Version 5.0 "Fire and Fortune" - Everything I DISLIKED Part 2 - Expenses

[Dark Chocolate]

I will try my best to be constructive. I love this game, it is nostalgic. I love this community and mod despite it’s flaws. I only want things to improve.

::: JUMP DRIVES :::
Jump drives were discussed in Dev Diaries #6 - Jump Drives I’ll be talking about certain points said in that post

"Obviously I can't speak for anyone, but personally, despite having access to a jumpdrive for QUITE some time, I have not once used one on the live server. The idea of having to look up a coordinate table stashed on some discord pin, then have to input a lengthy 20+ symbol coordinate only to mess up and input it again. Not exactly a very thrilling experience, similar to alt-tabbing to set up AutoHotKey macro to type the coordinate for you. And then you end up 100k below the plane because the coordinates were old.
Imma be honest, unless I were going uh, Bretonia to Sigmas or something, I'd rather just engage cruise and fly manually"

- You did not use jump drives, something that existed since so long coz you’d rather “fly manually” you wanted to travel? (definitely not F2 and minimize) And now you changed the mechanics for everyone?

- Sure the Jump drive mechanics the coordinates and everything was tedious. But still Everyone I know used jump drives extensively. They were not perfect. Sometimes We did have to survey coordinates so that we don’t spawn 100k from the Star. Most of the times we used old coordinates coz it was till better than travelling long distances through the systems. The main use was to organize raids and PvP opportunities that’s all. And we’d have enough jump fuel to get back to where we came from.

"Then there's the fact that Jump Drives are very boring visually. You start glowing reasonably nicely, but then you just stop, the game freezes and your ship suddenly starts existing in another spot in the universe. No cutscenes, no special effects, just a *pop*."

- I never personally thought the old group hug was bad. Everyone stands close, you start glowing reasonably nicely and you reach your destination with the jump sound. Simple and sweet.

- The new system has you spawn a jump hole now with a 15ish sec jump sequence which I do think is cool but not really necessary. The bystanders will still see a jumphole *pop* out of nowhere followed by our ships. Although there are some blue after effects added to ships that jump. It happens when you exit the regular jump holes too, I noticed. Those are nice.

- Although I might like the simplified controls, But the restrictions are a bit too excessive.

-The present jump system has you spawn a jumphole.
-But even with the largest Jump Drive you can jump 8 ships max
-Oh and Only THREE systems apart. That’s right.. Just THREE
-Oh and if you jump Max distance, that’s three systems apart, All your fuel will be eaten up. Now you can’t jump back unless you refuel.
-And the full load of fuel costs 20 million (200k as per new currency).

-So Lets say you wanna jump from Omicron Alpha to New York and back, It would have taken 2 jumps and 10 million as per the old system. As per the new mechanics, It would take 4 jumps and 80 million (800k as per new currency). That is Absurd.

-Matrix will extend the jump upto 5 systems, at the cost of 2.5million (250k as pew new currency). It will again spawn a jump hole and as per my understanding allow 8 ships max.

-So why the hell do we need all these restrictions.?

Well, Yeah people did come with LOLStraegies like this one.

But the way I see it, it’s pretty effective strategy. They jumped away, gathered more dudes, came back and annihilated us when we didn’t expect. So what’s there to be mad about it?.

I’ve also been forcibly LOLjumped away by people and obliterated hilariously, to which I just laughed and moved on. All the restrictions are to counter this aren’t they. Please do enlighten me if there’s any other reason I am missing out.

But still if you were gonna put all these damn restrictions over jump drives, may be don’t make using the Jump Drives so damn expensive! Everyone ain’t Rich lel.

::: CLOAKS:::
Cloaks were discussed in Dev Diaries #1 Cloaks

-The full load of cloaks costs like 5 million.
-So again if you were gonna put restrictions that would disable buttcloaking, I don’t think the quadratic formula fuel consumption thing or crysis style movement restriction is necessary.

-And if you were going to put both these restrictions, then why does cloak batteries need to be that expensive.

