trouble orbiting ships the same size as yours, since the clipper outmanouvers them all.

For the smaller ones, use your speed to keep a distance that allows you to out-turn them.

It's also a ridiculously expensive ship to outfit for straight combat - my PVE/PVP build only manages slightly-more-than-vulture-shields at 102 million with 15%off. So it'll feel like a step down until you've spent a ton of money on it.

On the other hand, it's an opportunity to learn to constantly manage your SYS pips to get the most out of it.

tl;dr it's not the best PVE ship and requires a significant investment to be useful, about as much as a Python. But it's stylish as hell and one of the better PVP ships.

e: changed build to have saner power settings

Chrysophylax fucked around with this message at 20:28 on Oct 3, 2015

# ¿ Oct 3, 2015 20:20

Chrysophylax: Dec 28, 2006; ._.

Cicero posted:

Is it actually possible to make decent money with combat these days? Or is it still space trucking all the way?

You can make much better money with combat than trading, provided the stars align in just the right way*. If they do, you're looking at 15-30 million/hr, and if they don't, .5-3 million/hr.

*Involves quitting to menu a bunch of times and having a certain powerplay rank 5 bonus.

# ¿ Oct 3, 2015 20:37

Chrysophylax: Dec 28, 2006; ._.

Leif. posted:

So, I had no idea that this was out(-ish) on Xbone. And it seems like the preview/early access basically is the entire game, which is rad.

Few questions though.

1) What's the flight assist toggle button on Xbone, if any?
2) How big of a damage dropoff is there between turrets and gimbals? I'm poo poo at aiming manually, so I need the auto-aim/tracking support. I'd rather have the full firing arc of a turret if possible, at least on hardpoints that make sense for it, but not if the damage dropoff is going to be atrociously bad.
3) Burst lasers - if I have the power draw to fit them instead of pulses, should I do so? I like pew-pew over bang bang, so multi-cannons are thematically out for me. (May re-address when I have something with more hardpoints than my viper).
4) How can I see enemy's hull damage percent? Do I have to go through their subsystems on the left hand MFD?
5) Any recommendations on where I should go? I've been pooping about in the general vicinity of the starting sector. But I'm not hurting too badly for credits (I have around 900k invested in my ship/modules, and another couple hundred in the bank from slave-trading) so I don't mind packing up and trekking out someplace.
6) I was doing a "Find and kill person X" mission. I had no idea that you have to search through unidentified signal sources to find them. I eventually somehow randomly found my target while in supercruise, but botched my exit and missed them. They took off running and haven't left supercruise since. I don't have a FSD interdictor module. Is there anything I can do?
7) As I mentioned, I'm in a Viper. Most of my gear is upgraded into the C/B range. Does it make sense for me to go to a Cobra next? Or should I stick with what I've got, and hurdle past a Cobra to whatever comes next afterwards...

If it helps, I pretty much exclusively do PVE content and have minimal interest in PvP. I pretty much hang out at nav beacons and collect bounties, interspersed with smuggling illegal cargo because that poo poo is hilarious and pays well.

2) The DPS is roughly halved, I believe. Damage per shot is still the same, they just fire roughly half as often. It's pretty bad

3) Pulse lasers have the highest penetration, but bursts do more hull damage. I find that it's almost never worth taking bursts because of their power drain. E: penetration is important because you almost always want to shoot at an enemy ship's power plant since up until now, 0% health on a power plant will make any ship explode. Starting in 1.4 it will instead shut down systems with a small chance of explosion, but it's still the best subsystem to target.

4) Should be right there on the hud, see http://i.imgur.com/tcJ1l26.jpg, on the left hand side, to the right of the NPC's name.

5) Even on XBone, you can help goons with our faction, see the PGS thread for more details. Otherwise, most areas of space are the same, nothing stands out from the starter areas in a 'make more money' sense. Maybe there are better mining sites elsewhere, or whatever, but they're scattered more or less all over.

6) Your assassination target will keep respawning at signal sources and supercruise until you kill them. You should consider buying an interdictor, it'll make assassination missions go by much faster.

7) A cobra is a multipurpose, your viper is a combat ship. The cobra will be a step down in shield toughness, but it is the fastest ship in the game, has plenty of power to power everything, great jump range, and awesome internal slots. They don't perform similar roles tho. If it helps, check out Coriolis to get a preview of what you can do with your future purchases.

