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

[Brian of Ardagh]

TLDR: real time ship transfer would cost more AND take longer than moving the ship yourself.


EDIT: the point I am trying to make is any delayed transfer is pointless because it doesn't meet the intent of a quality of life convenience feature. Real time would take longer and cost more than moving the ship yourself. Shortened transfer times are so short to be more a nuisance than convenience, and would still cost money.


MATH!


Furthest distance between two shipyards (excluding Jacques) is 914 ly. We know that we can't travel that distance directly through a straight line so increase it to be a little bit more conservative, call at 1000 ly across.


The FDL and corvette have jump ranges of approximately 12 light years in a combat configuration. We can't assume that the ship will always be able to jump the max distance so to be conservative use a 10 ly jump distance.


10 ly jump distance, 1000 ly total distance to travel, gives us 100 jumps. Jump time from jump to jump in one minute, but that doesn't take into account refueling or fuel scooping. Assume that it takes an additional minute per jump.


Now we have 100 jumps taking us 200 minutes so a little over three hours real time travel from one side of the bubble to the other.


Moving the ship with the transfer at real-time takes three hours. However, we have to get there first so the jump ship that we're using maybe has a jump range of 30 light years. Three times the jump range, one third of the transit time. The time for us to get to the place we want to go is one hour and three hours for the other ship to arrive for a total of four hours to get the ship there.


Under that circumstance it actually would be more effective (less expensive and less time) for us to fly the combat ship itself, therefore the real time ship transfer isn't viable.


Ship transfer half of real-time in this case it would take an hour and a half for the ship to get there after we've ordered it in, the total time from departing the ship location to getting the ship to the new location is now 2 1/2 hours. Compared to three hours if we flew our self, saving 30 minutes.


Even with half time transit it doesn't make sense to have that feature because even in the worst case scenario you only saved yourself 30 minutes of time but you had to pay to have the ship moved.


The assumptions used in the examples above are purposely conservative to demonstrate that expecting the ship transfer to be real time or even half time doesn't meet the intent of the added feature and convenience of a ship transfer service. Additionally, the above scenarios don't include other factors that can reduce travel time such as larger internal fuel tanks, FSD upgrades, jumponium, or the upcoming neutron star boost.

Where do you draw the line on convenience though?

It's no strawman to suggest that we get rid of supercruise for convenience sake. There are plenty of people that would like to get rid of that inconvenient and boring mechanism.

Some people would like an autopilot so they don't have to sit and be bored making 20 jumps to go from one side of the bubble to another. Should we implement that for convenience sake?

How about the upcoming multi-crew addition? It's been speculated that players will simply be able to all appear on a friend's ship, instant pilot teleportation. Is that too much convenience?

Eventually we may just use the galaxy as a pretty backdrop for all the gameplay. If we do it won't be Elite Dangerous any more, just a series of mini-games.

 

[V'larr]

Ooooh! A new thread on a proposed CG to decided the question of instant vs. delayed!

Ohhhh nooo....

TLDR: real time ship transfer would cost more AND take longer than moving the ship yourself.

No, because you have to make the same trip twice to do it manually. Ship transfer is 1-way.

EDIT: the point I am trying to make is any delayed transfer is pointless because it doesn't meet the intent of a quality of life convenience feature.

But that's not true.

The quality of life convenience would be 100% intact with a believable transit delay. You'd still be able to move your ships around like never before, wherever and whenever you need them. It just wouldn't be instantaneous magical nonsense!

And in the case of moving ships to Jaques...there's no question it would be faster with this feature than to do it yourself.

 

[NeilF]

Piracy is wholly reliant on the amount and value of the cargo in the hold of the target - and how much that can be sold for. Even selling at 100% would be quite a low earner (unless large quantities of cargo are taken).

Yes, trying to get enough cargo, of enough value is basically impossible to make piracy a viable occupation. Especially when supposedly you're doing piracy to make CR... Why do piracy when you can shuffle good for 100x more income, at less risk?

Doesn't add up does it

The lack of any real consequences to certain behaviours seems to be the root cause of this, i.e. the player destroying a ship may gain a bounty that is only as much as the cost of one tonne of mid-range cargo, while the player facing the rebuy may need to pay 500 times as much (in some cases).

Agreed...

FD said some time ago destruction of Pilots Federation ships (by other Pilots Federation members) was going to get addressed. ie: To prevent mindless ship destruction... And it's the first thing required IMHO to start helping PvP and piracy!

