The Galaxy - Is its size now considered to be a barrier to gameplay by the Developers?

[Darth Ender]

No I'm right. There is a distance limitation to ship transfers.

So what if people are camping ahead of time. Deal with it. What if they just radioed to more of their faction / crew to be ready for you. Thats part of the pvp culture you want to be part of. Deal with it.

The time it takes to do something is a deterrent. Removing that deterrent will have a massive change in what you experience at given places in systems with stations. That's only a bad thing in regards to negative player actions - which will obviously occur. And it's a far far cry from saying someone is coordinating with other people and the massive majority who are working alone. It most definitely will be a feature used to increase the amount of hostile activity since hostile ships tend to be lower jump range - where as non-hostile ships tend to already be at the top percentile of jump range ships anyway. So who benefits most? Hostile ships.

That being said. I dont oppose the feature because of that. I dont really care if players get killed in the game by other players. I oppose the feature because it doesn't solve a problem. It works around the problem and in doing so it only addresses this workaround to a subset of players. I dont believe this is the correct course of action. I believe FD should be putting time into solving the problem of boring space travel instead since it would benefit everyone.

 

[AstroCreep]

We like the potential effects this could have on interactions in the galaxy, and the benefit comes from instant transfer. We'll see in beta how it pans out.

Michael

There's potential for negative effects too which you seem to be dismissing currently, of course Beta will provide some of the answers but for me this Instant Transfer is a game changer and ruiner in many ways.

 

[MadDogMurdock]

Or maybe you'll have more ships because you can actually make use of them.

Michael

You might think that'd be the outcome but min/max tendencies would suggest otherwise.

 

[andrak]

This will be known as the year Elite: Dangerous transitioned from a space simulation game into an arcade game.

 

[Bacalao]

You guys don't believe in a taxi meta after 2.2? After the smuggling > all money making meta, after the heat > all PvP meta, you still think that it is fine that essentially the best ways to travel is now to just fly in a long range taxi ship and have your main workhorse ship sent after you all the time?

You guys don't believe it completely warps trade CGs so that you must play the taxi meta or you have no chance to be in the top percentages, because it's much faster to source the trade goods in sufficient quantities that, as opposed to flying the way back to where you buy the stuff in a interstellarly slower ship?

You guys are confident that powerplay, which is competitive by nature, makes the use of the taxi meta mandatory because if the players in your power don't do it, the opposing power can undermine/fortify/etc. much faster than your power?

You guys don't think that short jump range downsides of many ships should matter any more, and travelling be normalized to taxi ship with the best jump range a player can afford? (If you say yes to this, then please just go ahead and buff the jump ranges of Viper, FDL, Corvette, Eagle, Python etc.)

All excellent points. Perhaps the transfer cost should be higher if the ship you are taking isn't available at the station? That way local availability of ships isn't made irrelevant

I don't think this will be the case. There are fairly simple mitigating factors in all of your concerns, particularly about trade. For one, unladen trade ships tend to have really good range anyway. Yeah, my stripped to the core annie can jump 55 Ly, my unladen cutter can jump 33 or something. Unless I'm sourcing goods several hundred light years away the difference won't come into play. At best I'll save 1, maybe two unladen jumps, time that will be lost in switching ships before I load up. It's potentially an issue with rare's CGs, but lately they've been making the bulk of the travel time in supercruise to drop off or pick up, something no ship or feature can shorten the duration of.
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It may have some edge benefits on the fringe systems for powerplay, but honestly, there are much bigger problems going on there.
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Long range smuggling, the Cr/Hr aren't made or broken based on getting an empty ship out to Sothis/Robigo, besides which if you put a timer on delivery I just take my 450ton, 55Ly annie out there and start to fill up it's hold until my 720 ton Cutter arrives, at which point I switch ships with the cargo. You'd have to make the transfer ridiculously slow for it to matter. The only time it might begin to force you to actually wait (which is horrible gameplay btw) is if you took an Asp and transferred a python, the cargo discrepancy being big enough that you'd quickly fill the Asp. But as I've said before, the Sothis problem doesn't have to do with travel time.
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This is a convenience feature, people won't be switching ships every time they make a couple jumps, just for travel to distant places like engineer bases or when they want to do a mission or activity they don't have a ship on hand for. As far as potential exploits go, this is insanely tame, laughable to really even be concerned about it.

 

[Jukelo]

A fair point, but to design the game based on that to the detriment of everyone else isn't good either.

Michael

Hey Michael, I heartily agree with that, the game shouldn't be held back for fear of exploits. With that in mind (and sorry for going off-topic), does it mean Frontier will reconsider its position on commodity storage and direct player-to-player transfer of cargo and credits?

 

[T. Somtaaw]

I think everyone is being a little over dramatic about the new ship transfer feature. I agree this new feature needs to be caped by a certain distance like only being able to transfer ships within a 400ly radius of your current location for example. However, it's not going to turn into this big doom and gloom apocalypse like a handful of people are predicting. I really do think it's going to bring some very positive gameplay features and overall improve the quality of life within the bubble. Everyone needs to just wait until beta and see how it's implemented.

 

[Michael Brookes]

You might think that'd be the outcome but min/max tendencies would suggest otherwise.

For some, but not most players.

Michael

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

They are being discussed at the moment.

Michael

Can't be. I'm told FD doesn't listen to feedback

Seriously: cheers!

 

[AstroCreep]

Or maybe you'll have more ships because you can actually make use of them.

