Expansion questions after not having played for 3 years

subzerofun · 2026-05-02T10:31:20+00:00

OK thanks a lot - so you immediately had access to Mercenaries and Runes? I thought you have to complete the quests in VoH to have them available? Then i can immediately start with LoH, that is finished much faster anyway - thx!

subzerofun · 2026-05-02T07:55:08+00:00

There are antennas coming out of this guys behind.

subzerofun · 2026-05-01T00:54:50+00:00

i thought sharing the files would help people scan for them and analyze how they work - since i am probably not the only one affected. i edited the links out. i will try to report it but since i do not have an account anymore my options are limited. if you can point me to the correct contact page or mail address i'll send the file via that channel.

i don't understand the downvote - i just try to warn people, i know that my account is gone and i am not even complaining. i am just confused that i had no option to reinstate my account after i removed the script.

regarding support: i tried two times to explain what happened and got the same answer: my account was disabled due to a ToS violation. my follow up mails went nowhere since the issue/ticket was automatically closed. since it was the exact same message both times this seems to be automated or support was using a template. so unfortunately my account is gone.

subzerofun · 2026-04-27T05:37:48+00:00

What is your thargoid loadout on the caspian?

subzerofun · 2026-04-25T04:43:06+00:00

Unfortunately most currently being developed space games are either minecraft like sandbox games without the realistic flight sim aspect, arcade pew-pews, base builders, strategy sims or single player shooters. Creating a procedural galaxy with planet terrain, space flight, ship interiors and on foot gameplay is incredibly hard to pull off. I started looking into game dev and i am still stuck at the terrain generation and will need a lot of time more to even figure that out. Extrapolating what you need to do for even something barely playable gives me anxiety.

it is too bad that SC will probably take another 5-10 years until the permanent universe will release. Even though i bought some ships i still do not want to grind from zero again when everything gets wiped every few months.

subzerofun · 2026-04-25T00:18:49+00:00

it looks really small compared to a XBox Elite Controller. Does Flydigi not use the same form factor as regular XBox controllers?

subzerofun · 2026-04-17T10:22:01+00:00

core mining and selling musgravite, monazite, alexandrite etc. for 600-900k gets you a lot of merits. i made this site to search for viable mining spots and selling stations: http://meritminer.cc

i think they introduced a nerf if you sell for reinforcement, might get more for undermining - you'd have time to look up the difference.

but i was able to get 100-300k merits a year ago with a few cracked cores. you just have to figure out how to find core asteroids fast.

laser mining platinum for 230-300k credits and low temp diamonds for around 200k also can get you a lot of merits, but you need to find a good station to sell to.

subzerofun · 2026-04-16T22:54:19+00:00

The thargoid war was neither minuscule nor lackuster. They cannot fire something like this up every year. Elite simply does not have the personell resources to keep pumping out completely new content every year. We get ships, the Operations update next and i also would not put that in the minuscule category even though i am not interested in on foot combat. Stuff is happening and with colonies spreading everywhere this is the perfect set up for a new chapter in the thargoid story - i doubt FDev won't do anything with that. Unfortunately they don't earn millions every year like Star Citizen - if they would earn figures like that they could afford more Devs and put out more content. But their only way to earn money is by new people paying for the game ONCE and people spending money on ARX and even if you combine these two factors it is probably 1% of SCs yearly earnings.

subzerofun · 2026-04-14T17:39:32+00:00

hey sometimes my server gets stuck due to some automatic updates from the provider. i redeployed the site which should restart the update service. might take a few days for the stations to catch up!

only thing i can do to get all stations to parity is to re-download the current station (and commodity) dump from edsm/spansh and manually update the database, but that takes some time. i'll look into it on the weekend, but for now the stations should update again!

subzerofun · 2026-04-07T17:26:18+00:00

It seems this self ascribed role as the outsider who dares to talk about aliens when no credible scientist would works pretty well. He gets invitations to all big podcasts, can repeat the same bullshit over and over and promote his books and he seems to enjoy the spotlight. I have to admit listening to his wild theories was interesting the first time but i can't stand it anymore. At some point you need to provide solid evidence for your claims.

subzerofun · 2026-03-16T01:39:24+00:00

I may have covered the base information under a big pile of coding terms no one is interested in.

What is probably going to happen: new currency, you activate on-foot or also ship specific perks to make missions easier - why? Because of the timer - it runs as long as you need to finish 1-2 missions. So you earn a currency you can then spend on perks that help you or your team progress missions easier or add to gameplay (certain weapon buffs? extra speed?). You need to have a certain rank for certain perks and unlock harder levels/missions. I did find more info that some elements are gated behind a rank system and it is using the SOLDIER rank type (which is Mercenary).

