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

[asphaltpilot]

So, how do you explain the following:
Powerplay, enough said

And instant ship transfer would be able to exploit PP even further. And it will allow removal of most thought as to how any commander will strategize his/her weekly PP actions. Right now, I read the PP forum and look at the weekly situation for my superpower. I read the reddit, I real the slack. I come up with a plan for that week which I feel will best advance my superpower. With instant ship transfer. It doesn't matter. I can prepare, fortify, undermine, bounty hunt, intercept contracts, whatever, all within the same week. Thanks for dumbing down a part of the game which you made semi-complex (for a reason, correct?) to begin with. [downcast]

Dying 20,000 LY away from the bubble, appearing back in the bubble with no time lost

What are you going to do while you're dead? Could you play the game while you're dead like you could if you had delayed ship transfer? No. You can't do anything. That is the difference. With that said, maybe we should have a delay in "respawning" to dice up the risk a little bit. After all, this is Elite: DANGEROUS, no? At the very least, how about a cut screen or something of the sort showing your capsule getting rescued and taken back to the bubble. That would be ok by me, as well as a delay, because I want the simulator aspect of the game, the more realistic aspect of the game, finding reward from taking risks. I don't want this to be another current-gen game where everything is spelled out for you.

Instant fueling

There's a thread with a poll about this. I would be ok with a delay in fuel, of 20-40 seconds or so, big deal. Fuel scooping takes at least that amount of time and everyone is ok with that. If fuel purchases have to be instant, then make them more expensive. Pay a premium for convenience. Ditto for instant ship transfer. I would even be ok to wait a bit when I buy a ship. You order a ship, come back in an hour or two (or days) and here's your ship. You pay and go along with your business. Immersive. Realistic.

Instant cargo loading and unloading

Same as my answer above. And again, fueling, dying-respawning, ship repair, and cargo loading take you out of the game. Waiting for a ship to be delivered does not.

And I can't stress enough what others have already mentioned. The delicate balance of outfitting and its importance on the game will be null and void.

• One ship will have A-rated fuel tank, scanner, and FSD for exploration
• One ship will have A-rated haul, shields, and weapons for fighting
• One ship will have A-rated cargo racks and fuel tank for hauling/mining

Pretty much everything else on those ship will be bottom of the barrel in outfitting. And that's because there are two things that force commanders to carefully balance their outfitting: power plant and jump distance limits. With instant ship transfer jump distance no longer matters. It blows my mind that Frontier can't see this coming unless there are healthy limits (cost lots of $$ and/or limit distance) instant ship transfer.

 

[Jypson]

Yes you got it.
It is instant to refresh it right?
It is instant as proposed to get your ship, right?
That is the correlation.

Where the mission board (bulletin) tries to represent the system and
factions within generating missions based on their state,
the relogging bypasses that, to the extent that credit farming is sped up
by a great degree.
A lot of people use it for convenience, reducing the original purpose
and representation of that mechanic.


IMO same applies to an instant-solution of ship transfer.
Even if we had a mechanic generating missions along with it,
people would simply bypass it, due to conveniently having
to use less time.

Thus that "feature" is used less and less, as it is not "economical".

See the point?

Yes, I suppose I see your point. Would I be too crass though, if I said that I didn't care?

Speaking for me personally, I have no problem with people doing the Mission Board shuffle or anything else really. I'm truly not concerned how anyone but me is playing the game. I don't believe there is any right way to play the game. In my mind, the creators intent, is not the rule of law.

To keep in mind though, these are the words of a solo player and I have no interest in balancing the game for everyone else.

 

[Mark Lock]

We will be given the ability to transfer any of our ships to our current dock in 2.2 - there will be no delay in this transfer as the Developers have done some testing and any delay at all was considered to be too much of an impediment to gameplay.

In the recent Gamescom streams a recurring theme was that of "lowering the barriers to gameplay".

