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

[Angus]

Like you, at first, I was against the idea entirely...but so long as it's kept *believable* within the context of the game that already exists so far, then it's fine, really. That word "instant" is what causes a mess.

Sort of reminds me of Dennis Pennis:

Ms Frontier, under any circumstances, if it was tastefully done and it wasn't gratuitous would you consider respecting the lore?


Harsh, I know. Sorry Frontier, but you got me a bit vexed with this instant thing.

 

[kofeyh]

I have no issue with people suggesting instant transport is the way to go. Infact I've been in that camp myself.

However, the more I think about it, the more I believe delayed transport is the better solution:-
1) It risks less of a negative effect in OPEN.
2) It actually creates "chompier" gameplay where you have to weigh up and consider things.

Delay isn't the solution - making the mechanic time relative, and respecting the players effort is. Send-to is one option. There are others. The basic consequence is that a practical solution to the notion of ship travel is instead replaced with a timer and a rabbit appearing at the appointed time as a solution.

Yes, it should take time; it should also respect the players time, so that we're not adding yet more reasons for people to ignore entire mechanics because, in practice, they don't work. People have become so fixated on the notion that a delay solves the problem, they're not even considering other options and instead just shout it down as "wrong".

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You could start by not being the only one here insisting it's an egg timer?

So what is a timer that exists to "wait" for a ship to appear like a bunny rabbit out of a hat, then? How about the power-play allotment, what sort of timer is that? An egg timer is literally measuring the time for an egg to boil and be ready. So this delay people want? it's a ship timer to literally measure the time before the ship is 'ready'.

How else can one refer to a timer, than as a timer? Serious question.

I think you presume I don't want it to be realistic? No. I do want it to be logical and consistent. Timers don't do that. Re-working the mechanic so it respects game lore and players time, does that.

Frontier are trying to do the right thing for all the wrong reasons. Reasons can change, they won't if people steadfastly demand a delay, believing a delay is better, than simply improving the mechanic itself.

That's literally all I am asking. Can the mechanic exist in a way that respects lore and players? I think it can.

Timers don't (for either).

And so what can and will potentially happen is that we end up with some sort of half-brained delay, instead of a solution where ships can be transferred, but we're not upending the universe to do it. That's going to require more time from Frontier.

So yeah, the expedient option is just to chuck a timer in the client and say "ship will be 15 minutes" job done and we get a crappy solution, instead of one that's consistent, logical and is workable. This is Frontier. What do you think they are going to do if sufficiently pressured?

 

[NeilF]

People have become so fixated on the notion that a delay solves the problem, they're not even considering other options and instead just shout it down as "wrong".

Have you considered people may have considered the matter as much as you, but simply come to a different conclusion?

 

[Angus]

Anyone else remember "Carrier Command" also from the 1980's where you could view in realtime the movements of your assets ? Networking/Multiplayer seems to have put a heavy burden on this version of Elite.

One of my all time favourite games. Excellent point, it raised the tension and involvement, mind you the "red avalanche" from the North East tended to focus the mind somewhat, as well.

 

[Lucifer Hate]

I hope FD looks at this poll. At the time of this post 625 said instant and more than 3x that number at 1917 have said there needs to be time involved in transfers.

Would rather see transfers delayed and done right than to put it out in 2.2 as instant for convenience as to many features feel like they were done in ED

 

[kofeyh]

Have you considered people may have considered the matter as much as you, but simply come to a different conclusion?

The conclusion assumes that a timer can be a replacement for mechanics. A conclusion that is essentially trying to pretend travel time can be expressed by delaying ship use, via a timer. And that this is sufficient. Never mind reality, never mind logic, never mind usability. Just "pretend" that ship travel is essentially cooking popcorn and when the timer goes *ding* ship's done and away you go.

I do want logical, consistent and preferably lore friendly gameplay. An arbitrary timer is none of these things. We can and should expect better, is that not a sane thing to want?

 

[charognard]

I hope FD looks at this poll. At the time of this post 625 said instant and more than 3x that number at 1917 have said there needs to be time involved in transfers.

Really i hope too ! I don't want seeing my favorite game since ages being killed by the casual lobby ! ED is about TRAVEL, many core features are designed arround the travels, plz FD don't kill your game ! With any "instant anything" you are just killing all you have created !

 

[Ozzie F Isaacs]

I do want logical, consistent and preferably lore friendly gameplay. An arbitrary timer is none of these things. We can and should expect better, is that not a sane thing to want?

Aaccording to the poll. Of those who do not want instant transfer the highest number has always been under "Transfer should take at least as long as it would take manually." which is not an arbitrary value and to know how long that would take would require there to be a valid route. This eventually allows the simulated movement of the ship through space.

