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

[Robert Maynard]

* Where is arrival time stored, how does the server govern arrival time? Remember, the client cannot be trusted to hold the arrival time. As the server governs arrival time, it's going to need a queue for all these ships in transit otherwise there's going to be database blocking issues with all the ships being sent back and forth, that's going to need a scheduler. We're back to where we started.

Probably the same place that the current location of the ship, it's modules, weapons, purchase prices for every component, etc.. is stored.

* If you're going to query every ship that the player owns, then you're sending lots of queries where you should only be sending the relevant ones (i.e. the ones only for that shipyard) , now granted we could optimise it by limiting queries to say, the ship transfer window and once when you dock at a new station, but that still drives up the load significantly.

That seems to be done every time we look in the shipyard - it lists all ships we own whether in the dock we are in or their location if elsewhere. We also query the location of our ships when we initiate the galaxy map.

 

[Kermit Laphroaig]

I am assuming this is the threadnaught the mod said to post in when they closed the thread I originally typed this for, and by goodness I am gonna post it

Okay here we go -

Instant Ship Transfers breaking your immersion? Hell, let's dial it back all across the board. Here's other instant, gamey things that should be phased out of the game:

Cargo should take time to unload
Cargo racks are actually an automated system that allows for a densely packed load (this is according to their info fluff) but as is, the sale of cargo doesn't account for time. Let's say it takes only a couple of minutes for something to unload, and depending on

Modules should take time to install
Own a car? Ever need a part replaced? If you take it to a garage, you don't get anything instantly swapped out, even if you own the garage. In the future we can assume (due to their mass produced interchangeability) that it's easy to slap up and hook in new parts, so no tearing out the frameshift drive to get to life support, etc. However, there's nothing in the hangers that suggest there's an automated system for installing parts, and there's not just a pile of parts next to the hanger, either. Let's be generous, give it an hour for each part you swap, maybe less so for hard and utility parts. The time should scale with the size of the module being installed. Hope you didn't buy something on accident!

Paint Jobs should take time to apply
Ever get your car a paint job? Especially one with patterns and stripes? Yeah you already know where I am going with us. Let's be generous and allow for holographic simulations what a new paint job would look like before you commit to it. And regardless of costing irl money, in game paint jobs should be applied for a modest fee

Heat Sink and Chaff should be Synthesiable
Not actually a time thing, but since I got your ear anyway, how the hell can I make guided missile ammo with raw elements, but not shards of metal for heat sinks and chaff? Oh, speaking of ammo

Ammo should take time to reload, and not all ammo should be available at all stations
"Oh come on, now you're being ridiculous" you say, but I WARNED YOU. YOU COULD HAVE STOPPED THIS. No, seriously, limpets and SRVs might be hard to come by on distant outposts, to say nothing of missiles. "But Kermit" you start blubbering, now realizing what you have done, opening up the floodgates as you did, "Those things are manufactured right at the outpost!" Ok, and I can make missiles in my ship. Why can't I make limpets and SRVs? Seriously, a factory module that sucks up time, resources, and a hefty module slot would be awesome. And it should only take a couple hours to install, thanks to you, Billy. (I'm going to call you all Billy)

How the hell can I mine ice and water out of things and not use simple electricity to separate it into pure oxygen and hydrogen, thus an alternate fuel supply for my ship and replenish my emergency air supply
Wow that was a long title. But it's true, you have a        g portable fission reactor, electricity is not exactly a problem. A special module should again do the trick, "special" in this case being "tank of water with two metal rods sticking into it".

There should be a paint job, for all ships, that has a wizard on it
This would be the most realistic improvement of all, if the vans in my town are any indication of it.

Well there's my two sense on making the game more realistic, if we can't have instant transfer of ships. Discuss.

 

[CMDR Robyn Highart]

You jest but the ability to teleport TO your ships is the next logical step and one that many world welcome as it would make teaming up and playing with friends vastly easier. It's not the game I would of liked ED to be but it IS the game ED is becoming and it's a valid type of game.

Then it is not for me. I'll play something else. Shame.

