2.2's Instant Ship and Module Transport - Yay or Nay?

[lysan]

How much easier it would have been for fdev game designer to just make a poll. But no, they'd rather surprise us with game consistency murdering feature and pretend everything is ok. Gameplay in ED is about immersion, teleporting modules is about game design being out of touch and no longer caring about the game, instead quoting gibberish from game design "handbooks".

They probably get this feeling a few times.

 

[bladerunner900]

Yay! I guess. Not what I was expecting but it's better than nothing.

 

[lysan]

But this will still happen. Whether it 5 mins or 1 hour, it will still happen. So adding a delay adds nothing, apart from a bit of immersion for some. Adding cost will add nothing, because those who have an Anaconda probably have millions in the bank already.

You can already fly an Anaconda somewhere and then insta-transport a fighter to where you are. It's called buying another ship and then outfitting it. It doesn't really take much time, maybe 1/2 hr. But it can be a bit tedious. No-one likes shopping.

Adding a delay solves nothing.

The question is, do you want this ship transport. If yes, the above 'problem' will happen.

Almost everyone wants ship transport, because it allows flexibility in career choice and means you don't end up leaving your favourite ship on the other side of the galaxy.

I currently chose my current ship based on the missions and what I feel like doing. So I might trade in a T6/7 for a while, then get bored and sell it and buy an Imperial Courier and explore and fight and wander. Repeat for small ships for execution jobs of pirates or destroying a base. With ship transport I don't have to keep buying and selling and outfitting (which for me is a bit tedious once you've done it a few times).

Yes, some people will build their pointless fleet and transport it around where-ever they go, getting frustrated at the delays of waiting for 4 bays to open up. Who cares! It's a big galaxy.

It will not matter whether it's 5 minutes or 2 hours. Some people will exploit this. The question is, do you care enough about stopping someone playing a game 'their way' enough to inconvenience yourself. Cut off your nose to spite your face?

It does matter, look at this arma refueling mechanics, not a very long time but its not instantiates.
https://youtu.be/CSPdGz2EwOs?t=27s

To me FDEV simply didn't think this one all the through.

 

[ahwala]

No polls, only salt.

To those not liking the idea, is it because of the lack of a wait timer? How long is a reasonable time to wait?

I ask, because I'm doing the 5k for Palin at the moment, and flew 4,000 light years in two hours yesterday.

There must be a wait, yes. Ship transport itself is a very nice feature that would improve the game, significantly. However, without having to wait, it will break the game for a number of reasons, all previously mentioned in the thread: Noone will ever make long trips in anything else than a Conda, AspX or DBX again, because there will be no reason to. So different jumpranges are now irrelevant. Want to have your FDL or Vulture engineered? Visit the engineers' systems with your Conda and summon your FDL/Vulture at every stop, instantaneously. It will feel like an exploit because that's what this instantaneous transport basically is: A feature so easy to exploit that it's basically a cheat buil in by FDev, undermining every remaining bit of believability and making many aspects of the game useless.

As for a reasonable time to wait: I think it should scale with distance, longer distance, longer wait. I personally would prefer significant amounts of time, like about 10s per lightyear. In order to prevent the exploitative nature of instant transport, shorter times could suffice. But there has to be a timer, or this "feature" will break the game.

 

[avow555]

Ship and module transport is a great addition, it does however need to be over an amount of time.
Instant travel seems totally out of sync with the current game.

 

[Connolly91]

So instead of taking the time to upgrade the FSD on my Cutter/FDL/Vulture, I'll downgrade all my FSDs to D grade modules to save power and weight and use my Conda to jump anywhere in the galaxy that I want to go. Then, when I'm at the destination, I'll instantly teleport my ship of choice and go about my business.

This is what everyone is going to do because it's the easiest thing to do and it's awful game design. Awful, awful, awful.

It should take time. Hell, they could even make it real time but make the time pass when you're offline. So waiting for 8 hours for a ship halfway across the galaxy wouldn't really be that much of a wait.

 

[Luniticisi]

If FD had announced that ship transfer would take, lets say, half the amount of time it would a real CMDR to make the journey .. there would have been a thread exactly the same as this complaining that it's too long and should be instant ..

Sorry FD ...

Spoiler

[video=youtube_share;mPVpMxVn6mk]https://youtu.be/mPVpMxVn6mk[/video]

 

[Gedemon]

But this will still happen. Whether it 5 mins or 1 hour, it will still happen. So adding a delay adds nothing, apart from a bit of immersion for some. Adding cost will add nothing, because those who have an Anaconda probably have millions in the bank already.

You can already fly an Anaconda somewhere and then insta-transport a fighter to where you are. It's called buying another ship and then outfitting it. It doesn't really take much time, maybe 1/2 hr. But it can be a bit tedious. No-one likes shopping.

Adding a delay solves nothing.

The question is, do you want this ship transport. If yes, the above 'problem' will happen.

Almost everyone wants ship transport, because it allows flexibility in career choice and means you don't end up leaving your favourite ship on the other side of the galaxy.

I currently chose my current ship based on the missions and what I feel like doing. So I might trade in a T6/7 for a while, then get bored and sell it and buy an Imperial Courier and explore and fight and wander. Repeat for small ships for execution jobs of pirates or destroying a base. With ship transport I don't have to keep buying and selling and outfitting (which for me is a bit tedious once you've done it a few times).

Yes, some people will build their pointless fleet and transport it around where-ever they go, getting frustrated at the delays of waiting for 4 bays to open up. Who cares! It's a big galaxy.

It will not matter whether it's 5 minutes or 2 hours. Some people will exploit this. The question is, do you care enough about stopping someone playing a game 'their way' enough to inconvenience yourself. Cut off your nose to spite your face?

It's about making choices, instead of putting yet another "no brain required" element into the game.