Michael

I see the opposite:

1 long range FSD used as an Instant Transfer Ship/Explorer
1 Fighter
1 Trade/Miner

 

[Bacalao]

The time it takes to do something is a deterrent. Removing that deterrent will have a massive change in what you experience at given places in systems with stations. That's only a bad thing in regards to negative player actions - which will obviously occur. And it's a far far cry from saying someone is coordinating with other people and the massive majority who are working alone. It most definitely will be a feature used to increase the amount of hostile activity since hostile ships tend to be lower jump range - where as non-hostile ships tend to already be at the top percentile of jump range ships anyway. So who benefits most? Hostile ships.

That being said. I dont oppose the feature because of that. I dont really care if players get killed in the game by other players. I oppose the feature because it doesn't solve a problem. It works around the problem and in doing so it only addresses this workaround to a subset of players. I dont believe this is the correct course of action. I believe FD should be putting time into solving the problem of boring space travel instead since it would benefit everyone.

No, it solves a problem, just not your pet problem.

 

[Vorxian]

The hate in this thread is unreal.

Who's really worried about someone going off exploring some bubble systems, and find a nice bounty mission they like; fly back to the station and call their hunting ship? Folks make it sound like pulling in a ship for a fun purpose is game breaking.. For me flying back 500ly to get a ship with a 15ly range to get back to then do the mission is a bore chore. I'd probably burn out and not bother. I'd rather have fun doing fun things than jumponium for for the sake of feeling 'immersion'. Dang, you may as well have 1 minute per ton of cargo, or 30 seconds per ton of fuel to load / unload. It's only 13 hours to load and unload a cutter full of cargo 26 hours of game time for the sake of realism? Stuff happens instantly for a reason, and I do agree with Mike's reasoning. Having a ship available to use really isn't game breaking at all, what it does is open up more options to have fun with. It doesn't change exploring. It doesn't change combat. It doesn't change trading. I can't see what the issue is. I have tried, but just cannot see what the problem is.

So many other suggestions, ideas and mixed opinions to other things in ED usually invokes the : It's FDEV's game, they know what's best. This is also one of them.

 

[Darth Ender]

I think everyone is being a little over dramatic about the new ship transfer feature. I agree this new feature needs to be caped by a certain distance like only being able to transfer ships within a 400ly radius of your current location for example. However, it's not going to turn into this big doom and gloom apocalypse like a handful of people are predicting. I really do think it's going to bring some very positive gameplay features and overall improve the quality of life within the bubble. Everyone needs to just wait until beta and see how it's implemented.

The reason why people get overly emotional about these things is that there is strong precedence that any feedback about the feature in beta will just get ignored anyway and make it into release unchanged. Like so many bugs that get reported etc.

 

[CMDR-AD]

I've tried to think of the "bad" things that could be done with this. With the primary "gaming it" point being how short range FSD ships can make Anaconda FSD travel time.

Only one case I can see does offer some chance of being abused:

Player flys far (to Jacques), transfers in heavy battle ships. When done, he can suicide in a Sidewinder, and choose the default respawn back in the bubble (IIRC), and then transfer back all the battle ships. So in such case, he does get to "skip" the long, manual return trip from Jacques with practically zero cost dumping the Sidewinder rebuy (I think $32k?)

But otherwise, I wasn't able to make up situations where I could get any appreciable advantage in trade, or CGs, other than simply getting there faster (Anaconda, teleport the empty trade Cutter). But once the Cutter is there, any possible future advantages are small because cargo can't transfer.

And I do see what Frontier are saying about some delay times seeming annoying due to shortness. I checked, and getting most of my ships to me would take 2 to 8 minutes each even with real-time transfer. So I can see their point... Yes I could do something else. But not much in 2-4 minutes.

 

[Julio Montega]

Regarding the ship transfer as a feature, with or without time delay i see two very positive points about it:
- I can get my Python out of a hostile station, i made enemies with by pirating in that system and actually carry on using it (scrapping and selling)
- i can consolidate my fleet at my chosen homebase

 

[Wyaston Hypatia]

Thanks for the Replies Michael.

My problem has always been with the breaking of my Immersion this feature will bring. I think it's far too hard to just ignore it.

 

[Darth Ender]

So many other suggestions, ideas and mixed opinions to other things in ED usually invokes the : It's FDEV's game, they know what's best. This is also one of them.

It is their game, but they dont know what's best. They're guessing and hoping they're doing what's best. Like any developer. The future purchases of upcoming seasons will determine if they are on the right track. Until then it's all opinion. On both sides.

 

[CMDR Pugwash]

I think the issue for a few I've discussed it with is that it breaks the 4th wall in a way that seems to cross some invisible red line. You can say there are many things that you have to turn a blind eye to in the game of course, but for some of the players this seems to have crossed some kind of red line, even for players who normally seem to rationalize these things pretty well.

Personally, subject to beta testing, I can just about live with it, but would have preferred it to be on a timer. I'm teetering on the brink of saying I'd rather not have the feature at all if it has to be instant, but I would reserve judgement until the beta I guess.

The trouble is that the true effect will be difficult to replicate in beta due to the limited numbers. Unless everyone participates in the beta that is.

 

[Darth Ender]

No, it solves a problem, just not your pet problem.

it works around a problem to treat a symptom ... which is that people dont want to move ships around because the activity is mindlessly boring and tedious and time consuming.

The problem is that travel is boring, tedious and basically unrelated to any resemblance of gameplay. Fix that and no longer is travel " time consuming" but it's simply playing the game. No different than the time spent bounty hunting or doing a mission. It still will take time but it's not an extraneous wasted time like it currently is.

 

[Bomba Luigi]

Oh, while your here Mr. Books let me try get in a small question: When a Station is UA bombed players can't acces ships they have stored there currently, will we be able to get them out of there via Shiptransport?