Chrysophylax fucked around with this message at 04:38 on Oct 6, 2015

# ¿ Oct 6, 2015 04:32

Chrysophylax: Dec 28, 2006; ._.

Siets posted:

Welp, PowerPlay is now completely broken as a money-maker and is 5x the painful chore that it used to be. I used to be able to manage around 800 merits per hour, but was only able to pull off 200 merits per hour tonight after several hours of consistent applied effort.

Let's see:

First, interdictions are now much harder. You can now actually quite easily fail based on the mechanics alone even without the bug, throwing you out of supercruise, forcing hull damage, and giving you a long wait timer.

Second, the lovely spaz-out UI interdiction bug is still there and seems to happen more often than I remember.

Third, there's now way more spawns of Federal Navy ships that you don't get any merits for, which compete for your actual merit granting spawns.

Fourth, NPCs now interdict each other and quite often interdict the targets you want to fight!

Finally, not sure what it is, but NPCs seem to be dealing more damage and are more threatening in general. Several times tonight, I had to run from fights that I used to not have to run from. It feels like damage has been slightly increased from NPCs across the board, but it may have just been me tilting now that I realized I have another 2500 merits to go before tomorrow's reset which is probably not going to happen with these lovely mechanics being the way they are.

Congrats , you've made your game actively worse.

At this point, if I fail to get my remaining merits tomorrow, I am planning on cutting my losses and never touching PowerPlay again. What a god awful, grindy, boring experience. I take back all of my previous praise that I posted about it.

edit: Oh and figured I'd mention that someone from IRC said that the A Lavigny bonus to bounties has been tamed down as expected too, so there's that.

Yeah, my findings are p much the same. I'll add a few:

It seems that super-undermined systems spawn much much fewer PowerPlay NPCs.
Powerplay NPCs spawn in smaller numbers, usually after non PowerPlay NPCs. So the time to find a target has increased 5-10 times.
NPCs in general seem to spawn all over, instead of mostly at the star unlike before. Some systems have a ton of stations, so you might be missing out a ton of viable targets that are too far off sensor range.

I was close to my merit goal, so I grit my teeth (and relearned how to interdict all over again) to get there, but this pretty much kills powerplay for me. So this is my last week.

To be honest, we were wondering how long the gravy train was going to last. On the other hand, it feels like they either don't want anyone at rank 5 or playing this at all.

Edit: To expand, I still don't believe rank 5 is attainable by hauling mcguffins (without spending money on them, which requires money to begin with) or doing literally any other powerplay activity. There being no other economic incentive to powerplay - which I firmly believe was why there were so many merit farmers - will, I believe, ensure that only the ~roleplayers~ keep at it.

Chrysophylax fucked around with this message at 08:58 on Oct 7, 2015

# ¿ Oct 7, 2015 08:50

Chrysophylax: Dec 28, 2006; ._.

DarthBlingBling posted:

Please tell me people on the brown sea are getting angry about all this

Idk about the forums but on reddit there are petitions going about reverting these changes. Frustration abounds about merit farming being super slow, and traders being salty about interdictions they can't escape.

# ¿ Oct 7, 2015 10:49

Chrysophylax: Dec 28, 2006; ._.

QuantaStarFire posted:

So what's the procedure for applying the 15% discount? Strip/sell your ship, relog, buy new everything? Wanna reduce the insurance on my rare trading/explorer Asp.

Yeah you'd have to sell your ship and re-buy it at Rui space. The discount also only applies for one death-rebuy cycle.

# ¿ Oct 7, 2015 12:35

Chrysophylax: Dec 28, 2006; ._.

DarthBlingBling posted:

I saw a post earlier about a guy complaining that NPCs are harder now - their AI was changed, improved, and things do more hull damage in general now - and that his Cobra could no longer take wings of 3 vipers and how he was finally gonna have to give in to the SCB meta

I mean I don't understand what game they think they're playing, it's like a totally different experience from mine

# ¿ Oct 7, 2015 15:16

Chrysophylax: Dec 28, 2006; ._.

BTW guys, mining at a HazRES is amazing. The yields are spectacular, you can fill your ship in almost no time. We just had a session with a few of us providing cover while others mined. Great fun

# ¿ Oct 8, 2015 04:12

Chrysophylax: Dec 28, 2006; ._.

