***POLL NOW CLOSED*** IMPORTANT, OFFICIAL SHIP TRANSFER POLL

[Mephane]

Idea is that you don't have to traverse same path twice - if you see juicy war going on, you just park at station, call your ship, do some missions while waiting, and when it arrives, jump into it and blast some infidels in a name or revolution or whatever.

This. Also people don't forget, the important things in ED aren't just over instantly. CGs take days, wars take days. Good systems for RES hunting may stay so forever. And that juicy massacre mission for 5m credits - you can still accept it while sitting in your T9, then do it after the combat ship arrives.

And for anyone with too little time to wait (read: do other things in the game in the meantime), you'd be better off using a proper multi-purpose ship in the first place. Cobra, an Asp, a Courier, a Clipper, a Python, an Anaconda - they can all be outfitted so you can instantly switch play styles. Yes, you won't be as effective as in a super-specialized ships, but you are not supposed to be the most effective at everything at all times.

 

[Ascyltos]

The gameplay benefits to more casual players, who have less than an hour of playtime available per session, are far higher than the downsides are to me.
.

But what's stopping them from requesting a delivery of their shiny fighter / mining hulk / space truckin' machine / battle-barge at the end of a session and then pick it up the next day once it's turned up?

 

[CMDR GTR2014]

So Sandro

Say I'm in a Type 9, and I'm in a conflict zone I'm either gonna be able to get my fighter instantly or with a delay based on this poll??? [wink]

Not sure if you're trolling, but you have to wait a short delay to you crew member get their      to the hangar and put their "virtual reality googles" , so maybe 1 hour would be fine (JK!!!!!!!!)

If you are serious... your fighter must be inside your hangar before the attack, so it should be instante because he is already there

DELAY HOHAY!!!!

 

[Kurr]

Incidentally, explain to me how the Federation can instantly teleport cap-ship after cap-ship into a CZ after we continually dunk on them over and over again. WHAT SPACE WIZARDRY IS THIS?? Yeah Thanatos, I'm looking at YOU. And your friend Medusa too.

 

[Delilah]

There are too many time-sinks already. Instantaneous please.

 

[CMDR Redcrest]

The wait time isn't arbitrary though. Traveling 500LY takes some time, even with an FSD, and that's just the way it is. That's like saying that your fuel tank is an "arbitrary fuel limit". Fuel has volume and mass, you can only carry so much, and that's just the way it is.

Yes it is. It would be a wait time for ship transfer that was imposed for no other reason than 'some people said that's how it should be'
There's no sound reason to impose such a limitation, in my view.
Ships requiring fuel yeah fine. Scooping fuel is part of the game that's going to expanded on i.e. scooping the special stars (can't recall the right name) that boost FSD range at the cost of risk of damage to your ship. So having your ship require fuel is a logical thing and adds to gameplay and enjoyment.
Delayed transfer reduces gameplay and enjoyment for the sake of introducing a rule.
There are rules and there are principles.
The principle underpins the rule therefore a principle is the most important thing.
This is a game. The principle of any game is always to have fun. That which adds to the fun supports the principle.
A rule which takes away from the principle (delayed transfer in this case) is not a rule that should be implemented or adhered to.
In my view.

 

[Toumal]

I would highly like to see an option 3, that has the following formula inside:

Distance from origin in ly / jump range of designated ship in LY = Number of jumps * 1 minute

Since this is not here -> Option 2 for me.

Edit: This still saves at least half of the time you would need to bring your ship manually.

+rep, i like this idea.

 

[ethelred]

Thanks for listening!

 

[Sandysky]

I wish the results were visible.

 

[Maxulic]

My personal opinion is that transfers are a terrible, bad idea. I am all for module storage, this is a feature that is needed and that I will welcome, but storage should be local (I would be ok with a storage shared across the various stations inside the same system). If you want to pick up a module you need to fly back where you left it, to make our life easier though we should be able to to transport modules as cargo, so let's say that you stored a module at Jaques Station for the need of a specific CG and that you want to bring both modules (replacement and stored) back to the bubble your old module would simply use a few slots of your cargo.

 

[Balcanis]

First of all, I don't think the decision of feature implementation should be on the actual devs (sorry Frontier devs) who work on implementation or testing. Why? Because, devs and testers are usually clueless about how the product or service should look/feel like to the end user (again, sorry Frontier devs).

On the other hand it shouldn't be a decision made by the community either. Why? Because, today's gaming community is made of people that want to go in, shoot or do whatever for 30 minutes, log out and make the game as easy and convinient as possible for them in the process. I don't blame them, that's the gameplay that suits most of the people and that most of the games publishers adopt because it gets them a larger chunk of the market (people). Long run, what makes the game 'easy and convinient' is what ultimately kills the game. How? Well, the people who are 'hardcore' fans of the Elite and the genre who would like to see ED go on for years to come, would leave because the game would start turning into an arcade. On the other hand, the 'larger chunk of the gaming community' will leave regardless because they don't stick to a single game as they get bored by difficulty, or 'lack of content' or whatever. Again, I don't blame them, everyone has a right to an opinion and to do what they like.

Someone from the company who has a greater 'vision' of a game in the long run should be the one who would 'pull the strings' on future implementation of additional features/content, not the devs/testers or the community. Sure, both groups should be able to contribute with idea(s), but those ideas should not be the main guidelines for the future.

