*** The Official Elite: Dangerous Thread ***

Beat patch 4 -

Hi commanders, we've applied an update to Elite Dangerous 2.1 beta today. Below are the changes for beta 4 on the PTS.

We expect for the PTS to be down for up to two hours.

As always, thanks for your bug reports! If you've found an issue or bug with this update, please post it to https://forums.frontier.co.uk/forumdisplay.php?f=178 - thanks!

Stability Fixes
Fix audio crash for when in SRV when in srv and not loading the network component
Protect against working on a string that doesn't exist or is empty
Safe-guard against the render system returning a null texture, if one couldn't be allocated
Added a failure state that will abort a portrait request after a large period of time waiting for a texture to be provided, so the system won't be stalled indefinitely
Crash fix for when a projectile weapon turret on automatic hit an object that doesn't know what hit it
Crash fix when firing a projectile from a weapon equipped to a thing without a targeting system
Fixed a crash caused by trying to lock on to a target that is dying
Fixed server error when issuing mission rewards to player's without sufficient storage space
Fix crash when the location is shutting down and a drone exists without any asteroids
Crash fix when trying to check ammo prices for restocking a vehicle but the bay is not in an expected state
Increased rarity values for ice mining commodities so that ice mining
Fix a server crash generating an unknown body
Prevent a crash when (somehow) trying to preview a recipe on an incompatible module
Fix crash if control input is spammed while applying an upgrade
Fix the cargo spawning so that it replicates the data needed to spawn its cargo, if it gets authority transferred before spawning cargo
Fix a crash from an ill timed shutdown of UI during the supercruise transition
Fix memory leak in ambient AI spawning
Outfitting: fix for crash when viewing vehicle bay inventory



General Tweaks & Fixes
Fix issue with renaming a generated system changes the system composition
More changes to address space bound players being matchmade with those on the surface
Defaulted the main audio output device to XAudio2 as WASAPI seems to cause issues with audio driver exclusiveness (stops the game silencing other apps when it shouldn't)
Unhide control binding option for rotational correction
Scanning sound gets stuck if you target something else mid-scan fixed
Scanning nav beacons will now also trigger the scanning sound
Fix silent shield break/reform sfx and ship voice lines "Target shields Online/Offline" on none npc ships
Powerplay background icon smaller than expected fixed
Fixed issue where UI focus could get lost when navigating the power contact screen without a mouse
Comms chat history no longer disappears
Bound UI Back to right mouse button by default
Adding retreat and investment in galaxy map state filters (and removing anarchy as it it is unused)
Fixed slight discrepancy between mouse/gamepad input when using the steppers on the munitions screen
Switch Contacts and Universal Cartographics so that webserver can enable/disable them on a per-station basis
Galaxy Map: Fixing xml defining jump range in navigation panel
Galaxy map remembers previous route calculation setting (low fuel / fastest) properly again. Boost mode is not written in the backup value though, so it will reset to economical
Fixed Silent resources collected GUI
Fix for Nav beacon morse transmissions being audible in galaxy map
Various text fixes



Missions
Updated the Faction (Inf,Rep,State) Rewards and Penalties for completing/failing missions
After getting the Nav Beacon wrinkle during an Assassination mission and meeting the contact, the contact gave me a Target Body of "Currently Unknown. Scan Required" fixed
Some optimisations for mission generation
There is now always at least 2 targets in a massacreskimmer mission
Fix lack of failed mission icon
Removed placeholder text from Altruism missions
Modified text in 'target killed' inbox messages on assassinations so they refer to the target rather than the target's faction
Collect mission details do not update in Transaction Tab after getting New Destination Wrinkle fixed
Make military rank progress a bit easier
Changed the point reputation is removed when the mission is failed - there is now an instant progress that links to the rep change, and to the Failure panel state
Fix double mission icon in massacre skimmer
For piracy flag targets, if the target is not a mission target, check if it has a leader and whether that leader is a mission target
Removed some spurious debug output that was causing a slight stall when opening the mission details popup
Trimmed the mission complete animation - now much snappier
Fix an issue where scannable shipwrecks would ignore the fact that they were in a settlement. This meant they didn't link correctly to the tip off for their location
Add a faction government test so the pesky democracies don't make my greedy corporation shout "For Democracy!"
Fix the method that determines whether we can see planetary missions
Added in a massacre rank scalar - targets are now scaled by the rank and the rep, to match other massacre templates. You now get 12-24 targets to kill on elite
Made it so that a ship spawned for a mission USS will have the correct amount of mission cargo and the cargo will not be marked as stolen if the mission says it should be abandoned
Added some missing text



