Shoot myself in the foot.....

[champ sys]

So weird thig to ask.....

At the moment I am 320 kills, circling a planet in Galaxy 2 looking for the Constrictor -getting impatient - but that isn't my point...

Fly to a station, sell, buy, equip and Save Game.

Fly to next system, shoot, kill, scoop, shoot get killed......

Open saved game and restart where I was only 10 minutes ago

True getting killed causes a lag in advancement but what do I really lose?

Now I am just saying that maybe there really should be a penalty for dying... your saved file loses some equip or cash etc

Even better maybe we can only save our progress at certain stations or after a certain passage of game time...



Now don't get cross I am am only 'saying'........

[Rxke]

errr... The constrictor mission doesn't start untill you have 1280 (or something in that range) kills, IIRC...

[rbird]

I thought that one was 256. (I'm almost halfway there!)

Bob

[Rxke]

Errr... Never mind me...

[CWolf]

Now I am just saying that maybe there really should be a penalty for dying... your saved file loses some equip or cash etc

Even better maybe we can only save our progress at certain stations or after a certain passage of game time...

OK, I TOTALLY agree with the first idea. Most RPG's (which Elite kinda fits) do things like half XP or money. How about we have half money or something? Or, slightly more radical, say you are at Above Average, you have some kills over that but not Dangerous yet, how about if you die it reduces you to Above Average with no extra? So each Elite rating is the return to point if you die. Obviously normal saving and quitting without death wouldn't affect this.

I definately do NOT agree with the second idea, I squeeze in games of Oolite where I can, so only saving at stations is enough of a restriction for me. I don't want to be able to save mid-flight though (the other extreme).

[ramon]

If you got punished for dying you'd play the game very differently. You wouldn't take risk, no point forcing a mis-jump to fight the Thargoid threat, no point hanging around against impossible pirate odds.......no point.......playing the game......in my opinion, fly, dock, save is ideal. In this fast pace of life we call....er....life.... I normally only have time to fly to one station then I'll have to go and change my babies nappy, or worse, go back to work!!!
So while I see your point, I for one would like to see it remain the way it is!

[CWolf]

Maybe an option, like strict mode.

[Selezen]

Nah - I don't like this idea. The fact that you get dumped back to your last save point and can't save in space is (IMO) strict enough.

How annoying is it when you hyperspace into reidquat, dole off laser death hell to fleets of pirates, boost a rating, get loads of cash, pick up some luxuries floating around then die in the last fight before getting into the Aegis? That is bad enough.

Leave it as is, I say.

[Jinx999]

1) If there was a penalty for dying, people would just have two saved games, so one didn't get messed up.
2) The record for the highest number of kills of a single pilot is 300 odd, by a German guy on the Eastern front in WWII. The 6,000 needed to become Elite obviously isn't "real" and exists to compensate for being able to save (and the limits of the AI controlling the other ships).

[CWolf]

Fair comments. Also agree on the dual save thing. The only way around that would be an autosave only function. Really not worth the hastle.

Also, to be fair, if we are recreating Elite then a penalty system is a bit out of character. As I said before, maybe have it as an option for people who find normal Elite levels of play too easy (!!!)...

[ramon]

But if there are 'people who find normal Elite levels of play too easy,' then they probably don't die either

[Frantic]

All games I ever played were a hell of a lot more fun when dying was a real threat. You had to be cautious, and getting in over your head and coming out of it alive was a real achievement.

Wings for example. How many times did you hastily reboot before it could save your death to disk?

How many times in FFE did you revert to a previous save because the damage bill from the trip was too expensive. In reality, you should have avoided that system in the first place, or been carrying spare fuel so as to chicken out when things got too tough.

It adds more tactical play to the game. These days I try to play games with a minimum of saving, but when I was younger most games I had came with trainers :-/

[CWolf]

FFE and FE2 both had the much abused luxury of saving anywhere. Then again they did need it for two reasons:

1. FFE crashes (or did until JJFFE came out)
2. Trips tend to take a lot longer, especially without autopilot.

The ability to save only at stations means that in Elite you can go badly arment or ill equipped to a system, do well, feel happy, get screwed and have to try and do it all again - that does tend to be enough punishment. Especially as you could do the same trip from the same save 10 times and it be totally different each time (ships/cargo/fights/etc).

[ArkanoiD]

if you want to be more careful, do a simple thing: if you die, stop playing and do not resume until tomorrow That helps much, teached me to use escape pod and so on

[Ironlion45]

All games I ever played were a hell of a lot more fun when dying was a real threat. You had to be cautious, and getting in over your head and coming out of it alive was a real achievement.

Wings for example. How many times did you hastily reboot before it could save your death to disk?

How many times in FFE did you revert to a previous save because the damage bill from the trip was too expensive. In reality, you should have avoided that system in the first place, or been carrying spare fuel so as to chicken out when things got too tough.

It adds more tactical play to the game. These days I try to play games with a minimum of saving, but when I was younger most games I had came with trainers :-/

Though I agree with you on most points, still dislike making it mandatory. I hate it when games tell me how to play. In fact, this principal really goes against what Elite is about in the first place.