Official Forums = Depressing

[Walter]

I on the other hand think the 3d printing makes a whole lot of sense.
In fact it's one of the first things that kind of makes sense.

We are already at the point where we can print all kinds of complex machinery, not just in plastic but also alloys and this game is supposedly 1300 years in the future.
It makes a lot more sense than the fsd and space lasers.
it even explains current repair facilities, afms etc.

Quite right.

By the same criterion, any inorganic product can be reproduced in the same way: no further need for traders (and no fetch and carry missions either, except for raw materials); no further need for outfitting bays - just drop in your blueprint for the item you can afford; no further need for shipyards - just request your ship specs at any starport and have it built on request.

Oh, and Official Forums = Pond Life

Thank you very much. It must be wonderful to be so evolved.

[smartroad]

I don't get 3D printing in Elite (says the owner/builder of two ). As Early Bird says, if it is possible to 'print' - fabricate is the more correct term really - a small fighter with all its complex systems then there is no need to transfer many items, they can just be printed. All traders need to transport is the grey goo to make the stuff with.

Why can we 3D print fighters but not SRVs? Why can't I just print a new ship, why buy one?

I have long been wanting ship transport, but done in a realistic way - i.e. there is a delay on it getting to you. Maybe not the same as if you were to fly it yourself, but there should be a wait otherwise it is magic and as others have said DB is always on about the science underpinning Elite.

[Walter]

I have long been wanting ship transport, but done in a realistic way - i.e. there is a delay on it getting to you. Maybe not the same as if you were to fly it yourself, but there should be a wait otherwise it is magic and as others have said DB is always on about the science underpinning Elite.

Pretty well sums up 75% of the main forum thread. But it will make no difference to FD's plan. (When I say 'plan', I'm using the term very loosely.)

[Roger Wilco Jr]

Thankfully there is Mobius to avoid the PKers who will transfer their FDLs to blow up explorers. I think I'll indefinitely put off my plans to go back into open. Just knowing that I'd be sharing a galaxy with them is enough to keep me away.

[Walter]

Thankfully there is Mobius to avoid the PKers who will transfer their FDLs to blow up explorers. I think I'll indefinitely put off my plans to go back into open. Just knowing that I'd be sharing a galaxy with them is enough to keep me away.

The end of Open has been predicted.

[TorTorden]

Quite right.

By the same criterion, any inorganic product can be reproduced in the same way: no further need for traders (and no fetch and carry missions either, except for raw materials); no further need for outfitting bays - just drop in your blueprint for the item you can afford; no further need for shipyards - just request your ship specs at any starport and have it built on request.

Indeed, there really wouldn't be a point to transport anything but either elemental or organic material, but is it really that big a deal, and isn't that oversimplifying greatly ?

We see now time and time again where companies take for instance USA made steel, ship to Germany to be built into something, then shipped to China\India so the thing get mounted on another thing, then shipped back again.
So why wouldn't some systems end up with a surplus of some things, or they simply not have the blueprints (due to patents and proprietary tech) thus needing to have the actual goods shipped to them.
We can then RP that ship transfer is a special service for CMDR's of the Pilots federation and not available to regular plebs, and thus exempt via special deals with the Pilots Federation.

As for "printing" fighters and not SRV's.
I simply suspect they (FD) didn't think of it before now, so I wouldn't be to surprised if the buggy also shift to a synthesis regime.
Would make a lot of sense for explorers, I always thought you should be able to synthesise a buggy.

Honestly what I find most ridiculous about this whole discussion is how people seem to think the game is scientific or realistic, it's not.
We fly space planes in a basically arcade like flight model that although it's a lot more involved and better developed than No man's sky but still, we aren't futzing with orbital mechanics (I kind of wish we would, but I guess we have Kerbal for that) and combat takes place at <3km range, not even fighter planes of today keep to such close range.

The scientific side of this game started and ended with the stellar forge.
The rest is simply game mechanics hidden in scifi (heavy on the fiction, I would say it's borderline space fantasy but not quite)

[Roger Wilco Jr]

I'm still bored. We have a tornado warning, and I don't want my head in VR, so I'll add my 2-cents.

