I'm sure he does, since all he was doing was paraphrasing FDs position. It would, however, have been better had he used the phrase "fetch the ship you want" rather than "fetch the ship you need".
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The Galaxy - Is its size now considered to be a barrier to gameplay by the Developers?
- Thread starter Robert Maynard
- Start date
Yea good clarification here, thanks.
I'm starting to feel that any delay, even a static timer if the place of origin is X LY would be worth examining at this point. There is obviously a lot of players uncomfortable with the instant transfer.
I think its sad to see that these features are considered low priority as well. The QOL stuff matters, a lot, as evident by the amount of emotions they manage to stir up.
I think the recent conflicts also show that the devil IS in the details here. The problem with engineers was a similar issue. Good idea, executed in a way that didn't jive with the way the game played.
At some point they need to say, hey, look getting the small stuff right. (Like RNG, spawnrates, the delay etc) matters, alot. Because unlike headline feature # 3252346 these are the things that players are going to interact with constantly, through the lifespan of the game.
This entire argument is pointless, really.
It's a feature in the game that, when used by other people, will have absolutely zero effect on you as a player.
It's easily ignored, the same way some people ignore "Open" or "Solo" and others ignore Trade as a viable activity in the game.
Panties are in a serious need of being untwisted on this forum.
It's a feature in the game that, when used by other people, will have absolutely zero effect on you as a player.
It's easily ignored, the same way some people ignore "Open" or "Solo" and others ignore Trade as a viable activity in the game.
Panties are in a serious need of being untwisted on this forum.
Think again buddy,
I wonder Micheal Brooks have you thought about how this feature affects trading CG, with this feature people will only need to fly there slow Type 9 to the CG receiving station with the goods on board, then they can use a vessel with a longer range FSD to fly themselves back to where they acquired the required goods, teleport the T9 back to that station load it up with the require goods and fly it back to the CG receiving station, rinse and repeat.
This also eliminates half the risk of flying around in a slow an cumbersome T9s. An would drastically cut down on traveling times for CGs.
Would love an explanation on how you plan to balance this up, especially with you wanting this feature to be easily accessible to people, which suggests limited to amount of copying licenses issue per ship or attaching huge credit cost to each instant teleportation seem unlikely solutions that fit with the design goals of this feature.
This only one exploit I was able to come up with, I'm sure others will come up with smart, dodgier ways to exploit this feature to give themselves distinct advantage in CGs.
Apparently i agree with you a lot, and was not allowed to give you rep, cause i already had, (don't remember doing it
)But this, this is exactly why doing it the way FD wants to do it can potentially be a huge mess. Having only one vector to balance on and then having to take something away from players if they realize they have to backpedal is exactly why i hope they take a really long hard look at what this feature actually means for the gameplay.
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
That's a very interesting prognostication.... The suggestion seems to be that the ability of players to summon any ship they like to any location (with a suitable dock) will not be used in any way to affect other players - in a multi-player game.
It actually could, it's pretty brilliant.
It can also gave big rammifications on the BGS and for those that play Powerplay.
Valid points, but I would say the replacement ship thing is what we we've got and like it or not, its not going to change. Also, it basically time compresses a period when you are out of the game (death or in an escape capsule) into an instant (if you see what I mean?) whereas instant ship transfer would very much be a mechanic you are doing and using in-game.
To my mind the former makes sense and is a convenience, though I can see harder core players than me having an issue with it, and the latter introduces puff the magic dragon and wizardry into what for me is the most respected computer game series ever produced. I have a problem with that.
I've noticed some of the people that insist instant is the way to go seem to pretty much loath the game. As in, "the game is a terrible grind as it is, at least instant ship production is a step in the right direction." :-/
I believe he's already stated that cargo does not get insta-transported.
So I've just caught up with the thread. Thanks for everyone's input, as I've said before we do keep it in mind. There will be further discussions on the feature, although I do still feel that adding a time delay weakens the feature more than it solves any problems. One issue does resonate, and that's how far the jump can be, so we'll look into that. We still reserve the right to disagree with you
I see that people don't get that printing thing, which is a shame as it is used quite a bit anyway - for example food cartridges. We can review and change if needed, to be honest the feature is what is important in this instance. Yes, I appreciate the difference in scale, and as I mentioned before we're not talking about a single machine that just spits out a ship, it combines more economical processes as well.
The cost of the feature is also a balance, one that we'll refine through beta. Obviously we need to keep it accessible.
