How to Save Discovery Freelancer

[darkwind]

How to Save Discovery Freelancer

- Allow JD4's to jump transports - There were whole companies that had to cease to exist when they cut this. As far as I'm concerned, with the population we have on average the argument jump convoys were cutting into the flow of trade didn't hold up with me. There are undoubtedly ways to offset any potential negative impact that doesn't involve removing the ability completely. This also will pay off if we implement some long term changes around use of POB's and a faction 'challenge system'. I see people arguing that it takes too long to get around to find action, or that its too difficult to do this or that (if we got more complex here), but that can all be solved by using what we already have. We should not be afraid to let people branch out, build secret bases, form companies to offer special supply services, etc. (On the long term, a JD countermeasure could be devised, or a way to detect ships charging for a jump to help those hunting them, etc).

This can be balanced by having a jump drive have an insanely high charge up time, and broadcasting every minute that the ship is charging jump drive to the entire system, as well as perhaps making it necessary to be near a naturally occurring jump hole "To use the naturally occurring gravitational anomaly to facilitate faster than light travel."

For instance, if we get a golden ore transport in Dublin, and it requires charge up time of say, 5 minutes if going to London, but 15 minutes if going to New York, and will always spawn you on a certain location in the system (Near the star, like in E?), that might help with the ingame balance of trading.

Add the charge-up time to that, and also broadcasting your location to everyone, making you a sitting duck for every nefarious element in the system, and you pretty much have nerfed the jumpdrive into oblivion. (balance work needed with actual figures :-) )

Also, hi everyone, I dropped back after quite a while :wave:

Huh. Making jump drive which charges time proportional to traveling distance, which works only near jump holes and with notifications at entry and end systems? It could work.

Writing necessary things to work fastly and easily reviewed, can be very challenging though.

This would require very fastly solved shortest path problem.
In less than 5 seconds for all routes at the server start
or in less than 0.1 sec on a fly during working process.

[Akura]

How to Kill Discovery Freelancer

At what point will you realize that your wildly outlandish suggestion posts are incompatible with the game we're trying to play?

See, if this were somebody else, I might be inclined to give actual feedback, but since it's you, I know that your only response to feedback is to call everybody wrong, toxic, misinformed, or any combination thereof. Just stop.

For the love of all stop signs in the galaxy. Please just cease and desist. I mean allow multiboxing? What a great idea... how about we allow modifying ini files and disable anti cheat while we're at it?

"I don't get why Discovery seems to be in decline"

Let's summerise a little bit better:

At what point will you realize that your wildly outlandish suggestion posts are incompatible with the game we're trying to play?

This is why Discovery is dying folks, you've created a rigid-minded community that is afraid of change.

Discovery needs to evolve and loosen up some of it's more prudent rules and regulations if it wants to attract people.

I know exactly what I'm doing and I don't want to come back, how do you think new players are going to feel? From what I have gathered from current players I've been talking to on Discord, this server is breeding ground of resentment, clashing ideas and toxic behaviour.

[11of10]

How to Save Discovery Freelancer

- Allow JD4's to jump transports - There were whole companies that had to cease to exist when they cut this. As far as I'm concerned, with the population we have on average the argument jump convoys were cutting into the flow of trade didn't hold up with me. There are undoubtedly ways to offset any potential negative impact that doesn't involve removing the ability completely. This also will pay off if we implement some long term changes around use of POB's and a faction 'challenge system'. I see people arguing that it takes too long to get around to find action, or that its too difficult to do this or that (if we got more complex here), but that can all be solved by using what we already have. We should not be afraid to let people branch out, build secret bases, form companies to offer special supply services, etc. (On the long term, a JD countermeasure could be devised, or a way to detect ships charging for a jump to help those hunting them, etc).

This can be balanced by having a jump drive have an insanely high charge up time, and broadcasting every minute that the ship is charging jump drive to the entire system, as well as perhaps making it necessary to be near a naturally occurring jump hole "To use the naturally occurring gravitational anomaly to facilitate faster than light travel."

For instance, if we get a golden ore transport in Dublin, and it requires charge up time of say, 5 minutes if going to London, but 15 minutes if going to New York, and will always spawn you on a certain location in the system (Near the star, like in E?), that might help with the ingame balance of trading.

