Class is meaningless

[Shame]

Class has pretty much always been meaningless. Before people always just wanted an S class ship because that's the best. Inherently, there's nothing wrong with it long term, but the way the system worked, if you got a lower class ship, you would trade it later for a better class one. Sometimes you may even have decided to keep one because of how awesome it looked.

Now with ship upgrading and scrapping, even though it is an improvement, there is the reverse problem; you just get whatever ship you like the look of the most and buy S class if you really wanted to. But really, with how much more the upgrades stacked together provide compared to the base

I can see two potential ways to solve this; either make it so you can only install classed upgrades of a certain class on your ship and whatnot depending on what base class is, like a mother-board setup basically, or have the class show up as an overall power level from the median of the ship stats. It should also be made so that high-class modules and such are much more rare, to a point where it's simply good luck from your exploration, or whatever other means you may get it, and being done in such a way that if one player gets it, everyone else can't just go to the same location to get another. Otherwise you get the old problem of people hunting down max class and upgrades or the new problem of everyone having near-instant access. Neither is good game design, because otherwise it is meaningless and "class" is basically just fluff.

[Orion Invictus]

When you upgrade your class, you do get stat bonuses. Class is not irrelevant, the only difference is that now there's a different way to get an S class that doesn't involve uninteractive "gameplay" (i.e.: waiting at a space station or somewhere else with landing pads and hoping one comes your way).

[SteelFire]

Originally posted by Orion:

When you upgrade your class, you do get stat bonuses. Class is not irrelevant, the only difference is that now there's a different way to get an S class that doesn't involve uninteractive "gameplay" (i.e.: waiting at a space station or somewhere else with landing pads and hoping one comes your way).

This. Plus, if you find that really beautiful ship in a poor economy system, you can get it and upgrade it, where you would never have been able to even get an S-class version before, since they have a 0% chance to spawn in poor systems.

[japp_02]

I have checked that a superior class will yield you a better trade-in price when exchanging, and you will get the same price when scrapping. I usually only look for the slot number, except with Exotic ships which I rate to be best for warping. Maybe a S-Class fighter will perform better and faster to destroy pirates but I really don't see a big difference if I take a C-Class and give it the best upgrades, I just 'feel' it's as good as an S-Class.

[Shame]

Originally posted by Orion:

When you upgrade your class, you do get stat bonuses. Class is not irrelevant, the only difference is that now there's a different way to get an S class that doesn't involve uninteractive "gameplay" (i.e.: waiting at a space station or somewhere else with landing pads and hoping one comes your way).

My point is that a C-class ship and an S-class ship, having the exact same S-class upgrades, for instance, would make the class pretty much meaningless, because the difference in power would be so miniscule that having class in the first place as it stands is meaningless. The raw power is in the modules themselves than anything that base class provides.

To combat that, I presented 2 approaches to fixing this issue. The latter could be a rather quick fix, where as the former is something that may take more time, but would be more fun and desirable to have in the game.

Originally posted by japp_02:

I have checked that a superior class will yield you a better trade-in price when exchanging, and you will get the same price when scrapping. I usually only look for the slot number, except with Exotic ships which I rate to be best for warping. Maybe a S-Class fighter will perform better and faster to destroy pirates but I really don't see a big difference if I take a C-Class and give it the best upgrades, I just 'feel' it's as good as an S-Class.

Exactly this. But to my knowledge, if you have enough units, you can just buy more slots for a bit more units regardless. Looking at how ridiculous prices can get for upgrades, it's kind of funny how all of it added up for multiple ships would probably cost more than the maximum digit number of units is possible in the game, which btw is just above the 4 billion mark.

I suspect they will eventually allow you to change the component looks of your ships and may be subsequently, or without association, also changing ship type, meaning you could just buy any ship and turn it into any other. That's ok, but as it stands it would throw out any thought and standards you would put forward into buying any ship other than because you need a ship to get a better ship.

[SteelFire]

The stat differences between a C-class and S-class, with the exact same S-class upgrades are significantly different. You just have to look at the stat ranges for the different classes and you can do the math in your head to see that there is indeed a significant difference; especially when the modules start stacking with each other and getting adjacency bonuses.

[Shame]

Originally posted by SteelFire:

The stat differences between a C-class and S-class, with the exact same S-class upgrades are significantly different. You just have to look at the stat ranges for the different classes and you can do the math in your head to see that there is indeed a significant difference; especially when the modules start stacking with each other and getting adjacency bonuses.

Adjacency doesn't have anything to do with the class though, does it? If some parameter is at 100 for a C-class and 200 for S-class, and modules with adjacency added +500 to the C-class one, resulting in the stat being at 600, would that not mean that the S-class one be at 700? Or would it be higher? Either way, the result of ship upgrading is that class is a shallow part of any ship comparatively.

[SteelFire]

The bonuses on many modules are in %, not whole number additions. Using your example, if a parameter is base 100 and, for example, the three modules boost it by a total of 60%(let's make them even at 20% each), then the result would be 160. For the base stat of 200, the result would be 320.