 

[kofeyh]

Would rather see transfers delayed and done right than to put it out in 2.2 as instant for convenience as to many features feel like they were done in ED

This is my hope, that frontier say "Welp, we hear you guys, give us some time to look at it" and pull it from 2.2. Timers are a cludge. Instant is just lazy. Both are bad. It's all just a bag of hurt. I really wish they would do this, as there's scope for the mechanic to actually be useful, lore friendly and also consistent/ logical.

I fear a rushed "cludge" will instead be the outcome; and by that point, it'll be too late.

 

[NeilF]

The conclusion assumes that a timer can be a replacement for mechanics. A conclusion that is essentially trying to pretend travel time can be expressed by delaying ship use, via a timer. And that this is sufficient. Never mind reality, never mind logic, never mind usability. Just "pretend" that ship travel is essentially cooking popcorn and when the timer goes *ding* ship's done and away you go.

I do want logical, consistent and preferably lore friendly gameplay. An arbitrary timer is none of these things. We can and should expect better, is that not a sane thing to want?

Why would you not support us having 100,000ly jump ranges so we can jump to any system instantly? How does us taking time to get to places benefit our gameplay? Surely the sooner we can get somewhere the sooner we can get on with things?

The answer of course is it means there is instead consideration and planning and all those other things that come about when you have to weigh up cost and benefits. Simply making something immediate may well improve some gameplay aspects, but for me the risk is it upsets and damages others. For example my comment from a day or so ago:-

Let me tell you a bit of gameplay I did over the weekend... And then let's consider how "immediate" and "delayed" might affect it?


Heading back to a CG, I passed right through an Engineers system I'm current crafting with, and then on to the CG at LFT 133 to do a few runs on the Gold related CG. I would have like to have done a few bounty hunting runs in LFT 133 but I didn't have an appropriate ship there.

With Instant Ship Transportation

• Fly to LFT 133 and do some Gold runs.
• Call over my bounty hunting ship (instantly) and use it.

With Delayed Ship Transportation

• Consider if while flying though my Engineers system if its worth me stopping off at the engineer to call some of my other ships over there, so they're there next time I arrive?
• Fly to LFT 133 and call my bounty hunting ship over.
• Do some Gold runs.
• My bounty hunting ship has now arrived so use it.

Which gives "chompier" more considered and interesting(?) gameplay?

^ Instant obviously makes this example easier as I don't have to consider, plan or weigh up anything as there's a click-ship-appears option. But does that result in the best outcome? Maybe sometimes... But I'd argue, not always, and there's the risk of creating new issues that cannot be undone too.

This is my hope, that frontier say "Welp, we hear you guys, give us some time to look at it" and pull it from 2.2. Timers are a cludge. Instant is just lazy. Both are bad. It's all just a bag of hurt. I really wish they would do this, as there's scope for the mechanic to actually be useful, lore friendly and also consistent/ logical.

I fear a rushed "cludge" will instead be the outcome; and by that point, it'll be too late.

What alternative would you envisage as regards transportation? Surely it's either going to be instant or delayed (in some way)?

 

[kofeyh]

Aaccording to the poll. Of those who do not want instant transfer the highest number has always been under "Transfer should take at least as long as it would take manually." which is not an arbitrary value and to know how long that would take would require there to be a valid route. This eventually allows the simulated movement of the ship through space.

Simulating moving the ship means the game has to plot. This is computationally problematic. I'd rather they pull the feature and not bother for the time being. People are demanding it be the most immersive thing since a nice soak in a bath with lavender oil, with angels immortal singing and what not - the game isn't even close to being in a state to facilitate this.

Frontier figured people just want to move their ships from A to B. And to be able to do that reasonably simply. Boy were they wrong!

 

[kofeyh]

Why would you not support us having 100,000ly jump ranges so we can jump to any system instantly?

I did something similar to this during the weekend. I streamed an accident where my sidewinder experienced an anomaly within Jaques station; the pilot was knocked out by a fault in his flight suit and the ship exploded.

They woke up with the world's greatest headache and at the controls of a loaner Sidewinder. It happened because I have two commanders at Jaques and I made a decision to use a game feature, for only the second time (the first was a genuine accident) ever to reposition one asset so they could continue engineers work, and so I can then fly the other commander back to the bubble.

Again, you are misrepresenting my viewpoint to fit a narrative. Instant isn't logical (it's just expedient because sometimes that respects the players time more than looking at a game-over screen for 10 minutes whilst the credits roll). Neither is a timer. They are both bad because one ignores lore, the other ignores the player. Really, I'd prefer Frontier toss the concept back into the oven, rather than "cludge" the solution.

