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

[YinYin]

Is there a way to read up on how it's planned to implement these transfers? Are there daily limits? What happens with cargo? Cooldown periods in between? I'd like to know that before I can tell anything how I feel about it.

No limits beyond credits and potentially time. Cargo is a non issue because you cannot store any with a ship (you only transfer stored ships).

Time would run just like any other transaction (mission/bounty/fine/...).

 

[Libluini]

Is it just me or is the split across the community probably a tension between explorers and the more pew pew oriented crowd (roughly spoken)? As far as I'm aware the explorers were always the clear majority in ED and I bet most of them are voting pro delay...
It's not hard to foresee the result of this poll btw.

As an explorer myself, I fear I have to tell you the rift goes through the explorers, too. (Voted anti-delay.)

 

[GG7]

I hope we don't lose players with either option they decide. I share your opinion. I just hope you can order the transfer from any station to any station no matter where you are docked. I find that completely reasonable. Most of us plan what we are going to do anyways and are rarely lucky if a CG pops up that we want to partake in happens to be in the system we are currently in. So as soon as I log in, I'll order the transfer of whatever ships I want to go to the whatever system I want them in, and make my way there as I would have to normally do. I might beat my ships there, but I will do what I can until they arrive. It beats having to go about this the current way of getting multiple ships in on station.

Good point on WHERE you can make these requests from. I hope it is not literally to your current station location. Being able to make a request from "anywhere" in the game is actually more important than how long it takes. If we do have a delay, then this feature really needs to be accessible from any Station or Outpost, so that you can "time" your rendezvous with your other ship accordingly.

At least if we want to encourage "gameplay" to be used in conjunction with the time delay aspect of ship transport. I really don't want to be tied down to having to literally make the transfer request from the literal location I want the ship moved to.

Has FD mentioned this at all?

 

[Sandysky]

Adding a transfer time would only add one single thing: tedium. I don't see why any designer with half a brain would voluntarily want to add a form of tedium that brings litterally nothing to the gameplay, and very little to the realism (I mean, refueling is instant, buying cargo and outfitting too, so, what? Should I wait 48 hours when I buy 400 tons of cargo, so it's "realistically" delivered through the station and placed in my cargo racks? Hell no).

It's not hard, you order the ship to be moved and whilst it is in the process of being moved, you use your current ship and do other stuff. quite easy tbh

I'm really hoping delay wins the poll, I would hate the game to head down the 'instant gratification path', that is not Elite!

 

[CMDR-AD]

I would be somewhat interested at where a "Ship Transporter" ship as an NPC object (like a capital ship) might be used in various scenarios, (sometime later in the future, of course).

Seen at 'anchor' alongside a station now and again.
Perhaps captured by NPC pirates as an occasional persistent space combat POI (for a few days), where NPC pirates would spawn in and try to defend their captured haul vs. players.
And even as a huge wrecked ship site to explore, maybe out in an asteroid ring sometimes... Dark and shadowy, and maybe with a few Wanted NPCs hanging out with loot.

Could be some fun there.

 

[Kyokushin]

Why stop at that. When your ship blows up, there should be a delay for rescue teams to find your lifepod, and then haul your     to your last station. But wait we're not done. There should also be a delay as you wait for your insurance to clear (all that paper work and assessment, it takes time I know right?), and then a further delay as you wait for your new ship to be inspected and released to you. I mean you guys want realism right?

There is a line between gameplay and madness. Madness is instant transfer or huge delayed resque teama as you proposing.

Delayed transfer is reasonable approach what will not break immersion and will not make impact or gameplay like galaxy full of ASP's and nothing else. Sandro explained that.

Ships transfer should be a tool for SHIP TRANSFER (just fleet manager), not a way of faster travel through the galaxy.

 

[Martian Successor]

I'm really torn on this one!

For those still yet to vote, keep in mind that this will likely be a pivotal moment in the type of game Elite turns out to be in the future. Instant transfer could have a lot of potential impact upon current gameplay, both intended and unintended. Once that setup is in place, all future changes in the game after that point will likely rely on the instant transfer of ships. And once we have that feature, what's to stop other features being made more convenient?

