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

[Sandmann]

I suppoe this is kind of right. Every FdL can now be transported using a stripped down Hauler. If it stays like this they should balance it hard with transport cost, although I'm sure it will go down to a nonexistent levels after the first wave of moans.

Exactly so. The financially elite with bank accounts in the billions will pay whatever it takes to take advantage of the cheat, those with less imposing balances will cry about pay to win, the cost will be nerfed, and everyone will end up with a "transporter ship" and a "combat ship".

 

[CMDR_COM_TRUISE]

don't get me wrong either... I don't wish any mal intent to those whom instant ship transfer will benefit. If it is to be, thats ok. perhaps instead we should all get on board the notion of getting FD to balance the g game as a result. As there was no mention of this along with the announcement of ship transfer it has left some concerned about the already lackluster mechanics of this game, thinking FD truly really don't give a flying eff about the overall gameplay arc as long as they throw in nifty half baked ideas here and there.

dunno guys. wish you all well. in the end itll blow over and we'll play together ship transfer or not.

 

[Verax]

For me it's simple : the point of ship transfer is to void wasting time.

Having it take time defeats the whole idea.
I means, wasting time of people that have not a lot of available gametime already
is not going to help the game. The failure of some to understand this is quite
disheartening.

Hell, I would even advocate for the ability of doing instant transfers between friends locations to group up
if the distance is < 300 lyr or so.*

*Why not have the transfer be instant if the distance is like < 300 lyr, and then take some time/Klyr. ?

Exactly. And regarding that proposed limitation... even I could live with something like that.

 

[Muetdhiver]

With less than a quarter of people wanting instant transfer I would imagine FD would have to listen and make changes. I remember those wanting engineer materials/commodities/blueprint changes citing the percentage of the player base that wanted a change as a pointer of how FD should respond.

No they don't. FD is a company, not a direct democracy. They can do whatever they want / feel is best for the game.

Sometime they adjust things following the community, sometime they don't.

 

[Verax]

Exactly so. The financially elite with bank accounts in the billions will pay whatever it takes to take advantage of the cheat, those with less imposing balances will cry about pay to win, the cost will be nerfed, and everyone will end up with a "transporter ship" and a "combat ship".

Incredibly fallacious argument. There's nothing to win in Elite, and P2W involve spending real life currency. Can't you come up with any sound arguments?

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

For me it's simple : the point of ship transfer is to void wasting time.

Having it take time defeats the whole idea.
I means, wasting time of people that have not a lot of available gametime already
is not going to help the game. The failure of some to understand this is quite
disheartening.

Hell, I would even advocate for the ability of doing instant transfers between friends locations to group up
if the distance is < 300 lyr or so.*

*Why not have the transfer be instant if the distance is like < 300 lyr, and then take some time/Klyr. ?

It would still save time tho even if it wasnt instant . I find it equally disheartening that many do not understand how having a believable game which sticks to its own ingame rules is essential. Personally I would add repair times and loading times as well btw before you use those examples that are instant..... with the small print of we have stuff to do whilst this is happening.

If this was what FD really want In their game I wish they had been more honest about it when asking the old elite fans on kickstarter to fund it instead of talking about creating a believable galaxy

 

[jabokai]

FD's solution to this is about as lazy and pitiful as could be. I'm not surprised, to be honest - no wonder I haven't played in ages. Looking for something to bring me back and all I find are yet more embarrassing "features".

 

[Von Elsner]

No they don't. FD is a company, not a direct democracy. They can do whatever they want / feel is best for the game.

Sometime they adjust things following the community, sometime they don't.

Eh erm..."I would imagine"

 

[CMDR_COM_TRUISE]

i think they should set up solo with bull**** rules where you can meet up with friends and zip all over the galaxy willy nilly and that but leave open as a consistent galaxy based on some sort of logical gameplay. (not saying instant transfer cant have its place there either, it just detracts from the logical gameplay elements that provide us with the foundation of a consistent game).

 

[Sandmann]

Incredibly fallacious argument. There's nothing to win in Elite, and P2W involve spending real life currency. Can't you come up with any sound arguments?

Are you arguing that there's no winning? I agree.

Are you arguing that it won't happen the way I describe anyway? I disagree, and so would you if you were being honest. That's exactly what happened to the tough AI after engineers was released and it got nerfed to nothing, and it'll happen again this time.