Sekenr posted:

CQC players: Whats your opinion on plasma repeaters? Yes or no? I can't make up my mind, damage is great but it doesn't seem to be useful at any kind of distance.

I don't like them because of the distance thing, far too easy to just miss everything.

Kryopsis posted:

Is the Viper actually better than Cobra? I am currently in Gende where there are 3 RES within short range of a High-Tech station so I figure I'll just stick around until I have enough for a Vulture. I have a Cobra with B-class everything but if Viper is better for combat, I might as well go for that.

It is much better, on account of being a smaller target with more powerful shields. The armament is the same, but the placement is much better (which, to be fair, doesn't make much of a difference for PVE).

Power is tight, so sacrifices will have to be made somewhere. Good opportunity to learn about power management if you haven't already.

# ¿ Oct 10, 2015 16:04

Chrysophylax: Dec 28, 2006; ._.

timn posted:

Has anyone played around much with the new federal ships? They look sweet but on paper I don't really see the niche they're supposed to fill. The assault ship looks a bit worse than the imperial clipper at about the same price, and the gunship seems significantly worse than the python at only a marginally lower price. Is there something else to them in actual use?

The following regards their roles in PVE, unless noted otherwise.

The FAS is probably gonna be a really good PVP ship. Its weak shields make even the Clipper look good by comparison. With the Clipper having the exact same weapon loadout, and actually being able to pack more shields and much better internals, it's not even a fair fight. So no role filled here

The Gunship is just a disaster. If it cost as much as the FAS, it could be a pretty cool, cheaper Python. But it doesn't, so when you take into account the ridiculous lengths you go to to get decent shields on it to get to 'middling python build' while sacrificing utility slot viability, paired with the worst maneuverability, it's just bad. For much the same reasons, it's also bad for PVP.

Both ships seem to have an 'armor tank' gimmick to them, which doomed them right from the start - with no way to repair out in the field, you just cannot sustain a fight for long; my testing of the FAS, complete hull tank, lasted me about 20 mins at a CZ - unless you don't care about spending (admittedly not a lot of) money repairing armor, this doesn't begin to compare to shield tanks. Too bad, both look really cool.

E: The Gunship took the Fer-de-Lance's throne on the worst jump distance and autonomy

Chrysophylax fucked around with this message at 22:40 on Oct 11, 2015

# ¿ Oct 11, 2015 22:26

Chrysophylax: Dec 28, 2006; ._.

Beer4TheBeerGod posted:

Why are short bursts more competitive than FA off permanently?

Sometimes you just want to go where your nose is pointed at without inputting thrust on 3 axes at once.

slidebite posted:

What's the best way to find a high-tech world if nothing shows up when you try to filter by economies in galaxy view? I'm in the middle of nowhere but I want to load up on gold, etc and bring back other good stuff. Also want to more properly outfit my python.

Check if you don't have some other filter applied - it's easy to have multiple ones, it doesn't show all of them at once - otherwise it sounds like you're doing everything properly.

Chrysophylax fucked around with this message at 18:21 on Oct 13, 2015

# ¿ Oct 13, 2015 18:13

Chrysophylax: Dec 28, 2006; ._.

Dante80 posted:

e-mail conversation

That is very interesting, thanks for sharing!

One of my pet peeves with people on the brown sea is the constant claiming that FA-Off is required or something, like "Elite NPCs use FA-Off and that's why they're so hard". Glad to have my feelings on the matter validated by the flight model designer :unsmith:

# ¿ Oct 13, 2015 18:52

Chrysophylax: Dec 28, 2006; ._.

Shine posted:

Driving around a space mountain with low gravity for no reason is extremely my poo poo.

Now add 12 goons racing on a canyon :getin:

# ¿ Oct 15, 2015 03:19

Chrysophylax: Dec 28, 2006; ._.

Adult Sword Owner posted:

I thought they meant...rank I guess? My laser is actually C and 3, so I thought everyone was talking about C3.

likes to make it confusing like that. Guns come in only one rating for fixed, one for gimballed and one for turreted.

Although I hear there used to be variants that they removed.

# ¿ Oct 15, 2015 07:32

Chrysophylax: Dec 28, 2006; ._.