Add the charge-up time to that, and also broadcasting your location to everyone, making you a sitting duck for every nefarious element in the system, and you pretty much have nerfed the jumpdrive into oblivion. (balance work needed with actual figures :-) )

Also, hi everyone, I dropped back after quite a while :wave:

Huh. Making jump drive which charges time proportional to traveling distance, which works only near jump holes and with notifications at entry and end systems? It could work.

Writing necessary things to work fastly and easily reviewed, can be very challenging though.

This would require very fastly solved shortest path problem.
In less than 5 seconds for all routes at the server start
or in less than 0.1 sec on a fly during working process.

Not really, the best is enemy of good enough.

Don't try to do it by a millisecond, just give it a rough estimate (this time per jump gate, this time per lane segment) and have a previously calculated skeleton map to be loaded on server boot, that'd control this. I imagine it could all be shoved into a JSON file.

And you can most likely ignore freighters, as they're too small in cargo space to make a significant contribution.

Now, to be honest, I have no clue how to program this, never even took a peek at this server and it's config, but it's an idea.

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Be excelent to each other!

[darkwind]

How to Save Discovery Freelancer

- Allow JD4's to jump transports - There were whole companies that had to cease to exist when they cut this. As far as I'm concerned, with the population we have on average the argument jump convoys were cutting into the flow of trade didn't hold up with me. There are undoubtedly ways to offset any potential negative impact that doesn't involve removing the ability completely. This also will pay off if we implement some long term changes around use of POB's and a faction 'challenge system'. I see people arguing that it takes too long to get around to find action, or that its too difficult to do this or that (if we got more complex here), but that can all be solved by using what we already have. We should not be afraid to let people branch out, build secret bases, form companies to offer special supply services, etc. (On the long term, a JD countermeasure could be devised, or a way to detect ships charging for a jump to help those hunting them, etc).

This can be balanced by having a jump drive have an insanely high charge up time, and broadcasting every minute that the ship is charging jump drive to the entire system, as well as perhaps making it necessary to be near a naturally occurring jump hole "To use the naturally occurring gravitational anomaly to facilitate faster than light travel."

For instance, if we get a golden ore transport in Dublin, and it requires charge up time of say, 5 minutes if going to London, but 15 minutes if going to New York, and will always spawn you on a certain location in the system (Near the star, like in E?), that might help with the ingame balance of trading.

Add the charge-up time to that, and also broadcasting your location to everyone, making you a sitting duck for every nefarious element in the system, and you pretty much have nerfed the jumpdrive into oblivion. (balance work needed with actual figures :-) )

Also, hi everyone, I dropped back after quite a while :wave:

Huh. Making jump drive which charges time proportional to traveling distance, which works only near jump holes and with notifications at entry and end systems? It could work.

Writing necessary things to work fastly and easily reviewed, can be very challenging though.

This would require very fastly solved shortest path problem.
In less than 5 seconds for all routes at the server start
or in less than 0.1 sec on a fly during working process.

Not really, the best is enemy of good enough.

Don't try to do it by a millisecond, just give it a rough estimate (this time per jump gate, this time per lane segment) and have a previously calculated skeleton map to be loaded on server boot, that'd control this. I imagine it could all be shoved into a JSON file.

And you can most likely ignore freighters, as they're too small in cargo space to make a significant contribution.

Now, to be honest, I have no clue how to program this, never even took a peek at this server and it's config, but it's an idea.

Json will do nothing good here
Using regression analysis to calculate 95-98% precised answer is funny idea though

Or.. we actually could add multithreading... then there will be much more time to solve the task

[Karlotta]

- Allow JD4's to jump transports

This would cripple piracy even worse than it already is crippled now. I would however give freighters (which can be jumped atm) a little more cargo space to make jump trading / jump mining with a large group of people in freighters somewhat viable.

Here's how it seems to me. Instead of forcing people to trade the long way, it just drives people away in general. It also renders the value of the JD4 to a fraction of what it was and could be. I think it was well balanced. It takes hundreds of millions to get a ship able to use a JD4, able to use a hyperspace scanner, all of those cost hundreds of millions as well, not including jump batteries, fuel for scans, etc.

