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

[Sans Daring]

That post that you linked pretty much boils down to "because I say so", though. The argument of game impact you make there could just as easily be applied to all of those other tasks. Imagine the impact it would have on gameplay if a heavily-damaged PvPer had to wait a couple hours for their ship to be repaired before they could get back to PvPing, rather than just docking, mashing "REPAIR ALL" and "RELOAD ALL", and being back out of the station within thirty seconds? Or if they had to wait thirty minutes to refit their ship from a travel loadout to a PvP loadout?

Well it's a balance between game/narrative. There is no ideal, anyway more than you can say Lord of the Rings is best as a cinema or extended DVD version. You can make arguments either way, but the arguments are justified on balance, be it keeping viewers entertained vs immersion or gamers involved, vs immersion.

As for your explanation, you have to ask, whether the immersion vs gameplay have any critical exploits or downsides. If you have people waiting for 30 minutes to get their ship back/repaired, you lose the flow of the game as you would if you made people wait 30 minutes for people to board a ship in a film. You would have people leave the game. If ship transporation was singular - if you had just ONE ship you were waiting for and nothing to fly while you wait, then yes, insta-ship would serve the gameplay over the immersion in greater folds.

With insta-ship, the gameplay is over-served at the detriment to the game's ideology and immersion. Ship just... appears. It makes no sense in-game, out out of game, it is a non-essential trucation of immersion. The player can still do things without his ship.

The same arguments that have been made against ship transfer (that it would violate realism and decrease the amount of downtime for PvPers) could just as easily be made against instant repair, instant reload, instant outfitting, and let's not even forget instant respawn. In fact, ESPECIALLY instant respawn. People already use self-destruct as an instant teleportation system, sending themselves instantly back to LHS 3447 in exchange for the cost of the ship they were flying. Everyone arguing about teleportation is a little late, because it's been in for a while. Anyone who flew an Asp out to Jaques could instantly teleport themselves back to the bubble for just a mere 7 million credits.

That's because as I said, all is balanced out gameplay vs immertion. PVP requires a certain amount of pacing to keep playing.

Your arguments seem nuances on a basic point "I want insta-teleporation". You aren't meant to blow yourself up to get teleported back for a 7 mill ticket. It's an exploit used but not part of the gameplay-immersion balance. If there was a button that said "back to the bubble for 7 million" that would be considered immersion breaking. There is a difference between players working around Elite ideology and Elite actioning ideology that doesn't fit or benefit the game, just player entitlement. It's all about balance. There is no need for insta-teleport. It's not balanced.

 

[[VR] Marrs]

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?

There's no need for any scheduler. The ship only needs to be there when the player arrives.

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...le-Transport-Yay-or-Nay?p=4384663#post4384663

 

[warbaby2]

This is not some f2p cas game. I don't want them to find a middle ground. I want it done properly. Proper calculation of each ship's jump capability and travel time. Then notify CMDR when ship is delivered. If they can't manage to do this in a way consistent with lore and their previous effort, then I think they need a new job.

Exactly, it's an inexplicable hip shot... one that leaves a sour "we aren't selling enough cash shop skin because people don't fly enough different ships" taste in my mouth.

Tinfoil hat, I know...

 

[lysan]

it's funny FD want instant ship transfer, but autopilot is not going to happen, talk about some weird concepts..

 

[Enderby]

Instant? Huh? Why would they make them instant?

'Thought the "science of ED" was am all-important thingy that Brabers loves the most?

 

[kofeyh]

This is not some f2p cas game. I don't want them to find a middle ground. I want it done properly. Proper calculation of each ship's jump capability and travel time. Then notify CMDR when ship is delivered. If they can't manage to do this in a way consistent with lore and their previous effort, then I think they need a new job.

I want it done properly as well. But we won't get "properly" we'll get basically push button ship delivery because frontier hasn't built ship delivery to match existing mechanics, but as a simple expedient because people never clarify what they want, when they ask for it.

Just "frontier give me ship transport". So that's what we get. Instant as well because who wants to wait? Sandro doesn't, clearly. Braben probably wouldn't mind a bit of realisim. This is maybe why Sandro exists. To deliver a game at all, even if it's going off the rails at a pretty fast clip.

I don't particularly think this fresh new approach to expediency hot on the heels of time sink engineers makes any sense at all. But this is frontier and that's how they roll. In a confusing array of peculiar choices, between tossing various things under the bus, or fixating on pointless minutia to infinite degrees.

It's always extremes. This? No exception.

 

[Trueno33]

I wasn't suggesting it is - I was replying to Trueno's request for sci-fi which has teleportation - not something which was consistent with ED's lore.

And you were repped accordingly

 

[Jack Schitt]

The example was about putting a 2D FSD into a vulture.
Fact check: A combat fit vulture with a 2D FSD has a jumprange of 1.1 ly.
No speedy escape with that to another system (unless there are systems which are 1.1 ly apart anywhere? maybe in the core?)

Fair enough; I didn't have the game to hand when I posted and hadn't realised just how cripplingly bad a 2D is on a Vulture so it was a very poor example for me to hang that on. But the general idea that these game changes will lead to builds that weren't viable before becoming viable after is still valid (although perhaps not 2D builds). Only implementation and the beta will tell how significant this is.