Adult Sword Owner posted:

I''m switching modes but the offered missions aren't changing

I'm only up to ~24m of smuggling runs

why

If you're switching to open, and there are others there, they might be holding an instance open - it won't actually refresh the board. If this is the case, try private/solo instead.

# ¿ Oct 16, 2015 02:43

Chrysophylax: Dec 28, 2006; ._.

SynthOrange posted:

It's really disappointing though. I feel like I've already seen everything there is to see. :\

There really isn't a lot to do and see. There's no structure and no goals except those you make for yourself. If the flying of spaceships in combat or whatever doesn't interest you then...

Chrysophylax fucked around with this message at 03:04 on Oct 19, 2015

# ¿ Oct 19, 2015 02:55

Chrysophylax: Dec 28, 2006; ._.

Met posted:

I don't know why people freak out over these all the time. They're stupid but they're no Hutton orbital. That's 15 minutes right there. There's plenty I can find to do with a break.

Personally I have a problem with the concept of having to take a break because you're gonna spend 15 minutes in the darkness with nothing to do.

I think supercruise is the weakest game mechanic in the game, far too slow

EDIT: A big part of the problem is just how incredibly low your acceleration is when you're within 2000Ls (yes, two thousand) of any stellar object, and your top speed in those conditions. You'll be approaching a secondary star at 15kLs and you're slowing down to the sub-hundreds of c.

Like, in some systems, like Cockaigne, where the RES is 2kLs from the station, it's faster to hyperjump the 10 light-year round trip since the station is closer to the star. I don't think a choice like this should ever be present in a video game, I'd just make supercruise a lot faster, by a factor of 5 or so.

EDIT 2: In my perfect version of the game, you'd have point-to-point mini jumps. Some goon suggested this, basically you'd jump into a system and land at the nav beacon. From there, you'd plot in-system jumps, with the option for supercruising if you don't want to be scanned by cops on the way out. The nav beacons create a perfect bottleneck if you want pvp, and it would remove most of the tedium in the game

Chrysophylax fucked around with this message at 03:17 on Oct 19, 2015

# ¿ Oct 19, 2015 03:06

Chrysophylax: Dec 28, 2006; ._.

SynthOrange posted:

Supercruise autopilot.

I'd trade if there wasnt one type of trade run that blows everything else out of the water or if others were even remotely profitable.

I'd enjoy combat more if there were more than 1 type of viable gun.

I'd enjoy exploration more if supercruise wasnt dumb as hell.

I'd mine butHAHAHA NO MINING IS BORING AS gently caress.

I can see there could be a good game under there it's just buried under junk and poo poo.

I agree with you. It's impressive, really, how despite you being 100% right, this is still a very enjoyable game to me.

The major problem with this game is how schizophrenic :frontear:

is. Their original, 1.0 release, was pretty much Elite 2: Frontier in 2014.

Elite 2 was a game where you *had* to trade. Your lightweight, long range, fast, Eagle mk.I had to haul to make money. Your fighters hauled, every ship hauled. Dedicated fighter ships were, in lore, intended to be police or fleet forces, and were pretty much jokes in the game - you couldn't make money with them.

Also in the lore is the meaning of the Elite rating - there was only combat, but mostly only traders and pirates had combat. In game, this was represented by you being intercepted by random pirates carrying 50-200cr of bounty, when your haul was worth several dozens of times that. This was also the state of Elite: Dangerous on release. Simply put, combat was never a viable profession.

In E:D, this was represented by the way certain guns work. You rightly point out that there's only one type of viable gun... today. It wasn't the case in the intended game vision, I don't think. Because you earned not even enough money to cover ammo or fuel, trading was what you did to support your shootmans time. Because you had major disincentives to shootmans, it didn't bother you if torpedoes came one per launcher, missiles 12 per launcher, literally 30 railgun bullets, or 100 cannon rounds. You weren't meant to have more than low intensity combat.

At some point, they realize players don't want the doesn't-even-rate-as-good-as-Euro-Truck-simulator trading borefest, and want actual combat. What you get is NPC whack-a-mole that actually pays, but since it requires more than 30 goddamn rail bullets, and more than 2 minutes, it obsoleted all ammo-requiring guns instantly. So far they haven't rebalanced this.