 

[Weps]

My take on this is this: They created ships to have positives and negatives, you can have a powerful ship but it'll suffer short jump range... or a ship with long legs and no guns. Instant transfers will now allow you to have a ship with big gun AND long legs if you have enough money... so why not just remove the whole FSD drive thing and just give everyone maximum range, since this aspect of game balance is obviously now unimportant?

Or better yet. Just give us either the Farragut or the Majestic. [woah] This ship class can hold in all our ships, jump anywhere instantly, dissapear in a cloud of awesome whenever we feel threatened. No more combat logging debates, and think of all the paintjobs you can sell for them.

 

[Sandmann]

Or better yet. Just give us either the Farragut or the Majestic. [woah] This ship class can hold in all our ships, jump anywhere instantly, dissapear in a cloud of awesome whenever we feel threatened. No more combat logging debates, and think of all the paintjobs you can sell for them.

What a great idea. All they'll need to do then is install coin slots on our PC's and the transformation to arcade game will be complete.

 

[kofeyh]

Exactly. And regarding that proposed limitation... even I could live with something like that.

Hence why people are voicing concern. Because hey maybe instant travel regardless of distance is a bit too good, and maybe a balance could be struck, if we think about it a bit more and challenge frontier to improve on the concept just a little.

If we all just say "yes please" and ignore how amazing it is that instant travel seems to work regardless of distance (making it Frontier's new Transport Simulator 2016 title, out in the fall) rather than saying "hang on a second, is there a better option?" then how do mechanics improve? How can frontier recognise if there is some concern, if we all just ignore it and hope it'll be fine?

Because that's how I see it.

 

[CMDR_COM_TRUISE]

by trying to walk the middle line between solo-multi, arcade-sim they put themselves in the precarious position of failing to be great at either and never being able to appease everyone.

 

[Verax]

The insurance company coughs up a replacement, and delivers it to where we last docked; this may not be where our ship was toasted. We don't die. CMDRs are technically ejected into space, and then when someone finally picks up our now 'in stasis' puny meatsack-in-a-can, we awake back in our ship (lore wise, time has elapsed, giving the insurance company all the time in the world to replace our ship) as if nothing changed.

Because, much like simulating pooping in a game isn't really useful use of people's time, that time is instant for us. It's not actually instant in a lore sense. But for game reasons, it's made instant. Probably why frontier are suggesting instant ship travel. Because maybe it's not worth having a time cost? Plausibly. But the entry barrier of credits, instead, is so insanely low for anyone that has a few mil in the bank, to be effectively irrelevant.

Also when you die, there is a cost; loss of potential revenue, loss of faction rep (if missions were active) loss of cargo and so on. That's sufficient enough that most people don't expedite moving around by endlessly committing suicide. But, the option is there, if needed. Sometimes people go space mad and space their puny meat-sack corporeal form and hey presto back to the bubble. It's useful. But perhaps not constant best approach?

Ship transport is none of these things. It's absolutely encouraging commanders to bin FSD choice for anything apart from the taxi, because anything else isn't as efficient on time. It's now the defacto method to move around. That's brilliant, but does make a complete mockery of jump range & shakes up a lot of in-game mechanics. Pretending it doesn't change anything, or that it's just like dying, pretty much ignores how incredibly expedient ship travel will become.

You're beating a dead argument. FSD range was never something of concern on combat ships (because they're all trash unless you strip the ship to be useless in combat). I've never fit a combat ship with a smaller than max FSD ever and most combat players do not either. It's possible to downgrade for a slightly better weight or power usage, but there are drawbacks. It's really not a major impact on any gameplay. You just want people to be punished for flying combat maxed combat ships, and they won't be if they are able to spend a lot more of their time enjoying the game rather than traveling, which most of them (that I know personally) hate. It's boring and repetitive.

Adding a wait time defeats the purpose of this new feature, which is to allow players to enjoy most of their game time. It doesn't allow people to teleport themselves to places, but it helps them move empty ships to where they are. That is a great feature to avoid pointless, discouraging timesink. More players will enjoy this game because of it. It does not affect players that elect not to use the feature and it does not damage role balancing. Combat ships will not become trade ships or exploration ships because of this. They simply won't have to spend so much time waiting just to play the part of the game they like. That is not an unreasonable change.

Btw on a tangent, your example about insurance is patently ridiculous if you're implying it's somehow realistic. What kind of insurance company can and will repeatedly pay for multiple clients' insurance claims with only a 5-10% deductible from the total bill without charging any premiums AND never cancelling a policy.... without going out of business in hours? The magical make-believe completely fake kind, that's what

 

[CMDR_COM_TRUISE]

there's always space engine though. you can instant transfer the         out of that.