What are you going to do first when you fit a combat ship now ?

you'll change the FSD to 2D or 2E.
you won't ponder about using a fuel scoop.
you will not ask yourself if armor reinforcement will damage your jump range
you will remove the jump range factor from the decision when choosing between two ships (making a lot of them useless and other the obvious choice)

 

[MichifuII]

The time travel should be based on transfered ship FSD range.

 

[Joe Akeem]

...

3. My combat ships will have their loadout and power priorities planned around 2E sized FSDs (2.5 tonnes, 0.16 power draw).
...

Yup, if they stick with the Harry Potter mechanism, I'm going to do this too. Super lightweight FAS and Python fighters.

 

[Shocken-Orr]

Just tried to start a poll on this as it would be interesting to see, in numbers, what people think.

It was closed as there is already a poll set up?

I can't see one.....

Maybe the OP of this thread will have better luck

 

[ThatFuzzyTiger]

How much easier it would have been for fdev game designer to just make a poll. But no, they'd rather surprise us with game consistency murdering feature and pretend everything is ok. Gameplay in ED is about immersion, teleporting modules is about game design being out of touch and no longer caring about the game, instead quoting gibberish from game design "handbooks".

Except as far as Frontier are concerned, this is a QoL improvement that benefits the vast majority of non-forumites. That's their predominant concern, it makes life easier for everyone involved, and it appears that the reason it's instant is because it's stateless, so it doesn't tie up server resources, it's just press a button and *blap*, ship at new location.

So here we have ... *checks off default reason*

[*] Frontier not having enough time or resources to do the job properly

My god, I'm actually going to bat for a Frontier decision, someone get me some medicine.

 

[cluelessforumuser65578]

so long as it cost a small fortune and a 24h cool down to move something like a cutter 500ly i dont mind

 

[Parmo]

So where's the flipping poll?
I want an instantaneous poll!
:x
Oops!
...
But I feel like this guy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84zY33QZO5o.
...
I thought one of the great things about ED was having to plan things out - to teach planning, and patience.
The argument by Sandro in the stream was that it was to not get in the way of players to do want they wanted quickly.
Well Sandro, what players did you ask?
Many players on this thread seem to be saying otherwise - I feel they want the challenge of having to plan ahead and some consideration to the consistency of the game's realism. If it takes a player a set period to travel a set distance then so must a ship transfer.
So those at Jaques Station can now instantly get any and all of their ships? Don't seem right. So any ship can get to there? No matter how short it's jump range? Good route plotting that is!
...
This is a lazy fix at best and another lost opportunity.
It just gets in the way of players who would like to have to think out problems, not just in the extreme short-term but in the medium and long term.
Heck, all you have to do is keep the ships you want nearby.
Perhaps it might have been worthwhile having a command for your ships that just said 'Follow me'. The X3 series has just that.
Ah well, it all began with instant food and instant coffee!

 

[Asadaine]

Just tried to start a poll on this as it would be interesting to see, in numbers, what people think.

It was closed as there is already a poll set up?

I can't see one.....

Maybe the OP of this thread will have better luck

Yeah i noticed that I have just asked for it to be reinstated. Here's hoping...

 

[verminstar]

Carrier...meh whatever.

Instantaneous travel? Like star trek only the transporters are huge and transport ships?...hmm not so sure about that. Time will tell the tale.

 

[Cmdr Lycian]

Lurker here. Been playing elite since September 2015, and I agree, insta teleport is immersion breaking. My thought would have been, make transport convoys of large hauler escorted by six to eight fighters. Make its jump range dependent on the weight of the cargo, I mean that is what we have to do. Then make a fee associated with it, such as half the insurance fee of each ship transported. Can't be free. So if you have to travel 200ly, let it take as long as it would take us, an hour or two, traveling at 20ly per jump plus time to fuel scoop. This would open up possibilities for player escorts, or pirate raids. The more the value of the cargo, the better quality and quantity of escorts.
Of course that is just my idea.

How about this?

 

[Jack Schitt]

I wonder whether this decision has been made not to appease the "instant gratification crowd" as many seem to believe, but simply because anything more complicated would require resources the game cannot afford.

If you have a fleet transit timer that's held client-side then it's open to exploitation (or at least requires the Watchdog be tweaked to keep an eye on it). On the other hand if it's maintained by the server then it requires synchronisation between the client and all of the server shards (the player might not get the same server if they log out and in again) as well as temporary resources to hold player location information and the timer itself.

Rather than gameplay vs realism, this might just be down to processor cycles and network bandwidth. Either way, welcome to the new meta. Long-range Haulers and scoopless, minimal FSD, 2T fuel tank combat ships for everyone.

I don't envy Drew Wagar the job of integrating this into Premonition.

 

[Arim]

In short; more cheats at the Doraemon cat style?

No thanks.

 

[jasonbarron]

It's about making choices, instead of putting yet another "no brain required" element into the game.

What are you going to do first when you fit a combat ship now ?

you'll change the FSD to 2D or 2E.
you won't ponder about using a fuel scoop.
you will not ask yourself if armor reinforcement will damage your jump range
you will remove the jump range factor from the decision when choosing between two ships (making a lot of them useless and other the obvious choice)

Let's face it...you won't even NEED a fuel scoop. One of the cooler aspects of this game for me has been making hard decisions about how to set up my ship(s), especially my FdL. This mechanic will be a game changer in a big (bad) way.

The more I think about, the less I like the idea. My needle has moved from "dislike" to the "detest" side of the dial in the 30 minutes.

Fdev needs to think very carefully about where they're going with this; if I personally wanted magic systems with absolutely 0% thought about modules and mechanics going into the equation, I'd be playing NMS. Also, if they persist in going in this direction, DB just needs to shut it about "science."