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NQ I am extremely disappointed with wrecks.


Musclethorpe

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NQ, I had hoped you had taken this to heart.

 

 

I had hoped we were being offered an alternative to mining/manufacturing and courier work. A chance to play as a humble scavenger. If this expectation was either misguided or unrealistic, please read no further. However, if this was the goal...

 

...what exactly were you going for? It's been a week and I have roamed PvP space, both in-between planets, and out in random directions for a couple thousand SU, and have not found so much as an XS wreck. It feels as if you took your implementation of asteroid finding and went in the complete opposite direction to the extreme. Unless the goal was to just have us chance upon a wreck, here are a few reasons scavenging is completely untenable.

 

- Detection distance: Space, as you know, is very big, and 2 SU is "needle in a haystack" metrics.

 

- Rate of travel: This problem is two-fold. One, if traveling at maximum speed you are doing about 2.5 SU per minute (forgive my math if I am off). This means that you have less than a two minute window on your hours long search to see a wreck IF it intersects your search sphere right down the middle. The second issue being braking distance. Due to the detection range being so small, even a slight delay in seeing a wreck dead ahead could lead to you losing it in the backtracking process. Sure, we could reduce our cruising speed, but now we are covering less ground in an already astronomical search.

 

- Spotting the wreck: As I mentioned you have a very small window of opportunity to even see a wreck in the perfect conditions. Are we expected to stare at our screens the entire time we are searching? Sure, some one may (perhaps already have) write some LUA to make an audible alarm if a radar contact pops up, but it hardly seems reasonable to have to rely on that. Slow-boating anywhere is an hours long process and to be expected to sit in your pilot seat staring at space is completely unreasonable.

 

- Number of wrecks: Only you know how many are truly out there, but I will speak to the type of density needed to reasonably satisfy a scrapper such as myself. Over the course of, say, a four hour play session, I would hope to see roughly 2-3 wrecks. They don't need to be "What a haul!", but I do need to see something for my efforts.

 

In a game that has all but zero PvE, this is a great opportunity to add some that doesn't require AI, but we need reasonable tools to succeed! Increasing detection distance significantly doesn't meaningfully affect PvP (*ahem* such as it is) due to lock-on distances remaining unchanged, and this would be just the simplest of solutions. If I'm the only one who feels this way go ahead and ignore me, but if there are others out there that feel the same way, please speak up now!

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You're not wrong.

 

DU desperately needs some form of exploration mechanic post-Demeter!

 

It's really weird to have this vast sandbox with so much focus on shipbuilding...but then there's not much reason to fly your ship except between your tiles and the market? This definitely needs tuning. NQ is tragically stuck in the past if they think this sort of gameplay will scale today in 2022. 

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I too am disappointed with the space wreck system as it’s currently implemented. When I read about them in the dev blog, I was expecting frequent spawns that would open up a new salvaging loop. I also thought that they would be relatively lucrative wrecks that fairly compensated salvagers for their time (relative to the other game loops). However, I spent over 16 hours searching for wrecks after the patch dropped and didn’t find a single one. I was then told that space wrecks are something to be stumbled upon rather than actively searched for.
 

 I am very disappointed that this is the case and I have given up on looking for these wrecks until something changes.

 

Suggestions to make space wrecks more interestIng and enjoyable:

 

-Procedural spawns of the wrecks in the paths of transiting vessels at random time intervals (within, say, once every 1-2 hours).

-A specialized abandoned construct radar that has a passive range of 10+ SU.

-Exclusive elements that can only be found from salvaged wrecks (i.e. a new variant on existing elements or a new tier of elements that cannot be manufactured.

-Alternatively, exclusive schematics of these element variants.
-Unique ship spawns that have buffed attributes compared to what is normally available in the game world (i.e. lvl 6 equivalents of handling buffs)

-Or, just more frequent spawns that have a higher payout to match other activities in-game.

Edited by Sostraphaios
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I haven't done any wreck searching myself, but I agree with previous posters. Make salvaging a viable game loop for people to enjoy.

 

However - the game also needs an element sink. Once built, a ship is forever unless you PvP. There's such a huge amount of elements in player's pockets right now it's not even funny.

 

Add wear and tear to elements and let us RECYCLE them into the a percentage of the parts they were made of (not ore). This would open up for another game loop between salvager and manufacturer.

