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

[Gimi]

Have to agree with the majority here. Transfers, ok. Instantaneous, not ok. I understand they choose to do this for game play reasons, but I think it removes too much ship planning and strategy from the game. It will even change how people outfit their ships. No point in having a huge power hungry FSD if you can just have your ship transported where you need it I am surprised that they went this way.
The way to move around after 2.2 would be to build an Asp Explorer or Anaconda with an extreme jump range and lots of fuel. That is your taxi. Find a shipyard and then have whatever ship you need transported. Nope, this takes away too much of existing gameplay in my view.

Frontier, any possibility you might reconsider this?

 

[Parmo]

Yeah, because swimming in a pool full of turds is loads of fun if I just pretend hard enough. .

[haha]
It's getting Interdicted by them that's really fun!

 

[Gédéon_Lecanard]

Clearly you haven't given this enough thought. You think is about convenience, but really this change will make it so instead of flying fighters with non-painful range and jumping quickly into combat, we'll be shuttling in long range "explorer buses" and then going to stations (which takes about 5-10 extra minutes anyway) then mucking about with some annoying magic genie menu (another several minutes) then paying a huge fee (representing another hour or so of earnings) and then finally flying to CG from a dead stop inside a gravity well.

Why not just fix fighter jump ranges so they aren't quite so painful? Cut out all the station diving and busy work and time wasting expense?

Should they fix jump ranges, then yes I'd completely agree that having the ship traveling the actual distance in the according time is the way to go.

I'm not saying the mechanic is the best thing ever. Just that it's a sign that things are heading toward a more refined experience overall. In my opinion anyway, and I get why many of you are very much against the idea. I swear I was, too. It's not a perfect solution, but I believe the game needs to be faster overall, so any action taken in that direction will make me happy. That's only me, of course.

 

[Ziljan]

While i'm firmly in the camp of it should require the same time it would take to travel yourself, you seem to be oblivious to the the 22% in the poll that say it should be instantanous and another 22% who think it should take a fraction of the time.

So, while you and me think its not a great decision, there is almost 50% of voters in this thread who disagree.

So, when a dev thinks something is a good idea, and almost 50% are saying they agree, then you might be tempted as a dev to think "Wow, 50% agree, not bad at all. If we change it, then 50% will hate us for it, and 50% will love us, so we can't win either way. Keep it as it is guys".

As usual, there are the extra clauses about forum polls not being representative, FD have other sources of feedback as well, and the fact that they are not even back in the office yet, and probably still not had time to analyse all the feedback yet. Its no surprise they simply stuck to their guns for the period of the convention.

Feedback has been generated now, a lot of it, and i'm sure, if you were a fly on the wall in FD's offices, you would get to witness a number of discussions on this very topic over the coming weeks.

Therefore, you have your chance to give feedback, as do others (some who will disagree with you), and ultimately, FD will make a decision.

My guess is, if beta rolls around, and instant transfer is still in, then it will make it to live and stay there. If not, then great, i'll be happy.

My prediction (if anyone cares), is that FD will look at the feedback, decide they want to stick with instant travel, but having listened to the community, make the cost for ship transfer very high indeed, and scale exponentially based on size of ship and distance. You want to transport that Corvette to Sothis? Sure! Just pay a billion credits!

I hope they don't do that... but let's see.

22% think it should be instant. 78% think it should take time. Lumping in the "fractional" people to justify Frontier ruining the game for 56% of players because 22% are sort of on the fence but still annoyed by the idea of instant, that's a twisting interpretation of the poll.

Even if you put those 22% as "on the fence" then you still talking about 56% vs 22%. And that 56% will be extremely <censored> if gameplay is up ended. Meanwhile, that 22% wouldn't have much to complain about since the game will still get more convenient!

 

[Maro-Val]

Ship transfer.. my god what a mess. I always wanted ways to shrink the time we spend in the jumping screen. It was always a pain to move around the bubble just because when i was playing i was spending most of my time in travelling. Now with engineers we got decent jump ranges and i closed my mouth even though i had to do the stupid grind for mats and suffer the rng mess.