This repetition of my statement that I'd like a better solution is lost in "but how can you not support hacks?" or "why are you allergic to delay" arguments that miss the point entirely.

And on that, I am done. I respect a lot of the viewpoints and people who are contributing; I just don't agree that the current mechanic + timer = success. It's just an expedient cludge.

 

[Noogillim]

I wonder what limit if any a station would have on numbers of transferred ships?

You won't need to UA bomb any more just take a station down with the Fd version of the sorcerers apprentice instead of brooms the stations will be over flowing with space ships!

 

[Lucifer Hate]

I already see 1 way instant ship transfers can hurt the game. I most recently to make serious money used my Cutter to do runs from Sothis and Ceos back to the bubble. With instant ship transfers itwould cut the time required for long range cargo runs like that in half.

1. Take an engineered Hauler which with the right rolls could get 53LY jumps to Sothis.
2. Insta call my Cutter there saving me over 20+ jumps and load it up.
3. Fly the Cutter and make all my deliveries.
4. Call the Hauler and fly back to Sothis
5. Rinse and repeat

Instead of the time it took me for 1 round trip in the neighborhood of 50-60 jumps. I make the same round trip in well under maybe as few as 20-25. I also avoid half the danger of the trip to my big ship

 

[NeilF]

Simulating moving the ship means the game has to plot. This is computationally problematic. I'd rather they pull the feature and not bother for the time being. People are demanding it be the most immersive thing since a nice soak in a bath with lavender oil, with angels immortal singing and what not - the game isn't even close to being in a state to facilitate this.

Frontier figured people just want to move their ships from A to B. And to be able to do that reasonably simply. Boy were they wrong!

Don't see why? A logical approximation would surely be enough? The ETA minutes = DistanceInLy/JumpRangeInLy

This could be skewed however you like. eg: ETA minutes = (DistanceInLy/JumpRangeInLy) * 1.5


So you pay your money, they fit a transportation harness to your ship to control it and fuel it, and off it flies.

 

[redVENGEANCE]

Simulating moving the ship means the game has to plot. This is computationally problematic. I'd rather they pull the feature and not bother for the time being. People are demanding it be the most immersive thing since a nice soak in a bath with lavender oil, with angels immortal singing and what not - the game isn't even close to being in a state to facilitate this.

Frontier figured people just want to move their ships from A to B. And to be able to do that reasonably simply. Boy were they wrong!

The game knows the distance from A to B without plotting a course. Just click on a system in the starmap and it tells you how far away it is. Working out how long a particular ship will take to traverse said distance is not rocket science.

 

[Gédéon_Lecanard]

The funny part in all that will be when people get to try instant transfer, then use it for convenience, and then realise after a few weeks they would be totally unable to accept a delay.

You could start by not being the only one here insisting it's an egg timer?

Done! I joined the band, he's not the only one anymore. I suspect there are more of us anyway

If we have to wait for the ship to get there, we might just as well observe it doing the actual traveling (X series does that very well), and takes risks doing so. And its sweet time too. Anything involving an estimated delay with no real traveling from the ship is just an egg timer indeed. An egg timer with no purpose, as there is no actual cooking. You just stare at the timer and ding! Ship here.

I'd have instant transfer over that anytime.

 

[kofeyh]

The game knows the distance from A to B without plotting a course. Just click on a system in the starmap and it tells you how far away it is. Working out how long a particular ship will take to traverse said distance is not rocket science.

Actually the game does complex mathematics to plot a course, it knows how far A is from B, but it has to perform calculations to plot all the points between A to B. And it can only do this up to ~1000LY before the calculations becomes so insane as to be unworkable.

So if people want to "see" their ship moving, then either frontier literally has to come up with an entire mechanic to "fake" it, or the client has to compute the path. Otherwise, how does it know where it's supposed to be at any given time?

I don't entirely know how all the mechanics work, but pretending it's all trivial to do all of the things commanders want to see, is massively disrespecting the huge amount of work Frontier does, every single day, to make it look easy.

All of this, tells me "back in the oven for a bit" is the smartest decision Frontier could make, rather than a hair-brained cludge that doesn't really work for anyone.

 

[tagos]

Instant transfer is fine so long as no cargo is involved. I look on it not as a ship transfer but a swap. Different ship, same loadout. Some delay and a 'trade in' fee would be fine.

 

[Angus]

Instant transfer is fine so long as no cargo is involved. I look on it not as a ship transfer but a swap. Different ship, same loadout. Some delay and a 'trade in' fee would be fine.

But that ignores your supposedly unique engineered mods, as well as what ships are available at a given space station.


Anyway, look this way for some cheesy but somewhat appropriate allegory to the general discussion:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riNv3hpzWig