Michael
Firstly, thank you Michael for coming here two days in a row to face the potential pitchforks and torches. I think that the just knowing that you are aware of people's concerns goes some way towards making people feel a little better.
For me the issues is to do with choices. Anything that I would consider to be a good game has to have choices and consequences, and so far Elite: Dangerous has done that. Without choices, everyone would want to fly the ship with the big guns, the strong shields, the tough hull, lots of cargo space AND an immense jump range. The size of the galaxy is one of the factors that forces players to make choices - if you want a fully armed and armoured ship then you can have it, but the sacrifice is that it is going to take you longer to get to where you want to be. If you want fast travel, then you can also have that but you will have to sacrifice equipment on your ship.
The instant transfer takes away the need to make those choices, which overall lessens the game. Not to forget those players who have spent a lot of time grinding for the engineers in order to get a better jump range for their FDL or Cutter.
As for the 3D printing thing - I think the problem is that it's inconsistent with the lore of Elite rather than the possible science of 3302. Arthur C Clarke's 3001 gave a view of the future in the next millennium where technology is so advanced that it makes the suggested 3D printing of Elite look like someone whittling starships out of wood. Star Trek has long had replicators than can create food and spare parts, but for good storytelling it has limits - the "resolution" isn't as good as that of a transporter, so some parts still need to be manufactured in a "traditional" way. I would imagine that starships use industrial replicators to create hull plates and other components which are then put together, you don't just make a whole ship and the limit is there for good story telling. At the other extreme, Star Wars does not have anything like replicator technology / 3D printing, but the technology in that universe has been around for a long time which is why we get to see battered, patched-up ships. I've always felt that the lore of Elite goes somewhere in between the two - travel technology is better than in Star Trek, but communication over long distances is not as good. Also, goods have to be hauled from one place to another in ships. In terms of the ships themselves, we are closer to the Star Wars universe - ships are not always shiny-new, and in the stories of Elite, they are generally patched up (also in game - otherwise why does my 'Conda have wires dangling from the ceiling?).
I'm sure most players can see how small drone ships could be created in a ship hanger just from stored parts, but it seems like too much of a stretch for a whole ship with custom engineered components to be created this way and it does devalue the idea of your trusty vessel, patched up and restored after many battles but still in use. As for the argument about your ship being restored when you die, I just assume that the old ship is salvaged at the same time as your escape pod or remlok-sealed body - which means that those juicy engineered parts are available for you to install when the insurance pays out on your new ship. The "instantness" of that really isn't a problem as long as you don't pay too much attention to the in-game clock.
Ah, the mighty Maynard deigns to respond to me.
Explain exactly how my ability to transport a ship is going to affect you in such a way as to be game breaking. Please do so without making the assumption that every combat ship you see at Jacques or Maia was transported there (especially given that combat ships are currently docked at both locations in-game).
Or, it might be people like myself with very limited play-time (like, 4 hours in a given week), that think instant is going to give me more gaming, even though I don't like it from a realism perspective...for people like that (me), it's very much gameplay > realism. If I had more time to play, my perspective would be very different, as I'm all for realism. It's a very selfish perspective, but then, isn't everyone else's?
I will say that Michael's responses have alleviated some of my concerns with regards to the general direction the game is heading, but instant transfer still does not sit well. The inconsistency within the game world and potential exploits are enough to concern me already. In addition, potentially gating this feature through credits is not only inconsistent with the reasons given for implementing it, but it would also create an imbalance in the availability of the feature in favour of the wealthy. I don't care if I'm paying some pilot's apprentice a measly rate of 1000CR/hr to bring any ship to me, at least then cost doesn't create an imbalance in the availability of the feature and all CMDR's are universally limited by the time dynamic.
After many days mulling over this, I see using a realistic time delay solving so many of the potential problems with this while maintaining a huge QoL benefit that I'm frankly still bewildered that it wasn't FD's default position.
After many days mulling over this, I see using a realistic time delay solving so many of the potential problems with this while maintaining a huge QoL benefit that I'm frankly still bewildered that it wasn't FD's default position.
Point is it cuts the time you have to move in the t9 in half. [Jumphauler out to station /w goods -> Teleport T9, fly cargo to CG->teleport hauler->repeat] I halves the risk and travel times pretty effectively.
The only way this can be avoided is if the cost of teleporting the ship is really high, and i honestly think it has to be so high for it not to be worth exploiting that the people that are for instant transport are going to reconsider if it gets balanced that way.
