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

[Paramemetic]

So the sole argument for this instant travel is so players can pew-pew each other in a remote location faster.

I wish there was some form of arena we could do that in, where everyone could just go instantly and shoot at each other. That would be nice. And make no sense in-game, but not add any potential exploits.

So your concern is exploits? Which exploits, from this, would affect your gameplay experience? Be specific.

I can't think of any exploits from saving myself the effort of flying around in a Hauler for no reason, taking up my valuable time that I want to spend playing the game doing things other than flying around in a Hauler. If it's by design (players can get in the ship they want faster) then it's not an exploit, it's gameplay.

I fail to see how anyone can exploit this to affect other players. Even if there is some kind of exploit where I myself can benefit, it certainly won't hurt other players, so basically, you want to punish other people and prevent other people from playing the game the way they want to because you yourself . . . I'm actually not sure how you benefit from not having this feature, so I am having a really hard time understanding your angle at all other than some kind of ridiculous attachment of your own.

 

[HBK]

Well, I like convenience as much as the next guy, but as someone who visited Sag A*, it really feels weird to have instant ship transfer. I can totally understand there may be technical (as in programming) reasons why it's not feasible otherwise and I wouldn't be one of those guys asking for months long transfer times, but it will really feel weird if there isn't at the very least a few minutes of delay. I could totally accept something like a flat rate of 15mn no matter the distance for example, if only for accessibility purposes, but instant really doesn't feel right at all given how much emphasis there is on the "traveling" part of the gameplay for most activities.

 

[Frambitam]

Actually they really should have an arena mode that lets players bring their own ships in. But Arena like everything else seems to have been forgotten about.

Now that really is an interesting idea, have some kind of battle rating for each ship model and balance teams that way. I could totally get behind this.

 

[Muetdhiver]

So the sole argument for this instant travel is so players can pew-pew each other in a remote location faster.

I wish there was some form of arena we could do that in, where everyone could just go instantly and shoot at each other. That would be nice. And make no sense in-game, but not add any potential exploits.

At the moment it is because pew-pew is the main gameplay suitable to coop.
Exploring in wing and mining in group coming after that.
There is quite a lack of Coop oriented gameplay beyond pew-pew, so most example pointing at the benefits for coop will revolve arround it.

 

[Earthshine]

I think it's highly likely FD's decision had very little to do with "wanting to improve gameplay", and instead had a lot more to do with "being able to deliver ship transfer with minimal dev effort".

If they had been coming at it cleanly, they would have drawn up something like this...

- Open Galaxy Map
- Select target star system
- Open System Map
- Select a station (or, for Horizons owners, planetary base)
- Press new TRANSFER SHIP icon
- Choose ship from list of your ships that suit dock size.
- Get presented with cost (and arrival date/time, if implemented).
- OK/CANCEL
- "Mail" arrives when ship is available.


That, unfortunately, loses out to:

- Open Shipyard Transfer Tab
- Select Ship
- Get presented with cost
- OK/CANCEL
- Ship arrives


I'm not kidding myself that this is a big gameplay paradigm shift. No, I reckon this one is all about dev effort required.

Which is very unfortunate, I feel.

Not sure. It's possible I suppose.

Maybe a reasonable compromise would be to permit instant transport within short distances (maybe the rough radius of the bubble?) and have a delay relative to the distance when it's farther than that.

I can't see that as being terribly difficult to implement in terms of man hours. Granted the decision of the cut off point might be hard but I wonder if it's the kind of thing that they could just pick rather than exhaustively evaluating lots of options.

 

[JRok]

It doesn't really matter on a time delay... I mean we have instant ship repairs and an instant old loadout when our ship gets destroyed regardless if our particular ship or modules is available at the last station we visited. While I like to think of this as a space sim, there's just too many quirky "what the heck?" things in it, but if it was completely realistic, we'd likely be completely bored.