 

[WeirdWizard]

wow. over 3200 posts in just over 2 days.
kinda hard for FD to not take notice on this one.
though even if they are discussing this internally, I doubt they'll let us know.

Yeah but only 560 odd participants. Mostly it's the same people saying the same things over and over... I include myself if that, though perhaps unfairly I (weirdly) feel.

 

[Shar]

I am assuming this is the threadnaught the mod said to post in when they closed the thread I originally typed this for, and by goodness I am gonna post it

Okay here we go -

Instant Ship Transfers breaking your immersion? Hell, let's dial it back all across the board. Here's other instant, gamey things that should be phased out of the game:

Cargo should take time to unload
Cargo racks are actually an automated system that allows for a densely packed load (this is according to their info fluff) but as is, the sale of cargo doesn't account for time. Let's say it takes only a couple of minutes for something to unload, and depending on

Modules should take time to install
Own a car? Ever need a part replaced? If you take it to a garage, you don't get anything instantly swapped out, even if you own the garage. In the future we can assume (due to their mass produced interchangeability) that it's easy to slap up and hook in new parts, so no tearing out the frameshift drive to get to life support, etc. However, there's nothing in the hangers that suggest there's an automated system for installing parts, and there's not just a pile of parts next to the hanger, either. Let's be generous, give it an hour for each part you swap, maybe less so for hard and utility parts. The time should scale with the size of the module being installed. Hope you didn't buy something on accident!

Paint Jobs should take time to apply
Ever get your car a paint job? Especially one with patterns and stripes? Yeah you already know where I am going with us. Let's be generous and allow for holographic simulations what a new paint job would look like before you commit to it. And regardless of costing irl money, in game paint jobs should be applied for a modest fee

Heat Sink and Chaff should be Synthesiable
Not actually a time thing, but since I got your ear anyway, how the hell can I make guided missile ammo with raw elements, but not shards of metal for heat sinks and chaff? Oh, speaking of ammo

Ammo should take time to reload, and not all ammo should be available at all stations
"Oh come on, now you're being ridiculous" you say, but I WARNED YOU. YOU COULD HAVE STOPPED THIS. No, seriously, limpets and SRVs might be hard to come by on distant outposts, to say nothing of missiles. "But Kermit" you start blubbering, now realizing what you have done, opening up the floodgates as you did, "Those things are manufactured right at the outpost!" Ok, and I can make missiles in my ship. Why can't I make limpets and SRVs? Seriously, a factory module that sucks up time, resources, and a hefty module slot would be awesome. And it should only take a couple hours to install, thanks to you, Billy. (I'm going to call you all Billy)

How the hell can I mine ice and water out of things and not use simple electricity to separate it into pure oxygen and hydrogen, thus an alternate fuel supply for my ship and replenish my emergency air supply
Wow that was a long title. But it's true, you have a g portable fission reactor, electricity is not exactly a problem. A special module should again do the trick, "special" in this case being "tank of water with two metal rods sticking into it".

There should be a paint job, for all ships, that has a wizard on it
This would be the most realistic improvement of all, if the vans in my town are any indication of it.

Well there's my two sense on making the game more realistic, if we can't have instant transfer of ships. Discuss.

I can apprieciate the effort in typing this up but i think we did all this 150 pages ago then 105 pages ago then 90 pages ago well you get the idea.

 

[MadDogMurdock]

You're looking at one person. I'm thinking in terms of hundreds of thousands of transactions. Your idea sounds lovely when you think about it as an individual thing, all neat and shiny, but there's a lot of holes missing.

Start with the following :

* Where is arrival time stored, how does the server govern arrival time? Remember, the client cannot be trusted to hold the arrival time. As the server governs arrival time, it's going to need a queue for all these ships in transit otherwise there's going to be database blocking issues with all the ships being sent back and forth, that's going to need a scheduler. We're back to where we started.

* If you're going to query every ship that the player owns, then you're sending lots of queries where you should only be sending the relevant ones (i.e. the ones only for that shipyard) , now granted we could optimise it by limiting queries to say, the ship transfer window and once when you dock at a new station, but that still drives up the load significantly.

