Impressions of 5.0 to date

[Culbrelai]

My overall impression is sad. There are a lot of good things, but the practical reality is I am a wee bit bored. 5.0 has forced a total change in the way I will have to RP things, and I still haven't figured out the new PoB systems.

One of the benefits of the old version was you could mine, travel, and encounter players as you went from system to system. If you needed money, you could make it happen. Now, you can pretty much stay in your own system and not have any interplay with others. We are now a whole lot of shopkeepers. Why mine for Gold ore and refine it when you can simply make more credits in way less time it takes to "mine and refine" by buying gold at Arranmore and hocking it off?

The nerf to the barge is really bad. It isn't thought through and no one seems to know what the plan is for it or REFUSES to tell us what is happening. In spite of the anti-barge brigade's claims that it is an Uber credit earner, it ain't 5 times faster than a 5ker. Try about 35% profit over the same time. And you had to really work hard to get the barge, and operate it - the payback is that increase in profit.

Sigh, I have to say my impression overall is very underwhelming. I have done ZERO inRP since the update.

Hard agree with Festus about Barge. Really crappy thing to do to make a money sink and then nerf it to be nearly useless the very next patch.

Also agree with Schxer and St. Denis on all points.

To add there are WAY too many chokepoints and unstable jump holes. If I wanted to fly snubs only I would just play vanilla or one of the many vanilla mods. Unstable jump hole from Tohoku to Omicrons, why? Burgundy to Alpha? Why? Just because? Blech.

[[Renegade]]

Overall a big disappointment for me personally.

Trading is near enough not doable in alot of areas due to transports not going through certain jump holes.

Barges being nerfed heavily has put people who only supplied their bases with them not able to use them.

Battleships - I wont use them any more

Snubs - Wont use those anymore

Guboats and Frigates - well that change was possibly a good one apart from the fact that more and more hostile factions are moving to thses ships rather than snubs.

POB changes - Tried my best to get my head around it, what with the new refinery commands and lots more commands being changed.

Also the difficulty trying to get the Precious resources from Uncharted has put me off altogether now as I spent hours collecting some of these with a couple of others and then got attacked and lost the lot.

In my opinion there should have been more community negotiating and points of view relayed and also it should have had the option to be able to introduce things gradually and get opinions on them before implementation and also rolling things back if there is enough dislike.

I personally have not played for a couple of weeks now and will remain the same ........

Total dislike to alot of the changes ....

And it seems its pushed alot of people away from the game, too much, too quickly, instead of making the changes gradual.

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46th|Hazel: I best call every single Atlantis on the First Armada to help out with this MAXIMUM LEVEL THREAT.

[LordBuglette]

Battleships - Fat L for all the people primarily fly these things.

BCs- >Today I will make an assault ship and put the main gun on backwards. (Seriously whos idea was this)

Cruisers- I fly a Hel (Irrelevant opinion)

Gunboats- From probably the worst to probably the best ship class. Unless you can't use your FWG

Transports- Less health due to removal of armor marks, loss of heavy guns, straight downgrade, fly a frigate instead.

Snubs- Whoever decided to add a death fuse to these things needs to retire from development immediately and become a monk in the Tibetan mountains.

Systems- Yummy dead end systems. need to turn every route into a corridor with two entrances and two exits so we can "centre the player base"

Story- I'll care about stories take, developments, and changes when they start caring about ours (they never will)

Jump Drives- I jump traded with a barge 11 years ago but thats the last time I've used these things.

Docking Modules- Nice to see them work since they haven't for god knows how long

Cloaks- Just remove the proximity decloak and you have an excellent product.

POBs- No clue last time I built one was during the nomad events in Newcastle

Sieges- With the new Sandcastle Kicker 9000 you can bring agony and despair to all the POB owners on the server as long as you have a group of 5 or more friends!

Economy- Flavor completely removed, Mining dead, Barge got the junker techcell treatment, PVE is no longer a valid form to make credits in any timely manner.

PVE- Somehow we've gone so far backwards its unironically worse than vanilla.

Overall take- Did I say anything positive here? Oh yeah, they fixed docking modules. (they should've been fixed years ago) I don't think I've ever not enjoyed the game this much before. Nice job guys.

[Jean Paul Richter]

Battleships - Unusable, bulky, no engine slide, power core insufficient, mortars broke doing no damage, slow, in some cases BC got more hull than BS that's concerning

BCs- Gun on the back? Really? That was a bad joke, at least if you want to keep it on back, rotation speed should be higher, power core insufficient if you don't use missiles on heavies

Cruisers- Best class so far, balanced and usable.

