Elite Dangerous Newsletter #209 and Beyond first livestream

Content Recap - Beyond Chapter One Livestream (16.01.2018) - Part 1 Recap

Quote from Will Flanagan

Hi commanders, If you missed tonight's content reveal livestream or just wanted a recap of all the content discussed, read the notes below from Sandro Sammarco, Lead Designer, and Adam Bourke-Waite, Senior Designer: Please note this is part one of three livestreams, for more details click here. CRIME AND PUNISHMENT Another one of the changes coming to this Chapter is the revisions to Crime and Punishment, introducing crimes attached to ships, bounty changes and detention centers. More details can be found below: 'Hot' Ships

• Crimes are attached to ships which cause them to become 'hot.'
• Ships that are 'hot' have to connect to Starport services anonymously which limits their access to certain services.
• Fines can be paid off at security contacts, but Bounties must be paid off using the Interstellar Factors.

Why we are making these changes:

• Attaching crimes to ships allows provides more options for criminals. They can swap and store hot ships to avoid being wanted, but at reasonable cost (...which is that they’re not using the hot ship).
• It also neatly closes off loopholes where Commanders would switch to cheap or free ships before allowing themselves to be detected and possibly destroyed.
• This flexibility allows us to safely increase consequences for criminals: if the criminal continues to use a hot ship they may have to travel farther to find the port services they need.

Bounties and Notoriety

• Fines no longer mature into bounties.
• Bounties are no longer dormant.
• Murder bounties are being revamped to include the following:
  
  • A fraction of the perpetrator’s rebuy cost.
  • A fraction of the victim’s rebuy cost.
• Commanders will have a 'Notoriety' level:
  
  • It increases with each murder crime
  • It increases the rebuy cost fractions for both perp and victim
  • The victim’s rebuy cost is reduced by this amount
  • It decreases when a Commander is brought to justice.
• We are introducing 'Power bounties,' which only apply to 'Power' crimes
  
  • Power bounties replace normal crimes for Power activities
  • Power bounties can only be seen and claimed by appropriately pledged ships
  • Power bounties do not follow the crime flow

  Why we are making these changes:

• A reduction in crime states helps increase legibility.
• We felt the bounties for murder, in general, were a little too low.
• We feel its fairer that the perpetrator should shoulder some of the victim’s debt.
• Notoriety ensures that some of the risks of crime cannot simply be shaken off by changing one's ship.
• Power bounties allow us to have consensual PvP without unduly punishing those involved.

Interstellar Bounties

• Superpowers will issue Interstellar bounties against Commanders that continually transgress against factions aligned with them. [INDENT][/INDENT]
• An Interstellar bounty is issued once the credit value for all appropriate bounties and fines breaches a certain threshold.
• Interstellar bounties are valid in every jurisdiction controlled by a faction aligned with the superpower.

Why we are making these changes:

• We used to have these interstellar bounties in early Elite Dangerous and believe they add another level of consequences for serial criminals and help demarcate the superpower’s areas of influence.

ATR

• When criminals repeatedly commit crimes in sucession, they will eventually draw the attention of special authority ships: the Advanced Tactical Response.
• These are powerful enough to pose a real threat to any ships Commanders have, though they will not insta-kill you.

Why we are making these changes:

• The ATR exist to prevent commanders from operating above the law and act as a soft cap on criminal activities.

Detention Centres and Respawning

• When a criminal is detected and destroyed they respawn at the nearest appropriate 'Detention Centre.'
• At a detention centre a Commander must pay for crimes committed in the jurisdiction where they were destroyed.
• Leaving a detention centre a Commander is safe from other Commanders until engage their FSD.
• There are Superpower detention centres for Commanders with Interstellar bounties.
• Ships that are destroyed unrelated to crime will respawn at the nearest and safest Starport in the system if possible, reverting to the last port docked if not.

Why we are making these changes:

• This change allows us to guarantee that when the authorities or bounty hunters are successful, the criminal must pay for their crimes.
• The concept of respawning at ports within a system is less punishing and more contextually sound.

Miscellaneous Changes

• Kill Warrant Scanner will reveal the single largest bounty.