BTW if my maths is correct the distance from Atlas to Pleione is about 0.5ly in the real galaxy; I'm nowhere near the Pleiades in game so I can't check if that's also true in the ED galaxy. Of course if the other systems are more than 1ly away from either then the mythical 2D Vulture couldn't have got there in the first place anyway, so your argument stands.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

Actually it means people have to plan, and can send ships to places other than where they are going. This is actually making the mechanic work for more situations. Yes it's not really changing much time wise, but it makes a heck of a lot more sense and means ships do technically experience travel time. It just synergise a with commander travel time.

It's not a terrible middle ground?

Middle ground.. surely approx accurate time to deliver IS the middle ground.

Instant transfer is the far left
Do all the work yourself by taxiing the far right

Order your ship to be delivered bit it takes a realistic time to arrive in the mean time you do your own thing in your existing ship.... the middle ground

 

[CMDR Robyn Highart]

Middle ground.. surely approx accurate time to deliver IS the middle ground.

Instant transfer is the far left
Do all the work yourself by taxiing the far right

Order your ship to be delivered bit it takes a realistic time to arrive in the mean time you do your own thing in your existing ship.... the middle ground

Yes. They've made a huge mistake by starting off with instant. Now all the kiddies won't leave the idea alone. Even though it's astronomically op.

 

[darthyank]

Ship transfer: yes

Instantaneous: no, really no.
5 minutes per jump at least

 

[T1-Jafo]

Absolutely! I don't understand these people who want to make it more gamey and easier. Just play a different game , there's nothing else like this.

Too bad ED doesn’t have a built-in ‘SnapShot’ to offer. This way we could go back to an earlier version of the simulation when it was really fun, and the other folks could have their COD AW, err, DOOM, err, the game​ version of ED. win-win

 

[Havoc4U]

THAT'S BRILLIANT! Why has no one thought of this before?! One thing though? I go to a remote station, it has a sidewinder and nothing but a few lasers in stock. But if I pay a small "transfer fee" it can generate me a Class A conda? Brilliant!

well there again one could say that if there is not that type of ship class module in that station you cannot transfer your blueprint - that would keep things reined in

taking your example in consideration if you have an Anaconda that you want to transfer you would have to find a station where they supply Anacondas (meaning they have that ship generating module)

 

[Deleted member 115407]

OK, went back and forth and rolled it around in my head, now I've decided.

Transfer: Yay
Instant Transfer: Nay

It should cost you both time and money.

If they are going to stick with instant, the cost should be nearly prohibitive.

 

[WR3ND]

Ah, regarding the coffee thing.
Common misconception. If presented with instant vs. brewed coffee, 80% of the population can't even tell the difference. They still "hate instant coffee", though.
(I work for a company that makes that stuff, the figures are in our database )

You guys must make some crap brewed coffee then... [haha] Of course a company that makes instant coffee would have those sort of statistics on hand. No conflict of interests and cherry picking going on there, I'm sure.

Instant coffee is actually petty good for some uses though, especially in flavoring other things. [up]

 

[Ziljan]

Odd. I haven't logged on since they made the announcement of teleportation for cash. Didn't initially think it was a game breaker. My gut is saying otherwise though.

Gonna have to give it more time. Maybe see how expensive they make it. Immersion is dead now. But maybe they can still salvage game balance if they pin down the costs?

 

[Winterwalker]

Middle ground.. surely approx accurate time to deliver IS the middle ground.

Instant transfer is the far left
Do all the work yourself by taxiing the far right

Order your ship to be delivered bit it takes a realistic time to arrive in the mean time you do your own thing in your existing ship.... the middle ground

I agree.

Yes. They've made a huge mistake by starting off with instant. Now all the kiddies won't leave the idea alone. Even though it's astronomically op.

I disagree .. getting two shipyards talking to each other (exchanging information about your ship + loadout) is not only the key mechanic here .. it's a CORE mechanic ("instantly" is barebone).

SEE my new SIG !! .... 2,3, Clear

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

well there again one could say that if there is not that type of ship class module in that station you cannot transfer your blueprint - that would keep things reined in

taking your example in consideration if you have an Anaconda that you want to transfer you would have to find a station where they supply Anacondas (meaning they have that ship generating module)

So your notion of blueprints for 3D printers only makes sense for generic modules.. the whole of engineers is based on the notion that EVERY module is a unique snowflake that even the creator can't predict.

 

[CMDR Robyn Highart]

well there again one could say that if there is not that type of ship class module in that station you cannot transfer your blueprint - that would keep things reined in

taking your example in consideration if you have an Anaconda that you want to transfer you would have to find a station where they supply Anacondas (meaning they have that ship generating module)

Then there is still magic in replicating the engineer modules.

 

[Deleted member 115407]

Odd. I haven't logged on since they made the announcement of teleportation for cash. Didn't initially think it was a game breaker. My gut is saying otherwise though.

Gonna have to give it more time. Maybe see how expensive they make it. Immersion is dead now. But maybe they can still salvage game balance if they pin down the costs?

Yeah, it's the only way. The cost needs to be inconvenient, at best.