Inara updates, bug reports, requests

Commanders having Elite from Epic games store with http 400 error
When you try to link your accounts, you may receive the http error 400 about expired tokens. It's an issue on Frontier's end that I cannot solve on Inara. Fortunately, the solution is simple - please give it a few days and it will start to work later (probably when the access token on their cAPI server expires). If the error 400 appeared later and it worked before, try to reauthenticate as said in the error message (may be just a regular reauth forced by Frontier). Alternatively, you can try to use the workaround below. If even that won't work, it's the problem described above.
Please vote for the issue on the official bug tracker: https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/21258

Possible workaround: Try to connect the account while you are in the game. It may work.

Game data and imports not available for console commanders and PC players with Legacy game version
Inara supports only the Live game version (so PC Horizons 4.0 and Odyssey) since game update 14, thus all the game data on the site and the commander data imports work only for those game versions.
27 Mar 2023, 5:41pm
Artie
McGargoyle
Ah, maybe only take the top ranking players in each category as benchmark for Tier 5.
The beautiful thing about Elite is that there is an activity for everyone. Not everyone does everything, so maybe nobody should have all Tier 5 medals unless they're a true universal allrounder.
Edit: I have found the medals useful to see at first glance what kind of player someone is.


For the each individual medal it's more players, of course, but still around or less than ~2%, so having tier 5 is still a rare thing.
Which is a good thing. Something for everyone else to aim for.
27 Mar 2023, 6:04pm
Artie
McGargoyle
Ah, maybe only take the top ranking players in each category as benchmark for Tier 5.
The beautiful thing about Elite is that there is an activity for everyone. Not everyone does everything, so maybe nobody should have all Tier 5 medals unless they're a true universal allrounder.
Edit: I have found the medals useful to see at first glance what kind of player someone is.


For the each individual medal it's more players, of course, but still around or less than ~2%, so having tier 5 is still a rare thing.

Your website, you're the boss.
Still, I feel undervalued as an exobiologist and overvalued at most everything else.
27 Mar 2023, 6:05pm
Hm. Now I'm Tier 4 Explorer. Never did any super long exploration trips though.
27 Mar 2023, 6:40pm
McGargoyle
Artie
McGargoyle
Ah, maybe only take the top ranking players in each category as benchmark for Tier 5.
The beautiful thing about Elite is that there is an activity for everyone. Not everyone does everything, so maybe nobody should have all Tier 5 medals unless they're a true universal allrounder.
Edit: I have found the medals useful to see at first glance what kind of player someone is.



For the each individual medal it's more players, of course, but still around or less than ~2%, so having tier 5 is still a rare thing.


Your website, you're the boss.
Still, I feel undervalued as an exobiologist and overvalued at most everything else.
I feel overvalued in just about every category.
27 Mar 2023, 7:42pm
I feel overvalued in just about every category.

In my case... I don't... And I actually don't care.
Playing a game for my pleasure not any badges. So It's OK whatever Artie decide to do.
I'm simply grateful for all work he did to bring us this site/tool to community.
27 Mar 2023, 8:11pm
ZEN Industries
I feel overvalued in just about every category.


In my case... I don't... And I actually don't care.
Playing a game for my pleasure not any badges. So It's OK whatever Artie decide to do.
I'm simply grateful for all work he did to bring us this site/tool to community.
Have no doubt. The INARA site is fabulous and my main 3rd party resource since I started playing the game in 2016.

Is it the work of a single person?

If it is...
27 Mar 2023, 8:28pm
Finally! Now all can feel like admirals . Keep up the good work.
27 Mar 2023, 8:30pm
Kapetan BalvanFinally! Now all can feel like admirals . Keep up the good work.


Or Kings if you prefer Imperials, or nobody if you are with alliance or Independent.