Edited by Yoarii
typo
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19 minutes ago, Yoarii said:

I haven't done any wreck searching myself, but I agree with previous posters. Make salvaging a viable game loop for people to enjoy.

 

However - the game also needs an element sink. Once built, a ship is forever unless you PvP. There's such a huge amount of elements in player's pockets right now it's not even funny.

 

Add wear and tear to elements and let us RECYCLE them into the a percentage of the parts they were made of (not ore). This would open up for another game loop between salvager and manufacturer.

 

One thing too, is now that we have shields in, the 3 lives seem less like a good idea tbh.  Maybe add more HP but just 1 life would add to that element sink at least for some pvp.  The salvaging game loop will never be a thing if we dont get a real radar mechanic where we can head out in a random direction and explore, and do so at greater than 2su.  The solar system is too big, radar is too small.  Just the way it is until NQ realizes that adding a legit radar to a space game would be amazing.  Imagine that, actual exploration. 

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To use NQ's own words they want finding wrecks to be an rare and "exclusive" event. Because you know, this game already has so much general content that they needed to add something special for the hard core players.. sigh..

 

And to illustrate how bad it is. I have been playing the game for as long as it has existed, and I have yet to even see one of those fabled wrecks...

And then there is also the small problem of wreck value not even coming close to justifying the time and effort apparently needing to find them. And while the value of the new space wrekcs may be higher (to be confirmed..), it is a moot point if nobody can find them in any sensible way.

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Wrecks are totally disappointing.  I've found an XS core empty and a S core empty with basic weapons whoo!.

 

I've even done a 40SU circle arouMnd Ion and also didnt meet anyone else out there (so no PvP which is fine I guess) and I didnt find anything and boy it took way too long out of my life to do it with 2 SU range.  As much as I am OK ish with the asteroid mechanics I'm surprised they didnt tweak it to include wrecks.  They could have added them to it not so you can 'track one down fully' but at least point you in the right directly and even potentially end it so its 'nearby within 10SU of this location'.

 

Just a thought!

 

Honvik

Premier of the Empire

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"Suppose to be a challenge" Jesus christ they have their heads in the clouds. This is like on Easter I take my kids to the country and put 3 Easter eggs hidden...only over 20 acres. Good luck.

 

Make no mistake, this is them doing the BARE MINIMUM and trying to call it content. There is no challenge, or subsequent reward for aimlessly roaming empty space without some guidance. 

Edited by VandelayIndustries
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3 minutes ago, Honvik said:

As much as I am OK ish with the asteroid mechanics I'm surprised they didnt tweak it to include wrecks.

No. Just no. The DSAT mechanics is, imho, an utter disaster. It's literally fly to position A, then B....to E. It's just a time sink without any fun. It needs to be reworked into something that players can learn to be good at, while having *fun*. *Finding* a wreck should only be half the enjoyment, the hunt for them must the enjoyable too, as should the hunt for asteroids.

 

 

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Personally, I think rather than each element having three lives, it should lose a rank when repaired and only be permanently destroyed  when it reaches basic rank and is destroyed So a rare engine when destroyed and repaired can reach advanced rank. And if *that* is destroyed and repaired, uncommon rank. if *that* is destroyed the device can only be repaired to basic performance. 
If a basic component is destroyed: the end.

basic components are so cheap that they should just die when destroyed..

 

Then there should be some kind of junking mechanism, which converts those broken elements into basic components or even back into materials. It’ll of course have some loss factor involved.

 

some kind of tiered recycling engine that can recycle elements placed into their input container and recover components or materials from the element up to and including the tier of the recycler. 

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3 minutes ago, Yoarii said:

No. Just no. The DSAT mechanics is, imho, an utter disaster. It's literally fly to position A, then B....to E. It's just a time sink without any fun. It needs to be reworked into something that players can learn to be good at, while having *fun*. *Finding* a wreck should only be half the enjoyment, the hunt for them must the enjoyable too, as should the hunt for asteroids.

 

 

 

100% agreed. That's why even a 10su radar that "pings" would be amazing.  That mechanic alone could tie in to so much content.  Was the ping another player ship? A wreck? An asteroid? If it is an asteroid it might be a basic, might be an exotic!! Some actual excitement to explore. And if NQ added other content down the road like some anomaly or something, they already got the radar base gameplay so easier to Incorporate it. So much win.