Gunboats- Overpowered as hell, oneshoting bombers with dual razors? Really? Completely broken and the razor should have at least 5-10% reduced damage, so snubs can at least try to fight!

Transports- Loss of heavy guns in some cases e.g. Bison heavy transport, shields are joke and hull even more, frigates have replaced transports

Snubs- Bombers> Balanced, nice, and deadly as it should be.... Fighters> Missile launchers are finally usable, bringing nice balance to the game

Systems- Too many collapsed JHs and way to many unstable JH where nothing bigger than snub can pass, Lets say it could have been looked more into it

Story- I actually don't care about that atm, so good/bad makes no difference

Jump Drives- JD opening jumpholes so people can jump, absolutely amazing... However ship number limit should be removed because its ridiculous.... I like the fact its limited to max 3 systems.

Docking Modules- Finally Im enjoying them so fucking much, only thing is 10s ''wait'' for a dock should be removed so in PVP people can insta dock and undock without risking to die... Plus I would personally add a timeout after you undocked to dock again, like 1-2min or so, so it cannot be abused

Cloaks-Havent tried them yet but if its true that you have proximity uncloak, that is a big bs and should be removed, at that point cloak disruptors lose their purpose, in any case its enough to wait for a ship to come near the station and it will uncloak by itself

POBs-Unsustanable and money sink since economy as it is now its pure crap (I'm sorry for being honest no offence to anyone)

Sieges- Have no clue, I haven't done one yet

Economy- Routes are joke, mining is dead, lets say turn-around routes are non existend, profit is poor for time you invest in, commodities are way to expensive... This was engineered very very badly (no offence to anyone)

PVE- Missions are not profitable, encounters- good luck spawning one, and if you manage to do so good luck surviving, those 2-3 battlezones that are left stop working when there are too many players which in my opinion is absurd... You should take care of the server hardware/software to make sure it doesn't crash when it too much under load instead of trying to cut players fun.

Server- Random crashes because it can.... if you are in some sort of battle with other factions you lose RP because server broke.... Seems like a serious problem to me keeping in mind that Discovery server is manly RP.

Overall take- lets say its 65% bad 35% good... there are many room for improvements and Im more then sure devs, mods and admin team will do their best to fix all of this... and most of all don't forget to listen to community needs.

EDIT (quick one)- NPC collision avoidance system should be looked into since they are still colliding with capital vessels and its annoying, frustrating and completely disorienting.

P.S. AS I TOLD BEFORE THAT, WHAT I JUST SAID IS SEEN FROM OBJECTIVE POINT OF VIEW, IM NOT POINTING MY FINGER AGAINST ANYONE AND IM NOT TRYING TO INSULT ANYONE. IT JUST HONEST OPINION ABOUT THINGS THAT WERE IMPLEMENTED IN 5.0.

[Emperor Tekagi]

Oh boi, here we go.

Systems:

• Absolutely stunning work on new or changed visuals.
  
• Incredibly nice idea with the puzzles. Keep them coming.
  
• Gallia is beautiful but Picardy feels a bit lost in the current lane setup.
  
• Some systems are gone, however I can understand why. Glad to see where merges were made, they turned out decently.
  
• A few base models are just not my taste but.. yeah.. that's a matter of taste.
  

Story:

• I was not caught off-guard by the timeskip, so I did not mind it and consider it a relatively good approach to tie up loose ends, skip past impractical story lines and such.
  
• Personally would have loved 2-3 events featuring stuff from this timeskip (Slave Revolt, Freeport 9) akin to the old Texas VR Event.
  
• The story arcs opened up by the patch seem interesting, so far enjoying brainstorming or event participation for the first things.
  
• Seeing as they attempt to streamline and compile past lore stuff into easily understood and tracked down overviews, I got very high hopes for the story perspective. Just don't burn yourselves out ok.
  

Economy:

• Still very much WIP. It gets better. Where it aims to go is very nice.
  
• I like the 2 new types of contraband.
  
• I like the ideas for PoB integration. Still early stage too but a promising step towards a partial dynamic in the economy.
  
• People should keep in mind, normal trading averages at 75-100m/h old values and HRC commodities go up to old mining rates of 150m/h. HRC Mining is where it exists, actually better than this. Overall, you make money easier. Once we're out of early WIP, it'll be a breeze to make cash.
  