“Comedy is subjective. Isn’t that what they say?
All of you, the system that knows so much, you decide what’s right or wrong.
The same way that you decide what’s funny or not.”
27 Mar 2023, 9:00pm
ArtieWell, as there are hundreds of thousands players registered (and with their stats imported) and only less than ten has all T5 medals at the moment, I wouldn't say it's easy and that the medals lost its purpose with the lower requirements. Even if I take first 100 commanders in the rankings as those that may complete all the medals "soon", all of them are having thousands of hours in the game. Definitely not rookie numbers.


I'm in that top 100 and spent months in the black getting 5000 bios and 100 uniques, I feel it was time wasted now.
27 Mar 2023, 9:37pm
ArtieCommanders, based on the feedback, all medals on Inara were rebalanced and their tier requirements are now much lower, so it should be easier to level them up. But, getting them to tier 5 is still quite a work as only a few percent of commanders are having them. Also, a minor change was made that relevant medals are still contributing to the rankings score upon reaching tier 5 with a few points, so any "excess" progress may still increase your score.

While I am generally OK with the rebalancing, there are a couple of things that seem off:
  • I am pretty sure you are mistaken about the “Level 3 detailed scans” stat. I have been tracking this stat for my ED account and it is clear it is tracking the FSS scans, not the DSS ones. (As I said earlier, there does not seem to be any stat for the DSS scans, although there is one for efficiency bonuses received, which at least for me is a very good approximation of the number of DSS scans I have made.)
  • 100 planets with organic life and 75 unique species for level 5 do not match each other well. The typical number of life-bearing planets one has to visit is likely to be more than twice the number of unique species encountered, as there is bound to be a lot of repetitions.
  • Market network numbers (for the Trader medals) seem to be too low relative to the commodities traded now. Previous ratios seemed to be better balanced to me.
  • Likewise, 25 settlements rebooted for Samaritan tier 5 is laughably low, given that rebooting offline settlements is the only method of gathering chemicals & tech for engineering that does not involve theft or mass slaughter.
  • 100 VIPs delivered for Captain tier 5 is also too low. (Keep in mind that the (in)famous Robigo–Sothis runs are all about hauling VIPs around.)

Finally, a request: could you please always display the actual value, even when the relevant tier level is exceeded (in blue) and tier 5 is not reached? I would like to be always able to see how much above a particular level I am, without having to hunt for the relevant stat on the Personal Logs / Statistics page.
27 Mar 2023, 9:49pm
Thank you for your efforts, Artie!

I was feeling pretty directionless a year or so ago but then I started paying more attention to Inara because it gave me goals to shoot for. You've improved my enjoyment of Elite a great deal and that's why I became an Inara supporter.
27 Mar 2023, 10:07pm
PausaniasI'm in that top 100 and spent months in the black getting 5000 bios and 100 uniques, I feel it was time wasted now.


I'm in two minds on the change. On the one hand I'm a medal chaser and they gave me long term goals to work towards, but I also think some of them were too hard to complete. From my position they dropped more than I expected/wanted, but I also don't have the visibility of the data that Artie has. If he wants x% of players to be on tier 1 and y% to be tier 5 then he should balance progression levels to encourage the wider player base.

There is one aspect of the change that I think could be tweaked so people won't feel any extra effort hasn't been in vain. Once you reach tier 5 you can earn extra points on the multiples of that rank, so people are now able to score over 350K. I'd ask for a couple of tweaks to this feature.

a) Each mutiple looks like it adds 1 point, I think this value is way too low. Medals add 5K across the 11 per rank, so a total of 25K, or 454 per medal/rank (if my maths is right). By keeping the top of the table ranks open ended people can keep competing with one another using their chosen gameplay type.

b) Some ranks are a lot easier to have mutiples than others. Some require a single value like Combat Bonds, whereas "Unique species encountered" is always going to limit the progress for multiples for Exobiologists as you can never get mutliples of 100 unique plant types. What it'd recommend is that multiples are calculated for each requirement, and only the top one counts towards the multiplier value.