It would appear that travelling back to the location of a stored ship to fetch it back to one's location takes too much time and is therefore a barrier to gameplay that is unacceptable in the eyes of the Developers (and a large number of players, of course).

In a game where we have been given, to the best of the abilities of the Developers, a 1:1 interpretation of the our galaxy - with hundreds of billions of stars it seems that the size of the galaxy itself would now appear to be a problem to solve in the eyes of the Developers.

It will be interesting to see what further concessions to convenience we are given in future releases that will facilitate the multi-player aspect of the game.

Robert, size is not an issue at all, that's the size it is supposed to be, people can choose to just play on a couple of systems if they wish, it's an option if someone thinks the Galaxy is too big, nobody is forced to travel 100ly and more to do stuff, many missions take you 1 jump away and planets are real life sized, if someone wants to roam in rover, they can do it in any system, there are a countless number of nice places to visit with mountains and huge plains, craters , resources on every planet, as soon as planets with atmosphere become landable and walking around ships and stations/planets become available , options will double overnight !

As I see it, size is not an issue but a resource of a countless number of places where you can go, No player I think will ever visit every place on one planet, everything in ED is immense and it gives you an idea of what the scale of the real Universe is, that's something no other game has and that's my favorite feature in Elite series, you are alone in your ship doing what you want in a huge game universe, convenience is not something I'm looking for honestly, there are ways to ferry your ships to stations already, you buy a sidewinder with good FSD, you go to the station where your ship is, sell the sidewinder, go back to new station with the ship you want to move, I already did that many times, simple and realistic ...

Now Fdevs have come up with a quick ships transfer option, let it be, I watched a video today and it sounds like it has a cost depending on the ship, the bigger a ship is, the higher the cost, I saw prices like 600k to move an Orca 40ly away, I think it's not something ppl will use daily but only when they want to choose another station as home, people will just not use it to go to a conflict zone since the money you get is not enough to pay your expensive ship delivery, so I'm no longer worried, people will use it as a last resort not as an everyday option.

 

[Julio Montega]

Yes, I suppose I see your point. Would I be too crass though, if I said that I didn't care?

Speaking for me personally, I have no problem with people doing the Mission Board shuffle or anything else really. I'm truly not concerned how anyone but me is playing the game. I don't believe there is any right way to play the game. In my mind, the creators intent, is not the rule of law.

To keep in mind though, these are the words of a solo player and I have no interest in balancing the game for everyone else.

May i quote myself again, as the correlation proceeds:

Same arguments found here apply to the "instant transport" discussion.
As outcome mission stacking attracts a lot of Elite NPCs killing a lot of people,
then furthering their frustration to vent on the forums.

Eliminate mode switching and mission stacking by a sensible
mission rework and the perception of the "unfairness of the ai"
is alleviated a lot aswell.

Same applies to instant transport while a hybrid system is in place.
It just is not the mission stacking then, that is the problem,
but things like cgs and powerplay, due to ship-stacking and combat ships instantly
coming to those places, frustrating a lot of players ferrying in goods or mining.
As the limit of distance for combat ships and thus the "barrier" of tediousness and time
to attend to a cg is alleviated, since you have a "fast-path" in the first place.

It is no perfect match of concern, i give that but i think i read a lot of people sharing that thought.
I hope you guys see the little wheels that depend on each other,
making the game what it has become.
You simply can't implement something without changing and affecting other stuff.

 

[V'larr]

That isn't the same thing at all - there is a cost (and perhaps other limitations) to transferring ships, having them follow you automatically is very different.

Michael

Okay - key word "follow", not "instantaneously appear at whim anywhere you choose".

I'm going to segue a little to say you've been a real good sport dealing with the outcry, responses, acknowledging points and denfeding your own view on this.

But I really want to stress, I really don't think a wait time of a few minutes in most cases would weaken the feature to a harmful degree.

Upholding the sense of "believability" behind the way the game works is far more important than having to wait (and do something else) for a few mere minutes (only longer in the more extreme distances) while your ship makes its way across the galaxy.