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5 minutes ago, Maxim Kammerer said:

They could implement something like the mining scanner that returns the distance to the nearest contact only. Most players are familar with that mechanics and maybe the devs could even reuse some code.

 

Ya, honestly anything in that vein where we are given a hint to where to go.  If im on Jago and just pick a random direction, and go "explore" i should be able to find SOMETIHNG in 30min-1hr.  Maybe its a shitty wreck, maybe its a basic asteroid.  But its something, and the pings give us a general direction to go.  And obv i dont think i should ping and see everywhere and 100su away and all that.  But 10su sounds like a good starting point, as I can ping, and if nothing, ok fly 20su or so, do it again.  So given time i can cover at least some ground to do some exploration and find something.

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15 hours ago, Musclethorpe said:

- Spotting the wreck: As I mentioned you have a very small window of opportunity to even see a wreck in the perfect conditions. Are we expected to stare at our screens the entire time we are searching? Sure, some one may (perhaps already have) write some LUA to make an audible alarm if a radar contact pops up, but it hardly seems reasonable to have to rely on that. Slow-boating anywhere is an hours long process and to be expected to sit in your pilot seat staring at space is completely unreasonable.

 

No need to look to the screen for the wreck 24h/7w. Just record (with Lua) any ship u've seen on the radar and your coords at minimal distance to it. It's easilly achievable, if you can't do Lua ask anyone who can do it. Other than that - I agree, wrecks are just too rare. BUT. Without actual element sink it is good.

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2 hours ago, Sawafa said:

No need to look to the screen for the wreck 24h/7w. Just record (with Lua) any ship u've seen on the radar and your coords at minimal distance to it. It's easilly achievable, if you can't do Lua ask anyone who can do it. Other than that - I agree, wrecks are just too rare. BUT. Without actual element sink it is good.

I love the Lua-part of the game. However - that is just another AFK-gaming loop that already exists in form of missions. That kind of game play has no room in a game imho.

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I feel like radar activities should get sort of a complete rework, but since I have not used these system a lot or at all, I never dared to make suggestions:

 

I think the current 2 SU can be okay, but only for a radar that scans spherically.

 

There should be other scanners that are far more involved like scanning cones or planes, they could reach much further... The narrower the search angle the wider the reach, the more volume scanned the longer delay between two scans. But also, importantly, scans don't cross planets or atmospheres (for the really far reaching ones).

 

It's a very rough draft, but what if we made it more like guns, a certain number of different radars can be plugged into a seat. And the act of scanning more involved, cones need to be pointed, spheres can be enlarged at the cost of less frequent updates, planes can be rotated (scanning vertically, horizontally and everything in between).

 

The radar user would sort of have an overlay ingame, with sliders for each radar for finetuning (reach, angle, width, refresh rate etc), and their camera position would factor in as well.

 

Possibly the main radar guy could also relegate his data to gunner seats but that's less important.

 

 

And the DSAT you'd sorta make it like a territory scanner, after like 10-15minutes it tells you how many asteroids, mobile and imobile structures are in a sector (something like 30x30x30 SU).

 

 

 

Sry I'll stop now, I obviously don't know enough about this to make really good suggestions but maybe I gave somebody else a better idea.

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23 hours ago, Musclethorpe said:

NQ, I had hoped you had taken this to heart.

 

 

I had hoped we were being offered an alternative to mining/manufacturing and courier work. A chance to play as a humble scavenger. If this expectation was either misguided or unrealistic, please read no further. However, if this was the goal...

 

...what exactly were you going for? It's been a week and I have roamed PvP space, both in-between planets, and out in random directions for a couple thousand SU, and have not found so much as an XS wreck. It feels as if you took your implementation of asteroid finding and went in the complete opposite direction to the extreme. Unless the goal was to just have us chance upon a wreck, here are a few reasons scavenging is completely untenable.

 

- Detection distance: Space, as you know, is very big, and 2 SU is "needle in a haystack" metrics.

 

- Rate of travel: This problem is two-fold. One, if traveling at maximum speed you are doing about 2.5 SU per minute (forgive my math if I am off). This means that you have less than a two minute window on your hours long search to see a wreck IF it intersects your search sphere right down the middle. The second issue being braking distance. Due to the detection range being so small, even a slight delay in seeing a wreck dead ahead could lead to you losing it in the backtracking process. Sure, we could reduce our cruising speed, but now we are covering less ground in an already astronomical search.

