Lave Radio Breaks Elite Dangerous.. A new error code cursed players on Wednesday and it’s all Lave Radio’s fault
Main discussion
“Public reaction” to patch:
Alec Turner 1) giving a uniform model for cosmetic purchasing across all three platforms 2) allowing the store to be more easily integrated into the heart of the game by taking technical/legal coding complexities around actual financial transactions out of the equation 3) alleviating the not insignificant overhead of individual fees for numerous small financial transactions which make paying small amounts for things with credit cards not cost effective for Frontier (which thereby enables the purchase of individual paintjobs rather than whole packs a viable option)
Feed the galaxy Is this why famine states are so rare? More food that Aldi’s..
Questions
Response to the Grind Question from Ryan P Bodfist :-
Hi Lave Radio Crew,
You asked for some feedback grind in ED – here’s my take…
ED is a great game and the ED Developers are incredibly good at what they do in so many respects so don’t want it become too much of a rant…. But there have been some odd decisions made in the game at times I feel….
In terms of grind – I’d break it down into 2 categories;-
Wild goose chases that make no sense.
Repetitious game loops that have no variation in Challenge
Wild goose chases that make no sense
Now there are wild goose chases that make sense – for example searching for Alien ruins etc – that’s fine. But here are some examples of the case in point – though there are others ;-
Searching for material traders. Firstly, it isn’t enjoyable to spend hours searching through probable systems where they might be – it’s simply not fun game play. Secondly, how does it make sense that material traders would not be advertising their location – they are selling a service and they want to make money. Why, why, mcwhy? (the last one was for the Scottish folk amongst the crew… ) It just feels like artificial difficulty for the sake of it. It becomes a grind. Furthermore – all people end up doing is using online resources to find them all – so it takes people out of the game as well and fails to achieve what it was trying to do anyway! Solutions:
Simply make them all visible in the galaxy map – I’ve still got to travel there after all
If you really insist on make some game play out of finding these then make information a commodity that can be gained from factions etc – give me a way of finding the information out that makes some kind of sense.
Randomly searching for ships and equipment
Why do I have to fly around and dock at each station to find out if they are selling the thing I want – It not believable and it isn’t fun game play. Again I have to go out of the game to get this information and I don’t want to do that.
Solutions:
Make this information visible to me within a radius in the game from stations.
Searching for materials.
Put some challenges in the game that make getting materials deterministic rather than just on a dice roll. I know missions do this to an extent, but I think there needs to be more ways. Make information a commodity – maybe a tip off on a base that has a stockpile of a particular materials that I can infiltrate. A tip off on a large ship giving me exactly what it’s carrying – so I don’t waste my time getting a criminal record and get none of the materials I wanted because of a dice roll.
That not to say get rid of the lucky dice roll way of getting this stuff as well – but make it more involving. For example, a random find in a salvage wreck gives me a document that details a site on a planet with loads of material x, or a base that I can infiltrate or a reward for rescuing a ship under attack, or perhaps when I hand in a rescued escape pod etc.
Only being able to pin one engineer blueprint…
I understand the limitation of not being able to get the engineer bonuses without visiting them – fine. But why can I only pin one blue print? Again – is it believable and does it improve gameplay? No and No. Just feels like an artificial restriction for no obvious gameplay benefit.
Repetitive game loops that have no variation in challenge
The other aspect of the game that I find “grindy” is the repetitious loops that offer no variation in challenge or game play. In short these become a grind not just because of the amount of times I have to do it but because there’s no variation in challenge – it gets dull pretty quick.
Missions
Missions get a bit “grindy” for me because they are just a bit of a forgone conclusion. Mostly they are go somewhere, evade the NPC interdictions (which I never fail – when was the last time you failed an NPC interdiction?). I never get anything I don’t expect, no variation in challenge – it all just feels like I just have to turn up. Because of this it becomes a grind just to get credits/materials rather than something that could be exiting and have some tension/emotional content at the same time.
Solutions:
More variety in challenge – keep me on my toes. Make NPC interdictions an actual threat. Get rid of no fire zones around anarchy stations so I can get attacked whilst I’m docking / un-docking in some cases – opt in risk isn’t risk…. I need to feel some emotion – some tension then its exiting – I need to feel I’m not totally safe at all times (Other than getting “Ganked” of course – but that’s not the kind of risk I’m looking for….)