But, I just don't think PvP/piracy is anywhere on FD's agenda. The introduction of Wings nigh on 18 months ago implied ED was going to become a truly interactive co-operative and/or PvP environment (should you want it), but since then, it's not really moved forwards an inch Piracy has been left half baked. Crime and Punishement has been left in the mixing bowl. And any hint of deeper mechanics (eg: for PvP or piracy) and background sim are still just recipe cards.

I think it's all looking like more PvE simplistic mini-game stuff for a good while now... So, as it stands, bring on insta-transport. It can't damage anything, as in truth there's nothing really to damage. May as well just get my PvE fix all the quicker...

 

[Brian of Ardagh]

No, no, and no.

Instant? No, it breaks the believability of travel within Elite Dangerous.

Expensive? No, because then only the wealthy players get to use it. It becomes an in-game paytowin gimmick with a restrictive barrier to entry. Everyone should have reasonable access to this feature.

Cooldown of 12-24 hours? Why? *That* would indeed just be an unecessary egg timer that just adds another frustrating barrier to entry and makes the feature harder to use.

*All* this feature needs is a believable transit time and it would be perfect.

I totally agree with you on needing a believable transit time. I think many of us have been asking for this. It's still twice as fast the player going to the remote ship and delivering it themselves.

I'm even willing to make the transit time relatively short by assuming the delivery is done by a shipping company that has somewhat fast long range ships. It doesn't have to be 50 ly/jump but 30 might be plausible. In that case you aren't looking at delays greater than 20 minutes for a full bubble transit.

Has anyone ever figured out what the maximum distance between shipyards is within the bubble? That would be a decent gauge of the maximum transit time within the bubble.

Jaques is a totally different animal of course. To implement instant transfers to Jaques makes a mockery of the scope of the galaxy and players that have made the journey.

Under my suggestion, I've calculated that the delivery time of a ship transport vessel to Jaques could be under 6 hours. That might seem to be long to some but you have to get to Jaques as well and it might take you longer to make the trip than the delivery ship. Plus if the transit is realistic the cost could be lower allowing more CMDRs to use it.

Obviously if you are at Jaques in a single ship now it would take 6 hours for your ship to be delivered. With a bulk transport vessel ferrying your ships, you could move all or some of your ships to Jaques at a lower cost than instant.

*On the notion of instant costing more than realistic, I think FD will make instant costly, not prohibitively costly, but it's not going to be pennies on the tonne. A realistic transit time would be done on a, virtual for now, bulk cargo carrier. FD could set the costs much lower.

 

[JerryLove]

I totally agree with you on needing a believable transit time.

Relativity dictates that a nothing faster than c. Even that would require magical drives.

Then there's the issue of getting it on the shipment schedule. Did you ever order something? Not like it's on the way to you right that moment.

I mean: we could just be hiring some guy and paying him by the hour; but then the value of the ship would not be part of the cost (it would break immersion).

As to actual transit time? I seem to recall a station that was going to jump from one end of the galaxy to the other in a single hop... so that seems fine.

Of course; simply printing it locally may make more sense in-game.

I'm even willing to make the transit time relatively short by assuming the delivery is done by a shipping company that has somewhat fast long range ships. It doesn't have to be 50 ly/jump but 30 might be plausible. In that case you aren't looking at delays greater than 20 minutes for a full bubble transit.

I'm for whatever makes for the most compelling game-play.

Jaques is a totally different animal of course. To implement instant transfers to Jaques makes a mockery of the scope of the galaxy and players that have made the journey.

Why? How long did it take Jaques to transit to where it is?

Obviously if you are at Jaques in a single ship now it would take 6 hours for your ship to be delivered. With a bulk transport vessel ferrying your ships, you could move all or some of your ships to Jaques at a lower cost than instant.

If it happens at the end of play, then it's irrelevant as I go to bed. If it happens early then it makes me shut down the game for a while (hardly good game-play)

*On the notion of instant costing more than realistic, I think FD will make instant costly, not prohibitively costly, but it's not going to be pennies on the tonne. A realistic transit time would be done on a, virtual for now, bulk cargo carrier. FD could set the costs much lower.

I'm in favor of whatever best enhances gameplay. I don't care about what people want to imagine the mechanism is.

 

[Brian of Ardagh]

I'm in favor of whatever best enhances gameplay. I don't care about what people want to imagine the mechanism is.

And this is exactly why we can't have nice things. There's always someone or some group that doesn't give a damn abut someone else's gameplay. Best enhancing gameplay is subjective, your opinion on what is best gameplay is not the same as everyone else's opinion. But, you know that, ya just don't care.

Thing is, your views are probably in the minority but for some reason FD sees fit to cater to it.

 

[JerryLove]

And this is exactly why we can't have nice things. There's always someone or some group that doesn't give a damn abut someone else's gameplay. Best enhancing gameplay is subjective, your opinion on what is best gameplay is not the same as everyone else's opinion. But, you know that, ya just don't care.