So I guess my point is they had a goal, and accomplished it, and are veeeeeeery slowly coming around to fixing what, to us, is obviously wrong. They clearly don't understand what a 2014/2015 gaming audience expects from games, even sperglord flight simulators.

Edit: That said, if you PVP, all those guns suddenly come back to life, and work really well.

Chrysophylax fucked around with this message at 03:34 on Oct 19, 2015

# ¿ Oct 19, 2015 03:30

Chrysophylax: Dec 28, 2006; ._.

Adult Sword Owner posted:

The disconnect between quality of lasers and quality of hard-rounds is part of the problem

Oh and also things like "cannon absolutely loving sucks because manual aim is a nightmare and gimbaled can't track for poo poo"

Cannons work only if the ship you're attacking is very large, Asp and above. But to be fair, cannons are poo poo guns by design - they're the low power, low energy variants of the multicannons. High punch, low bullet velocity, easy to miss with.

IMO, lasers are good only because everything else is so goddamn unusable. They're, by and large, too energy hungry for the damage they do, even compared to stuff like railguns and multicannons. That is, you can't fire them for very long if you're not really attempting to balance your distributor settings - as soon as you get your rear end in an anaconda or python and you *don't* have 4 pips to WEP, you'll see just how little you can actually fire your 3 or 4 pulse lasers. Your mighty Anaconda becomes a paper tiger - indestructible, but incapable of dealing damage.

If you compare it to the cookie cutter FDL PVP build that is all multicannons and PAC, you can fire forever and a day with no pips to WEP. This allows you to keep 4 pips to SYS and 2 to ENG for extended periods, making you a far tougher opponent than you seem at first.

So I think there is some thought by :frontear:

to the way the weapons work. It's *so close* to being balanced, if only you could have ammo modules, or literally multiply by 10-100 the ammo counts

Edit: changed a word, added others

Chrysophylax fucked around with this message at 03:44 on Oct 19, 2015

# ¿ Oct 19, 2015 03:39

Chrysophylax: Dec 28, 2006; ._.

Hamburger Test posted:

So now that smuggling isn't miles better than everything else. Is there a way to hunt pirates that is less tedious than just flying around looking for "X Signal Source" and hoping it is a pirate and also something you can defeat in a cobra?

I'm trying to get some imperial reputation so that I can get an Imperial Courier, now that the Asp is no longer as attractive.

Resource extraction sites are where you'd do this for money.

TorakFade posted:

Much luck with rerolling the instance needed though, at least before haz res were introduced...

Which you still need to reroll because :frontear:

cannot get anything their players ask for right. They still spawn eagles (in wings tho!), wings of couriers, and poo poo that is not worth your time. It's better, but only marginally.

Chrysophylax fucked around with this message at 20:56 on Oct 19, 2015

# ¿ Oct 19, 2015 20:50

Chrysophylax: Dec 28, 2006; ._.

Sankis posted:

Is there somewhere I can read specifics on Smuggling/Salvage missions? Are these something 1.4 introduced? Are there any other major changes in features/how to grind money that I need to know?

Salvage missions are missions that issue a special permit for legal salvage. It's a special flavor of Weak Signal Source, nothing fancy.

The smuggling was a short-lived thing. They're just missions for hauling illicit cargo. 1.4 introduced long range ones, which scaled pay with distance. Turns out, taking those missions from exclaves 500ly from the bubble paid millions. It was nerfed 3 hours ago

Sankis posted:

Has anything even remotely interesting happened with Jotunheim or was that given up on? Is the best ship for exploring still the Asp?

It was given up on, but we have our own faction now. Check the PGS thread for details.

The Anaconda has the highest possible jump range, but the Asp is still the best all rounder.

Edit: I don't know the specifics since 1.2 up to now, but mining is now profitable and somewhat on par with other activities. The new Hazardous resource extraction sites provide an interesting opportunity - since yields are higher at a RES, you can get wings of miners/defenders going, it's great fun. Expect 5-10 mil/hr doing this, if you know what you're doing.

1.3 introduced powerplay, and with it, the absolutely grindiest ways to make money. I hate powerplay and I hate its particular way of grinding, so I'll just say it's not worth the bother.

Chrysophylax fucked around with this message at 21:35 on Oct 19, 2015

# ¿ Oct 19, 2015 21:27

Chrysophylax: Dec 28, 2006; ._.

frank.club posted:

Did they really nerf all other smuggling missions too?