With a time delay you get a lot more dynamic thinking into the mix. ("Do i take the risk of flying there? or do i plan ahead and have my ship transported there while i do some other activity?"
Some times obstacles can add to the gameplay. Forethought and strategy are usually the results of getting around obstacles.
If people arn't using that feature to magic your ships around then they will have a hard time competing with other players who are fighting against thier faction. The same goes to powerplay. To compete you will have to do the instant ship transfer to stay on an even playing field whether you want to or not.
For instance during the Lugh war where there where competing CG's, we would all be using the magic ship transfer whether we want to or not otherwise it becomes an unfair fight.
Send for ship...twiddle thumbs for x minutes...receive ship.
Well...the waiting was pointless from a gameplay perspective, let's remove it. Seems pretty straightforward to me!
Sense of scale is bogus as you travel too fast. If it took u 6 months to reach mars, maybe you'd appreciate it. When it takes you seconds to reach places at speeds far beyond reality that you couldn't come even close to comprehending, the "sense of scale" people think they have is nothing more than a figment of their imagination....
As usual, FD make a bad decision again it seems. Instant travel is just the opposite end of the bad scale that hyper jumps are on. The awful mechanic of jump after jump after jump after jump.... This move is probably due to a drop in the player base as a move to make the game more fun.
Unfortunately, rather than address that issue, they decided to do it this way. Maybe it's yet another placeholder until they can incorporate the true way of travelling in 10 years time...
What ED has done is show how NOT to do space travel. Too many jumps one after the other is not engaging gameplay. Instant travel makes a mockery of the point of playing a space sim. Had they concentrated on the ship and it's internals and made hyperspace be a thing that just made you go faster, allowing you to fly to a system in real time instead of a loading screen for another skybox.
Another thing FD have done is seemingly not think about this. Orfeboy made the following point,
Not only that but guess what you're going to do with all your FSD's - swap them all out for the lightest and least power draining one. Since only one ship needs to go anywhere, why bother fitting anything heavier on your ship. In one fell swoop FD have made almost every ship now a "system ship". This also affects FSD upgrades - just get your Asp upgraded, why bother with that boring grind for any other ships? How can you make this many mistakes in a game? I shudder to think how their design meetings go - who is in charge here? Who's "designing" this game and making so many mistakes?
With the current model, the galaxy is way too big. It might be fun for a few players, jumping ad infinitum but I doubt most people that play want to waste hours doing this. Travel. IMO needs to be completely ripped out and designed from scratch taking into account that the players ship is the most important thing. ED feels like you're working for a company and driving a company car when it should have the Milennium Falcom feel like that first piece of crap car you bought after you learned to drive.
Travelling can be fun if you have things to do and see along the way.
As usual, FD make a bad decision again it seems. Instant travel is just the opposite end of the bad scale that hyper jumps are on. The awful mechanic of jump after jump after jump after jump.... This move is probably due to a drop in the player base as a move to make the game more fun.
Unfortunately, rather than address that issue, they decided to do it this way. Maybe it's yet another placeholder until they can incorporate the true way of travelling in 10 years time...
What ED has done is show how NOT to do space travel. Too many jumps one after the other is not engaging gameplay. Instant travel makes a mockery of the point of playing a space sim. Had they concentrated on the ship and it's internals and made hyperspace be a thing that just made you go faster, allowing you to fly to a system in real time instead of a loading screen for another skybox.
Another thing FD have done is seemingly not think about this. Orfeboy made the following point,
Not only that but guess what you're going to do with all your FSD's - swap them all out for the lightest and least power draining one. Since only one ship needs to go anywhere, why bother fitting anything heavier on your ship. In one fell swoop FD have made almost every ship now a "system ship". This also affects FSD upgrades - just get your Asp upgraded, why bother with that boring grind for any other ships? How can you make this many mistakes in a game? I shudder to think how their design meetings go - who is in charge here? Who's "designing" this game and making so many mistakes?
With the current model, the galaxy is way too big. It might be fun for a few players, jumping ad infinitum but I doubt most people that play want to waste hours doing this. Travel. IMO needs to be completely ripped out and designed from scratch taking into account that the players ship is the most important thing. ED feels like you're working for a company and driving a company car when it should have the Milennium Falcom feel like that first piece of crap car you bought after you learned to drive.
Travelling can be fun if you have things to do and see along the way.
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