* Notification queue? Nice. Now we have TWO queues, one scheduler (and a partridge in a pear ~treeeeee~ )

* Oh, and a messaging app that pushes the messages through, but that's going to need either an update to the UI or some extra additions in the existing UI to allow people to handle ship transfer notifications.

* What happens if the push fails? Does this force a disconnect due to data not received by the client and lack thereof of response?

* You don't need an arrival time - you just need a transaction timer - just like a mission - actually more like a fine.
* Every ship you own already has a known location - that location just needs to be changed twice, (Start > In Transit > Destination)
* That second location change doesn't need to happen when the timer counts down to zero, just when the pilot 'collects' the transaction at the destination, also just like a mission - actually more like collecting a bounty.

So once again:

1. Request Ship Transfer: (Reduce Credit Balance, Change Ship Location, Add Transaction Timer)
2. Receive Ship Transfer: (Change Ship Location)

Nothing complicated going on here at all - just reusing existing mission mechanics.

 

[TomR]

There should be a paint job, for all ships, that has a wizard on it
This would be the most realistic improvement of all, if the vans in my town are any indication of it.

The people demand answers Frontier!

 

[Theodrid]

The alternative beetwen insta transfer and the other 2 options (same time as player would use, of course approximatly) or a small % of the time are still worse than insta trasfer.

The first solution remove your ship for weeks. Tell me your problem if:

1) I go to jaques with an asp and then call my Fdl or corvette;

2) I directly fly to jaques with my Fdl or corvette.

I can do both and still I can be with Jaques with my corvette (or with my asp + my corvette). Why is this bothering you?

Why I should play for week when i can get To jacques with my conda and then call an other ship over there? It's just "I" have played that bother the others. Because of that, I "blessed" the new feature.
Btw: just completed to upgrade 2 more Fsd ship in my fleet (courier and gunship): While I was travelling to that good old witch I was wandering here, on the forum. Nice way to play the game, uh?

2 option.

Only a % of the time.

This solution bring the same problem (things should be debatalbe but I am going to gliss) of the instant trasfer but a less degree. Unfortunatly, I don't have fun in watching a clock going to zero so for me the Insta trasfer is still a win.

Is it realistic? No, most probably no.
Is it coherent with Elite's lore? No, I doubt it.

Doesi it solve more problems than it creates? Hell, yes.

That's enough to me.

Do 10 times a trip to the professor with 10 ship different and then we could talk again about the insta trasfer.

Untill then, insta trasfer got my simpathy....

Sorry, instant transfer IS going to create way more problems than it solves, they have been presented well in this thread and others. Secondly, 'watching a clock go to zero', come on, that is so easily dismissed it is ridiculous, what is it again that is stopping you from doing what you were doing in your current ship?, makes me wonder what you guys are doing currently in game with zero ship transfer? - have you stopped playing because you have to do 20 jumps to grab your battleconda? And finally a delay is far more 'realistic' than none at all, I can't help but think that if Frontier had announced 'ship transfer with delay' that many of you would have been happy with a QOL improvement, they mention 'instant' and now you all 'have to have it', it's funny, I'd seen threads requesting ship transfer before, a very tiny fraction of a fraction of the posters dared to mention 'instant transfer', now apparently, out of a stream it is the latest 'must have'. Please, think about where you were before they announced it and what you realistically would have been happy with.

 

[Trueno33]

I get this argument. But the respawn/buyback thing is balanced by the fact that you have died, losing money, failing your missions, losing exploration data, losing journey progress, not to mention the plain humiliation of being killed. So there is a penalty for these things, which mitigates the realism-breaking aspect of respawning. As for jumping/FTL travel, that's a legit part of the game universe without which there wouldn't be a game. It's part of what you buy into and a pretty standard scifi trope.

Instant ship teleportation, as proposed by Frontier, doesn't compensate for itself in the same way, and raises the odd question of why a civilization that can teleport giant spaceships needs me to take 6t of poo from Sothis to Hecate for 2mil credits

Your post made me think of this: we all have grown with certain popular culture of sci-fi worlds. I am curious: there is even ONE of them that includes space ship teleportation?
May I just assume that the answer is NO, because it is such a nonsensical concept?