For the past 3 days I've been sitting imagining Elite with this feature of ship teleportation, and it feels like the whole world(galaxy) would be upended - the illusion peeled back, breaking the magic spell of a system that makes sense - all of my belief in the Elite Dangerous experience, just gone.

All it would take is a reasonable, believable amount of time to allow for the ship physically travelling across space - in my view, preferably based upon how fast a player could do it without stopping to scan and only minimal time to refuel (e.g. Buckyballing) - nothing that would be prohibitive or causing a barrier to entry.

Heck, personally, I wouldn't make the cost a barrier at all - I'd add some kind of cost, sure, because that's a bit of work to move a ship across space and even an NPC oughta get his due for doing you a service - but it shouldn't become something that only the wealthiest players have access to!

 

[Julio Montega]

Okay - key word "follow", not "instantaneously appear at whim anywhere you choose".

I'm going to segue a little to say you've been a real good sport dealing with the outcry, responses, acknowledging points and denfeding your own view on this.

But I really want to stress, I really don't think a wait time of a few minutes in most cases would weaken the feature to a harmful degree.

Upholding the sense of "believability" behind the way the game works is far more important than having to wait (and do something else) for a few mere minutes (only longer in the more extreme distances) while your ship makes its way across the galaxy.

For the past 3 days I've been sitting imagining Elite with this feature of ship teleportation, and it feels like the whole world(galaxy) would be upended - the illusion peeled back, breaking the magic spell of a system that makes sense - all of my belief in the Elite Dangerous experience, just gone.

All it would take is a reasonable, believable amount of time to allow for the ship physically travelling across space - in my view, preferably based upon how fast a player could do it without stopping to scan and only minimal time to refuel (e.g. Buckyballing) - nothing that would be prohibitive or causing a barrier to entry.

Heck, personally, I wouldn't make the cost a barrier at all - I'd add some kind of cost, sure, because that's a bit of work to move a ship across space and even an NPC oughta get his due for doing you a service - but it shouldn't become something that only the wealthiest players have access to!

And here even is an opportunity to help us help E: D with basing the time limit
on real numbers.
Create a bucky ball over several system with every single ship, with an average loadout
and have the time to get there be stopped and noted.
Then the data can be processed into an average to set the delay.

 

[Jypson]

May i quote myself again, as the correlation proceeds:



Same applies to instant transport while a hybrid system is in place.
It just is not the mission stacking then, that is the problem,
but things like cgs and powerplay, due to ship-stacking and combat ships instantly
coming to those places, frustrating a lot of players ferrying in goods or mining.
As the limit of distance for combat ships and thus the "barrier" of tediousness and time
to attend to a cg is alleviated, since you have a "fast-path" in the first place.

It is no perfect match of concern, i give that but i think i read a lot of people sharing that thought.

Is it your concern that combat ships will be able to travel faster now and possibly harass others? I'm sorry, maybe I'm just very-very tired, but I may not be following you.

 

[TheSisko]

So, as I understand it:

• You can have a crew of up to 4 pilots
• Only 1 of those pilots is 'active'.
• All of your pilots earn a percentage of your profits.
  

Well, my fellow Commanders, I say no! [down]

Why should NPC crew on shore leave enjoy the good life with us paying for it?

I say, we get the lazy slackers to work! And we can start by getting them to deliver our ships to us.

I propose that when you want a ship transported to you, you select a NPC Crew member and then the ship you want delivered to you. Selected crew member then 'disappears' for a period of time (yeah, I'm an non-Instant fan).

Upon their return, the selected NPC pilot has your ship with them, ready for your use. This is a lot more believable (to me anyway ) then 3D printing of entire starships. Not even the Star Trek or Stargate TV franchises did that.

NPC Crew could earn additional XP points by delivering ships, and you could add some gameplay decisions here by taking into account the combat rank of the NPC. If they're say, Harmless, then there's a chance they may not survive the trip (along with your ship ). Higher ranked pilots would improve the chances of successful delivery.

