The Potential of Elite: Unsolicited Ideas Improving the Game

For starters, I'd like to say, I do like this game. However, I don't know that it's actually a good game. There's parts that are amazing – the flight model, the graphics, the environment that Frontier has built, all are top notch. The content however, sometimes feels unpolished, or even lacking. Part of this is Elite feels like a game that can't decide if it's a single player or co-op game, or an MMO. These improvements are directed at the MMO aspect.

Ships

Ship balance is sorely needed in this game. Some are utterly irrelevant (Asp S, Hauler/Adder after 10 minutes, Cobra Mk. 4, Dolphin) Some age poorly (Both Vipers, Federal ships, Eagles etc.) and some have ludicrous stats that beg the question of 'why use anything else?' (FdL, Anaconda, Alliance Chieftain, Asp X). Part of this is due to some questionable numbers in the calculations (Why does the anaconda frame weigh as little as an alliance chieftain? Why do medium ships easily out turn most small ships? Why is the asp scout?) Here are a few proposed reasonable (and unreasonable) changes that could breathe new life into ship configuration.

Ship Customization

My proposal to improve customization increase ship usage is to scrap the idea of existing ship designs and switch to ship frames. Now what do I mean by that? Right now, if you want to fly a diamondback ship, you can choose either the scout, or the explorer. In this proposed cange, each ship frame would have scalable sizing. You could fly a diamondback as big as a corvette, or an anaconda the size of a sidewinder, if you were willing to pay the premium price for a custom frame. Each frame would hold generic stats for the frame, to differentiate them. For example, A diamondback frame might carry stats like so:

Frame mass: 5/10
Weapons slots: 6/10
Core slot sizing: 8/10
Internal slot sizing: 3/10
Shield scaling: 3/10
Armor capacity: 4/10
Pitch inertia: 7/10
Lateral inertia: 4/10

What does this mean? This means that ships you buy with the same base frame share traits, regardless of size. In this example, diamondback ships will always have poor shields, relative to other ships of their size, but have more capacity for weapons and core slots.

There's a number of ways Frontier could implement this. They could have set sizes with predetermined components for each frame – you could buy say, a galleon sized frame, or a frigate sized frame, or what have you. However, I think it'd also be interesting if you had a space cap for each type of component, and you could play within that. Maybe you want to sacrifice most of your optional internals for one really big shield generator, or perhaps you'd like to skimp on thrusters for your big shipping boat and instead grab a bigger FSD. Maybe you want a bunch of small weapons for railguns, or maybe one huge slot because you want bigger dakka.

To some extent this already exists in the game, with ship variants, but overall could be expanded. The closest thing we have is the imperial line of ships (courier, clipper, cutter), but it would greatly expand the usability of some ships.

A distribution of ship frame sizes could look something like this:

Ship size (comparably sized ship)
Sloop (Sidewinder)
Galley (Adder)
Brig (DbS)
Junk (Viper)
Caravel (Cobra mk III)
Carrack (AspX)
Clipper (iClipper, duh)
Galleon (Python)
Corvette (iCutter, gotcha)
Frigate (Panther Clipper?)
Destroyer (No comparable data)

This change would revitalize a number of less used ships frames, and give players a ton of options. The change to customization would allow ample opportunity for Frontier to re-balance the ships. Currently, there's clear best-in-classes (FdL for combat, Asp X/Anaconda for exploration, Cutter for hauling stuff).

Moreover, when this change is made, care should be used to make the big ships FEEL like big ships, in the way they handle. Having big chunky capital ships would be a fun experience. This could be implemented in any number of ways, but I think the diversity of the game would be improved.

PVP

PvP is currently dominated by a few builds. Frontier could easily rebalance this along with the ship balance changes. Changes that would help would be to scale ship durability and maneuverability with the frame size. Larger ships should generally be less agile than smaller ships, with better armor and shields. This would open the opportunity for turrets and gimballs to be more useful. It'd be fun to have large ships feel more like capital ships in combat, with better spaced weaponry for larger frames.

Further, some weapon type need to be tuned. Rail guns, frags, and plasma accelerators are ultra efficient, and deter use of larger ships. More diversity in the PvP pool will attract more players.

Unlawful conduct also needs to be upgraded as well. In high security systems, security responses should be swift and strong. Furthermore, players with high bounties should be pursued by heavily armed bounty hunters soon after anytime they're scanned. This is both immersive, and deters ganking and crime sprees.

Engineering & The Grind

The engineering grind is absolutely ridiculous right now. It takes an incredible amount of time to grind up to a ship at a decent level, and then you actually have to learn to fly the damn thing. This isn't consistent within game mechanics either. If your engineered ship gets blown up, the insurance company replaces it with an engineered ship. If they can find a way to turn money into materials to get engineered components, why can't we? There's no reason to have to grind to engineer our ships, and the same goes for money as well. Grind =/= Content.

Quests, Player agency, and the World

Grind =/= Content. I say it again here, because I don't know that everyone at Frontier gets it. Everything in this game is surface level, and rather tedious. There are so many quests that could be easily improved. Bounty hunting quests could involve interacting with local authorities to track the target through systems. Some could be traps, designed to lure in a player. Smuggling quests could become more rewarding, and more depth could be added with better AI scanners and special smuggling cargo holds. Exploration could evolve to have detailed planetary surveying, with quests to survey for yet-undiscovered mineral deposits.

This leads me into my second point of player agency. Sure, the game is supposed to be 'small fish in a big pond', but you know what? Sometimes the fish get really big too. I think players, and player factions, should be able to invest facilities, and grow themselves a real faction. Not this 'competing for influence in systems', but having real bases and power. Players should be pushing a lot of the action in the game, if it's going to be a truly immersive experience.

Facilities would be used to make money, such as a planetary mine, or refinery, or be as big as a small station with a shipyard.

Rich, mineable mineral deposits should be rare to generate. This will naturally lead to conflict among players for the best spots both in mineral deposits and location. These facilities would generate wealth for the player or squadron, either by selling passively as part of the galactic economy, hiring ships to move their merchandise for them, or by hauling their harvest themselves. These facilities could stimulate player interaction by:

a) Being attackable. Facilities could be damaged or destroyed by ships, or captured or raided on foot. Players could invest in defenses, but it wouldn't be a catch-all. This would encourage players to fight over valuable locations.

b) Encourage players to 'expand the bubble', by building mining facilities and stations out in the black. This would also increase the depth of exploration gameplay by incorporating new mechanics to do detailed surveys of planets.

c) Allow player pirates to flourish. Areas with known, high value targets in low or no security systems would encourage piracy. This would also encourage miners to defend their shipping lanes, perhaps through the opportunity to hire their own security forces.

These changes would greatly increase player agency, and result in emergent gameplay, which is good for the playerbase.

IDK if anyone feels the same way that I do, but Elite's potential is so easy to see, but it just isn't there yet. I doubt Frontier will do any of these things, but it'd certainly get me back into the game more.