On the other hand, I have never liked time-sinks of any type...Elite already has far too many of them. How much does time-delayed transfers help with those time-sinks? It makes them "easier" because it is automated, but they are still there. However, what makes Elite special for many people is it's simulated galaxy. A time-delay gives convenience whilst maintaining much of the current design philosophy of the game.

So - just for a moment, consider this poll as something larger than whether or not you want instant-ship transfers or not, because the result in either event could quite possibly have a heavy influence upon the future development decisions of this game.

Personally, I can see many more possibilities of adding interesting future gameplay coming from delayed transfer rather than instant - things like new giant-sized ship carriers (the Panther Clipper!), convoy protection missions, calling on player ship transportations - a player/players in a modded Panther Clipper for example who have found a faster route than the game's delay timer, etc, etc.

So that's good but... delayed module transfers is an unecesary time sink in my opinion. Unlike ship transfer delays it adds nothing to immersion nor future gameplay content. This is where I am really torn. Module transfers should be a seperate poll if anything.

 

[Ophion]

This poll is a pleasent surprize. I wish there was a couple of official FD polls like this one every month.

 

[Silverfoxbl]

I think 100 mins from edge to edge is still too short of a time even 24 hours is plausible for that distance means that edge of bubble to edge of bubble should be like 100 mins
but hey its a good idea any which way just not instant that takes out the fun from game.

 

[CmdrKafka]

I also have a busy real life and instant transfer would clearly save me time.... But I voted for the delay for two reasons:
1. Realism/immersion
2. I can always go and do something in real life while waiting for the transfer.... (I.e. Put my kids to bed, read a book, eat dinner). And to retain immersion I can pretend I am doing this on my ship....
3. As per 2, this gives me an excuse to renovate the interior of my house to resemble an Anaconda (my wife may want to cast a different vote in this)

oops that is three reasons.

 

[Paramemetic]

Obviously this - and seeing your ships being transported in the Galaxy Map too (but maybe not in 2.2!)

I proposed this, but with 20 seconds instead of one minute. Why would the guy bringing me my ship spend a full minute in each jump when I only spend a few seconds there, just long enough for the FSD to spool and me to clear the star enough to not cook myself?


This is what I'm saying about just arbitrary decisions being bad game design. One minute is a pretty obvious "okay a good time frame" but it should not take that long.

This proposal, for those not reading from the beginning, was "(total distance / ship jump range) * 20 seconds. Lore justification is "a pilot did it, but not one who is a member of the pilot's federation because union pilots can't exchange money."


It's not as good as the "it goes instantly, lore justification is a bulk freighter jumped in and dropped it off via Warlock/hyperspace drive" option, but Team Immersion doesn't actually care about making the game good or fun if they can make it take a long time and be boring.

 

[kofeyh]

I voted for opt 2

BUT

I WOULD RATHER HAVE 1 or 2 mins per jump for added realism ( OPTION 3 ? )

Oh yes. This will be frontier's BREXIT. People are voting for delay, but are now having second thoughts about how long it should take.

This is going to end well. Oh frontier. I wish you well with this.

 

[Paramemetic]

This poll is a pleasent surprize. I wish there was a couple of official FD polls like this one every month.

Game design by vote has never produced and will never produce a good or enjoyable game because all of the research in game design indicates that players do not actually ever know what they actually want.

 

[dvx]

voted!

 

[TomR]

The real solution here is to force a commander into CQC while their ship is in transit. That way there is no down time during the delay.

 

[tmetler]

I think there should be tiers, maybe some available only at certain stations.

Basic tier is very cheap and available almost everywhere but takes up to hours depending on how far away you are. You can go do local missions while you wait.

Deluxe tier is more expensive but gets to you as fast as transport can handle in lore. Probably takes a minutes but less than an hour depending on how far away you are.