Also, some the ship's modules may be damaged on arrival to reflect the battle which the crew member had to endure. The lower the rank, the more chances of damage. Upon their return, the NPC pilot will give you a short report:

Hi boss, here's your ship. Some commander thought I had a big haul, but all I had was a big cannon. Don't need to worry about him.

Boss, I'm back. Those thrusters need looking at, they're kinda damaged. Dunno why.

OhMyGod! Please don't make me do that again!

 

[Julio Montega]

Is it your concern that combat ships will be able to travel faster now and possibly harass others? I'm sorry, maybe I'm just very-very tired, but I may not be following you.

To an extent yes.
Also the pace of the game will change,
accessability to CGs and other events will be upped.
It will be easier to react to powerplay stuff
and you as a player have no chance to counter that.

(see discussion powerplay actions by going private and solo,
people might send in fast craft in solo and port corvettes there in open)

But in the end we see a lot of people use relogging-mission-refreshs for making money,
so in a hybrid transport system, that would lead to think the immersive system
generating missions would be used less, until you come to the logical conclusion
to take the economical route: fast-path and instant porting.

It boils down to me thinking there is no space for a hybrid system,
there has to be one solution for all.
I see even darker times for PvP piracy with this instant-port stuffz.

 

[CMDR-AD]

I'll reserve my own judgement until beta regarding ship transfer. My guess is that FD has something planned, whether it be an event, feature, or scenario, that almost requires instant ship transfer. The idea behind it is certainly dividing the community, which I myself am against insta-ship transfer, but there's a lot of handwavium in this game - from module outfitting to Engineer upgrades, all of which should take time but does not. So I see both sides of the argument.

I have faith in FDev making the right decision - even if it's against popular demand, I believe they will make the right decision here.

My thought also, I will wait and see how it will be used in the beta. I must admit, my primary thoughts on how it might be abused seem to have been proven to be very much less than I expected (combat ships with 2D FSD actually only gain like 1 or 2m/s speed, and may suffer serious weakness in having that small, low integrity FSD sniped, so they cannot wake out of a fight).

And I also agree that something in the future could be a big part of the need for instant ship availability, especially when players begin traveling large distances without ships in the upcoming Multi-crew play.

My thanks to Mr. Brooks for his replies here. If I may ask one question regarding the beta...

Is there a chance we will see beta ship transfers at their full prices for testing (not reduced prices for beta)? Would be helpful for seeing how viable some transfer actions vs. costs will ultimately be.

-AD

 

[Jypson]

To an extent yes.
Also the pace of the game will change,
accessability to CGs and other events will be upped.
It will be easier to react to powerplay stuff
and you as a player have no chance to counter that.

(see discussion powerplay actions by going private and solo,
people might send in fast craft in solo and port corvettes there in open)

But in the end we see a lot of people use relogging-mission-refreshs for making money,
so in a hybrid transport system, that would lead to think the immersive system
generating missions would be used less, until you come to the logical conclusion
to take the economical route: fast-path and instant porting.

It boils down to me thinking there is no space for a hybrid system,
there has to be one solution for all.

All of your concerns, do not concern me.

What is this hybrid system you keep referencing?

 

[Julio Montega]

All of your concerns, do not concern me.

What is this hybrid system you keep referencing?

That very system you suggested
Having instant port and missions generated for players to transport the ships.

It's a separate mechanic you see

The player gets his ship when they want it (QOL), and, players get more missions for ship transfers, protection or attack or whatever. It's not a actual players ship in question of course, just additional gameplay, just like people want!

Now if your concern is harvesting salt by destroying another players ship while it's not under their control...that's a different conversation

I might just have misread your post,
on not planning having the transported ships be player ships.

