Mission you Playstation 4

Aired 13 December 2016
Audio versions

Download the episode directly from here.

Crew Members
Head of health and safety : Ben Moss-Woodward – Cmdr Eid LeWeise
2nd Technician : Chris Forrester – Cmdr Fozza
Chief Archivist : Colin Ford – Cmdr phoenix_dfire
Chief Bar Steward : Grant Woolcott – Cmdr Psykokow
Show Notes

• Development News
  • Elite Dangerous: Horizons for PS4
    • Trailer
    • Some interesting stills from the trailer
    • The reddit thread
    • BrettC “So as it stands, we’ve not announced any official support for any hotas on the PlayStation 4 platform.“
    • Lots of people asking about ‘true’ cross platform play but sadly the same as the XB1 (so far)
  • Beta changes
    • Military slots coming to the 2.2.03 Beta
    • (very) Experimental shield change
    • Additional Testing
  • Festive Countdown
    • 1 rare paint job each day from 13th Dec – 24th Dec
    • All rare paint jobs are withdrawn 3rd Jan 2017
    • Today’s (13th Dec) is a Wireframe Python
  •  Mission Stream
    • Ed, Adam Bourke-Waite (designer) and Dominic Corner (developer)
    • The big take away is MISSIONS IS HARD!
    • Where are we at in turn of missions?
      • Missions are ongoing, currently doing some reward passes and balancing. Fixes in the current beta, always trying to improve things.
    • When will players be able to share missions with wing members?
      • It’s something FD want to do but not in the ‘immediate’ roadmap. No ETA No Guarantee 😀
    • What’s the reason for the low number of missions from each faction?
      • It’s a design decision, but also there’s a tech limitation with the passenger missions sharing an allocation with mission missions. I.E. 40 missions made in total, some passenger some normal.
      • In Current PTS Beta, Dom also introduced a bug (oops!) but that’s fixed hopefully! Failed to connect messages are because you timed out making missions.
    • Why are FDev allowing mission stacking?
      • No easy fix for this – if you have 4 missions, who do you credit the mission to?
    • Why does FDev allow Mode switching to get more missions?
      • Not an easy one either. Each transaction server makes its own missions
    • Will engineers be able to give us missions that give us rewards we need?
      • For now ‘no’ (because engineers are not factions)
      • In the future maybe…
      • Maybe specific rewards from specific (logical!) places
    • Can the ED Community make missions?
      • It’s very easy to underestimate the complexity of the missions and would be damn hard for the community to do. Making a tool to do this would be a HECK of a hard job too.
    • More intra system missions?
      • It is currently possible currently set between 0 and up to 500 ly away! It would be possible but cascading complexity, risk vs reward job. Might be looked at in the future
    • Can rewards reflect your status with a faction?
      • FD have not currently considered this.
      • Rewards are worked out by credits, then broken down to the credit value of the ‘stuff’ or hard cash…
      • Every mission offers ++ reward.
      • We’ve been getting the right rewards but not displayed
      • It’s a bug and has been (hopefully!) fixed.
    • Mission filters?
      • No
      • Missions are NOT generated specifically for you so you get the generic result set. In theory someone could filter stuff
    • Is it possible to detect who’s scanning your ship? I.E. who cares if a pirate scans my contraband instead of the police
      • The pirates are STILL a faction so the mission still fails
      • Yes it’s possible to identify who is scanning.
    • Any chance of more luxury passenger missions?
      • Adam will take the feedback on board but need to be careful to not lock ppl out. Though he gets that we need reasons for an Orca etc too…
      • Gotta figure out who you’re going to annoy the most
    • Do you feel that removing the rank locks has removed the feeling of progression in the game?
      • No it’s a good thing. Ppl have the choice to do ‘hard’ stuff
      • Possible ‘elite’ rank missions being a thing ‘one day’
    • Multistep passenger missions can we get paid for each step?
      • At the moment it’s by design trying to keep the passengers happy
    • What is the limiting factor implementing new mission types?
      • Say FD wanted to add a ‘photography’ thing make a design, get approved. Dom has to make Mission Progressions Elements and other things. To make the template, side panel and all that shite. 
      • Please let us accept missions for another ship. I.E. need cargo when u dont have it
      • The mission needs to know if you can complete it but doesn’t look at every other ship you can get. This makes lots of strange edge cases that would get a lot of grief from ppl who can’t actually complete the missions.
    • Can we get Elite only missions back?
      • Adam thought there were some in game? But there could be a bug if they’re not showing up
      • Dom can see the servers soul
      • More missions with NPCs via the inbox (rather than mission screen)
      • Dom feels conflicted, there ARE missions given whilst you fly around. But they are rare. Server load tech issues, but also design.
      • The secret for a higher chance is to stay in the same place for 15 mins.
      • Potential things coming that will make this more interesting / common etc…
    • Military Missions?
      • FD are aware of the communities desire. But No ETA, No Guarantee…
    • When there is opposition to a mission we seem to get the same ship multiple times, how about more groups of smaller ships etc?
      • It is possible, but needs balancing
      • 4 ppl at once is a LOT different to 4 * 1 person
      • Adds a lot more complexity
      • No ETA, No Guarantee.
      • No comments for 2.3 or 2.4…
      • Increase mission branches etc
      • Something FD are always looking to do.
      • Good example – nav beacon scanning…
    • Can we pick our crew up when they die?
      • Potentially in the future, but DAMN it’s a big job with lots of tie in between loads of ppl…
      • … That… would actually be quite complicated!
    • Will there be any missions that need top tier load outs and rewards…
      • That’s the challenge isn’t it… BALANCING IS hard 🙂
      • Adam is doing a balancing pass based off of REAL data not anecdotal data 🙂 Chat then gets pissy about FD ignoring player reports. Adam says NO they need the reports to find things, but you need to base data off of data…
      • FD are looking at ‘the economy’ and how to manage it
      • Any chance of increasing the colonial missions time?
      • That was a bug it’s fixed
    • Will Jaques Station get missions?
      • Yes – soon
    • Explain how making missions works..
      • 2 missions from same station
      • 1 to dest 10 sec from the star, one needs to go to hutton orbital!
      • But it’s both the same mission
    • Can we get cash not cargo?
      • Maybe… but this may be going anyway…
    • Passenger requests are now optional
    • Do missions need a client update?
      • No they’re all server side (but we still need to test etc!)
    • Can we get a timer for mission refresh?
      • No it takes place piecemeal. Gen 4 banks of missions. If more needed after 15 mins then they are generated…
• Newsletter 154
• Community Corner
  • PC gaming using Playstation VR
  • ‘Panels’ Coming to Voice attack
    • Demo video
  • Jupiter Hell has been kickstarted!
  • Elite RPG
    • New updates covering Cybernetics Personal Combat
    • Story by someone called Allen Stroud and ship counters.
  • £13,000 VR Setup!