On top of that, it does allow players to build up to and earn a way to alleviate a great deal of logistical challenge that helps save time and effort. It doesn't totally remove activity though, it just frees up time doing certain things to do others. So, I'm not opposed to limits and ways to balance things out. We could have an anti-JD countermeasure added so anyone can interrupt a charging jump from anywhere in a system, and use it to 'ping' the ship to track it. I'd rather them think along the lines of giving another earnable technology to offset it instead of keeping it cut. You're talking to one of the biggest pirates that ever flew here, and it still doesn't scare me, it can be dealt with in other ways.

The things that were proposed to counter-balance jump trading will lower the value of a JD4 (and other JDs too) for all other applications of JD too.

It takes millions to get a JD4, yes, but if it makes you safe from pirates along the way its a thing that will let you avoid interaction and maximize your profit. Unless you counter balance it wit hsomething, and then... whats the point in allowing it in the first place?

Trading may be long and boring, but that's also a result of the breakdown of the "traders give pirates something to do, pirates give law enforcement sometinig to do, need for law enforcement ships creates demand for credits, which creates demand for traders" feedback cycle. You never really address that problem. All in all, there are little (or no) benefits in jump trading compared to all the problems it creates.

- Allow [limited] Multiboxing

Personally I think that allowing multiboxing for certain activities could be beneficial, but there is potential for abuse of some things.

Beneficial Multiboxing:
- Having several transports trading separately from each other. This raises chances for pirates to intercept your transports, also because its harder for a multiboxer to check the playerlist for all systems they have their transports moving through.

- having a [Help] tagged char in one "box" who will answer questions from noobs, while trading on other chars

- having a recruitment-char in a "box". Can be named such as: [Recruiter]-Br-Corp-Gateway|

Abuse of Multiboxing:
- sending a neutral snub to scout ahead of your traders/smugglers/hostile combat ships

- trading in a multiboxed convoy where 1 transport flies ahead and the others only follow from far if its clear

- [u] Mining for your own transports (makes the existence of the current co op mining system pointless)

Not sure how I feel about this use:
- Docking one or more snubs on your own carrier This may be abusable somehow (not sure if its abuse or legit use of things you payed for with credits) but it can also make the game very, very interesting and fun. For example you dock a repair ship, a bomber, and a vhf on your carrier and jump it all to where you want to go. I guess existing pvp rules will prevent abuse such as docking your snub in combat and then shooting with the carrier, because when ur pvp dead on the snub you are on the carrier too.

As for enabling the permitted uses and making the non permitted impossible/punishable, I guess there could be rules for tagging requirements of multiboxed ships. Maybe some coding in launcher of flhook too.

The [Helper] and [Recruiter] thing could very easily made legal and be encouraged by simply announcing the rule and letting people who have the gear use a PC and a Laptop at the same time.

Ahh well I'm not saying there may be no drawbacks, but we have drawbacks with the way it is now as well. My argument remains that its better to deal with that stuff as it may come and take our chances that it will actually still create more to do in the end than not.

As far as the carrier idea goes, to me, if a player can use their carrier to jump around, and use as their own mobile base, all the power to them. I'd love to try to escape back to my own carrier. Its not going to be easy, some will pull stuff like that off, some won't. We have a tendency here to not allow anything over these minute possibilities of abuses that always turned out to be a lesser threat than perceived. Especially over the last 3 years or so as population reached its current state.

Maybe the carrier with snubs multiboxing can also be solved by making a rule requiring a tag (for example the multiboxed snubs must have the same unique tag as the carrier).

What really needs to be avoided is miner+hauler multiboxing and scouting for your own convoys or spying between hostile IDs.

Maybe its possible to allow same IPed ships if they share a tag, and have flhook kick ships that have same IPs but no common tag?

-Void the oorp rules around enforcing roleplay consequences only while uncloaked

This makes it easy for people who want to screw other players over and stalk them to find dirt on them. Too abusable. There are already too many toxic "roLePlAy cOnSeQunCeS" being enforced that just screw players over.

Ahh but to me that's the very thing I want allowed now.

I dont even need to address anything more after that sentence. If you allow that to an even greater extent than we have already, you will make disco even more toxic, vengeful, paranoid, hate filled, tribalistic, and small.

Until you manage to understand that, there is literally no point in talking to you about anything, sadly.