The above would address in some small part those feeling the burn of working towards the old medals requirements. What do you think?
27 Mar 2023, 10:11pm
I dunno. I just feel that if completely unofficial pretend medals are somehow ruining things for people, then they might need to go outside for a walk and "touch grass" as the kids are saying these days.
27 Mar 2023, 10:23pm
Kapetan BalvanFinally! Now all can feel like admirals . Keep up the good work.

Yeah, there are top 8 commanders giving their TED talk how to level up Inara medals effectively.



Pausanias
I'm in that top 100 and spent months in the black getting 5000 bios and 100 uniques, I feel it was time wasted now.

It's still contributing towards your score even after tier 5, so it was not a time wasted. I will probably just need to adjust the unique species for post-T5 calculations as it's a stat with the finite number, so it doesn't scale well.

Sampi Ogonek
While I am generally OK with the rebalancing, there are a couple of things that seem off:
....
Finally, a request: could you please always display the actual value, even when the relevant tier level is exceeded (in blue) and tier 5 is not reached? I would like to be always able to see how much above a particular level I am, without having to hunt for the relevant stat on the Personal Logs / Statistics page.

Thank you for the feedback!
Some adjustments were made to have one stat more important and the rest just complementary, those doesn't need to copy the main stat proportionally (there is quite a lot of leeway). It's also set so it will scale sufficiently well for the post-T5 medal score contribution calculations. But, yeah, maybe increasing the settlements rebooted and VIPs transported a bit won't harm. Yes, the level 3 scan is FSS, but that's not important (the factor for adjustment was how the numbers for those scans are now counted towards the game stats).
Uncapped numbers for the stats displayed - maybe, experimentally. As far as I remember it was there some time ago and it was confusing people, but I can try that again.
27 Mar 2023, 10:55pm
Aunty Sledge
I'm in two minds on the change. On the one hand I'm a medal chaser and they gave me long term goals to work towards, but I also think some of them were too hard to complete. From my position they dropped more than I expected/wanted, but I also don't have the visibility of the data that Artie has. If he wants x% of players to be on tier 1 and y% to be tier 5 then he should balance progression levels to encourage the wider player base.

There is one aspect of the change that I think could be tweaked so people won't feel any extra effort hasn't been in vain. Once you reach tier 5 you can earn extra points on the multiples of that rank, so people are now able to score over 350K. I'd ask for a couple of tweaks to this feature.

a) Each mutiple looks like it adds 1 point, I think this value is way too low. Medals add 5K across the 11 per rank, so a total of 25K, or 454 per medal/rank (if my maths is right). By keeping the top of the table ranks open ended people can keep competing with one another using their chosen gameplay type.

b) Some ranks are a lot easier to have mutiples than others. Some require a single value like Combat Bonds, whereas "Unique species encountered" is always going to limit the progress for multiples for Exobiologists as you can never get mutliples of 100 unique plant types. What it'd recommend is that multiples are calculated for each requirement, and only the top one counts towards the multiplier value.

The above would address in some small part those feeling the burn of working towards the old medals requirements. What do you think?

Yeah, a number of people having a tier 5 (for each individual medal) before the change was something like 0.1%. It should be rare, but not that rare. On top of that, people having at least tier 2 were under 10%, which was also very low number for such tier. It definitely needed addressing. Invaluable was very thorough VladmirMcDoogle's writeup (a first commander who managed to get all T5 medals) that just confirmed the requirements are often simply too high (like 500 hours per T5 medal).

I can increase the post-T5 points a bit to better show the progression, but I primarily want to not "compete" with the points for under-T5 medals (so, for example, having two T5 medals should be always much more valuable than having one T5 medal over-levelled ten times). I will address those unique species, as it's the only finite number (well, theoretically the unique markets traded with is also a finite number, but with a much higher limit so it doesn't matter that much), but generally, the medals should be roughly balanced by the time required to complete them, so although some may appear to be easier than others, there shouldn't be big differences.

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Discussion about Inara - any comments, suggestions, feature requests, bug reports are warmly welcomed.

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