 

[CMDR Robyn Highart]

Well, I like convenience as much as the next guy, but as someone who visited Sag A*, it really feels weird to have instant ship transfer. I can totally understand there may be technical (as in programming) reasons why it's not feasible otherwise and I wouldn't be one of those guys asking for months long transfer times, but it will really feel weird if there isn't at the very least a few minutes of delay. I could totally accept something like a flat rate of 15mn no matter the distance for example, if only for accessibility purposes, but instant really doesn't feel right at all given how much emphasis there is on the "traveling" part of the gameplay for most activities.

What sort of potato does ED run on if they can't make a way for it to compute travel ability, and arrival time for a few dozen ships per minute???

 

[Martind Forlon]

And now FDevs steps into this thread announcing: "no ship & modules" transfer ... and amount of salt coming will be multiplied ...

 

[Ozram]

i see what you are saying but "fun to you" may be gamebreaking for others, it isnt about wanting to stop your fun, however for better or for worse ED is not a single player game where you can turn on cheats to do what you want.

how is "I do not have time to get my ship to a conflict zone to play with people" any different to "i do not have time to grind to an A rated fully engineered FDL therefore the game wont let me have my fun"?.

I am not having a go, and i do sympathise but i thought the ship transport WAS the compromise, instant ship transfer seems to be jumping from 1 extreme of having to taxi ships from one place to another, to the other extreme of unbelievable magic.

And i found sandro et all making a joke about it really rather worrying to be honest. Clearly they disagree with those of us who want a game free of magic, but to mock those worried it was breaking the game was taking it too far imo.

either way tho it would be nice to have some dev thoughts on this threadnaught.

Did he? I'd have a few choice words would get me banned from the forums if I voiced them as regards that, so I'll just say, it does not bode well for FD to go down this rout.

 

[TomR]

If I am trading in my T9 I would assume I have trades to make or I enjoy trading. Make a quick stop, order ship, make a trade, profit, jump in pew-pew ship, pew-pew. If all i care about ever is pew-pew, why would I be in a T9? Unless I'm Driver777 of course.

Meanwhile to save me a few minutes of trading we create potential exploits, ruin the consistency of the game and make the size of the galaxy map meaningless. Sounds like a lot of loss for a very small gain.

Suppose you're flying around in a combat ship, decide to land to repair and rearm and you happen to see a sweet trade deal. You could call up your trade ship! Works both ways.

 

[Khelder]

Lets try to understand the goal of the feature; suppose you are flying in a Type-9 and you see a combat zone... Do you want to keep flying around in your Type-9 for half an hour while you wait for the ship transfer to complete, or do you want to dock, call up your other ship and go shoot stuff? Because that is the point of the ship transfer feature as described by the game designers. Adding a wait time adds nothing to this experience at the cost of forcing someone to wait for literally no reason. This is a game, and you are trying to stop people from playing the game.

It does keep the need to have at least a little commitment or meaning into the choices you make. I get the reasoning. More fun, more fast. But it's also a short-cut to avoid responsibility for choices you make.

It would be like playing a fantasy-based game, selecting a weak spellcaster type character and then, on a whim, deciding you want to start swinging around a big heavy sword and start lopping heads off. I get that you might want to stop and have some different kind of fun, but it doesn't fit with the choices you've made.

At least with ED you get to go and pick up your other ship and come back without having to restart a whole new character.

 

[Dbrn47]

I honestly don't believe this "Type-9" example even exists.

Who flies any new route in a Lakon Type-9? Any route that isn't 1000% checked out and fully known in advance.


And it's not like combat zones are rare and special. Any time you want to find a combat zone, you bring up the Galaxy Map and filter on COMBAT ZONE. Who looks out the window of a Type-9 and thinks anything but, "Jeezus, got to get this lump docked quick and quiet, then load up again, without any trouble!".

Honestly.. I probably would have. Though I haven't done enough trading to have it figured out anyway. As far the last bit, you can filter for the couple states of war but they don't always display correctly.. You go to an advertised system and nothing is going on or there are combat zones in systems where it wasn't advertised. Systems can have multiple states going on.. The Galaxy map doesn't take account for that, just for the controlling faction and that doesn't always work like I said.