We can't have nice things because gameplay is important?

OK. What's your standard? Realism? Then get out of that WWII fighter in space.

You don't seem to care about others' opinions. You certainly don't care about mine. What was that about being the reason we can't have nice things?

Thing is, your views are probably in the minority but for some reason FD sees fit to cater to it.

Don't be a whining carebear. Suck it up and play the game FD makes or go do something else.

 

[Sans Daring]

Don't be a whining carebear. Suck it up and play the game FD makes or go do something else.

While I think his comment was unneeded, surely the "carebear" are people looking for things to be instant, thus, easy, than delayed, thus more strategic.

As for gameplay, I think it horrendously marginalises player gameplay. It simplifies options. It makes things easier - if people use it as a standard function rather than an occasional benefit, which they will when it carries little cost in time, space or money. Hence I will always say the issue here IS gameplay far more than immersion. Needs some cost so players don't devalue the core of Elite's ideology for an easy time. The authorised cheat code, all reward, no balanced loss.

 

[jasonbarron]

Don't be a whining carebear. Suck it up and play the game FD makes or go do something else.

How'd you come up with him being a "carebear?" Or a whiner, for that matter? Personally, I think the people looking for insta transfer are the ones wanting to play in easy mode. Speaking of modes, which one do you play in?

 

[V'larr]

I don't quite dig this idea:

I'm even willing to make the transit time relatively short by assuming the delivery is done by a shipping company that has somewhat fast long range ships. It doesn't have to be 50 ly/jump but 30 might be plausible. In that case you aren't looking at delays greater than 20 minutes for a full bubble transit.

But this is what I see as ideal:

Plus if the transit is realistic the cost could be lower allowing more CMDRs to use it.

If ships were being moved in "bulk" like cars on a cargo ship, I would imagine that ought to take far longer than what I envision with the ship being on "buckyball" autopilot, not stopping for anything except to scoop fuel.

So I think the basic metric FD ought to use is a ship that can do, say, 15-20 ly per jump and do a rough guesstimate (that's really all we need here, doesn't need to be exact) of the time it would take a "buckyball-ing" CMDR to jump the straight distance from point A to point B.

It would obviously come out a bit shorter than actual realistic time, but that's fine. It doesn't have to be mathematically perfect. It just needs to be believable.

As to actual transit time? I seem to recall a station that was going to jump from one end of the galaxy to the other in a single hop... so that seems fine.

It was never explicitly stated Jaques would be going to Beagle Point in a single jump. I think for obvious gameplay reasons we didn't get to see the individual hops, plus we don't actually know how long it took for Jaques to get to where he was discovered. So you're making a baseless assumption there.

Of course; simply printing it locally may make more sense in-game.

No. It doesn't. I'm repeating myself here, but reprinting a uniquely modified, uniquely outfitted, uniquely painted, uniquely used, and someday uniquely named ship - not only does that ruin the meaning of "unique" completely, but it doesn't fit whatsoever with the background game universe we've been given. If 3D printing on massive interstellar-ship scales were available on-demand, there are any number of ramifications that would have upon the governments, societies, economies, and more. What we see so far within Elite Dangerous doesn't match up with that at ALL.

3D printing, like *instant* ship transfer, is no better than coming out and saying "Look, screw it, Elite has space magic - everyone come show up to get your magical spaze wizard wands so you can just teleport yourself around and cast Patronus at griefers at pirates and do whatever the hell you want."

 

[Brian of Ardagh]

We can't have nice things because gameplay is important?

OK. What's your standard? Realism? Then get out of that WWII fighter in space.

You don't seem to care about others' opinions. You certainly don't care about mine. What was that about being the reason we can't have nice things?


Don't be a whining carebear. Suck it up and play the game FD makes or go do something else.

Gameplay is important to just about everyone that plays the game, people just have different opinions about what is gameplay and how accessible it should be. Yes, we all have different standards but there really isn't some objective truth about how to play, how much accessibility there should be, how much realism, etc.

There are people that would allow instant pilot transfer to any owned ship. There are those that would get rid of SC, or have an autopilot, or just be able to choose the system where your ship and pilot would materialize. All these measures, including instant ship transfer enhance accessibility to the game, to those that want the game to go in that direction.

I do care about your opinions or I wouldn't participate in this thread with my focus on trying to find a compromise. I find though that the people that want instant apparently can suffer no delay or it will destroy their ability to play. That might be an over exaggeration but I see no level of compromise coming from the instant crowd.