Balance:

• Gunboats are just a hell lot of fun, a tad strong but hardly broken. They need adaptation and have a learning curve, get used to it, not very hard.
  
• Snubs, yeah man. Snubs are in a good spot. Now make me able to actually crack transports in a snub and we're talking. (GBs works just fine). If snubs end up with the ability of swarming a Cruiser to death, so be it.
  
• Cruisers - Yeah uh. Not the main Cruiser guy but they feel fine overall.
  
• Battlecruisers - I don't get the hate on the BC Heavy. You're a sluggish tank who if the components aren't targeted, is quite tough to crack. The moment they know how to coordinate and sub-target, you're in for a challenge. The BC Heavy is just strong, making its limitations a necessity. BCs are probably the class requiring you to use strategy, positioning and your brain to fly. I love them.
  
• Battleships - Just as awkward as you would expect without a full rework yet. The band aid makes them not fully hopeless, although light BSs are in a tough spot for the time being.
  
• Engine Kill and Strafing changes to caps: The disappearance of WASD macro gameplay is a blessing. Strafing works just fine for aimed dodges. The Engine Kill is useful once you get used to it.
  
• Bombers - More strategic, overall still viable. They got hit hard in terms of solo or two-only performance but past this threshold of numbers? Deadlier than ever if used correctly. The latest buffs helped them to get back on their feet even solo though.
  
• Transports: Excluding Frigates here, they gained better tanking survivability. That's about it. Though they're the next in line for a larger rework :]
  
• Frigates: Lovely. Just lovely.
  
• Liners: Since Haste posts it on the Discord, looking forward to what you guys make of them.
  
• Freighters: Did they even change? They're still defensive but strong. Hopefully more often used in the near future.
  

Equipment:

• JDs are nice. The limitations are fine. The battery costs are a bit high but JDs are now late game economy anyway, so it is fine.
  
• Cloaks. Did you guys even try to cruise in with a cloaked snub on a target? You do not get uncloaked at 3k. You get as close as gun range. Transport Cloak needs a full review though.
  
• Docking Modules. Probably the most headache causing equipment we ever had. Few attempts to get them back to working properly, now we got them and they still stir up trouble with the server. When they work, they're really cool though.
  
• The other stuff: Yeah well, basically redundant atm. Not exactly cool but we'll see what happens.
  

PvE, Missions, Encounters:

• Finally got to try out one encounter. It was nice. The issue is their availability, really.
  
• Missions. Pillow. You mad lad. You made snub missions fun. Don't need mindless 200m/h pve like we had, I prefer pve being just plain out fun and challenging. I am actually sad they got nerfed again because the full hardcore mode npcs were incredibly nice (and unfair to 90% of people).
  

To summarize:
It moves into the right direction, just there is a ton of work ahead and maaaaany things to fine tune. Quite a few were swiftly fine tuned and will continuously be adjusted, so that's nice. I wish devs a happy break time some time soon, else you all end up insane like Haste and Pillow.

[BobMacaroni]

Battleships and BC - I haven't played enough of them to make too much of a comment. More powercore and tankier with nerfs to strafe turret steering all around means that I've seen that generally the bigger the ship, the better for dueling, which might be changed with enough skill and practice, but... missiles... Besides that, backwards BC gun is... interesting. Not too much of a fan, but otherwise the weapon loadouts seem OK from what I've played of them. BCs are really fun to play

Cruiser - Completely OK in fleet battles. does not work in dueling. STS changes were a massive blow to cruiser players, but that could just be me, since I came during Cruiser meta and abused Storta too much to ever go back to "normal" cap pvp. again, weapons (in general) seem to be balanced in terms of damage. There could be a lot more variation in setups, however, and missiles are... we don't talk about missiles.

Gunboats - Best PVP part about patch. Gunboats 10/10

Bombers - Re add SNAC. That's all you need. It was a little shaky to begin with, but balance is getting there

Fighters - Seem good. Not too much was changed, but fighter missiles are nice

Systems - best part about 5.0. they look absolutely amazing and super fun to see all the new stuff and they are just... good and fun to explore. Especially the new puzzle systems.

Systems part 2 - why remove so many system connections? poor dublin! I dont know what happened to gallia. why remove so many systems? I get that people are more squished together now and theres more chance for interactions, but I liked all the systems. they were cool.