Guardian sites
Firstly, how am I supposed to know where these are in game? Secondly, why so far away? Why can’t I buy them for large amounts of money, or get them in other ways.
Hard missions perhaps when I become an ally with a faction etc. I hate having to do the same one or two things thing over and over and having to fly so far. Give me the option of harder less repetitive tasks to get this stuff – so I can choose the easy “grindy” way or several different hard challenging exciting ways – where there’s a real element of tension and risk (i.e. I accept I may fail but if I win it’s worth it…)
Anyway – that’s my 10p worth.
By the way – thanks for all the work in doing the Lave Radio show over the years its been running – much appreciated. Makes my drive into and out of Cambridge much less of a grind 🙂
Best Regards, Commander Ryan P Bodfirst
No response to the Question about Fleet Carriers? – CMDR Ade Mason in the Lave server:
“Do you guys think that the Fleet Carriers should be given free to Lifetime Expansion holders, like me, and I assume the both of you?”
Cmdr Ade Mason : “For my point and in addition, my understanding is that fleet carriers are almost a cosmetic, I know this was discussed in episode 257, so I don’t want to linger on it, I don’t think they’ll give any more than a transport/support option for your fleet of ships rather than having them stored at stations, also many players don’t play for credits, so they’d be priced out of potentially ever owning one if the hypothetical value of one is let’s say 5 billion for argument sake, it’ll then only be for the elite only players who already have billions, as the latest updates have been about getting new players into the game, I cannot see FDev releasing something that only a small percentage of players will afford to have access to! It’s not in keeping with the structure of the game, just some additional thoughts, so giving one free to a LEP holder wouldn’t be a game breaker, but would give them a nod and thanks for the support.”
New Question – Cmdr Thane didn’t realise that the ship compass could be used to locate his landing pad. What piece of functionality did you miss, until someone pointed it out to you? (And maybe needs to be included in the new Tutorials)?
Individual Fighter and SRV Paint Jobs – 460 to 3280 ARX
Individual Ship Paint Jobs – 620 to 5,520 ARX
Individual Bobbleheads – 2,450 to 6,450 ARX
COVAS – 8,850 ARX
Ship Kits (sold in Bundles) – 11,750 to 13,520 ARX
Cosmetic
Minimum Arx Cost
Time to earn at 400 Cap
Maximum Arx Cost
Time to earn at 400 Cap
Decal
50
< 1 week
150
< 1 week
SRV / Fighter Paint Job
460
~ 1 week
3280
~ 8 weeks
Ship Paint Job
620
~ 1.5 weeks
5520
~ 14 weeks
Individual Bobblehead
2450
~ 6 weeks
6450
~ 16 weeks
COVAS
8850
~ 22 weeks
8850
~ 22 weeks
Ship Kit
11750
~ 29 weeks
13520
~34 weeks
Community Corner
We Have competition, the Loose Screws Elite Dangerous podcast is available covering similar topics as ourselves but in ‘merican. Hello to Dyrvol and Dravenous13
Our sister station, Hutton Orbital Radio, Broadcasts on Thursdays from 20:30. You can tune in at tv.forthemug.com/ or, for just the audio, at radio.forthemug.com/.
For the discerning Commander who likes a bit of CQC action, check out the CQC Discord at “discord.me/elitedangerouscqc”.
I’m CMDR Wet Stapler and I run the Elite: Musicians group. We’re a bunch of space bards and we’re starting a big project to make a large album of music all about Elite: Dangerous. We would certainly appreciate a shoutout if you could spare us the time in an upcoming episode! If you do, please give them a link to our discord in the show notes: https://discord.gg/uaxqBKz Thanks for your time! Fly safe! And if you can’t do that, fly dangerous. CMDR Wet Stapler
Cmdr Plater will be doing his 24 hour Charity Stream in aid of the Britsh Thyroid Foundation (Plater has terminal Thyroid Cancer) on the 28th September from 12 midday. Lave Radio, Hutton Orbital Radio, The Buurs and many others will be there to support him. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGBuea5fdJo
Shoutouts
Our sister station, Hutton Orbital Radio, Broadcasts on Thursdays from 20:30. You can tune in at tv.forthemug.com/ or, for just the audio, at radio.forthemug.com/.
For the discerning Commander who likes a bit of CQC action, check out the CQC Discord at “discord.me/elitedangerouscqc”.
Thanks to those who have chipped in on Twitch chat and in-game commanders
Greetings, Commanders, and welcome to Episode #257 of Lave Radio. The show about the universe of Elite, and the fantastic community that surrounds it.