Now ship transfer. When i first heard about it in the forums i was very skeptic. I m all in for new things in the game and all that, but i was thinking how would they implement it in game? And back then i figured it out. They will do it in the lazy way and brake it. Insta-magic-travel.
So many ideas mentioned all those months, but no.
The next step will be: Devs listen to the community you got what you wanted. Yeah right.

What a mess.

 

[Privata]

Instant ship transfer is a GOOD idea and this forum only represents a vocal niche of the community and has always had a strong bias. Many people that play Elite but never post here will love this new feature and many people who don't play Elite yet will probably be more easily drawn in with this added incentive of less pointless timesink.

Anyone that doesn't like it can create their own "immersion." It's what you did in 1984 right? Lol.

It goes against the original vision
Ruins the point of many ships
Removes the idea that going far away is a big deal.

Its sad because when I first got to the pleiades nebula in my ship , it felt so alien. because there I was in my ASP with only two guns , and not much else for protection.
I was in unkown space.
I felt so tiny.

But not anymore , now everyone has superpowers !

Its taking away a massive part of what made the game so great

 

[grnbrg]

However, even implementing a small transfer time means quite a bit of work, they would essentially have to implement a scheduler on the backend,

Not really. The code just has to change the current location of the ship from Station A to Station B, and a field would have to be added to the database (and a small amount of code to the shipyard modules) that basically says the ship won't be visible/usable until after a particular game time value.


grnbrg.

 

[SomeIrishLad]

One thing I like about this game is it feels immersive. Adding gamey things like instant transport would ruin the immersion for me.

 

[Wyaston Hypatia]

ED Is built in a foundation of a 1:1 galaxy recreation with the Stellar forge.

On that was placed the background sim and then player means to move around in space.

Even with a sci-fI FTL mechanic. The immense size of the Galaxy has always been front and center. The Hutton run or the travel to Beagle Point really strikes it home.

The size of space is measured with one thing, time. Real time. The time it takes a player to travel A to B.

This is the first update feature that really shrinks the Galaxy and takes away from that awe inspiring foundation.

Refuel, repair, mods. The time on those things don't diminish the size of the Galaxy. Instantly moving a ship does.

This is the first update feature I'm actually feeling a little let down by. I hate that, I'm a positive player and I try not to get sucked into the negativity seen with most threads. It's kind of a bummer, but I'm sure we'll live.

Well said.
Sums up my feelings as well.

 

[Robert Maynard]

However, even implementing a small transfer time means quite a bit of work, they would essentially have to implement a scheduler on the backend, and if we want to see our ship coming in to the port this would have to be implemented as well, essentially spawning a specified ship into your instance.

We already have any number of real-time count-downs in the game - missions.... Setting the availability of a ship at its destination to "not before dd/mm/yy hh:mm" shouldn't be that hard....

 

[Trueno33]

Hence the decision to go the instant route.

sorry Marcus, I fear that the decision is due to be the cheapest in terms of programing and server usage

 

[CMDR SUPER SOLDIER]

Ship transfer, the station 3D prints your ship just like ships can 3D print SRV's and fighters. Your old ship is shipped out to the station you are at and is now that station’s property. Allowing it to be instant.

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

Ship transfer, the station 3D prints your ship just like ships can 3D print SRV's and fighters. Your old ship is shipped out to the station you are at and is now that station’s property. Allowing it to be instant.

 

[ThatFuzzyTiger]

Not really. The code just has to change the current location of the ship from Station A to Station B, and a field would have to be added to the database (and a small amount of code to the shipyard modules) that basically says the ship won't be visible/usable until after a particular game time value.


grnbrg.

Oh ye of little understanding. If it were that simple, then that would be a simple snap of the fingers. I can assure you, doing that server-side with LOTS of timers being referenced (because credits are involved, it means it hits the transaction server, so it will be server arbitrated) is a great way to clog up the CPU. Yes, you'd need a scheduler, and depending on how often this facility got used, that scheduler had better be well coded.