Having said all this, I'm an Elite player since the 80s and I loved it. I also love the ED because it's not 'story based', but instead the game allows you to create your own story, your own content. I also started playing EVE Online back in 2008 and I'm still playing it. EVE Online doesn't have a huge gaming community because it's not easy and in many ways it's not convenient, nor does it have 'story based' gameplay. However, because of that it has a 'dedicated' fans and gaming community who kept it alive for 13 years now and still going. I would LOVE to see ED go on for many years to come, just like EVE Online, and for that purpose I think Frontier should be very careful about what they implement.

I voted for the delay, even if it would 'only' break immersion. In an open universe where you don't really have a storyline to follow from start to the end, immersion is one of the key factors. I think instant delay would break that immersion and set ED on a roadmap to being just another arcade game where you go in, constantly grind money (for whatever reason) and running missions/quests/CGs. In the future I would actually like to exclude Frontier from this completely and see these ship transfers to be done by players in carrier ships, where a wing or group of commanders would be able to intercept that carrier and with enough fire power destroy it along with it's cargo, etc. Of course, another group would be able to wing up and defent the carrier along it's route. That would be immersive, fun, and would bring some adrenaline rush into both the attackers and defenders, especially into the carrier pilot.

 

[Cosmo]

I voted for Option 2. Want to add that I would be content with 100 minutes delivery time with freighters across the whole galaxy (not just the bubble).

 

[TomR]

Have any of you considered the impact on this game if people have a ship they can fly? Do you know how much that will break the game, if someone gets a ship? Just consider what could happen if someone else gets a ship, and they can fly it!

 

[Dodgey]

Can we have crew members fly the ship to its location? Could add some additional gameplay into the transfer, maybe a 1 in 50 chance.

Ship is attacked during transfer. You received a message from your crew member, "MAYDAY, MAYDAY, your ship is under attack in such a such system".
The crew member steals your ship. You hunt them down and make them surrender.
The crew member goes to the wrong station, you fire him/her.

 

[Kerrash]

Just going to bookmark this thread for the next "Devs don't listen" post

Thanks Sandro! <3

 

[Carradin]

I voted "yes" to having a delay, but I would have no issue with it being shorter than the one listed in the poll. 2 minutes for a system right next door and 20 minutes for a cross-bubble transfer would be fine for me, with those times scaling up linearly to the Jaques scale. Instant rubs me the wrong way, but it does not need to be prohibitively slow.

I laid out my reasoning in a previous thread on this issue, so not going to repost it all here. But the post is Here for anyone curious.

 

[ROSS-128]

While I disagree with you and think we should have instant transfers, this is an example of a well reasoned post that makes sense. If you could send ships ahead, that would improve things. If you made the delay a function of ship capabilities, that would make sense.

The main problem with this ridiculous poll is that many people feel very strongly that it should not be instant, and that's fine, that's whatever. But those people have only the option to vote for another aggressively bad option, which is "go literally watch a full length feature film while you wait to play this game the way you want." It's just another example of Frontier going "oh you want to feel like space is big so you want to travel the full distance in a system? Okay but it's gonna take you 30 minutes to go to stations." It's a ridiculously heavy handed overreaction.

There are many, many other, better ways to implement a delay that would save people's precious immersion without adding more time staring at the screen doing nothing.

I do agree that the alternative FD presents its overkill. It should be based on known FSD performance, so that it is comparable to flying the ship in most situations. The purpose of transfer, as I see it, is not to save time on a single ship (though in many situations it does still cut the trip in half anyway, which is a HUGE time saver), but to allow you to move multiple ships simultaneously so that you can set up shop.

I'm still voting for the delay despite their specific proposal being over the top though, because it will be FAR easier to get them to nerf an overly long delay than it will be to get the instant gratification monkeys to let go of the instant transfer banana.

 

[MONTItheRed]

Hello Commanders!


* Instant transfer is likely to have a less plausible/desirable explanation for how the feature works in game lore.

Are other unrealistic features going to be taken under review?

* Instant transfer will lessen the need to have decent frame shift drives in ships other than one, “main” explorer type vessel.

This can be addressed by factoring in the ship's current jump range relative to the ship's max FSD jump range into the cost of the transfer. If your ship has a jump range higher than the ship's largest C class FSD, there is a discount, shorter range incurs additional cost. The costs can be balanced and tweaked during beta

* Instant ship transfer will remove any potential game play from deciding when/if transfer should be initiated.

Does this imply a cool down between ship transfers? What gameplay is involved with deciding when to transfer the ship? Will there now be a mini game for transferring ships?

* Instant ship transfer undermines the scale of the galaxy.

The scale of the galaxy is fixed. Jumponium, engineer FSD, and the upcoming neutron star boost “shrinks” the entire galaxy, whereas ship transfer should only be within the bubble. (I still hope to not have ship transfer to Jacques).

 

[Paramemetic]

Personally, I'd say you should only make it not be instant.. if.. and only if - you can order your ship to be moved from any location TO any location.

So I order my python to be moved from Alioth over to Sothis. It takes two hours. In the meanwhile I'm doing random stuff around Sol, then flying my Asp from Sol out to meet it. Bingo bango.

I agree with this, if I can create shipping orders that move ships around however I want without having to first travel to the station, a delay makes sense and adds those planning opportunities or whatever Team Immersion wants. If I have to go to that place first, it has to be instant. If I can send ships around arbitrarily, it should still be instant (after all I still have to go to that place to fly it) but at least it isn't as abhorrent.

The idea of 100 minutes of real life time for 300ly is just completely insane. Like, it's stunningly bad.

 

[Heshinsi]

I'm wondering when the poll for the rebuy screen to be delayed after ship destruction gets posted. After all, a tiny rescue capsule can't beam instantly across the galaxy after all.

For those of you complaining about realism, there's already aspects of the game that aren't realistic, and are meant to make the game more enjoyable.