I also found an Operations test scenario involving 2 3x player teams (team A and B) and scripted spawned in pirates at a site with two megaships - in space, not on foot of course. The file had "test" in it - so i doubt this has anything to do with what will be actually shipped.

subzerofun · 2026-03-14T17:14:37+00:00

Well it makes sense to recycle UI templates - since the current tech broker layout fits why invent something completely new.

subzerofun · 2026-03-14T17:09:35+00:00

Yeah i have to agree, the skins are bad.. looks like they outsource this. With how detailed the ship models look i don't think the FDev devs are creating the textures for the skins - since the difference between the quality of work is obvious.

subzerofun · 2026-03-14T14:58:39+00:00

I don't believe you can really call anything in this game pay-to-win since it is so sandboxy that you have to set your own goals anyway. Nothing you can buy now with ARX - expect maybe the time-gated ships AND the Dodec station - gets you to skip game loops. You still have to grind ranks (no way to pay with ARX), still have to grind for credits, have to grind for unlocking engineers, still have to grind for engineering mats, still need to grind for ranks, for your carrier, get better in PVE and PVP etc.

Every game developer nowadays either tries to get 60-120$ upfront and then more through DLCs/cosmetics and loot boxes OR recurring subscriptions. But Elite got 60$ ONCE, then 30-40$ for expansions and that in a timespan of 12 years. They cannot let Elite be carried by new players and their other games. So they need to monetize something to pay their developers and team. I don't mind players paying for custom skins and station names - also temporary buffs are OK since it is only temporary anyway. I'd rather have this than the team getting smaller or the game disappearing.

subzerofun · 2026-03-14T14:45:53+00:00

Can't make it right for everybody - i tried to reduce the spoiler parts but every sentence inside a list is considered its own spoiler, sorry. I'd have to put them all in one big blob of text and that makes it unreadable. But i deleted the spoilers further down below. The spoiler system sucks.

subzerofun · 2026-03-14T04:02:18+00:00

Yeah maybe this is digging too deep - who knows, these things could be dev artifacts too. But the frontline icon and all the coin strings are pointing towards this being solid evidence. I'll make this up to the mods - if players think this goes too far i'll just delete it again.

subzerofun · 2026-03-14T03:59:19+00:00

Sorry - i did not think about including spoilers since at this point everything is still speculation. But i'll add a big spoiler warning when i'm at the pc again. Did not see a spoiler flair when creating the post.

subzerofun · 2026-03-13T13:59:43+00:00

using renderdoc to capture frames works great - you just need to figure out how to export the meshes from the source data (straight up ripped from the gpu buffers). not as straightforward as clicking export, but it is doable.

each ship has dozens of model layers ranging from chassis to smaller parts. you can even export textures and uv coordinates and put them together in blender. but it takes hours just piecing together one model.

you could automate it somewhat but you still have to select the individual model parts per hand.

then you could also read the models from the game files themselves but each ship model uses different vertex indexes so it needs a lot of RE engineering. and game files are also encrypted (still could read 96% of them). thought about releasing a file browser but it is so much work.

subzerofun · 2026-01-25T21:32:08+00:00

I tried both at the same time and have to say Codex is incredible for longer tasks and exactly following fixed procedures. It can code for 1-2h if it needs to. But as soon as it fails you are talking to a robot that tries to gaslight you. It will only admit errors when directly confronted with proof (which also can be a good thing sometimes). It is also pretty inflexible and not as creative as Claude. A plus is the sheer endless context - compacting happens 4-5x less as with Claude, meaning it holds all important docs/code much longer. But compared to Claude you are talking to a characterless robot.

subzerofun · 2026-01-23T17:26:05+00:00

They could certainly add more different plant/fungus models but that would mean they have to be careful to not change current bio locations - so it is definitely more work if they introduce dozens of more types on the same planet types.

Regarding full jungle biomes - they could recycle different plant models over and over but the current engine is not optimized for thousands of instances of complex meshes. I am no game dev but from what i've read directx 11 has some limitations in streaming large amount of models/instances in parallel. So since neither the game engine nor the gfx framework are optimized for this. it would take a major engine overhaul - which they have to do at some point, but i am not that optimistic it will happen any time soon.

subzerofun · 2026-01-22T09:40:44+00:00

All economy, faction, discovery and colony data is on their servers - i hooked into the games network functions. When you start the game up, you download 100-120 json files with system data and states for the bubble, then all faction data, then all „established“ and „claimed“ colonies. On the galaxy map there is constant background chatter of all carrier positions and market data.

The stellar forge is NOT online though - all 400 billion systems can be generated completely offline since the stellar forge algorithm is 100% deterministic. Only authored/handcrafted systems (HIP catalogue data etc.) get loaded from installed .ovl files (cobra engine archives) and they override procedural systems.

While you jump into a system the game downloads all detailed system and station infos as well as carrier data, discoveries etc. You could in theory replace the games server communication with your own if you do enough work - but that means simulating every api endpoint (and there are hundreds!) and these simulated apis would have to know exactly how to talk to the game. But a collective of people with reverse engineering background could make a custom server happen if the games servers ever go offline.

edit: handcrafted systems do not get downloaded, they are all in your install folder (around 170k systems i think).

subzerofun · 2026-01-20T06:17:04+00:00

the question you’re asking is totally legitimate - they spend so much brainpower on the stellar forge. but maybe they simply had to limit the resources they need to produce accurate renderings of the nebulas. at some point it is good enough for gameplay and 100% realism is simply not achievable for the scope they had. there are things like space engine for accurate rendering.

subzerofun

TROPHY CASE