Economy - work in progress. I get it. good direction, though

PVE - Haven't done very much missions, but they seem nice. still not very good for making money though. unfortunately not smart enough to figure out new encounters (they never spawn )

that's about all. as Emperor Tekagi said though, the direction is good. even though it's not perfect yet, I like seeing that the devs are looking to improve the game, and thats a big win

[DSE-]

Thank you to all contributors so far. It is encouraging to see open honesty in the discussion without, I am pleased to say, personal attacks and criticism.

Raising issues and complaints is acceptable, and pleasing to see no criticism of individuals or various teams working on behalf of the Disco community is happening! Well done!

[Saronsen]

battleships - bad. weak firepower, guns have no impact, solaris is so bad you can miss the broadside of actual battleships with them, secondaries are so hilariously inefficient its actually better to ignore small targets entirely, flak is useless since its easier to shoot missiles instead of flaking. light battleships are currently king since theyre least affected by mobility changes and have five (5) of the most efficient guns (primaries), but theyre still going to get mulched by gunboats

battlecruisers - cool idea, horrendous implementation. rear gun thats only good for shooting at other big ships with the idea that "skill" (read: fingers tied in knots cus rolling is mandatory) is the reason its so slow with useless arcs. tankier than battleships if anyone rubs their brain cells together to change their approach or the enemy cant destroy modules. whoever loses engines first dies. mulched by gunboats

cruisers - like last patches cruisers but slightly less obscene. mulched by more than 1 gunboat.
bombers - is balance magic back? probably decent after that. mulched by gunboats.
fighters - i dont fly fighters anymore i cant comment. mulched by gunboats
transports - mulched by gunboats

gunboats - see above
frigates - see above
both have benefitted massively from their predators being rendered useless after the patch, combined with their changes and buffs

economy - LMAO.
mass commodity removal - LMAO.
mass contraband removal - LMAO.
cloaks - LMAO proximity decloak
pobs "economy": LMAO. hardly anyone want to partake and those who do have realized its dogwater.
PVE - wow i sure LOVE disruptors being back on nearly every NPC despite them being removed after years of complaints! wow i love that you have to depend on NPCs killing themselves and each other to do missions!
systems - new and modified ones look nice, happy about delta and nomads actually getting a little attention. removal of several of them is a sin. the removal of alternate paths and systems to force interactions that people will just avoid anyway is a stupid practice
JD - funny mass jumping of enemy fleet replaced with a discount EVE jump and tiny group wormhole. meh.
story - LMAO didnt pull the trigger on the insurgency. skipped a massive possible event for the slave revolt. ill give a shit about the story when something actually interesting and not contrived nonsense happens
uncharted gimmick - dont know dont care

whoever is leading cap weapons and combat into "high refire zero impact" design needs to be caned
its also hilarious that the story lead and systems lead also immediately left after taking a massive dump on everything but ill upset OP if i go further

[Chronicron]

Here's my 2 cents, this comes from a person who takes the fighting/moneymaking aspects very casually and the exploring/narrative aspects very seriously.

Systems.

This is where the department did a very good job, for the most part. New Uncharteds look neat, all four of them. Pi looks better than it was, Tau-61 saw a good glowup, Omega-52 looks better, not a fan of this Delta design coming back, not a fan of how trashy Ile-de-France looks, Gallia's routing structure feels like it was made more nonsensical and worse than it was before, but the systems themselves look very pretty and make a really good eye candy. I like the idea behind the maze systems, like Kepler, Omega-55 and Alaska. I hope I get to live to see the Lambda sector.

@Groshyr did an amazing job.

@Markam you sir are a wonderful person. The philosophy of reducing the amount of systems and making the routes tighter for sake of increasing player interactions has done nothing but harm to the whole "Discovery" idea. The proper way was to make more systems with scenic landmarks for people to come to and do things with. Case and point - Earhart and the Uncharted systems. Except, maybe make them more accessible.

Story.

Not sure where the story will be going from this point on. I am intrigued about the whole Earhart narrative, however. The time skip was lazy and unnecessary, there could have been events leading to stuff that happened during the time skip that would spur up player activity on the server and hype the community up for the release, but I heard there were some issues with story-lead-at-the-time so I guess that's the aftermath we have. As it was mentioned before me, I hope we get the VR recreation of those events.

Economics.

In its current state, investing into Russian economics is a more responsible financial decision than farming money on Discovery. I'm not a POB owner, but I can say that trading being made more difficult and retained to the same profit per hour (which already was a hideous experience) is not good for an average player like me.