For more details about Crime and Punishment revisions, check here: Elite Dangerous: Beyond - Chapter One Content Livestream - Part 1 - YouTube GamingWING MISSIONS One of the new additions to Elite Dangerous in Chapter One of the Beyond updates is the introduction of wing missions. These are missions designed to be shared by up to four players. It’s one of the most requested mission features and we are excited to take out first steps into multiplayer missions. On the stream tonight we showcased one of the wing missions players will be able to test in the beta: a wing delivery mission. This mission requires the player, and his wingmates, to deliver a large quantity of cargo units from one station to another.

• In order to accept the mission, one member of the wing needs to access the mission board and select a wing mission, which are denoted by a special icon.
• Once accepted, the player who took the mission can share it by clicking the share button on the mission’s entry, located in the 'Transactions' panel. Doing so sends the player's wingmates an inbox message and adds the mission to their own Transactions panel.
• The wingmates can choose to then either accept or decline the mission invite in the Transactions panel.
• Important to note: each player can only share one mission at a time, this means that with a maximum of four players in a wing, players can be part of up to a maximum of four active wing missions at any given time.

In the case of a wing delivery mission, players will be charged with transporting large quantities of goods from point A to point B. Previously, when taking a delivery mission, all the cargo would be placed into the player’s hold for them to deliver. However, as we are now dealing with larger quantities and missions involving multiple players, this added a new development challenge; we needed to add a way for players to collect and deliver part of the mission’s total required cargo. In order to facilitate this, we introduced the 'mission depot,' which allows members of a wing to collect and deliver any amount of cargo that they require for the mission. The mission is completed when all the cargo has been delivered and each member of the wing is then able to collect their rewards.

• All players who are members of the wing at the point that the mission is completed are eligible for the mission rewards.
• Every member of the wing receives the same reward choices for completing the mission.
• Wing missions are also using the new mission reward system, which provides players with three different, and roughly equivalent, reward packages allowing each player to choose which set of rewards they wish to claim. One of these reward packages will always be a credit based reward package.

For more details about Wing Missions, check here: Elite Dangerous: Beyond - Chapter One Content Livestream - Part 1 - YouTube Gaming We'd also like to thank everyone for their questions during the stream, and we'll try to respond to those questions here on this thread. Check back here soon for a full list of the questions.

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Quote from Adam Waite

Morning all, I'd like to address two conversations I have seen here: Firstly the mission choices system will always offer credit heavy packages and then picks randomly from materials, commodities, reputation boosts and influence boosts. These other two reward packages will also come with some credits, essentially the remainder once the commodities, materials etc have been taken into account. In my mind the commodity option is there for those commanders who feel like they can use the trade system to their advantage. There should be cases where players could sell these reward commodities for more than the system essentially purchased them from. Basically where the player feels they can increase the value of their reward package by taking the time to sell those reward commodities at the right system for the right amount. Of course, this is a procedural system so it's up to the player to work out if it's worth the time and effort. As with everything, the values used in all these calculations will require balancing. HOWEVER, the new system adds a lot of flexibility now as the choice is always in the player's hands. A quick note on influence boost rewards and wing missions, due to the nature of this reward and the impact on the BGS only the mission owner will be offered this reward type. All players will receive baseline influence increases, but only the owner of the mission can get the increased boosted amount. In regards to porting all missions over to the wing mission system, I don't want to do that because I want finer control. Someone suggested that low level wing missions spawn with low amounts that are suitable for solo players. However, it would actually need to cover the full range of player skill and then the full range of wing sizes and skill levels. Considering how difficult it is to balance a mission template (rewards, challange, branches etc) for just the skill range of a solo player I decided to split wing missions into their own templates that faces the challange of being balanced for either high level solo players or 2+ wingmates. Also on a more practical standpoint it's a lot of work to port any mission over to being a wing mission, with a lot of new (and in some cases very difficult) questions needing answers. By making the wing missions new templates we allow ourselves the opportunity to solve these challenges while not impacting any of the normal missions we have in game. That way we add options for our player and don't risk taking away something players might already enjoy. Ta, Adam