 

[Brian of Ardagh]

I would like to suggest a compromise idea that should help to meet the needs of time-poor players without radically altering the psychological scale of the galaxy.
I'm not claiming it's original, just that it's something I want to say.

Allow pilots to also send ships ahead of their journey to any known shipyard station (because shipyards have facilities to store ships indefinitely), through a point-to-point ship transport mechanism, initiated from any shipyard, going from any shipyard with an owned ship, to any known shipyard. Even a considerable transfer delay time would cease to be a penalty provided that the player anticipates and plans their (general, approximate) movements, and credit cost would be less critical to game balancing.

I would like to ask again that the current plans be put on hold temporarily and reexamined in the light of the many viable objections and the considerable player support expressed for them. It really needs to be worked through again I think. There's nothing wrong with making a mistake, but ignoring a flashing red warning sign with klaxons is usually less advisable.

For many of the people arguing for instant, it's pretty much instant or nothing. I'm against instant ship transfer on the notion that there are really no satisfactory ways of explaining the transfer method; each explanation requires to either ignore possible issues or for FD to limit in-game things that would arise from such technology. Like 3D printing, MB has said it's a licensing thing but that make little sense. So the ship manufacturers allow unlimited ship fabrication to the ship transfer facility but not to the shipyard facility? And how do they create an exact copy of the engineered mods without accounting for the fact that engineered mods are supposed to be unique creations, otherwise why can the engineer duplicate his work after creating a mod?

I've been trying to push an idea but so far have gotten little traction and that is ship rentals. Yes, you won't get your ship at the rental facility but you should be able to get one very similar, it would also be effectively instant as renting shouldn't take any longer then the proposed transfer method. It could also cost the same and insurance would cover loses just like your own ship but without the rebuy. The available ships could differ from what the shipyard carries as they source their own ships from other locations. I would also concede the ability to rent ships with engineers mods as the rental facility could conceivably purchase ships or modules that have been modded already.

Perfectly valid in-game explanations with no lore ramifications. If FD finds that ship rentals lead to significant exploitation problems they will have a number of methods of constraining the rental facilities. Prices might be higher near CGs or other sensitive activities. Certain modules or ships might not be available at certain times, etc.

The ability to manage your fleet of ships could be implemented at a later date with more costly NPC ship courier services or cheaply by bulk transportation services.

Both of these features could lead to significant game play additions in the future that instant transfer will never allow for. For one thing ship rental facilities could offer missions to source a ship and that could require you to mod the ship with certain specs. For the fleet management we could see players purchase large transport vessels specifically for taking ship and module haulage contracts. Other players could get missions to deliver ships to specific locations. You could fly to station X, transfer to the ship to be transported and deliver to outpost Y, then you could be provided another ship for the return trip to station X.

 

[Jypson]

That very system you suggested
Having instant port and missions generated for players to transport the ships.

My friend, my friend, we are not communicating clearly. I proposed no hybrid system. What I was talking about are two completely separate things.

Thing 1 (Actual Player Ship Transfers)
> Your ship is instantly brought to you, end of story. I don't care about the how, it just is.

Thing 2 (Ship Transport Gameplay) aka. NOTHING TO DO WITH PLAYER SHIPS
> There are Missions to transfer an NPC ship from here to there, or protect an NPC ship being transported, or attack an NPC ship being transported.
> THESES ARE NOT PLAYER SHIPS, just a bit of pretend so it LOOKS like ships are being transported around, and we get some of the immersion and extra gameplay people are keen on.

 

[Julio Montega]

My friend, my friend, we are not communicating clearly. I proposed no hybrid system. What I was talking about are two completely separate things.

Thing 1 (Actual Player Ship Transfers)
> Your ship is instantly brought to you, end of story. I don't care about the how, it just is.

Thing 2 (Ship Transport Gameplay) aka. NOTHING TO DO WITH PLAYER SHIPS
> There are Missions to transfer an NPC ship from here to there, or protect an NPC ship being transported, or attack an NPC ship being transported.
> THESES ARE NOT PLAYER SHIPS, just a bit of pretend so it LOOKS like ships are being transported around, and we get some of the immersion and extra gameplay people are keen on.