 

[Kermit Laphroaig]

I can apprieciate the effort in typing this up but i think we did all this 150 pages ago then 105 pages ago then 90 pages ago well you get the idea.

Then I guess we just gotta keep on doing it over and over and complain until they get the idea and do something!

 

[WeirdWizard]

Your post made me think of this: we all have grown with certain popular culture of sci-fi worlds. I am curious: there is even ONE of them that includes space ship teleportation?
May I just assume that the answer is NO, because it is such a nonsensical concept?

But there are many many games that offer similar conveniences, especially MMOs.

 

[Kurr]

I voted for instantaneous transport because this is a video game and fun will ALWAYS trump realism.

 

[WeirdWizard]

Then I guess we just gotta keep on doing it over and over and complain until they get the idea and do something!

You never know, it sort of worked a bit with Engineers (I mean not really but at least they improved it a bit), but there have been lots of situations where forum activity hasn't had any impact on Frontier at all.

 

[Yaffle]

That isn't true. You could "rent" a ship while the repairs are done to your other ship. You could still play the game. Realism!

I voted for instantaneous transport because this is a video game and fun will ALWAYS trump realism.

But my ship got destroyed and it spoiled my fun. So I need an indestructible ship, because it's more fun and as we know fun trumps everything else!

 

[Andovar]

I voted for instantaneous transport because this is a video game and fun will ALWAYS trump realism.

There's also those of us that equate some realism to fun.

 

[CMDR Robyn Highart]

I voted for instantaneous transport because this is a video game and fun will ALWAYS trump realism.

Fun is subjective. My fun is gone with gimmicky tricks in a realistic universe that should be consistent with it's own reality.

 

[Kermit Laphroaig]

You never know, it sort of worked a big with Engineers (I mean not really but at least they improved it a bit), but there have been lots of situations where forum activity hasn't had any impact on Frontier at all.

Don't worry buddy we'll get you on a paint job yet!

 

[Dbrn47]

But my ship got destroyed and it spoiled my fun. So I need an indestructible ship, because it's more fun and as we know fun trumps everything else!

Oh no, now we have mods doing it too. [squeeeee]

 

[kofeyh]

You jest but the ability to teleport TO your ships is the next logical step and one that many world welcome as it would make teaming up and playing with friends vastly easier. It's not the game I would of liked ED to be but it IS the game ED is becoming and it's a valid type of game.

Sure. I can jump to my ship. Okay so then crews are added so i can teleport to a friends ship. What if it's 20,000ly away? No problem you say I can just teleport back when I am done.

This is marvellous and very freeing and pretty much invalidates distances. Next up, might as well just teleport cargo? Cut out the middleman and not bother with travel of goods at all. Since all the stuff is in place to teleport everything anywhere. Gene Roddenberry would love it.

"But that's just silly", you exclaim, "teleporting cargo? that would break the entire game, don't be foolish!". Quite. However at what point do you stop and think, wait, am I now the same as the cargo. People are concerned about ship teleport, sorry, transfer because of what it will do now, as well as what it effectively means.

Hey, I could be wrong. Might be that beta sees no interest in ship transport at all and we're having a big conversation over nothing (but I am pretty sure everyone will use it endlessly because it's litterally not optimal to not use ship transfer - credits willing - and so it wil go live and people will demand the costs drop to be fair to all and we suddenly can transfer a ship 22kly for 50000 credits because this is better).

I'm sure engineers was going to be just okay too. I seem to recall folks thinking it'd be awesome and not at all have the endless fixes now going in and all the material spawn rates going up because it wasn't quite what was suggested on the tin and a bit hard so let's reduce the grind and oh can you make the AI less nasty because that's impacting my materials gathering.

I love this game and I think the community is actually pretty cool but given any chance to short circuit process and the line up of nodding heads is a mile long. That's not bad, per-se. Just human nature.

 

[Tuub t Tute]

How about a 5k LYr range limit? Jaques Bubble is safe from Transformers. Anyone serious about wanting a "brave new world" will go out there manually and FDev can monitor the "improvement / carnage" on the old bubble and adjust accordingly?

That sound like a deal?