I would only agree to "player driven changes" and POB challenges if all the parties affected agree to enter the challenge, and the consequences dont affect anyone that doesnt want to be a part of it. A challenge system with altered POB mechanics and rules (best to separate destructible and indestuctible POBs entirely through game mechanics, rules, and laws) that takes place only in locations where uninvolved players wont be affected could make things interesting.

But that defeats the entire purpose of the new system and FR in my eyes. The point will be that the game will go one without opponents. It becomes a game of principle. You could let factions gain quite easily, or not so easily. But stations that are out in the open, whether they have an active faction or not, should be fair game. They are just sitting there otherwise. This is an easy way for us to keep the universe changing in small ways, fight our small wars, and have ongoing conflicts/activity drivers using what we already have. Many factions would undoubtedly like to try to instigate against their enemies, try big moves of some kind. If we limit this to consent only, it goes nowhere instantly. If we limit it to only OF vs OF, it can be avoided. The main principle is that real things will be at risk of change, and to do something about it, you can get in game and get involved.

For the challenge system, I predict that for the first year it would be most active, and factions would have a few little wars to try to gain the places they have always eyed. Some will succeed, others won't. Eventually things will plataeu based on player population still, and all of the potential moves will have been made. So, some places will see the odd successful 'permanent' changes. Personally I don't think anything will stay all that permanent. Once a station in border zone falls to one faction, another can come along to challenge them as well. I forsee slow change, and that's the point. It would unfold in almost real time, and anyone could form a faction, if not already active, to try something. Otherwise the most popular ideas will have something decent to offer people.

The thing you'Re never addressing in the non consensual challenge is that the biggest and must unscrupulous mob will dominate everything, and stomp out everything weaker than them. That's the opposite of a healthy environment.

If you absolutely want a challenge system, propose the details of a consensual one that doestn involve people who dont want to get involved, which doesnt require any flhook or game mechanic changes, and see if anyone is interested in that. If not, the more impactfull non consensual one will also fail and there is no point in trying to push for it further.

Cut the server into 3 major sections.

I dont see how this would have any positive effects. It would make players more isolated and lonely, and they would be forced to make lots of chars instead of getting to use their favorite chars more. Creating more bottlenecks is good, but you dont have to separate the map into 3 pieces for that.

-Clarify what is/can be cannon or not, and acceptable RP
-New Community Attitude and enforcement from the staff-

Yes. Players need better lore, laws, rules, and game mechanic explanations, and faction leaders + staff need better guidance through codes of conduct. How ever "better" doesnt always mean "more". The rules, laws, and tutorials need to be condensed and simplified instead of making the hay stack even bigger for people who are trying to find the needle they are looking for. And disco staff have a habit of making things worse instead of better with their moderation style (just telling people to shut up and not resolve their differences, locking discussions because a few people trolled instead of stopping the trolls, threatening and handing out bans as if thats the only tool they have, double standards when allowing certain people to hold trial by discord and then banning people who defend themselves against provably wrong accusations). We dont need more of the same style, we need better style.

I'm not determined to see the map changes but I did want to put the idea out there as an option. Yes it would leave some inconsitencies, but to me at this point its worth it to on the other end create a situation that is more interesting and more enticing. But think of it this way, players will mostly start based on the restarts confined to one of the three zones. Which means each zone is like a shrunken server, it should be easier to get interactions within each zone if it has local trade routes from one end to the other across it. So instead of cutting systems, shrinking or altering routes, we just cut the map into zones that are each their own little world. Keeping players confined except by JD means ships in each zone are 'cornered' and confined. Each zone would then develop its own new route system with major routes of local traffic. Think of it another way, its like dividing the server into 3 'floors'.

But you can focus people into bottlenecks without separating the mod into "floors" or "Zones". If you did that, players would flock the the busiest of the 3 and leave the others empty. Instead of doing that, you can make the houses more closely interconnected by removing or shortening travel distances between them, and bottlenecks by creating fewer alternate routes between them, and within them.

More generally, I think you should really concentrate on getting staff to implement the things that most people do agree with, and spend less time pushing things that very few people agree with.

There is also a lot of pointless rhetoric being thrown around here, from ad hominems to self praise, which dont really contribute to finding the best solution. First concentrate on what everyone can agree with, get that finished, and then move on from there.