Let's not even get into the idea of "Non instant sending" ships, that would be a pit of snakes nobody would want to descend into.

 

[askavir]

Instant ship transfer is a GOOD idea and this forum only represents a vocal niche of the community and has always had a strong bias. Many people that play Elite but never post here will love this new feature and many people who don't play Elite yet will probably be more easily drawn in with this added incentive of less pointless timesink.

Anyone that doesn't like it can create their own "immersion." It's what you did in 1984 right? Lol.

Thats cute, but the problem is that those people who you speak of will be gone to play the next Pokemon Go two weeks later, and we will be the ones left with the turdish gameplay decisions that were made because of them.

 

[Robert Maynard]

Oh ye of little understanding. If it were that simple, then that would be a simple snap of the fingers. I can assure you, doing that server-side with LOTS of timers being referenced (because credits are involved, it means it hits the transaction server, so it will be server arbitrated) is a great way to clog up the CPU. Yes, you'd need a scheduler, and depending on how often this facility got used, that scheduler had better be well coded.

Let's not even get into the idea of "Non instant sending" ships, that would be a pit of snakes nobody would want to descend into.

.... we already have plenty of timers running - every mission - and they affect credits - both in rewards or fines.

 

[ThatFuzzyTiger]

We already have any number of real-time count-downs in the game - missions.... Setting the availability of a ship at its destination to "not before dd/mm/yy hh:mm" shouldn't be that hard....

The problem is that if you make it on "Send" it's more than just setting a time, you've also created a one-to-many calculation for the CPU, a big one. Now imagine lots of those being sent to the AWS over and over.

 

[WR3ND]

We already have any number of real-time count-downs in the game - missions.... Setting the availability of a ship at its destination to "not before dd/mm/yy hh:mm" shouldn't be that hard....

It could be something as easy as saving a time stamp that the client checks for when the player checks the shipping/shipyard information. If it's past the stamped time, it's there; if it isn't, it's on route. Might not be ideal, and there might be viable alternatives that could add more meaningful content to the game, such as seeing where your ship is on the galaxy map and seeing when it docks, but that's another issue.

 

[ThatFuzzyTiger]

.... we already have plenty of timers running - every mission - and they affect credits - both in rewards or fines.

And they're all fixed 1:1 entries which don't generate CPU overhead, your point?

 

[Erimus Kamzel]

ED Is built in a foundation of a 1:1 galaxy recreation with the Stellar forge.

On that was placed the background sim and then player means to move around in space.

Even with a sci-fI FTL mechanic. The immense size of the Galaxy has always been front and center. The Hutton run or the travel to Beagle Point really strikes it home.

The size of space is measured with one thing, time. Real time. The time it takes a player to travel A to B.

This is the first update feature that really shrinks the Galaxy and takes away from that awe inspiring foundation.

Refuel, repair, mods. The time on those things don't diminish the size of the Galaxy. Instantly moving a ship does.

This is the first update feature I'm actually feeling a little let down by. I hate that, I'm a positive player and I try not to get sucked into the negativity seen with most threads. It's kind of a bummer, but I'm sure we'll live.

+1


@ FD, please reconsider.

 

[Ziljan]

I'm not saying the mechanic is the best thing ever. Just that it's a sign that things are heading toward a more refined experience overall. In my opinion anyway, and I get why many of you are very much against the idea. I swear I was, too. It's not a perfect solution, but I believe the game needs to be faster overall, so any action taken in that direction will make me happy. That's only me, of course.

Refined like a fine wine? Uh, no. More like refined sugar. And this change will cause tooth rot, guaranteed.

I don't agree that the game is slow. Things take time because the galaxy is huge. Space is huge. That's part of the appeal!!! If they reduce travel time, then it should be because of technological advances that unfold in game. Not because of magic.