Please Frontier - a ship courier service...

[Jaiotu]

Any ship courier service needs to take into account the possibility that the courier might get interdicted along the way and you might end up paying an insurance bill on top of the service charge.
And the courier service shouldn't be instantaneous. If it would take a player and hour to fly from point A to point B then it should take the NPC flying your ship the same amount of time. No instant transfer of ship to station.
You could game the system by allowing you to select an NPC to deliver your ship based on the NPC's qualifications. Pay less and you get a Harmless pilot who is more likely to lose your ship along the way then if you'd paid more for a Elite pilot to do the delivery.
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On a related note... I'd love to be able to "lease" ships from my fleet to other players. They'd pay me a down-payment equal to the insurance cost of the ship and I'd earn 5% royalties on any income that they make while using my ship. If they get blown up along the way I'd have to travel to the system where it was last docked and pay the insurance from the "shipyard" dialog. It would be really awesome to operate a fleet of pythons operated by newbs who otherwise would be grinding in a sidewinder and all of them out earning me credits

 

[Oblivious]

Can you explain why gutting part of what makes a choice unique doesn't make it less meaningful?

I can explain what I want one more time, but I'm really not understanding what you're asking at this time...
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Either a ship valet service.... or a taxi service to the next star system.
Who knows, maybe once they've brought passenger missions to the game, you might even be able to hitch a ride with another player.

That's a cool idea too, for other reasons.
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Any ship courier service needs to take into account the possibility to the courier might get interdicted along the way and you might end up paying an insurance bill on top of the service charge.
And the courier service shouldn't be instantaneous. If it would take a player and hour to fly from point A to point B then it should take the NPC flying your ship the same amount of time. No instant transfer of ship to station.
You could game the system by allowing you to select an NPC to deliver your ship based on the NPC's qualifications. Pay less and you get a Harmless pilot who is more likely to lose your ship along the way then if you'd paid more for a Elite pilot to do the delivery.

Yeah, exactly.

 

[Psycho Romeo]

I can explain what I want one more time, but I'm really not understanding what you're asking at this time...

I said gutting part of what makes and option unique makes it less meaningful. You said you disagree. Please explain how you disagree with this. Because I can't fathom how any logical thinker can say this.

 

[Oblivious]

I said gutting part of what makes and option unique makes it less meaningful. You said you disagree. Please explain how you disagree with this. Because I can't fathom how any logical thinker can say this.

Actually I think the real problem is you can't accept that I think what I think and not what you think.
But to answer your question, uniqueness and meaningfulness do not necessarily go together. It would be unique if your character had to spread peanut butter all over his body and fly to Wolf 359 while singing the entire score from Jesus Christ Superstar in Portuguese, but not particularly meaningful.

So you see, I'm disagreeing with what you consider to be meaningful, although you didn't accept my earlier statement that you're entitled to your opinion, but seem to be more interested in debating this.

But I'll ask you a question now: Why?
Do you deny that a courier service as I suggest would exist in the galaxy that Frontier has created?

I think you just want to argue, but if it's just that you think that would somehow make the game easier or less 'meaningful', that's fine too, but I've said all I need to say and don't want to debate it any further.

 

[PiLhEaD]

It has been hinted at before.
I believe FDev want to support a ship delivery service at some point in a future update.

Yes, this is my memory of the state of play too. However not soon.

All said, I will be very happy when a ship courier service is implemented!

As for select ship/loction at 'login'. Absolutely not.

For me knowing that you're heading far out from your home base (if you have one), with an equally long return trip, is part of the whole experience, and part of the decision making process on what to do next. Being able to warp to and fro instantly, for me, goes against the desire to base Elite in some sort of 'reality' - in its loosest sense.

 

[Gaarp Kobayashi]

Please, please please... please please please please please please.... can we get a ship courier service?

You know, for a fee we can have a ship we own delivered to a station of our choice.
(...)

Yup. You can. It will be implemented.

Mr. Brooks said so in one of Ed's amazing YT streams. Not remember which one exactly, but it was during the Horizons pre-release hype streams. It's very obvious the game needs this kind of feature, as FD encourage us to own multiple, various roles/builds ships. So what you're asking about is just a formality.