 

- Spotting the wreck: As I mentioned you have a very small window of opportunity to even see a wreck in the perfect conditions. Are we expected to stare at our screens the entire time we are searching? Sure, some one may (perhaps already have) write some LUA to make an audible alarm if a radar contact pops up, but it hardly seems reasonable to have to rely on that. Slow-boating anywhere is an hours long process and to be expected to sit in your pilot seat staring at space is completely unreasonable.

 

- Number of wrecks: Only you know how many are truly out there, but I will speak to the type of density needed to reasonably satisfy a scrapper such as myself. Over the course of, say, a four hour play session, I would hope to see roughly 2-3 wrecks. They don't need to be "What a haul!", but I do need to see something for my efforts.

 

In a game that has all but zero PvE, this is a great opportunity to add some that doesn't require AI, but we need reasonable tools to succeed! Increasing detection distance significantly doesn't meaningfully affect PvP (*ahem* such as it is) due to lock-on distances remaining unchanged, and this would be just the simplest of solutions. If I'm the only one who feels this way go ahead and ignore me, but if there are others out there that feel the same way, please speak up now!

 

I knew not to get excited by these wrecks I never saw any of the ones that were underground and I had no reason to think this would be any different. the re-occurring cycle is the gains never justify the means in this game across the board and bunch of tedious time and effort for little reward playing to keep your head above the rising tide. I've been trying to point this out for awhile now to no avail but it is by far the biggest problem with the game. 

Edited by Namcigam
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14 hours ago, Overstimuloredom said:

Sry I'll stop now, I obviously don't know enough about this to make really good suggestions but maybe I gave somebody else a better idea.

I think it's a great idea. Eve has something like it and it's great fun to hunt down anomalies and/or players with it.

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Space Wrecks should be done through DSAT.  To be found the same way as asteroids (maybe with more steps) but then are also broadcast after found creating POIs for pvp. Alternatively they could just spawn on and around asteroids with RNG based on asteroid rarity. This would give reason to discover asteroids beyond just mining. The current state of the wrecks mechanic is not a "way to play" it is a weird novelty that people may do out of complete boredom and then give up after hours of no results. The only new "way to play" outside of Mining/Manufacturing/Building is to run missions. That is only a thing because of people using alt armies to mass run NPC missions. There needs to be a gameloops. The current implementation of wrecks is not a "loop" it is a broken circle. 

 

This is an overall problem I have with NQ game design as they think that Sandbox/Emergent gameplay means you can't direct the flow of player activity. Just making a massive empty space and peppering in mechanics does not make a game. There are plenty of ways to direct player movement and activity. The empty space is too big and the RNG elements are too few and far between to work the way they are attempting to design the mechanics. Give incentives for players to interact/play together through bonuses, player exclusive utility benefits (Tile bonuses to manufacturing/mining etc ,player markets that aggregate dispensers into a NQ Market style UI). Please please please look at games that do this well: Sea of Thieves, Star Wars Galaxies, Survival Games and even Battle Royale. Yes.. Battle Royale. It is a large "empty" map but a good Battle Royale uses map design and weapon spawns to direct the flow of players. This has to be done even in a sandbox MMO. Right now this is like a Battle royale map where there is no map flow and the guns spawn like the mining skittles on planet surfaces. Perfect example. Why do mining skittles spawn evenly spread all over the planet surface every 2 feet. It is just lazy or bad design. 

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On 2/17/2022 at 1:39 AM, Yoarii said:

I haven't done any wreck searching myself, but I agree with previous posters. Make salvaging a viable game loop for people to enjoy.

 

However - the game also needs an element sink. Once built, a ship is forever unless you PvP. There's such a huge amount of elements in player's pockets right now it's not even funny.

 

Add wear and tear to elements and let us RECYCLE them into the a percentage of the parts they were made of (not ore). This would open up for another game loop between salvager and manufacturer.

I've been saying this forever too. I think the hope was PvP was the sink for parts, but it hasn't panned out (yet).  If you're an industrial player, you have to be creative to keep busy.  (Btw I seen one of your ships on Teoma a couple days ago =))  Karl something...

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