Engineers
To help players find crafting resources, UI's displaying Engineer recipes now have a 'tooltip' for each ingredient
Fixed the 'removed effect' box sometimes not appearing on crafting UI
Added loc strings for 'Where are my pinned recipes' helper popup
Added popup explaining where pinned recipes can be found
Fixed flickering UI when showing engineer popup with a face/text combo
Added text field to the level progress to describe the unlock condition e.g. "Buy Modifications"
Added an appropriate spinny 'wait' UI state while the modification is being rolled
Fixed crafting UI not rendering text in Russian
Add a resistance to heat-adding weaponry (Thermal Shock and Retributors primarily) so that the hotter the target already is the less effective they become, one or two weapons are still effective, without 6-8 being totally out of the park. It should still be fairly easy (though harder) to push ships into module damage, as they start reaching hull damage diminishing returns will kick in severely. becoming immune to these effects at 300% heat or higher, preventing the 8000%+ cases we've seen
Added some schematics for Engineer bases
Added Engineer ident audio
Help information on the Potential Outcome menu does not disappear if you exit completely out of the screen by pressing 'B' fixed
Recipes should now be referred to as blueprints
Don't show progress bar when at maximum level - now applies in commander log as well as workshop UI



Weapons
Assorted buffs/fixes/rebalancing to missiles:
Speed of Seeker missiles increased from 450 to 625.
Speed of drunk (packhound) missiles increased from 400 to 600.
Speed of Dumbfire missiles increase from 600 to 750.
Blast radius of small seekers and dumbfires increased to be in line with mediums (50% boost).
Hardness piercing of small seekers & dumbfires plus drunk missiles brought up to intended levels and consistent with medium (100% boost).
Base damage and hull/module split of all missiles increased as intended, approximately a 40% increase to hull damage and 120% increase to module damage.
Missiles now take an extra two point defence shots to bring down, but are still easily shot!
Some impact effects rebalanced in light of new material change
More optimisations (Cannon in particular)
Slightly increased damage and fire rate of turreted weapons so that they're more in line with the damage progression from fixed to gimballed
Fixed the missing confusion stat from the new gimballed weapons we recently added
Buffed cannons effectiveness without changing their DPS.
Remove damage fall off completely. They'll now do their full damage up to their maximum range
Slightly increase projectile speed so they're easier to use at range
Increase armour piercing so they get to apply they're full damage to even larger ships than before
Slightly increase their chance to breach the armour and increase the module/hull damage split when they do




Outfitting
Updated Outfitting resources to point at the correct UI icons per module
Fix shield optimal strength always being reported as 100 rather than the correct value
Changed the Outfitting to use 3 rows instead of 4 and updated item styling to accommodate those changes
Changed Mining Launcher Category Icon to make the text on top of it more readable
No Indication is given that a installed module on a ship is "modified" in outfitting fixed



NPCs
Adjusted the shield-down flee behaviour to be less frustrating
Don't put CG commodities in NPC cargo holds
Stop hitmen being sent after the player for no reason
Ignore drones when pirates work out the value of cargo a player has; if players only have drones, pirates will let them go on their way
Rebalance the tutorials to be reasonable with the new AI



Avatars
Improve the time it takes to generate avatar portraits
Female Theocracy jacket now has military shoulderpads fixed
Fixed accessories on female Independent and government constraints
Blue avatar lighting fix



POIs/USSs
Don't spawn materials when it should be seeds
Load the correct physics soundbanks on datalinks/points
Added in a greater variety of commodities to the POIs so the players see something other than tea
Fix where the POI search can get stuck between the terrain bounding boxes and unable to progress beyond the initial placement



Ships
Display three colour decals correctly (not as two colours)
Paintjobs assigned correct colours for Crimson Eagle
Various art fixes for Imperial Eagle
Fixed minor LOD issue on the Anaconda
Fixed landing gear audio issues
Fix for voice lines overlapping
Fix for bobblehead sound issues
Fix for ships sometimes being silent
Rebalanced cockpit lighting after materials were recently upgraded
Huge optimisations of cockpit lighting in some ships. Lots of fps claimed back without impacting visuals whatsoever
Warning lighting improved
Fixed the freefall shepherd tone sound
Fixed broken paintjobs on the Imperial Cutter



SRV
Fixed some issues with the turret HUD



Ports/Stations/Bases
Updated Hangar cameras to fit the new Engineer hangars
Fix for settlement/port voice volumes
Fixed and edited geometry to hide clipping meshes/bounding volumes on hangar interiors
The Dweller - Gap under the large biome fixed
Added Lights to Breakers Yard
Rocks seen at the back of Felicity Farseers Engineers base in large landing pad hangar fixed
Fix various pad issues at Pater's Memorial
Fix engineer rock formations not having the correct colour in supercruise
Fixed hitcheck on small engineer landing pad
Reduced volume on one of the loud settlement alarms
- Mix fix for Independent 01 Station Voice



Orbital Cruise
Audio: Fix a broken altitude ratio rtpc that was causing some weirdness in the glide sequence
Optimisations to OrbitalHUD UI



Render
Asteroid billboard optimisations to bring performance back in line with the old forward rendered billboards
Star rendering optimisation
Click to expand...
 
