Ship transfer delay with math.

[Bambi]

Okay there's a lot of worry about hour long delays from people who don't have time to play video games in the first place, but let's use some hard numbers to base our fears on.

Let's say, a reasonable scenario. You left a ship in LHS 3447 and are now in or around Sol and want to retrieve that ship. Keeping in mind that canonically there is no FTL comms, a courier ship would have to go to LHS 3447 to retrieve it. The courier ship would probably be fast, let's say 30 ly range. Using an online route planner, that's about 3 jumps there. Let's say the ship you're retrieving is slow, say 12 ly range. That's 10 jumps back. 13 jumps total. Let's say each jump takes about 30 seconds accounting for FSD cooldown, chargeup, and time spent in witchspace. Let's ignore refueling for the arguments sake. That's 6 minutes and 30 seconds for a realistic travel time of a slow ship going nearly 100 ly. Even adding in a minute or two at each end to take off and land, that's less than 10 minutes.

Let's say the distance is longer, but the ship is faster. LHS 3447 to Deciat. Bit over 200 ly. 20 ly jump range. That's 8 jumps there, 13 jumps back. 10 minutes and 30 seconds. Let's say the ship is slow again. 17-18 jumps back. 12 minutes and 30 seconds.

If we account only for the time back, and ignore the courier. That's only 5 minutes, 6:30, 8:30, respectively.

These numbers seem quite reasonable to me. Add in the idea that you could order the ship to a different station than the one you're in right now, that would make a delay perfectly reasonable, you could do a short delivery mission or hunt a few pirates well within the time it would take for most deliveries. Hours do not figure in regular play.

The model could be further simplified by only accounting for straight line distance rather than pathing a full journey, and adjusting the time per ly travelled in order to fine tune the amount of time if needed.

 

[CMDR Aengus]

Let's just say they've already decided?

 

[Heavenly-Hammer]

Nah, I like instant.

Or how about a 5 minute delay. Call it enough time to load all of my ships on some special transport ship equipped with capital ship-class FSDs that ordinary pilots can't get, capable of traversing the length of the bubble in a single jump. Boom! Lore for the lore nerds, who can now shuffle off.

 

[Mohrgan]

We have heard this all before. Once you start putting activities in the background, behind the scenes. You remove all game play from that feature. There is no reason to dress up non game play for little to no reason at all. See the mega-threads on this very subject for more details.

 

[Bambi]

Once you start putting activities in the background, behind the scenes. You remove all game play.

This doesn't follow.

 

[Arkadi]

Nah, I like instant.

I like Italian Espresso, pitch black and strong - never liked Nespresso though, so I don't like instant. I also don't like my car to be 3D printed. Also I think car-sharing is good for the enviroment but I already own a car and would not sell it for a 3D print copy of it.

 

[TuxedoSteve]

Personally, I think it'd be fine if it took time but the time was calculated on the straight line distance between the two locations, then divided by the ship's jump range and taken at a rate of 2 'jumps' per minute. This would make a 500 light year distance with a 12ly range FDL/Corvette take less than 21 minutes. (Just over 4 minutes for 500ly with a 60ly Anaconda)

The only time you'd ever have to wait for more than 30 minutes if your ship has a vaguely capable FSD range would be a transfer to Jaques. Which would take less than 18 hours for any ship with the same vaguely capable range of 12+ ly. (About 3 hours for a 60ly Anaconda)

 

[SqualZell]

We have heard this all before. Once you start putting activities in the background, behind the scenes. You remove all game play from that feature. There is no reason to dress up non game play for little to no reason at all. See the mega-threads on this very subject for more details.

Exactly! risk vs reward.

get an 6 million ASP explorer, strip it barebones except for the FTL and Fuel Tank (make it 10M). Go super far then transport your fleet in an instant.

you just removed
1- the time associated with traveling but gained the reward of having your full fleet available on hand instantly
2- the risk associated with travel, gained the reward of transport of 50-100-120M + ships with 0 risk of losing them.

basically you are unbalancing the risk vs reward associated with the transportation and traveling.

why would you travel in your anaconda when you can do it in a sidewinder and risk nothing.

if you play solo, by all means do whatever you want. /givecredits 1 billion for all i care.
in open play you bypass all the gameplay and risk associated to transporting your expensive ship... yeah powerplay will be... well changed and not in a good way.

 

[Mohrgan]

Exactly! risk vs reward.

get an 6 million ASP explorer, strip it barebones except for the FTL and Fuel Tank (make it 10M). Go super far then transport your fleet in an instant.

you just removed
1- the time associated with traveling but gained the reward of having your full fleet available on hand instantly
2- the risk associated with travel, gained the reward of transport of 50-100-120M + ships with 0 risk of losing them.

basically you are unbalancing the risk vs reward associated with the transportation and traveling.

why would you travel in your anaconda when you can do it in a sidewinder and risk nothing.

if you play solo, by all means do whatever you want. /givecredits 1 billion for all i care.
in open play you bypass all the gameplay and risk associated to transporting your expensive ship... yeah powerplay will be... well changed and not in a good way.

The balance is returned because; everyone can do that. No one is excluded from this feature. Jump in, grab your ship of choice and go at it. Just like the guy you described did. Universal access is inherently fair.

 

[Sans Daring]

The balance is returned because; everyone can do that. No one is excluded from this feature. Jump in, grab your ship of choice and go at it. Just like the guy you described did. Universal access is inherently fair.

And universally destructive. Ships are no longer ships, they are asset sheets. No ship is really over at Lave when you're at Robigo, it's just in your back pocket. FDL becomes over-powered given their high firepower/low jump becomes negliable, and providing you're using a stripped ASP as a sort of transmit beam, it can be as far as your ASP can travel in the same time. Ues it's universal, universal doesn't create balance. A neighbourhood can go down the chute, universally, so everyone lives in a worse place, universally, doesn't mean it's a good thing.

So if you're going to make such a MEGA change to how we use, move, and fit-up ships, you need to make sure there's a risk/burden at the very least to minimise the use so it doesn't become a reward system that devalues the game's key assets.

I would think a cost and delay based on a hauler's flight speed for any station, BUT if it's a place running a community event or something that requires specific ships, as FDev have alluded to being one of the reasons they are implementing this, that is negotiated. That way FDev gets to keep its route of ensuring people have fast access to the events that they would like to see participation in, but the option doesn't become overused to devalue and change the gameplay as per routine.

 

[Robert Maynard]

Closed as a duplicate.