Should Jump Range Be Used As A Balancing Factor?

[jmp470]

I'm the Chief Operations Officer for a hospital in the real world and if I was in charge of ED, I would be running stats. For a hospital, if 25% of patients time is wasted, my patient satisfaction survey 's would suck. If I could find away to go from 25% to say 5%, satisfaction would go through the roof!

FD should not cater to those that bought the game on a discount. Those are residual income streams. The people that paid full retail are the ones who paid FD's light bills! When season 3 comes and it costs $60 USD, do you cater to those who pay the price or those that say it's to expensive?

If explorers are watching tv while playing. There is ZERO immersion!!!!!

 

[Backelaer]

Well I'm kinda fine with the way FSD ranges are at the moment, so I don't have much to add to that discussion. However, one point you made, made think of something:

/snip

2. Multi system pursuit is virtually impossible due to so many other variables(fuel, instancing, loading times, etc), that adding range makes it fully impossible for some ships to follow anything.

/snip

You're absolutely right about this. This made think of a possible solution: wouldn't it be cool to be able to track someone you engaged, or that engaged you for a short period of time on the galmap? Say, with a label like the one people on your friendslist have? They would remain visible for about 5 minutes or so.
Now, that would put traders trying to run from combat vessels in a disadvantage. So how about only ships that fired at you (so who either attacked you or returned fire) would get tagged?
I might have missed a lot of other problems there, but I sounded like great idea in my head

 

[[DOOK] Droogie]

Increasing an FDL and Corvette to 15ly at the bottom end wouldn't impact explorers at all.

 

[Cliffson]

Derath you have made too many good points recently and now my rep button seems to be broken.

No one is saying all ships should jump the same or jave huge ranges but balancing out good combat ships (as it is only combat ships affected) by saying 'yeah its the best ship but its a pain in the.. To get it anywhere' is just bad design.

To copy some of the terrible arguments some on the the yes side seem to resort to, extending this logic means you may as well say cheating is okay as its balanced by fdev banning your account for a few days.

 

[DocPossible]

<snip>

Frontier has decided.

Some people just haven't gotten the message, yet or are selectively ignoring the fact that Elite is, despite the relatively convincingly simulated astrophysics from my layman POV, a game through and through.

Edit: Magic Engineer weapon upgrades ("healing" lasers anyone?) and magic storage space syntheses isn't moving Elite any closer into the realm of simulation.

I wasn't expecting a link to one of your own posts Still, the things you list demonstrate the point. Some aspects are sim like and in some cases they've made decisions that are for the convenience of players. Maybe they can come up with lore reasons for some of it, or animations for ship repairs, outfitting and cargo loading. An upper limit on ship speeds is the most glaring example of non sim play.

Maybe you're right and they have decided to put gameplay first. In which case I guess FD have answered the OP with a resounding Yes. I suppose from a gamplay perspective jump range is needed as a balancing factor if you want to make it harder for combat ships to nip around the galaxy and influence the BGS...

 

[Thebadmf]

I would really love more exploration ships, especially an imperial explorer as quite simply the insides of the lakon ships and Anaconda look like scruffy dumps rather than something I would want to spend time in for weeks at a time. I want to explore in style

Off topic but Amen.

 

[BurnyBurns]

Maybe you're right and they have decided to put gameplay first. In which case I guess FD have answered the OP with a resounding Yes. I suppose from a gamplay perspective jump range is needed as a balancing factor if you want to make it harder for combat ships to nip around the galaxy and influence the BGS...

"Uhhh, those naughty, naughty players in combat ships. Let's balance their influence on the BGS by limiting their capabilities to travel severley, so they waste lots of time when moving around."

Brilliant balancing. Only makes people with limited time budget not bother at all after some time, and delays those with already much time at hand a little bit. I guess it's an effective filter in that regard. And I strongly dislike it.

 

[[DOOK] Droogie]

A Gutamaya Explorer would be amazing. This game only has 2 viable long range explorers, and they're separated by hundreds of millions of credits. We desperately need more options.

 

[andrak]

They should be used for balance but not to the crippling extent today of the pathetic jump ranges on the FDL and Corvette.

 

[Fox White]

Okay so I have a crazy theory just for the fun of ideas. I ask you what if the current jump ranges arent to small, what if its the bubble that is to big?