 

[Joe Akeem]

I love that weird 'twiddling thumbs' argument. How on earth do you cope with the fact that your favourite TV-show airs at 20:30 but the time is only 13:00? Do you place yourself in the sofa 'twiddling your thumbs' staring at the screen for 7,5 hours?

Comedy gold.

 

[Yaffle]

hurt[/I] other players, so basically, you want to punish other people and prevent other people from playing the game the way they want to because you yourself . . . I'm actually not sure how you benefit from not having this feature, so I am having a really hard time understanding your angle at all other than some kind of ridiculous attachment of your own.

Been to Jaques in a high-combat ready FdL lately?
Flown a Robigo/Sothis mission lately?
Ever done any PowerPlay?

I'm not even a nefarious min-maxxer-exploit-spotter type and I can see those as problematic instantly. Which would be reduced given a realistic time for a ship to be moved from A to where you want it, B. There seems to be a schism in thinking I don't want ship transport. I have no problem at all with ship transport, it's the instant nature of it that is the equivalent of ordering a bacon sandwich and getting a taxicab.

 

[HBK]

What sort of potato does ED run on if they can't make a way for it to compute travel ability, and arrival time for a few dozen ships per minute???

Given how many server errors we get when things get busy? I dunno but it doesn't seem the servers are very robust lol

 

[Shar]

So the sole argument for this instant travel is so players can pew-pew each other in a remote location faster.

I wish there was some form of arena we could do that in, where everyone could just go instantly and shoot at each other. That would be nice. And make no sense in-game, but not add any potential exploits.

That appeared to be Sandy's only rational, even the guys onstage were laughing about it being the only example they could think of. The game balance will pay a heavy price for this convenience.

 

[Slopey]

So your concern is exploits? Which exploits, from this, would affect your gameplay experience? Be specific.

I can't think of any exploits from saving myself the effort of flying around in a Hauler for no reason, taking up my valuable time that I want to spend playing the game doing things other than flying around in a Hauler. If it's by design (players can get in the ship they want faster) then it's not an exploit, it's gameplay.

I fail to see how anyone can exploit this to affect other players. Even if there is some kind of exploit where I myself can benefit, it certainly won't hurt other players, so basically, you want to punish other people and prevent other people from playing the game the way they want to because you yourself . . . I'm actually not sure how you benefit from not having this feature, so I am having a really hard time understanding your angle at all other than some kind of ridiculous attachment of your own.

From a previous response to the same general point on how it won't affect others: (replace informed with affected as required)

You'll be informed when you try pirating in open and all you ever see is empty AspX/Anacondas zooming between stations.

You'll be informed when you see someone arrive in an Asp and depart in a Cutter, emptying that nice little trade commodity route you were looking forward to running 3 or 4 times between stations.

You'll be informed when the player you blew up in a Hauler outside a far away station with only sidewinders in the ship yard suddenly appears in a Vulture and kills you.

You'll be informed when you participate in Community Goals but can't keep up with these guys who seem to be getting runs in 2, 3 or 4 times faster than you doing the round trip in one ship.

You'll be informed when the usual high paying mission ports you like to fly from are nerfed because they've turned into cash farms with a higher rate of payout than ever anticipated.

You'll be informed when your favourite sectors become desolate as players react almost instantly to BGS PP changes by summoning their 2D FSD fighers to reclaim the sector.

etc.....

Even in Solo or Private Group, you will be informed.....

 

[Ian Phillips]

What sort of potato does ED run on if they can't make a way for it to compute travel ability, and arrival time for a few dozen ships per minute???

Over what range?

The current limit is 1000 ly for planning a route. Currently, using the current code, you could not get a ship to Jaques if they had to calculate the route.

 

[Cageman]

An honest question to the instant crowd: Are you in it(ED) for the long run, or will you move on to greener pastures when the excitement goes down?

Just curious because I have a feeling that the 'longrunners' are not so hyped about this mechanic.

Long run!

 

[JetsonRING]

I agree. A transfer speed based on distance from storage station to target station. And only station-to-station (space or terrestrial). No "I am in the middle of nowhere, bring me a ship" transfers.