Fabrication tier is the most expensive, but gets your ship to you in fixed time of 1-2 minutes. It works in lore because it's not actually transporting it to you, it's rebuilding the ship at the station based on schematics you bring them and they then take possession of your old ship remotely. I'd imagine that fast fabrication like this should be possible by 3300 given the right schematics, but it might not be available everywhere so you might have to travel to a larger station to get it.

 

[Tranqu]

When I think about it... The ship transfer can be instant. BUT it can only be initiated in the point of origin of the ship, not the destination.

This can easily be explained by you having to make a bio signature scan before moving the valuable ships around, forcing you to be present at the ships location where you initiate the transfer.
This way you can conveniently move ships through the galaxy and are a lot more mobile, but still feel the size of the galaxy as you have to travel yourself aswell.

 

[veryinky]

1: Reasonable delay based on known FSD performance. For many ships, this is closer to 30m for 400LY than 100 for 300.

Bulk freighters don't use FSD why would they be held to the limitations of what is described in game consumer grade technology which allowed anyone to fly from star to star? Propeller planes are cheaper than jets, while it's possible for someone in the middle class can afford an old cesna or a piper supercub, but that thing is not going to let them do an intercontinenal flight in a few hours. Again, capital ships with hyperdrives are thousands of times faster than a FSD.

 

[Javert]

We shouldn't have to actively affirm that we want something left alone. It should be assumed that most people who don't express an opinion are satisfied with the existing status quo. Unless voting is mandatory for everyone, you're going to have a *strong, strong* sampling bias in these results.

To some extent, all polls are flawed, and all the polls on this topic have been flawed but I doubt I could come up with a perfect one.

I do have a question on your post though. The existing status quo is that we don't have ship transfer at all - it doesn't exist in the game today. Therefore both options are a change from the status quo? Secondly, the previous detailed discussion with the devs on this from the 2013 DDF discussions clearly stated that when ship transfer was implemented, there would be a delay. Therefore even if you say that ship transfer existing forms a status quo, wasn't the status quo that there should be a delay, and the decision to make it instant was a change to that?

Problem is that the status quo could be different depending on your point of view?

 

[MahdDogg]

I only posted in that thread because I was linked to it because it's goofy - I don't read this forum usually because I have other things to do in life. So the sample is self-selecting and skewed towards people who are interested in this particular issue. If we assume that people who don't post on the forums are generally happy with the direction the game is going, we can assume that the people who have posted in that thread are going to be the ones who care about the issue, and the people who didn't post, the vast majority, would have been fine with instant ship transfer.




Statistically speaking, none of this is true. For a population of 2 million a random sample of 2600 would give us a pretty good confidence level, but this wasn't a random sampling, it was self-selected. So no, you cannot have the confidence level you are expecting. Test design is the critical difference between statistical masturbation and actual research.



What Frontier has done is made an "official" poll using two extreme options because they couldn't use the self-selecting poll made on the forums or gather useful information from it. What they have failed to do is make the poll they have created here actually useful because most people do not follow through with polls that are emailed to them or bother to vote about issues that they do not care strongly about. So most people would likely be very happy with instant transfer, but will not vote because they trust Frontier to make the best gameplay decisions possible when designing the game (though I don't know why they have that faith at this point).

Because most people trust the game devs to design a game that is fun and cool and not lame and boring, they don't bother voting in polls about gameplay unless they are of the sort that is afraid of fun, cool gameplay because they use Elite as a reality-substitute rather than an entertaining video game. To the latter, it is very important that Simguru Braben not make a game too fun because if they are having fun, they will realize that it is not actually their real life, which is joyless and tedious as all real lives are.

Basically, the statistical methods being employed here aren't actually meaningful and shouldn't ever be used to influence actual game design, instead, simple tests should be employed, like "is it fun when we actually play it."

Sandro straight up said that they have tested it both with and without a delay, and a delay added nothing, when they actually played it. People who have not played it both ways are saying they would rather play it the not-fun way, but they cannot know that because they have not played it either way. Instead, they are worried about their immersion, which is a silly thing. I would rather gameplay decisions be made by people who have actually playtested it and not by biased polls.

Oh look, someone who understands how polls are supposed to work.