Personally I think FD should have had a smaller bubble to begin with and used players to expand but it is far to late in the game to do that. Part of me does hope the thargoid invasion fixes some of that in the sense of taking out a couple hundred systems and requiring the community to really work together to defeat them. Thats just a crazy theory from someone whoms had a bit to much lavian brandy though

 

[[DOOK] Droogie]

Okay so I have a crazy theory just for the fun of ideas. I ask you what if the current jump ranges arent to small, what if its the bubble that is to big?

Personally I think FD should have had a smaller bubble to begin with and used players to expand but it is far to late in the game to do that. Part of me does hope the thargoid invasion fixes some of that in the sense of taking out a couple hundred systems and requiring the community to really work together to defeat them. Thats just a crazy theory from someone whoms had a bit to much lavian brandy though

A smaller bubble would be awesome. Sort of a galactic equivalent of mega cities from Judge Dredd

 

[Scoopy Doopy]

For me, the lack of jump range keeps me out of a lot of interesting activities. There have been several times I've wanted to do a combat CG 150-300 LY from my home at Jameson's Memorial. The preference would be to take the Vette or FDL but, I end up taking a FAS or Anaconda because it's so far away... or I don't bother at all because with a 3 hour play window I don't want to spend an hour jumping.

I sit firmly in yes range should be a balancing factor but, that minimum jump distance needs to be at least 15 LY but preferably closer to 20 LY using the same amount of fuel as the current drives or increase the tanks of the affected ships accordingly.

Just out of interest, how come it takes some people an hour to do a couple of hundred light years? You can easily do 15 jumps in under 15 minutes which, even with a 13LY range (which I think my Vulture has,I can't remember) would get you around 200LY. There's give and take of course because you wont fly in a straight line but it certainly isn't going to take an hour.

Unless you don't have a fuel scoop of course,in which case, I think it might be your own fault.

 

[CMDR Corlas]

Part of me does hope the thargoid invasion fixes some of that in the sense of taking out a couple hundred systems and requiring the community to really work together to defeat them.

If we ever get a legit alien invasion that can destroy inhabited worlds and stations, I will be SO HAPPY.

 

[jmp470]

Just out of interest, how come it takes some people an hour to do a couple of hundred light years? You can easily do 15 jumps in under 15 minutes which, even with a 13LY range (which I think my Vulture has,I can't remember) would get you around 200LY. There's give and take of course because you wont fly in a straight line but it certainly isn't going to take an hour.


Unless you don't have a fuel scoop of course,in which case, I think it might be your own fault.

LMAO..... When was the last time you bought a mechanical piece of equipment that could not be refueled from an external source? That's what our ships are! The Sun's are our gas stations. A fuel scoop should be required equipment!!!!

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

I have a feeling that modules are going to see some major changes anyway. Pretty sure I read that the FSD drive ratings will be changed so each letter will have a seperate purpose.
I can't remember where I read it though.

 

[Scoopy Doopy]

LMAO..... When was the last time you bought a mechanical piece of equipment that could not be refueled from an external source? That's what our ships are! The Sun's are our gas stations. A fuel scoop should be required equipment!!!!

Either your reading comprehension or mine could do with some refinement it seems.

However, I am still interested to know how it can take someone an hour to do 200LY.

 

[BurnyBurns]

However, I am still interested to know how it can take someone an hour to do 200LY.

Sounds more like a case for about 20-30 minutes in some combat ships. That's bad enough. But I won't be surprised if there is a ship configuration that results in an hour travel time for the distance. Take a small FSD, on an otherwise heavily equipped/laden ship with a small tank and the smallest possible scoop.

 

[Derath]

200 ly is probably around 25-30 jumps for 13ly, when you factor in fuel scooping time its probably around a minute a jump, you could do it faster with a huge fuel scoop but then your combat loadout has a huge fuel scoop lol

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

On average, a jump cycle takes 1 full minute, including scooping.
I've done enough to know exactly how far my Python will go in what time I have to play... Lol

So 60 jumps will take an hour, in my Python that will cover roughly 1380ly an hour. That's roughly 20 hours to get from Sol to Sagittarius A.
My FDL, can only jump 11.3ly. So in 1 hour I can only go 678ly.
That would be over 40 hours to do the same distance!!
And to add, some stars are further than 11ly apart, meaning I need to detour.
Once it took me 5 jumps to do an 13ly trip. I wasn't impressed. Lol

 

[tawittle]

Jump range should be a balancing factor, but 11-12 ly is far too low. With an A rated FSD, you should be able to do at least 15 LY and all ships should be balanced accordingly.