Have to say, after playing in the beta, Engineers, and their associated crafting mechanics, are a step in a bad direction IMHO. Not only is the whole gameplay ethos based around yet more mindless grind, it's worse still topped with a frustrating game on Wheel Of Fortune. And even worse yet, it risk making combat frustrating too; Completely by random now, you'll find NPCs (& CMDRs) have adaptation X which means your load out is rendered "nerfed", so you simply have to run...

Where are the gameplay mechanics adding depth and emergent gameplay? Grind and dice rolling seems a poor direction IMHO.
 
I was looking to get back into it after the the update. However after watching Kornelius's video's on the engineers beta, what will be the point?

It will render my current python load out useless against already upgraded NPC's. The grind to get upgraded will just make it more tedious for very little reward....

Thoughts
 
I couldn't disagree more, the fact that it renders any particular loadout vulnerable to others is exactly what the game needs in my eyes.
 
Dano said:
I couldn't disagree more, the fact that it renders any particular loadout vulnerable to others is exactly what the game needs in my eyes.
Click to expand...

atomic7431 said:
Plus the Elite universe may finally live up to its title of `Dangerous` :)
Click to expand...

...and all from rolls of the dice...

Not skill, not logic, pure good/bad luck.

You interdict an NPC, and your modules and their wheel of fortune side effects mean his modules are far far less effective. ie: Luckily your side effect X is great against his module Y.

However, at the roll of a dice, he could have been created with the modules and side effects that means you're now on the back foot.

Sounds somewhat daft too me. Encounters being decided to some large degree by random Top Trump stats...

Now consider PvP. Two of you turn up in Vipers... Can you have a nice interesting fight? Alas his side effect X means your module Y is useless... You just run away. How is that conducive to interesting gameplay?



And all this development time/effort, so we can spin the Engineers Wheel Of Fortune over... and over... and over - only after having spent countless hours farming for materials of course - is at the expense of anything deeper and more meaningful in the ED mechanics. Can I even undertake the most simple of space missions yet to go and escort and protect a convoy? Better still, do this as part of a Wing of friend, with, shock horror, us all getting paid, instead of just me? Alas no, but at least I can grind for half a day and then spin a wheel and create some random stats...
 
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I see what your saying and im not disagreeing although, the idea is there whether it has been implemented in the right way i cant say.
But i will say that there will no longer be a go to same old same old build for xyz. The encounters with both npcs and humans will be different every time and IMO make the game more interesting and challenging.
 
So... this new Engineers thing is basically übering up your ship components for a massively ridiculous boost that unbalances the game and risks your newly übered Anaconda getting the spit slapped out of it by a random NPC?

Man, I hadn't even gotten to the point where I could get a properly kitted Python or FDL yet...
 
ttaskmaster said:
So... this new Engineers thing is basically übering up your ship components for a massively ridiculous boost that unbalances the game and risks your newly übered Anaconda getting the spit slapped out of it by a random NPC?

Man, I hadn't even gotten to the point where I could get a properly kitted Python or FDL yet...
Click to expand...

You can pimp up your modules. This means you can roll "The Wheel Of Fortune" in an attempt to get the behaviour you want, by the stats going up in hopefully the direction you're after, but others will possibly (most likely) go down. eg: More power thrusters at the cost of more heat.

However, it's where we talk about weapons that things get more interesting, as you can get side effects too. eg: A Beam laser might also be able to heal a wingman, or a take a ships shields down if they employ an shield cell. And there's all manner of side effects now... So the concern is, you turn up to a fight, only to find by pure bad luck, the NPC or CMDR involved has side effect X which means your current build is in trouble.

In my opinion this risks making combat frustrating and too down to chance.

Add to this the entire mechanice behind getting these enhancements which is grind to go and farm the materials, and then a "Wheel of Fortune" to try and get the behaviour of the module...

If you've not seen the "Wheel Of Fortune" in action, behold, how finally earning access to an engineer, and then after X hours of farming materials for an upgrade, how you then try and get the enhancement you're after - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvcSw-gZkP8 (unfortunately the video has some blur/blocking issues - but you get the idea!)
 