I don't know. I bet they did tho, since it's a :frontear:

nerf - salting the earth

# ¿ Oct 19, 2015 21:31

Chrysophylax: Dec 28, 2006; ._.

timn posted:

And blowing past what content that exists to get to a non-existent end game helps because...?

Because then you can either move on to some other activity or actually enjoy the content that does exist in any ship and configuration you dream, aka playing the sandbox with any/all tools

I've been running missions with a PVP fit FDL because hardmode is super fun when you don't feel the need to min/max all the time (which is a personal failing, I know)

thetechnoloser posted:

Looking at an Asp. Looking to basically stay multi-role, so that I can also dabble in a little CZ if I so do so / defend myself if I get interdicted.

http://coriolis.io/outfit/cobra_mk_iii/24A4E4A3D3A3A4C0s0s24240j0403034501-2f.Iw1-kA==.Aw1-kA==

You won't be able to CZ on an asp, sorry. It doesn't have the shields, the firepower or the internal slots for sustained fighting. It's also almost as large as a Python, which means you'll be a pretty big target at all ranges.

If you're adamant in staying multirole, I suggest something like this - but this is basically an all-missions runner, capable of 1v1 fights. Maybe swap one of the cell banks for more cargo space, if you wanna haul more than fight.

If you want to run CZs, I suggest a Vulture or Courier, at that price range.

Chrysophylax fucked around with this message at 01:47 on Oct 20, 2015

# ¿ Oct 20, 2015 01:13

Chrysophylax: Dec 28, 2006; ._.

Adult Sword Owner posted:

Here we see the majestic Anaconda carefully laying its eggs in a nearby asteroid

So did a few million surprisingly quickly in a Hi mostly because of incidents like above. Buuuut two things

1) Wow I just realized my shield is literal poo poo
2) I run out of power FAST with 4 weapon pips, and I even take massive amounts of heat. What am I doing wrong?

Here is me

http://coriolis.io/outfit/vulture/24A5A4E3D5A4D3C0v0v0k---42f32j4v2h.Iw19kA==.Aw19kA==

Feel free to mock the shields

You're using two large beams with a class 5 distributor, i.e. there's just no way to fire them for long on that ship.

I gotta shame you for that shield situation man :psyduck:

I took the liberty of redoing your build a little, here.

Swapped out a beam for a cannon, which will give you a mightier punch versus armor (just keep close to your enemy), made your shield 2.68 times stronger, gave you a decent cell bank to recharge between fights, gave you a chaff, 2 shield boosters and a much shittier warrant scanner. I also suggested some power priorities.

But to be honest, I'd get rid of the beam - the vulture's power plant is tiny and can't support those sorts of weapons without sacrificing somewhere else - 23.6% of the power available was just guns, in your build.

Try messing around with dual pulse lasers if you want more tank.

Edit: redid the build a little, oversight

Chrysophylax fucked around with this message at 04:11 on Oct 20, 2015

# ¿ Oct 20, 2015 04:07

Chrysophylax: Dec 28, 2006; ._.

Dante80 posted:

Even cooler in concept.

I've been playing since premium beta, and tend to reset my character every three months or so (or in 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 etc etc). I view this as FE2/FFE with friends (ie a niche product), not a persistent MMO where you have to grind to reach an end state, and then beg the developer to add more high end poo poo for you to not get bored.

Then again, I'm weird (necrogamer + astronomy nerd). Just flying around and enjoying the scenery is enough for me at most times. In the end, I just want to remake/relive this intro.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbegNmKRZUM

Maybe in 2017 we'll be there.

We're not in disagreement, really, I have pretty much the exact same view. I too played FE2 and FFE and that's all I wanted out of E:D and for the most part got it.

But I enjoyed FE2 a lot more when my brother got me a save with almost infinite money, and I could just buy anything and everything and do anything I wanted :shobon:

E: I guess what I'm trying to say is, I dislike the fact that in order to experience all the ships and configurations you have to put in a lot of time. I view that as the sandbox impeding me from playing with it, and in this case it's just ridiculous the level of grind you gotta do if you want to play with any ship past the Vulture.

The ships themselves stop being 'better than' at that point too, which makes the whole grind even more pointless, I really don't get it.