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[Kauket]

I don't want JD4's to be primarily focused on money making, because I like using it for pvp related stuff, like jumping to someone who needs help.

Might as well make a "commerical" version of the group JD to allow trade jumping and it won't work unless you're within a set of coordinates.

Eg, Must be within the range of -10,000 to 10,000 Y cords. (can't go further than 10k on/off plane. )

It would be nice if we could make 'allowed' jumping zones for commercial JDs but each system is its own size, so we cannot use coordinates to determine where they can land, unless you made a script to figure out stuff from zoom scale.



"Allowed landing zones" - or maybe different charge areas, quicker to charge near the center?

Who knows.

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[-Rax-]

dumb question
but could tradelanes be set to go faster and cruise speeds buffed across the board?

It's not a dumb question, and yes, it's possible to make lane speed faster.

When I suggested it to devs when they asked for ideas on how to make the lane network better, they said something like "we dont talk about that now".

Buffing lane speed to 130%-180% would concentrate more trade routes on the lanes, making player meetings and interactions more likely, and doing pirates an additional favor by making it harder for traders to drop of the lane and do a u turn as soon as they see a red on scanner.

It would also make trade more profitable compared the the OP pve zone / mission money making.

And make getting from A to B faster, also making finding interaction easier.

But hey... when "we dont talk about it" we dont talk about it.

I actually agree with that, even if I don't pirate or trade anymore.

-I was thinking on more JH's across the system , more trade routes and more connections within the houses. Another idea would be to make a kind of a circular trade route connecting the houses with a better profit.

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[Karlotta]

dumb question
but could tradelanes be set to go faster and cruise speeds buffed across the board?

It's not a dumb question, and yes, it's possible to make lane speed faster.

When I suggested it to devs when they asked for ideas on how to make the lane network better, they said something like "we dont talk about that now".

Buffing lane speed to 130%-180% would concentrate more trade routes on the lanes, making player meetings and interactions more likely, and doing pirates an additional favor by making it harder for traders to drop of the lane and do a u turn as soon as they see a red on scanner.

It would also make trade more profitable compared the the OP pve zone / mission money making.

And make getting from A to B faster, also making finding interaction easier.

But hey... when "we dont talk about it" we dont talk about it.

I actually agree with that, even if I don't pirate or trade anymore.

-I was thinking on more JH's across the system , more trade routes and more connections within the houses. Another idea would be to make a kind of a circular trade route connecting the houses with a better profit.

More JHs also create more alternative routes, which reduces the number of random encounters.

You could make a higher profit circular route, but something everyone should try to understand is that you can have as many trade commodities and even routes as you want, as long as they all lead through the same busy route segments routes/bottlenecks at some point.

In addition to that, increasing trade lane speed is really the easiest and most effective way to concentrate trade onto lanes, move houses closer together, and do pirates a favor. Doesnt mean it has to be the only thing done, but it should definately also be done.

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[Czechmate]

There are 2 circular routes made by @Squad, one house one, one edge world doable by unlawfuls.

Imo they just need to be advertised and pushed more - They should be a staple of Disco

[AuruemSaber]

How to Kill Discovery Freelancer

At what point will you realize that your wildly outlandish suggestion posts are incompatible with the game we're trying to play?

See, if this were somebody else, I might be inclined to give actual feedback, but since it's you, I know that your only response to feedback is to call everybody wrong, toxic, misinformed, or any combination thereof. Just stop.

For the love of all stop signs in the galaxy. Please just cease and desist. I mean allow multiboxing? What a great idea... how about we allow modifying ini files and disable anti cheat while we're at it?

"I don't get why Discovery seems to be in decline"

Let's summerise a little bit better:

At what point will you realize that your wildly outlandish suggestion posts are incompatible with the game we're trying to play?

This is why Discovery is dying folks, you've created a rigid-minded community that is afraid of change.

Discovery needs to evolve and loosen up some of it's more prudent rules and regulations if it wants to attract people.

I know exactly what I'm doing and I don't want to come back, how do you think new players are going to feel? From what I have gathered from current players I've been talking to on Discord, this server is breeding ground of resentment, clashing ideas and toxic behaviour.

see you might have a valid point if this mans suggestion wasn't to try and turn Freelancer it EVE Online or an RTS. There is a huge difference between changes and this not being the same game people are here to play.

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