I guess it will eventually happen during Season 2 (Horizons), parell to multicrew features, though this exactly is my very own speculations.

Cheers Commander Oblivious!!!

 

[Psycho Romeo]

Actually I think the real problem is you can't accept that I think what I think and not what you think.
But to answer your question, uniqueness and meaningfulness do not necessarily go together. It would be unique if your character had to spread peanut butter all over his body and fly to Wolf 359 while singing the entire score from Jesus Christ Superstar in Portuguese, but not particularly meaningful.

So you see, I'm disagreeing with what you consider to be meaningful, although you didn't accept my earlier statement that you're entitled to your opinion, but seem to be more interested in debating this.

But I'll ask you a question now: Why?
Do you deny that a courier service as I suggest would exist in the galaxy that Frontier has created?

I think you just want to argue, but if it's just that you think that would somehow make the game easier or less 'meaningful', that's fine too, but I've said all I need to say and don't want to debate it any further.

I think the point went over your head. The point I'm referencing in regards to courier services is about choices, and making choices meaningful. Not random acts of absurdity.

If I had a choice, between appleTasty and appleCheap, I could choose one or the other. AppleTasty would be really tasty, but they're really expensive. AppleCheap less so, and cheaper. This would be a choice depending on my value of cost per tasty.
If I were to remove (gut) one of the parameters that made each choice unique - for example, appleTasty was made to be the same price of appleCheap, then there is clear and obvious choice here. This choice is now pretty meaningless, because it's not even a choice.

Similarly, if I had a choice, between a CIII and a VIII, I could choose one or the other. CIII would be really convenient when I needed to move a long distance. VIII less so, but it's a lot cheaper. This would be a choice depending on my value of convenience per tasty.
If I were to remove (gut) one of the parameters that made each choice unique - for example, a courier service that could move a VIII across the bubble conveniently, then there is a clear and obvious choice here (within the scope of what is valued in this example, at least). This choice is now pretty meaningless, because it's not even a choice.

You said your opinion is that you disagree. You've failed to mention any support for why you disagree or what you are basing your opinion on. This is what I'm interested in.

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Regarding your question, I've not denied that it would exist. I disagree that it should exist. I stopped buying into the idea of lore with the release of comatose powers. The lore is interesting, but it has no precedence over the game's fundamental design principles (such as meaningful choice). If it did, we'd have a courier service and we wouldn't be having this conversation.

 

[Oblivious]

I think the point went over your head. The point I'm referencing in regards to courier services is about choices, and making choices meaningful. Not random acts of absurdity. ...

I've understood what you meant, and my example wasn't a random act of absurdity, but rather an exaggeration to make a point. That point being, I see no valid reason to make the game more of a pain in the ass just for the sake of being forced to make a very unrealistic choice.

You said your opinion is that you disagree. You've failed to mention any support for why you disagree or what you are basing your opinion on. This is what I'm interested in.

I have no lofty criteria. I simply want to play more than one role in the game and have more flexibility to be able to do that. I have a Cobra MK III, fully outfitted to be a great little fighter. I greatly enjoy combat and combat missions with it.
But I also have an Asp Scout which I use for exploration, and it's fitted to be best it can be for that purpose. And I have a regular Asp Explorer, which I like to use for more heavy, long-distance trading.

Now, say, for example, I'm in the Sol system, taking missions to wipe out pirates with my Cobra, and I get tired of that and decide I want to do some exploration. But my Asp Scout is 600 LY away at Ceos or somewhere. How do I get back to my ship? I have to buy a new ship, outfit it for a long-ass, possibly dangerous journey crossing many people who may want to kill me simply because they don't like my affiliation, and all for what? So I can get to where I left my Asp Scout.
But then I get there and I see I can take a mission to make a few million CR wiping out pirates. But too bad, since my fighter is now 600 LY away. Sure, I could buy a new fighter there... maybe... but then I have to fly 200 LY to somewhere else in a search for an A4 power distributor... somewhere else for an A2 Thruster... and so on.

There are numerous possibilities, but it all boils down to that being a pain in the ass. EDH is great fun, and I've been playing ED since last April for a total of just under 400 hours, but I also have a family and commitments and I don't want to spend all my limited daily gaming time just trying to do stuff to enable myself to do other stuff later. And we're not talking about a game where I would otherwise have to spend a certain amoutn of time honing my abilities before I can do 'other stuff', but something I can already do, but can't due to a simple and IMO unreasonable limitation in the game.

