I've played plenty in Open too. It's not the threat of attack that sours me, but the rock-paper-scissors element to ship building. I've said before that if engineering were not a thing, and each ship was simply it's stock version, I'd play in Open all the time.

Hence why I think the introduction of Wings was detrimental to the game, especially in Open.

Ever watch Twitch? There have been streams of giggling asshats murderboating players for thrills in wings of four ships versus some single, lone, helpless soul.

I'm a loner online. I had a very bad experience with large group scale organizations online back around 2014 - 2015, and that was enough. I was fed up. I have no patience of player problems or issues or any of the other nonsense and drama that comes about these groups of cats that need to be herded but can't.

I'm not alone in this view, either. Most of Elite prefers to play by themselves, or so it seems. So when gank squads come along and plow through players it can be disheartening. They're honorless dogs. I deal with it but running when I'm outnumbered, and know all the tricks so I can get away almost every time, save for that rare run to a planet and I'm caught in a gravity well--the most dangerous time for any pilot in Elite is near the surface enroute to landing and out of FSD.

Wings encourage the asshats to band together for the "lols," and inexperienced pilots have a significantly harder time escaping from situations such as this, especially when all four ships are fully engineered. I keenly remember Elite being a much better time in Open before the introduction of Wings. The clowns will still band together, but Wings make it far easier for them to identify and eliminate a single target on the scope, but more importantly far, far easier for them to find where their friends are at to join in.



I prefer having the element of human challenges in Elite. I just don't want to be forced to run in a group myself to remain competitive. I think these gank squads are a big obstacle most players have to overcome, psychologically, to want to play in Open. The deck is stacked against them, after all. Us loners just want to roam... alone.


edit: To DBond's point--yes, Engineers was also a huge negative to Open. You MUST engineer or you're toast. However, since then, the AI seems to have caught up with Engineers, too, so engineering is needed, regardless of mode of play.

You make some great points concerning wings. I myself have joined a wing with some friends but we play only on private groups anyway.

It's not power creep, or how strong engineering is, but how specialized it is. How certain modifications, especially experimentals, need a hard counter. And if your ship doesn't have it, tough luck and you'll be disabled or otherwise befouled beyond your ability to withstand it. NPC combat doesn't suffer from this to the same extent because it's very rare the NPCs will have these same exotic modifications. Maybe they never do?

It's like going in to melee combat and wearing black armor, only to find out your opponent's sword ignores black armor. Awkward example, but that's the gist of it. If I had only worn white armor!

Nadda, I posted in the FW thread, telling What's up!

Just a heads up, this week’s CG has rewards of double pre-engineered FSDs. Contingent on tier reached, 4A, 5A, and 6A. 6A being the prize as it is used in the Vette and Conda.

I found out that deep core mining has been COMPLETELY changed with Odyssey. I wish I had known that before I made a long trip out to an area that has void opals and low temp diamonds. I guess it's time to watch the new training videos.....

BAH!! I just dusted off and updated two days ago and I'm over at HIP 12099. Doubt I'll have time to participate, depending on how long I'm here.

Even if I got over there, wherever it is, don't think I would have the time to win a top reward.

Thanks though!

How has it been changed?

After updating I had been at HIP12099. Before I stop playing ED just about a year ago, I guess I was going to the Jameson crash site. I had scanned a few planets in the system, so I finished that up Thursday night and then went to the crash site twice yesterday and gathered as much material as I could and traded some in, then went back for a second round.

Looked at the CG, I thought it was all bases in Colonia, but I found out there is one in Alcor, so I ran over there last night and ran one mission.

I'm flying my Conda, and it was all outfitted for battle with 5 hull packages, so I had to transfer a bunch of cargo racks to Alcor. Did one run with a 32 capacity rack and that was it for the night.

I'll be flying there most of the day.

Viable asteroids with void opals or LTD's no longer have those blotches of red and black on them when you use the scanner. The coloring and shading cues have been completely changed. So I'll rephrase: The procedures on how to deep core mine is the same but the visual cues you get on viable asteroids is completely different now.

Oh no. So no more bright yellow flares with tiny black dots inside?

Hmm. I learned how to mine asteroids last year and it was insanely profitable for the amount of effort involved.

Same here. The great majority of the 4.6 billion credits I currently have came from deep core mining.

I found deep core mining to be quite enjoyable, esp in VR. I don't have near 4.6b, but I did get my Trade Elite from core mining.

Caught up with Wingy, Bo and Recluse last night to finish off the CG! Was great getting to talk to the guys after a year hiatus, almost to the day!

Ended up in the top 10% and got 50M. Lugged just short of 55Kt's.

I want to thank the FDevs for doing an update just short of 1 day to go, that was REALLY nice! After the update, server started dropping, probably happened at least 10 times and a lot of lagging!

And yeah, I feel like a RUFUS, I kept saying I was flying my Clipper, to find out its a Cutter!! DOH! I bought it just after the 2 CG's last year and it sat in Shinrarta this whole time.

I started out flying with my Conda and after 1 day of only 300T's per sortie, I pulled the Cutter over and stripped it down, including shields and then I was lugging 794T's per sortie.

Got boring at times and I had seen the guys in and out for a couple days, so hooking up with them on the last day was good. Lot's of chit chat for sure! Thanks!

Now we have to wait until tomorrow to get our FSD's!

Cheers

Just checked a few minutes ago, no modules yet. Sure hope it doesn't take a week to spawn them for us. Definitely good to hook up RAM22. I took the cutter home and brought back the vette to pop the FSD into.

Wingy

What's weird is I received a message on my phone from Frontier saying the modules were now present. I went there, and NOTHING??

Received a message in my Inbox that the FSD'd are now at Alcor-MacDonald settlement.

They're messed up, you can't add an Experimental to them, they have some software issue. They said they'll get back to us in 3-4 weeks!!

Speaking of FSD's, I got the double modded 5A from a Tech Broker. Went and added mass manager and lost about a LY in jump in my ASP Discovery!?! I read up on it, and it must have something to do with the Mass of the ship?!

Cheers

No, it should have given you at least 1 or 2 additional ly. Do you have any cargo on board? Limpets?

Wingy

Ram, can you post a Coriolis link to your ship with the FSD issue? Maybe we can spot what it is.