Thoughts on Elite Dangerous with relevance to Oolite

[Redspear]

I like this a lot!

It's coming along...

[Cholmondely]

I like this a lot!

It's coming along...

Thought I'd post here, rather than on your new shiny thread!

Pilot Licenses.

Musings

1) The license for a car is quite different for that for a tractor or a for a juggernaut. Ability to drive the one might well not confer a legal ability to drive the other.

2) Anaconda - crew 40-72: what is the role of the player in such a well-crewed ship? They are not all going to be chambermaids and duralium polishers. Surely the pilot is a different person from the captain?

3) Are they really pilot licenses? Or just licenses to "buy"? (as you implied some time earlier).

[Redspear]

1) The license for a car is quite different for that for a tractor or a for a juggernaut. Ability to drive the one might well not confer a legal ability to drive the other.

Agreed. The player is however always the pilot and essentially nearly always doing the same things: docking, equiping, loading,jumping, fighting/evading.

If it seems a bit strange that there aren't multiple of even sideways progression paths then you can perhaps see that I tried some of that above and thought it was getting not only complicated but convoluted.

2) Anaconda - crew 40-72: what is the role of the player in such a well-crewed ship? They are not all going to be chambermaids and duralium polishers. Surely the pilot is a different person from the captain?

In real life almost certainly but in the game almost certainly not. Flying it is supposed to be the fun part, taking orders less so. The player both does the flying and (theoretically) gives the orders. Personally, I'd rather the fighters had been brought into the player ship stable than the freighters but there you go.

This particular question of yours extend beyond my little oxp I think.

3) Are they really pilot licenses? Or just licenses to "buy"? (as you implied some time earlier).

It's supposed to simulate the former by representing the latter. By that I mean that I wanted it to function as the latter but the former is the excuse.

To my mind, elite's non-mission progression path is both too short and gathers pace rather too soon and then loses it - it's too steep, too early.
This was an inheritance from elite BTW, oolite actually added some particularly expensive items and ships that address this in part at least.

Rather than make the progression a matter of credits alone, I've used elite ranking which scales rather more traditionally IMHO.