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It's not all boost as you seem to be making out though is it? You're glossing over the fact that for stuff to go up stuff will go down, it is always a balance of some sort not a mere possibility as you seem to imply, either way yes, I do think it will help and as for PvP, good. There needs to be some level of uncertainty when a CMDR takes on another, it's a far better option than the mechanic we currently have which is whoever has the current best meta wins, nope, I'm all for it and I'm also all for the time it'll take to amass materials and modify modules, it should never be something that is easy to roll lots of.
 
Dano said:
It's not all boost as you seem to be making out though is it? You're glossing over the fact that for stuff to go up stuff will go down, it is always a balance of some sort not a mere possibility as you seem to imply
Click to expand...

Huh? - I stated, for example, "...but others will possibly (most likely) go down. eg: More powerful thrusters at the cost of more heat."

Dano said:
either way yes, I do think it will help and as for PvP, good. There needs to be some level of uncertainty when a CMDR takes on another, it's a far better option than the mechanic we currently have which is whoever has the current best meta wins, nope, I'm all for it and I'm also all for the time it'll take to amass materials and modify modules, it should never be something that is easy to roll lots of.
Click to expand...

You believe it will help PvP? We'll see... I predict increased cases of individuals turning up, with the winner having been decide hours/days before by module choice... I don't see that as a good move personally...


BTW, I understand your concerns about "current meta" wins. The game was already "suffering" in this area, and I don't see Engineers helping it. Consider at the moment just the divide between PvE and PvP builds. The issue is already in the game, and I believe Engineers will simply magnify it.

Next couple of months will be interesting... I predict buckets of frustration, and worse still, rebalance after rebalance after rebalance... All using up more valuable development time...
 
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Really don't like this wheel of fortune nonsense :(

How about giving us more actual game depth with better missions and interactions?

Don't like the way things are going :(
 
IvanDobskey said:
Really don't like this wheel of fortune nonsense :(

How about giving us more actual game depth with better missions and interactions?

Don't like the way things are going :(
Click to expand...

Yerp...

I recall back in Kickstarter Braben suggesting depths the game would have - Being able to find a resource rich area, and then deciding whether to work it yourself, or sell the data.

Imagine if you could do even the slightest thing approaching that? If you could hunt for a resource rich area, mark it, and you and some friends spend a few days working it until its resources ran dry. Instead, we are in a thin stateless universe where even the sexy title of "Bounty Hunter" just means going to a RES (Resource Extraction Site) and farming (shooting) the never ending procession of Wanteds turning up there solely to commit suicide on your lasers. It's paper thin, and needs love and attention across the board. Not time being spent on introducing more grind and random "Wheel Of Fortune" gameplay :(
 
IvanDobskey said:
Really don't like this wheel of fortune nonsense :(

How about giving us more actual game depth with better missions and interactions?

Don't like the way things are going :(
Click to expand...

They've done both, missions and interactions are far superior to what is currently on live.
 
Dano said:
They've done both, missions and interactions are far superior to what is currently on live.
Click to expand...

To be honest I can't comment on the quality of the new missions... I'll have to go and give them ago.

In reality how much beyond take X to Y or go to X and kill Y have we got? Be honest now?



In my mind we'd have something like the following:-
  • 1) You get a distress call, and manage to save an NPC from destruction.
  • 2) Over the following weeks, the NPC asks for your personal help with various missions.
  • 3) Finally, after building up a good reputation, he asks for your help. His family are moving to a new home/world and want your personal protect of the convoy. You realise this is a big missions, with a huge payout, so ask a couple of your friends along to Wing up as part of this mission. The mission involves you protecting their convoy in normal flight between Beacon A and Beacon B.
  • 4) A variation of (3) is a mission to protect a constant stream of cargo vessels between Beacon A and Beacon B. You may well be wise to do this with some wiingmen, as there may well be missions being given to CMDRs to attack that convoy too!
  • 5) Missions to go to a Capital ship or platform and act as fighter protection for a time period.
  • 6) Missions to utilise a stealth build ship to sneak into an asteroid field unobservered by enemy ships and to locate and scan a ship/station. (Note: Let's have CQCs line-of-sight scanner in the core game)
  • 7) Let's have dead stations/platforms, where missions ask us to go and do things. eg: Collect some data/cargo.
  • 8) etc etc...

Can you imagine if the time dedicated to "Wheel of Fortune" had been put into missions and community goal mechanics? Can you imagine if Powerplay then utilised this convoy protection/attack mechanic too (from no.4) etc?

Why is, after all this time, I still don't even have the mission depth and functionality offered in space sims from 20+yrs ago? Yet alone, utilising the multiplayer environment available in ED.
 
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Quick question; did anyone else receive an email with the subject 'We Want to Celebrate Your Special Day!' from Frontier?
 
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