I don't have the same concerns as some that want a reasonable and realistic delay. I'm not sure if instant will break the game or lead to exploits.

I do worry that there's no future gameplay to be found in instant ship transfers. A small but essentially realistic delay can be explained by in-game transportation services. I believe that can and should lead to future gameplay. That is my only concern.

Edit: Jerry, I apologize for my comments. I was exasperated and tired. This discussion is tiring as we can't seem to find much if any middle ground.

 

[Brian of Ardagh]

If ships were being moved in "bulk" like cars on a cargo ship, I would imagine that ought to take far longer than what I envision with the ship being on "buckyball" autopilot, not stopping for anything except to scoop fuel.

True that it would probably take longer but I'm kind of trying to throw a bone here myself. At some point the delay might be too realistic and long making it rather worthless to those that want instant. Personally, I think a realistic delay is still 1/2 as long as fetching the ship yourself. Ship summoning and sending ahead along a feature to send from point A to point B while the pilot is at point C would be great.

I prefer the bulk ship transport service as a way to logically explain all these features. I also think added gameplay could be developed. I'd love to get a mission to destroy a bulk carrier with escorts that is suspected of carrying military ships.

 

[V'larr]

True that it would probably take longer but I'm kind of trying to throw a bone here myself. At some point the delay might be too realistic and long making it rather worthless to those that want instant. Personally, I think a realistic delay is still 1/2 as long as fetching the ship yourself. Ship summoning and sending ahead along a feature to send from point A to point B while the pilot is at point C would be great.

I just can't see 5-10 minutes in all but the most extreme cases (Jaques) as being too prohibitive or realistic for people to handle.

It can take more time than that just to complete one cycle of supercruising in to a station, landing, handing in missions/bounties/trading/etc., and taking off again.

The bulk carrier idea is basically asking Fdev to add in a whole new approach to ship design and introduction that I just can't see as being timely or efficient.

 

[Goose4291]

As to actual transit time? I seem to recall a station that was going to jump from one end of the galaxy to the other in a single hop... so that seems fine.

Except that Jaques is using the older Hyperdrive engines rather than FSD's, meaning he's spending upwards of one week in witch space with each jump.

 

[Brian of Ardagh]

I just can't see 5-10 minutes in all but the most extreme cases (Jaques) as being too prohibitive or realistic for people to handle.

It can take more time than that just to complete one cycle of supercruising in to a station, landing, handing in missions/bounties/trading/etc., and taking off again.

The bulk carrier idea is basically asking Fdev to add in a whole new approach to ship design and introduction that I just can't see as being timely or efficient.

Well, my idea for the ship transport would be virtual to start with, there would be no in-game ships in the 1st stage. The implementation of a player requested ship transport as a mission would make adding transfers this way relatively simple. FD could add the in-game ships at a later date if they wished; if they did that could lead to missions related to ship transports.

 

[V'larr]

Well, my idea for the ship transport would be virtual to start with, there would be no in-game ships in the 1st stage. The implementation of a player requested ship transport as a mission would make adding transfers this way relatively simple. FD could add the in-game ships at a later date if they wished; if they did that could lead to missions related to ship transports.

I'm not a fan of invisible placeholder items; but your idea is not a bad idea. Just...if we had a time machine and could add it on while the game was still in initial development...? Y'know? lol

 

[Brian of Ardagh]

I'm not a fan of invisible placeholder items; but your idea is not a bad idea. Just...if we had a time machine and could add it on while the game was still in initial development...? Y'know? lol

Well baring ship transportation services, I would go with the hire an NPC idea. In 2.2 we are getting a crew lounge, we will be able to hire, for a long term, a pilot to help with SLF fighters.

It naturally follows that if you could hire a pilot for that job, you should be able to hire a pilot for ship pickup and delivery. To shorten the time it would best if you could remote hire from the station where your ship is located. Otherwise the trip will be just as long at it would normally take.

 

[V'larr]

Well baring ship transportation services, I would go with the hire an NPC idea. In 2.2 we are getting a crew lounge, we will be able to hire, for a long term, a pilot to help with SLF fighters.

It naturally follows that if you could hire a pilot for that job, you should be able to hire a pilot for ship pickup and delivery. To shorten the time it would best if you could remote hire from the station where your ship is located. Otherwise the trip will be just as long at it would normally take.

I really love that idea! Seems like it wouldn't be too hard at all to take things one step further.

 

[Weps]

Wait, the poll has been closed? When? How? Do these things have a maximum life span?

 

[Robert Maynard]

Wait, the poll has been closed? When? How? Do these things have a maximum life span?

When I added it I selected a 14 day span - not anticipating that this debate would rumble on.

I've re-opened it.