This ship transfer & 3D printing has been pretty well hashed over on the official forums. I guess I could actually go for 3D printing. With space age polymers, I could see frame pieces, panels, cockpit glass, and even the seat fabric being printed. If I stretch, I could even see electronic circuits being printed. But not all at one time, especially for something as large as even a small fighter, and certainly not an Anaconda. For 3D printing, I'll have assume it is parts and submodules, and there are service mechs that assemble the fighter. Same for the AFMU. And I can do that, regardless of what FD says.

Now they had material transfer in Willy Wonka, so I assume we can have that in the future - not! I'll assume they are actually flying the ships, and we're just supposed to ignore the impossibility of it. It won't matter for me, as I'll only be transferring ships if I'm moving, although I'm sure I'll eventually cheat.


What I've been depressed about is where the game has been going in general. I'll put forward the following - Imagine that if since release, what if this had been happening?:

We didn't lose the cool silent running feature.

They developed a proper crime and punishment system to punish PKers, rather than reward and glorify them.

They didn't make it too easy to make mega credits.

They didn't have this crazy interdiction mechanic, or constantly being interdicted just because you have some cargo.

Wings actually worked, all the time, every time.

Conflict zones weren't lame furballs, but they had proper warzones - probably requiring a military career using military supplied ships.

Killing ships took longer, and killing big ships took a lot longer.

Rather than RES sites, have miners randomly in the rings and respond to distress calls to kill pirates.

There was a proper way to handle local and multi-system politics rather than Power Play.

Instead of landing only on airless planets, we could land on earthlikes.

We didn't get RNGineers and all that crap.

We could hire NPC escorts.

We could fly escort missions.

We could join NPC convoys.

We could have first person experiences. Walking and driving around stations. While your ship is being serviced, and cargo loaded and offloaded, you can visit contacts to get paid and missions, or visit the bar or black market. And etc.

You could walk around your ship and jump into a ship launched fighter or take over a turret.

Instead of magically getting transported to a station when you "die", have some escape pod game play - be captured by slavers or rescued by S&R or other players, or rescue other players.

Being able to jump into a station fighter patrol and respond to crimes in the system.

Have a proper insurance system, which could also cover cargo if you wanted.

There were rock hermits and landable asteroids.

Your visual ship damage was persistent.

And how about fixing the bugs before releasing new features.


Anyway that's a short list, and I'm sure there are lots of Q/L improvements that could have been made, instead of having your ship get damaged by firing off an SCB. Other than populating earthlikes with cities and life, most of these things could have easily been implemented instead of complex BGS, PP, and RNG stuff.

I think it would be a lot more fun play, and less of a grind, if there were all these other options for game play. And what if there were more delays while things were happening, as long as you had something else to do - how about jet skis on the station lakes? I'd find that more realistic, w/o resorting to months to travel between planets and years to travel between systems.

And finally, I'd like to stop hearing about FD constantly re-balancing things. How about using some common sense, performing some actual testing, and releasing something that works. Would that be so hard?

[CMDR Abil Midena]

...WTF is wrong with people these days!

Because to world is full of dicks!

...and there's no consequences for being one, especially in ED.

Bold part added by me to complete a thought.

Killing a non-wanted player should carry serious consequences in game. Lots have been suggested, and none have been implemented.

Also imagine if some of those a-holes had to physically sit next to the person they were trolling. My guess is there would be a lot less trolling.

[bl00dh0und9]