Chrysophylax fucked around with this message at 05:21 on Oct 20, 2015

# ¿ Oct 20, 2015 05:16

Chrysophylax: Dec 28, 2006; ._.

Sekenr posted:

So - I have about a 100 mil in free assets, the question is trade Python or T9? 250 cargo space isn't a very big improvement over ~200 that my Clipper can carry. So - is outpost landing preferable over 500 loving tons, opinions goons?

A trader might know with more certainty, but despite being boring as all get out, the T9 prints money - I've heard profits of 2 million per leg of a roundtrip aren't uncommon.

Outpost landing allows you to trade certain goods for higher profit margins, but nothing that gets close to having twice the cargo space.

# ¿ Oct 20, 2015 08:35

Chrysophylax: Dec 28, 2006; ._.

Ok so I made the shittiest video that tries to illustrate translation vs rotation using big ships. Hopefully it shows just how important it is to spend as little time as possible turning.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DReR08mjP_c

Pictured: abusing the anaconda's nearly perfect vertical/horizontal boost capabilities, and strong thrusters in general. Throttle set to the blue zone at all times.

# ¿ Oct 20, 2015 21:01

Chrysophylax: Dec 28, 2006; ._.

LCL-Dead posted:

I'm not following.

My methods: I'm almost always in the blue zone unless chasing, even then I'm careful about speeding up on a target that's more than likely about to flip a bitch. I make very liberal use of my thrusters in every maneuvering situation (Slight evidence a page or two back in the sidewinder being rammed by a python video, that was me in the vulture). However, I never use FA Off or if I do it's only for a few seconds until I've reoriented onto the target.

What precisely are you trying to showcase with that video?

Adult Sword Owner posted:

translation vs rotation

The difference between trying to rotate your ship vs pointing in the best direction in the first place I guess?

Exactly this. On larger ships, this is something you almost always want to do because your pitch rates are much lower than on smaller ones. Once you're facing your enemy, it's easier most of the time to keep them there by physically moving your ship than it is by rotating to keep up.

Nostalgia4Infinity posted:

Kinda makes me want to kit out a combatconda. God knows I have the $$$ for it.

It's not a terribly effective fighter, but it's nigh unkillable and really loving fun to fly, it moves like it doesn't weigh 1400 tons

# ¿ Oct 20, 2015 22:29

Chrysophylax: Dec 28, 2006; ._.

LCL-Dead posted:

Rotate as in yaw or rotate as in rolling and bringing the nose up? I'm of the habit of continuously making sure my target is in the upper center portion of my screen via roll and pitch.. cause Vulture's can't really shoot down.

Any rotation, yaw, pitch or roll. Keeping your target in the upper portion of your cockpit is smart tho, since for the most part it's the zone with the most unimpeded view.

# ¿ Oct 20, 2015 22:46

Chrysophylax: Dec 28, 2006; ._.

And because there isn't a clear way in game to communicate with your faction. Everything needs to be done through the brown sea/reddit, which I'm sure only covers part of the playerbase.

They designed a co-operative game of risk, neglected to give players the tools to communicate

# ¿ Oct 21, 2015 12:10

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 12:45

Chrysophylax: Dec 28, 2006; ._.

Beer4TheBeerGod posted:

How do you abuse thrusters using FA off?

Gonna suggest an alternate to Paramemetic's thruster abuse.

The clipper is one of the ships that keeps drifting if you do a turn in any direction, owing to its very weak vertical thrusters - this means that past a point, your pitch becomes very stiff. Its acceleration isn't all that hot also, so this means that changing directions "normally" is a bad idea since you'll be a sitting duck for a good 5-10 seconds. This is, I believe, what earns it a 2/10 agility score, even though it pitches and yaws better than its size suggests.

Instead, do a space Immelmann turn, like so:

Most ships do those turns normally, but the clipper can't, it'll just keep going forward at the 'A' point. You'll turn around but you'll lose a ton of speed.

Turn FA-off at the moment you want to turn around, and keep your throttle on. Alternatively, turn the throttle off and boost. Boosting accomplishes this faster for obvious reasons.

Edit: words

Edit2: One of the reasons why this works is the speed limit ships have. You won't just keep drifting once you boost since you start countering your original inertia owing to this limit.

Chrysophylax fucked around with this message at 17:39 on Oct 22, 2015

# ¿ Oct 22, 2015 17:20

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