Yes i did misread your post,
after how many hours in the forums? 6? Whoa!

I don't like that as a final solution, not really,
would be better than to have solely instant ports,
but heck, i am in for being immersed.
And that is where we can conclude,
two opinions.

 

[Jypson]

Yes i did misread your post,
after how many hours in the forums? 6? Whoa!

I don't like that as a final solution, not really,
would be better than to have solely instant ports,
but heck, i am in for being immersed.
And that is where we can conclude,
two opinions.

Indeed, two separate opinions

o7

 

[Gortron]

I was in the "Rather no ship transfers than like this" camp. But having listened to Sandy on the Lave Radio podcast I've warmed to the idea.

It has the potential to break the game in some ways but they can always undo it or change it if the impact is that bad. I love that ED is a space sim game but ultimately it is a game. Probably the most common complaint is about 'Grind', which is an Emotive (and short) way of saying 'Doing something you don't want to do so that you can do something you do want to do'. Wasting lots of time shuttling around ships makes sense in a small game area but ED is enormous so travel time is still relevant even with big jump ranges. There are many occasions that I've thought I'd like to do something because of something I've stumbled upon but getting the ship to do anything is too much hassle.

The biggest issue for me is believability; I need some sort of plausible Sci-Fi excuse for my ship teleporting. 3D printing is a massive copout; if you can print literally anything then you can make matter from energy so spaceflight would be pointless.

IMHO a better solution would be a used ship brokerage at some (if not all) locations where you can basically exchange (for a large fee, the more Mods the more expensive) your ship in one location for another of almost identical spec in your current location. The only difference being the paint job and some pretty insignificant modules (RNG) but any engineer mods carry over. It is instant, reduces the barrier to entry but isn't daft as a brush on the believability scale for us nutters who want our disbelieve suspended

 

[Privata]

Just pursuing all the rabbit holes that come up on this.
So far I think we've pretty much dismissed any technology-based lore solutions so we may as well forget that altogether.
The programming angle has been pursued and we've come up with a relatively simple timed implementation as well as an instant implementation that is even less effort than the one proposed.
We've examined the effect it'll have of ship builds due to min/max tendencies.
The cost angle has been explored and it may as well be zero due to either 'trivial' or 'barrier to gameplay' considerations.
The distance limit has also been dismissed as just a different version of the barrier than the one we have now.
We've examined the impact on the use of Shipyards and Outfitting.
We've looked at the impact on Powerplay.
We've looked at how it makes all CGs the same regardless of location.
We've looked at many many potential exploits.

So basically, still a bad idea on almost every level.

Nothing good can come from this , yet its happening

 

[MadDogMurdock]

Nothing good can come from this , yet its happening

Apparently, this is the game FD want to play.
Existing players will vote with their feet and potential new players with their wallets.

Sit back, watch, and have a coffee - instant of course

 

[Brian of Ardagh]

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

Have you considered swapping the instant ship transfer for a ship and module rental service. A rental service is a natural fit in any economy, doesn't need and real explanations, and is just as instant as instant transfer. It would also afford your greater control over things like what ships and modules could be rented and at what prices. Engineered modules could be part of the rental, explained by the fact that the rental service sources and mods their own modules. I would imagine it wouldn't really require much in the way of modifications to the instant transfer programming required.

I know it doesn't solve the fleet management issue of course but that could be implemented later with a two ship transportation services; one would be a costly but quick single ship delivery service, the other a bulk service that would take a bit longer but be much cheaper.

Both of these suggestions would naturally lead to future gameplay ideas like delivery request missions for certain ships to rental facilities including engineered mods missions. The ship transport services could lead to missions to deliver ships and modules to certain destinations. The player wouldn't be doing other player deliveries but they would fit in with the overall ship delivery structure.