That's a super simplified example too, since each module doesn't just calculate its boost on the base stat, they build on each other and include a further boost with the adjacency bonuses.

Yes, some do add flat values, like hyperdrive modules, but in that case, ship type will play the bigger role than ship class.

[gamergrandpa]

Just did some quick checking and, a C class anything upgraded to an S class gets stat boneses but they do not equal the stats of the same ship bought as an S class. They are always somewhat lower than the same class bought.

So class does matter if your talking base stats. What you do with the modules will only build on the base stats.

That's my take on it anyway.

[quiescentCeez]

Does this make sense. I'm still on my first planet on a trade post which a found and bought a new fighter ship. Wierd thing is a few dozens of ships later I see the same model ship and same class(A) and same slots# which had the SAME shield/weapon mods with an exception of different engine launcher BUT had a slightly higher DMG output and a slightly lower SHIELD rating compared my ship. The difference was about 3-5 points but i was a lil surprised that there was a difference. Is there a lil RNG when its comes to those stats?

[Orion Invictus]

Originally posted by quiescentCez:

Does this make sense. I'm still on my first planet on a trade post which a found and bought a new fighter ship. Wierd thing is a few dozens of ships later I see the same model ship and same class(A) and same slots# which had the SAME shield/weapon mods with an exception of different engine launcher BUT had a slightly higher DMG output and a slightly lower SHIELD rating compared my ship. The difference was about 3-5 points but i was a lil surprised that there was a difference. Is there a lil RNG when its comes to those stats?

Yes. There's RNG in just about everything in NMS.

[Shina]

Class brings a higher multiplier. Example C class fighter multiplier is x 1.10 to damage accrued on modules S class is x 1.60 shield multiplier on C class fighter is x0 against x1.25 for S class. Slot count is higher. I don't understand the statement here.

[Shame]

Originally posted by Orion:

Originally posted by quiescentCez:

Does this make sense. I'm still on my first planet on a trade post which a found and bought a new fighter ship. Wierd thing is a few dozens of ships later I see the same model ship and same class(A) and same slots# which had the SAME shield/weapon mods with an exception of different engine launcher BUT had a slightly higher DMG output and a slightly lower SHIELD rating compared my ship. The difference was about 3-5 points but i was a lil surprised that there was a difference. Is there a lil RNG when its comes to those stats?

Yes. There's RNG in just about everything in NMS.

It baffles me to this day as to why they add in power numbers for things so it goes between x0.5 and x1 power or something like that. It is incredibly pointless and moreover a bit non-sensical and just gives them the excuse to slap that "procedurally generated" word in there. Honestly, procedural generation in and of itself isn't that impressive anymore when we have things like genetic algorithms with neural networks for many things in today's age.

[Orion Invictus]

Originally posted by Shame:

Originally posted by Orion:

Yes. There's RNG in just about everything in NMS.

It baffles me to this day as to why they add in power numbers for things so it goes between x0.5 and x1 power or something like that. It is incredibly pointless and moreover a bit non-sensical and just gives them the excuse to slap that "procedurally generated" word in there. Honestly, procedural generation in and of itself isn't that impressive anymore when we have things like genetic algorithms with neural networks for many things in today's age.

Are those things used in video games? This is like complaining that cellphone cameras aren't impressive because we have the Hubble Telescope.

[Shame]

Originally posted by Orion:

Originally posted by Shame:

It baffles me to this day as to why they add in power numbers for things so it goes between x0.5 and x1 power or something like that. It is incredibly pointless and moreover a bit non-sensical and just gives them the excuse to slap that "procedurally generated" word in there. Honestly, procedural generation in and of itself isn't that impressive anymore when we have things like genetic algorithms with neural networks for many things in today's age.

Are those things used in video games? This is like complaining that cellphone cameras aren't impressive because we have the Hubble Telescope.

Well, I more or less understand how it is done generally speaking, and once I understood it and how shallow it often is in games, this one included (again, same 12 planets over and over again). Doesn't mean it's not often important in many games, just that it isn't that impressive anymore unless you couple it with something that is really going to impress. And it has got out of hand for this game in that it is used for things that really don't need it, like the power variation.

[Orion Invictus]

Originally posted by Shame:

Originally posted by Orion:

Are those things used in video games? This is like complaining that cellphone cameras aren't impressive because we have the Hubble Telescope.

Well, I more or less understand how it is done generally speaking, and once I understood it and how shallow it often is in games, this one included (again, same 12 planets over and over again). Doesn't mean it's not often important in many games, just that it isn't that impressive anymore unless you couple it with something that is really going to impress. And it has got out of hand for this game in that it is used for things that really don't need it, like the power variation.

It makes no difference for power variation if you're not someone who tries to min-max everything. If you are, you likely enjoy the grind anyway.

This game does have problems with variety (as perceived by our human brains; arguably they're the bigger issue here), but procedural generation is its whole shtick. Getting rid of it would be taking NMS out of NMS.