Modules and things.

- Cloaks

Gone are the glorious days of buttcloaking and not worrying about burning a hole in my pocket each time I cloak. Now the cloaks are a money sink for people who owned billions prior to the new economics. Proximity decloaking ruins the whole idea of it.

- Jump Drives

Why? Was it to remove the roflmao lolwut outcast jump drive raids? And makign them twice as expensive to use now that the jump trading is gone just to have another money sink? That idea is stupid on its own.

I do like that they're now more like Warp Drives from StarLancer, however. Makes a nice consistency narrative-wise.

- Docking Modules

Love them when they work. A very good concept, a shame it tends to break the server but I believe the coding department will solve this issue eventually.

@Aingar is a FLHook god that we needed. @Haste's idea was utterly unnecessary and uncalled for, because there are better things to have as money sinks than utility tools such as jump drives and cloaks. Like POBs. Or making those things in the first place.

Oh, wait. They already are more expensive to make. Lol.

PVE.

The interaction concept is neat, like the one we have in Magellan. That being said, even if it's nice in concept, the execution was awful. It's utterly unenjoyable on battleships because of how broken the NPCs are and the income was cut down in half from what it was with NPCs becoming two times more dangerous. Giving Cruiser/Destroyer NPCs BS Mortars was a very bad idea.

Capship Balance.

- Overall

Making every gun "high refire, low damage, same/better DPS" was a bad idea. Half of satisfaction of flying cap is landing big shots that feel powerful. Now it's the theoretical skill that matters? Even though spamming shots is less skill-demanding than actually aiming and timing them, and hard-hitting guns just take up more energy and are overall a worse alternative to their high refire siblings.

- Battleships

Light Battleships having thicker power cores while Heavy Battleships having the smaller ones? How does that even make sense? That being said, the energy consumption of Mortars makes them absolutely redundant. One's better off running Brawlers with missile launchers than the double HM setup that used to be all about precision, timing and high reward when hitting shots at a long range. Solaris turrets were made utterly useless - they're not even a threat to enemy ships, they're more likely to damage your own allies than whoever you're aiming for. Thumpers are absolutely broken and render every other turret obsolete. And why were the Nightmare torpedoes removed?

At least the annoying strafing is gone, so thank god for that.

- Battlecruisers

With their "segmented damage" gimmick, Battlecruisers feel very much out of place. If the devs were going for this change, it should've been given to Cruisers and Battleships as well. I know it's a lot to ask for, but with how things are now, BCs just feel like they're from a completely different mod. That being said, Battlecruisers themselves are very much more enjoyable than they were, though they take a moment to learn. In some instances, they feel like WOWS ships more than anything.

- Cruisers

Not much to say about them.

- Gunboats

Can't judge because I never tried them, but looking from the side of things, I think they're now more fun?

Snub Balance

- Overall

Missiles are useless. They're very easy to dodge and half of the time they don't even track because the tracking bug is still a thing. Other than that, I can't judge because I haven't pewed in snubs much since the patch.

- Bombers

What exactly is their purpose now? Are they supposed to be a capship lynch or a snub lynch? Because as things are right now, they're kinda good at both. The ASMFD is a massive middle finger to snubs, Neutralizers are basically a better option deshielding option against caps and Scorchers are good at everything. Shame SNAC's been turned into an anti-shield weapon though. Rest well, sweet prince.

Overall

Give more systems to explore and make the economics not as tight. Not all of us are gold hoarding dragons sitting on piles of billions.

Be nice. ~Alex

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[jammi]

Economics.

In its current state, investing into Russian economics is a more responsible financial decision than farming money on Discovery. I'm not a POB owner, but I can say that trading being made more difficult and retained to the same profit per hour (which already was a hideous experience) is not good for an average player like me.

Just a small note on this, regular commodities are now balanced at 5.5 credits per second/unit, which is about 40% higher than the previous patch.

Ores were turned into High Risk Commodities which when purchased from NPC stations, aim for 10 - 12ish csu. That's about the same as before, but you can boost that further by trying to find a refinery POB that's undercutting NPC prices.

Basically, you should be making more per hour if you're trading normal stuff, and have better access to 'ores' because NPCs sell them too. Earning money isn't slower, but there are more 'end game' cash sinks that were previously missing.

The economy obviously still needs a lot of work, but baseline profit per hour isn't really the issue in my opinion.

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