::: DYING is EXPENSIVE :::
-The above 2 problems are worsened by this. There was this convenient old plugin thing which allowed us to retain our expensive ammo after death, so dying won’t affect your wallet.
-In the present version, When you die it’s gonna cost you 1-2 million (10-20k) for the shield batteries, some 2 milllion for torpedoes and everything, additional 5 million if you got cloak batteries and additional 20 million if you got jump drives. If you dock to preserve ammo, the repair costs are too high, especially if you lose parts on a Battlecruiser.

-Earlier I had no problem with people killing me even if it was a gank. Now I am skeptical coz everytime I die it’s gonna cost my wallet. I sell my cloak/JD battries and/or have it disabled in autobuy, so my shiny equipments will be eating rust 99 percent of the time. Why would I even bother to buy new ones.

-Is this intentional? Like Dying gonna keep being expensive all the time from now on? Or is this going to be fixed later?
-Please Fix it and bring back the way it was in the previous update. Not everyone is stupid rich with barges parked in every corner of the universe.

::: SUMMARY :::
-Since I can anticipate that I will be told how some systems have been deleted so Three systems is still "good enough" jump distance and how the restrictions are necessary, Well atleast make the ammo/battries cheap.

-Preferably remove the Quadratic Formula Fuel consumption thing. If Not, atleast make the battries cheap.

-Please bring back the old plugin that doesn't charge us for the lost ammo so that Dying isn't costly.

::: Conclusion :::
All I want is the game to be FUN to play. These are just my opinions about what the present state of the game is and how I'd like it to be.

Also
-I could not review Alien Cloaks since I am not a member of K'Hara I won't know the full potential. If you can review them, please post your opinion below.
-I could not review the economy/trading/mining stuff. If you did, please post what you disliked about the new changes
-Comments/Criticism/Feedback of my opinions as well as your own opinions are most welcome.

-Thank you for listening to me.

[Ashyur]

it cost so much because they want you to trade,mine also no longer used
trading should bring pirate interaction (though with 18k scanner,player list and discord bots..I rightfully picked the word "should"? )
pirates give lawful and hunters a reason to log

the ecosystem ..?

[The_Godslayer]

Also
-I could not review Alien Cloaks since I am not a member of K'Hara I won't know the full potential. If you can review them, please post your opinion below.

Our cloaks saw a "just for fun" usage rate outside of large fleet fights simply because it took the CM slot and that meant you would get missilespammed to oblivion. In fleet fights it was used for choosing optimal engagements or getting back into position after overextending. The glaring exception was the Marduk, which had two CM slots.

K'Hara's faction perk of infinite cloak has been deleted by the dev team, and that claim that the nomad cloak being infinite when standing still is a concession is a pathetic joke at best, because the cloak already only had three uses: getting within 15K without an instant alt+F4 or beeline for the nearest sun, avoiding gross overgank, and the ever-infamous buttcloak, which was also removed with 5.0. These uses have all been removed, and I guess we are supposed to just afk farm activity with cloaks that are only infinite if you are afk, and last a few minutes if you're prowling around living the nomad fantasy and hunting through the stars trying to find trespassing humans to sneak up on.

The tool I used most was the nomad countermeasures, which functioned as a cloak disruptor at that time as long as you had cloak batteries. It was simply a more viable and effective strategy to wait for someone to feel smart and try to buttcloak a nomad, only to get decloaked and missiled to death.

In all, it would be a joke if only it managed to be funny. I'll have it back in blood.

---

I'll do something about my superiority complex when I cease to be superior.

"Whatever happened to catchin' a good old-fashioned passionate ass-whoopin and gettin' your shoes, coat, and your hat tooken?"

[Lemon]

There are a lot of annoyances that make "sense" on paper but make the game less enjoyable to play at the moment - thing is, it's the feet that matter, we are yet to see if the patch is a success or not, and we will see if after the first excitement wanes we return near the 20 averages it will be clear it's time to focus on gameplay more over restrictions and "logic" on paper again. If the averages stay at 40+ then it's for us old timers - tough, deal with it or leave, proof is here that you are obsolete.


JDs are exhibit A - the mechanic is cool, but the cost and restriction is there to make sense, but makes old people like us less likely to play the game and is just an annoyance.