If ship transfers is a make or break for people than I don't know what to say. I mean sure it's bizarre but it's not game breaking. I don't play open and that's really why we're here anyhow isn't it? As far as the science aspect it's always seemed to me that the science and realism is on the background portion, with distances, orbits, etc. etc. The game takes places 1000+ years in the future, how can we 'sim' flight mechanics for craft that virtually no one has any experience in today, let alone what it will be like then? Sure while there are things that could be in the game and aren't, keep in mind the game isn't 'complete' and is continuing to grow through the expansions. I've always been expectant of there to be more content over time and have taken that into consideration when I purchased the game. It's not like they came out and said, "Hey guys you can do everything ever anywhere right now." It's a growing and expanding game. Are there things that could be fixed? Yes. But I'm also not making or working on a game that has trillions of objects in the game. Or any game for that matter.
As far as some of the above complaints:
-silent running is still in the game
-atmospheres are coming in the future
-PK'ers receive in game bounties as do all players who commit crimes, they glorify themselves (but that's why we're not in open
-interdictions while annoying it's a pirates way of life, otherwise the only way to pirate would be at stations as you could only do it out of supercruise and we'd be back at the griefing mechanic. I will say that it would be nice if they didn't know I was carrying cargo as soon as I entered a system, rather they pull me, then scan, then react accordingly. But it's AI and AI always knows everything.
- we can already purchase military ships, whether you choose to use them is up to the player, and the combat ranking would be your 'military' path
-politics, it's politics and I keep my nose out of that
-First person stuff is coming
-I personally would rather not choose to float in the voids of space when my ship blows up hoping someone comes to 'rescue' me. At that point you'd be at the mercy of AI and as we're aware it's hard to program good AI. and is it really 'realistic' to have someone magically come and save you whenever you[r ship] die[s]? you're in the voids of space. You'd also be at the mercy of never being rescued.
--- I do find the upcoming passenger missions kinda entertaining with the whole 'happiness' level of passengers. They said the cabins have escape pods, so if you're passengers aren't happy they can leave, to prevent you from potentially hijacking them etc etc.
So passenger A: "Man this pilot sucks. I'm not anywhere near my target destination. I think what I'll do is use this escape pod to float in the voids of space indefinitely."
-The USS typically alert you to crimes taking place. While I understand you're looking for more of a 'scanner' type thing that says hey here's a crime happening go stop it. the uss are typically a crime (referring to the one's that actually have ships)
-What can we do on an asteroid?
-Killing ships all depends on the ship you're using. If I'm in my 'Vette I don't want it to take the same amount of firepower to bring down an Asp as it would say a Python. Damage is all dependent on the ship's setup.
-Engineers I get the frustration with the RNG aspect but my thought is they're applying experimental upgrades so the numbers will change.
-I think it's nice to have in the game more easy ways to earn credits. As there are only a few spots and it's not like it's hey go here deliver some stuff have an anaconda. It's more hey deliver this stuff repeatedly, here's an anaconda, and by the way you're going to spend about an hour or more just delivering the 'crap' and roughly 30 minutes just traveling to these systems. I personally did use Ceos/Sothis for a bit but I've found a system, that if I'm not diddling, I can make comparable amounts of money for only 2-3 system visits that are right next door.

I'm only mentioning these cause these are the only complaints that weren't about the ship transfer/3d printing, so don't think I'm singling you out. Again these are my thoughts/feelings about these specific things and I'm in no way saying yo'rer wrong, just my 2credits. I will also say that I don't have to deal with the 'wing' frustrations cause, well I haven't winged. Sure they could work on some things before implementing new things but I'm sure they're on a time frame that needs adhering to as well as trying to improve things. Sure things can get stale after a while, but so does every game. They all end up turning into doing the same thing over and over again.
I've also seen [not necessarily here] the complaint about stars not having details and what not. I mean I guess but it's an effing star. They sit in space, and burn what else should they be doing? We haven't exactly seen [irl] other stars up close, just the one. Which has some dark spots and burns and spews jets of fire, which the game already has on its stars.
I am a bit biased into this game as well because, well I have not found any game that is a 'sim' of this galaxy we call home. No other game (I've found) allows me to walk into my front yard, find a star, find out what it is, hop in the game and go visit it. Or allows me to travel to the opposite side of the galaxy into the unknown. I came into the game in XB GPP and it warned me that only buy if I'm okay with the current state and expect the plausibility of the game not changing. I had never even heard of the game or the series for that matter before it came to XB1. [I do have a game capable PC, but don't have the proper space to for properly setting it up, so only really use it for strategy games and DCS]. I went into it with tempered expectations not even aware that the game was going to be growing over time. I was hesitant at first, ended up buying it, loving it and eventually moving on. I'd come back to it every so often for brief stints and ultimately spent six/seven months away. Since I started playing it again I can honestly say that I have not been interested in any other games, and have not even really played any other games for the past couple months. I also don't see that changing any time soon although I may dabble with Battlefield and Titanfall, and Dishonored (I'll probably pause Elite for that no question).
Anywho just my 2credits and I think I've typed enough in this post as my 'Conda has been patiently waiting for at least an hour in dock for me to take it to Farseer to try and get her up to 50+LY.

[Phillipus]

Listened to Sandro on Lave Radio. He's sticking to his guns, instant ship transfer is here to stay. Good. "Ship Printing" is an unnecessary explanation. Looked at the big thread on the official forums about this - mass hysteria. Looking forward to instant ship transfer as a thing in October.