If you can’t get in-game you can also join the Twitch chat channel, which you can access through “laveradio.com/live” and clicking on ‘live chat’; and on “twitch.tv/laveradio”.
Tonight’s activity in-game
Is Kurgol flying to Maia to see the new Thargoid?
Development News – what have the devs said this week?
Single-player surprise? Like the player freighter in NMS.
500 ly but Refuelled by what? New kind of fuel? Possible skimming from gas giants? Powered by Arx? (Hope not).
You can schedule jumps, how often will you be able to?
Who would you allow to dock? (private, friends, squadron?)
One carrier per instance and they cannot be destroyed. Can you drive it off’ like other capital ships?
What will you use for your personal fleet carrier for?
How much should they cost?
Rumour has it, they will need to be maintained, and not just fueled.. Thoughts?
Refuel, rearm and repair but to get different functions, you have to add the right support ship?
Trade – does this mean you can store commodities there?
Bounty hunting
Exploration
Search and rescue
Piracy? Base for griefers?
Miner
Mercenary
Smuggler
No anti-Xeno though.
4 large pads, 4 medium pads, 4 small pads. Once all the pads have been used, no-one else can dock
How big are those support ships? And are support ship and modules the same thing?
Community Corner
Best video of the carrier announcement has to be the ‘ghost giraffe’ s drunk Review.
Questions
Someone posted on the ED forum that you guys could use some ideas re:The Grind. My ED copilots and I have one glaring Grind issue, and that is Raw mats. The issue is, we are purely combat pilots, and there is only one way to gather Raw mats for engineering, SRV surface prospecting. None of us want to drive SRVs in circles picking stuff up, yet we have to do so for many hours. It’s really irritating. Miners and Explorers can gain Manufactured/Encoded/Raw mats from their normal tasks and missions. Combat pilots must step away from their normal tasks/missions to get Raw mats. The fix is simple. Add Raw mats as mission reward options, and make NPC Mining/Trading ships drop some Raw mats just like ships drop Manufacture mats. The credit grind is gone, now it is just the mat grind.
What Do you think of Fleet Carriers? Have you got idea about the Role you want to do?
Shoutouts
Our sister station, Hutton Orbital Radio, Broadcasts on Thursdays from 20:30. You can tune in at tv.forthemug.com/ or, for just the audio, at radio.forthemug.com/.
For the discerning Commander who likes a bit of CQC action, check out the CQC Discord at “discord.me/elitedangerouscqc”.
Thanks to those who have chipped in on Twitch chat and in-game commanders
If this means that the amount of Galnet content won’t change, but the percentage that’s related to in-game content will increase, I think that’s very positive – especially if that means that there’s more non-routine in-game content going on than previously.
If this means that the amount of Galnet content related to in-game content won’t change, but the total amount of Galnet content will decrease, then that feels like taking several steps back, to how things were two or three years ago when Galnet could go for weeks between non-automated news items.
I think also, while people weren’t satisfied with the “off-camera” narratives, this was because they took place 100% off-camera, and often, more recently, in undefined locations so that people couldn’t go looking for in-game signs of them. They felt like they weren’t really happening in Elite Dangerous.
There’s still, I think, room for quite a bit of off-camera narrative, provided that it relates to some in-game content as well. For example, the Enclave Interstellar Initiative could have had some “background” material in Galnet over the previous few months: – 6 months before II starts: news article about how meta-alloys are being widely used in research – 4 months before II starts: news article where some corporation expresses concerns about the meta-alloy supply security – 1 month before II starts: story about scientists noting Pleiades barnacles are showing signs of damage …and then go into the II with that as lead-up, rather than it suddenly starting with “meta-alloy prices double! exploration CG! no previous hints that there was any sort of issue!” – and then of course potential for a few stories following up after the II months later highlighting the long-term effects it’s had
If most of the stories eventually connected around to in-game events, they wouldn’t need to all have in-game interactions directly associated with them for players to feel that they were relevant. (e.g. Drew Wagar’s “Premonition” storyline was generally well-received and the finale had lots of players participating on both sides, despite most of the lead up happening “off-camera” and often even “off-Galnet”) An in-game event which connected three stories from months or even years ago that people had assumed were just background flavour could be really exciting. (And it’d look like you’d planned it that way even if you’d just picked up those loose stories months later, too)
@Stephen Benedetti can I ask then, on average do you expect there to be roughly the same number of Galnet stories per week but instead of Frontier inventing stories (e.g. the winking cat stuff or the dude who stole a DBX) they’ll now be covering things that actually happened (e.g. expeditions, races, AX combat/repair achievements, etc)? (which sounds great) … or, do you mean that you’ll be cutting those side stories and then, once a month or so, adding a story about the outcome of something wide reaching (but still largely Frontier created) such as an Interstellar Initiative or game update? (which sounds disappointing on the surface at least).