I'll also add that I don't want a delivery to be instant. It's fine with me if I order my Cobra to be delivered to me from Sol to Ceos on a Monday night and can't expect to have it until Tuesday evening when I next log in, but then I can at least still do some local exploration and have some fun, rather than to have to use up all my gaming time for one night just flying 600 LY so I can have some fun the next night.

I totally get it that you think that's wrong, and that's fine, but you're not going to convince me to agree with you, and I don't particularly care if you agree with me or not. Hopefully Frontier has seen this, and that was my sole intention. I hope they add such a feature, but I'm not on some crusade to see it happen and at this point all I'm going to be able to do is to either continue arguing or repeating myself, neither of which I feel like doing, so I'm through discussing it, and I'm unsubscribing from this thread and shall not revisit it.

I wish you luck on your crusade to see this idea not be implemented.

- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -

Yup. You can. It will be implemented.

Mr. Brooks said so in one of Ed's amazing YT streams. Not remember which one exactly, but it was during the Horizons pre-release hype streams. It's very obvious the game needs this kind of feature, as FD encourage us to own multiple, various roles/builds ships. So what you're asking about is just a formality.

I guess it will eventually happen during Season 2 (Horizons), parell to multicrew features, though this exactly is my very own speculations.

Cheers Commander Oblivious!!!

Awesome. Thank you.

 

[Psycho Romeo]

I simply want to play more than one role in the game and have more flexibility to be able to do that.

More flexibility, because you want it so your lifestyle is less prohibitive of your play time.
This is like saying I want more firepower, so that I don't have to try so hard to pew pew better.

From my point of view (who is also someone who has many things that stop me from playing as often as I'd like), you are asking for all the benefits of having a dedicated ship but without the drawbacks associated with it. You want to fight like you're in a CIII and you want to explore like you're in an AS and you want to trade like you're in an AE but you don't want to deal with any of their drawbacks. Want want want. That's what it comes down to.

We have multi-purpose ships that - correct me if you've read otherwise - but they able to be built with multiple purposes in mind. You may not be as potent as a dedicated ship, but you make up for this by being able to completely change what you're doing on a moments notice. This sounds perfect for someone like you, who wants to completely change what you're doing without a lot of hassle. So forgive me if I feel that this suggestion is pretty pointless and does nothing but erode some of the fundamental elements of the game. Consequence, compromise, adaptation, etc. They're pretty core mechanics. I don't play chess then suggest that I be able to skip my enemy's turn when I want to move again.

 

[PANTHER STARFORCE]

Throwing my support behind this idea as well.
The service should be instantaneous. I realize it breaks fiction / immersion... but the entire reason people like us are asking for something like this is because we have a "real life" outside of the game. I'm a father and a husband and a career man. I LOVE Elite and spend what little free time I have playing it... but my time is limited and to be able to switch gears quickly and go from bounty hunting to mining by simply docking and switching ships would be a welcome, welcome treat.

It's also very easy to segue off this idea and ask for the ability to name our ships for inventory clarity (visible name plaques on our ships even?) and also be able to purchase a "garage" in a starport where we can stash our entire collection if there's a system or faction we fancy.

This doesn't even require the fabrication of assets or content... this is a code / design change. C'mon Frontier! Low hanging fruit and all that

Cheers,

-EJIRO

 

[CMDRFallanx]

+100000. Sick of leaving ships scattered about the galaxy like the illegitimate children of some pro athlete.

 

[PANTHER STARFORCE]

+100000. Sick of leaving ships scattered about the galaxy like the illegitimate children of some pro athlete.

LOL!!! Certainly paints a picture
But yes indeed, agreed.

 

[sbdags]

Hauler Taxi for the win!! I love ferrying my ships around using the long range hauler. Try it some time it adds another element to the game.

But yes I should be able to pay "someone" to deliver my ship, in real time, with real insurance risks, stated at the outset, to a location of my choice.

 

[TigerTen]

I like this - " Hauler Taxi " - one ton fuel = 500 Ly jump range or so.