 

[Verax]

Hence why people are voicing concern. Because hey maybe instant travel regardless of distance is a bit too good, and maybe a balance could be struck, if we think about it a bit more and challenge frontier to improve on the concept just a little.

If we all just say "yes please" and ignore how amazing it is that instant travel seems to work regardless of distance (making it Frontier's new Transport Simulator 2016 title, out in the fall) rather than saying "hang on a second, is there a better option?" then how do mechanics improve? How can frontier recognise if there is some concern, if we all just ignore it and hope it'll be fine?

Because that's how I see it.

Oh please. Most of you are just overprotective of your little safe haven at Jacques. That's another of the ulterior motives here. Selfish.

 

[[VR] Marrs]

That doesn't even make any sense. I and others have already stated that this does not affect anyone who chooses not to utilize the feature. Even if they do, they can still self-impose their own wait time. Ship roles remain intact because this does not make any ships better at things they are not intended for. Jump ranges do not need to impose wait times on people that merely want to move to other areas of populated space. That's not exploration, that's not trade, it's not anything but wanting to be somewhere else for a short range activity. People that feel it's unrealistic to circumvent the artificial timesink of space-travel-time can get over it because it doesn't affect them if they don't want it to, but other people that perhaps only have an hour or two to play games on a given day or evening can still enjoy that time playing Elite, when they otherwise might (and often have, speaking from experience) elect to play other games that don't require a pointless timesink. If you like and care so much about Elite Dangerous, you should care about a broad audience wanting to play it-- otherwise it will not be financially robust enough to ever have its full potential realized. I don't understand why that is such a difficult concept to grasp. No one is forcing you to change how you play, and there is no necessity to either.

You can now fit your combat ship with the most basic FSD and gain the advantage of less power use. Unless balanced properly potentially this could mean you can fit better weapons or run your beams for longer before they cut out. If you fight someone who elected not to use the transfer feature, as you suggest, you now have a combat advantage over them, which means if they want to stay competitve they will be forced to use the feature even if they don't want to.

 

[Sandmann]

You're beating a dead argument. FSD range was never something of concern on combat ships. I've never fit a combat ship with a smaller than max FSD ever and most combat players do not either. It's possible to downgrade for a slightly better weight or power usage, but there are drawbacks. It's really not a major impact on any gameplay. You just want people to be punished for flying combat maxed combat ships, and they won't be if they are able to spend a lot more of their time enjoying the game rather than traveling, which most of them (that I know personally) hate. It's boring and repetitive.

Adding a wait time defeats the purpose of this new feature, which is to allow players to enjoy most of their game time. It doesn't allow people to teleport themselves to places, but it helps them move empty ships to where they are. That is a great feature to avoid pointless, discouraging timesink. More players will enjoy this game because of it. It does not affect players that elect not to use the feature and it does not damage role balancing. Combat ships will not become trade ships or exploration ships because of this. They simply won't have to spend so much time waiting just to play the part of the game they like. That is not an unreasonable change.

Btw on a tangent, your example about insurance is patently ridiculous if you're implying it's somehow realistic. What kind of insurance company can and will repeatedly pay for multiple clients' insurance claims with only a 5-10% deductible from the total bill without charging any premiums AND never cancelling a policy.... without going out of business in hours? The magical make-believe completely fake kind, that's what

You're (intetionally) ignoring that not everyone does combat. Tell me you can't see how instant transfer wouldn't radically benefit robrigo style long distance cargo gaming?

 

[Muetdhiver]

Eh erm..."I would imagine"

Sorry, my appologies, I overreacted here.

Still, I have friends not playing ED because when you have 1 1/2h game session, spending
half of it moving arround to get the right ship to play in wing is not fun. Especially when there
are other games offering instant teamplay gameplay. Like most multiplayer games in fact.

This is why I think that :

• Instant transfer to a range is good. Like 300 lyr.
• Instant transfer at long range is questionnable, like Jacques.
• I think you should be able to transfer to your friends location in the same way, if the distance is < 300 lyr.

Having ED as a viable quick-play team game option would be a positive outweighting the negative (loss of realism*)

*Transfering 700 tons of cargo in/from you bay is instant too, so is refueling and repairs
Should cargo loading take 5min, repair 1min / 1K credit ? Watching paint dry / timers going to zero does not make for interesting gameplay.

These are instant because otherwise the game pacing would be an horrendous slog. Ship transfer is the same.