The thing is, what Galnet needs to do is bring a sense of life to the galaxy. If FD have to invent that life (as at present) then so be it, if they can cover the life that players are creating on a daily basis then even better, but if (as it slightly sounds), it’s going to become even more lifeless … that would be a HUGE pity!
This thursday, FDev will have Dav doing a similar, or even the same, presentation about the Back-ground simulation we had at lavecon this week on the Thursday Presentation.
Our sister station, Hutton Orbital Radio, Broadcasts on Thursdays from 20:30. You can tune in at tv.forthemug.com/ or, for just the audio, at radio.forthemug.com/.
For the discerning Commander who likes a bit of CQC action, check out the CQC Discord at “discord.me/elitedangerouscqc”.
Thanks to those who have chipped in on Twitch chat and in-game commanders
Cmdr Arkaboop on Reddit shows us how to play Elite using Remote Play on a PS Vita using a Mobile Hotspot (because the local WiFi is rubbish) as well as adding a case that adds the L2/R2 and L3/R3 triggers so as not to lose any functionality.
Maybe we can segway into “mobile ways to play elite”
This took a little longer than I was anticipating (I should just go ahead and trademark that phrase, lol), but David (/u/RahnKavall) and I are pleased to present the next chapter of FANGS: a short single-chapter interlude called MERCS.
(What’s Fangs, you ask? Fangs is a noir-themed web comic set in the Elite: Dangerous universe!)
MERCS is an original story written and illustrated by David, using the characters from his own E:D web comic MERCENARY COMMANDER (now sadly offline, or I’d link to it Ah, we’ve still got the images!). After getting all super-duper emotional with FANGS book 2, I wanted to do something a little less serious to change things up a bit and get the tone a little lighter—and Rahn & Moose here certainly fit the bill 😀
David & I are now heads-down working on FANGS book 3, which will be titled “To Sail Forbidden Seas” and which will be about a commander who gets marooned in Witchspace during a mis-jump and comes face to face with the things that lurk in the between:
Test panel, temp VFX, subject to change
We’ve been refining our art process and now have a Maya-driven workflow (which lets us do interior shots like this!), and we’re excited about the art possibilities!
You guys are an amazing community and David & I are grateful for your continued support. Thanks for reading FANGS—it makes me really happy to see folks enjoying something we worked so hard on 🙂
You will likely recall the story of CMDR Michael Holyland, who sadly passed way in May this year at the age of 15.
A personalised audiobook was created for him by the combined efforts of Frontier, Voice Actors and the Community.
It was Michael’s wish that the audiobook be made available to the community so they could also enjoy it. We have taken the additional step of publishing it in ebook formats too. The book can be freely downloaded from the link below.
We are suggesting donations to Cancer Research UK in memory of Michael.
Ohm Horizons (HIP 29312) 13-JUL-3305 to 21-JUL-3305
Welcome to the Seven Sisters Speedway: In a reimagining of one of the earliest BRC events, take off from Ohm Horizons in HIP 29312 near the edge of the bubble, and take a whirlwind tour around some of the stations and installations of the Seven Sisters in the Pleiades Nebula, then race back to Ohm Horizons.
Begin the race docked at Ohm Horizons in HIP 29312.
Visit the following nine locations in the Pleiades Nebula in any order:
The Seven Sisters are:
Asterope – Dock at Copernicus Observatory (83ls)
Atlas – Hip Hop only!
Celaeno – Dock at Artemis Lodge (46ls)
Maia – Dock at Obsidian Orbital (635ls)
Merope – Make a fly-past of the Listening Post orbiting Merope-1b (2100ls) – Note: listening posts, like other space structures, only appear on your Nav Panel when you approach to within 1000ls.
Pleione – Dock at Stargazer (1072ls) AND
Pleione – Make two tunnel fly-throughs at the Squirrel’s Nest space bar (265ls)
