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

[pierschip]

A small delay of between 5 and 100 minutes would imply that you requested someone (or an AI) to be available at the port your ship was docked at and for them to fly the ship to you (fitting a fuel scoop first if required). This is potentially more unrealistic than instant and here's why I think so:

Rather than actually transfer your ship, how about you instruct the startport where you ship is docked to sell the ship and all the modules, transfer the credits to your account and those credits are then used to buy the identical ship and modules (assuming they were available) at your current location? In my mind that's more realistic.

 

[The Wallet Inspector]

This is crazy people, instant transfer is fine, as is instant cargo loading and instant escape pod return..... Would you like a poll to have a 30 minute delay to load 500t cargo, or be locked out the game for 100 minutes while your escape pod made its way back to the last station.

Please vote to leave things the same, no delay!!!

It is a false equivocation here, to compare cargo loading to actual space travel. The cargo is already there. Why would the station have the ability to instantly build any ship i desire? So how come I cant just buy any module/ship anywhere in the galaxy? Also you are not "locked out of the game", you are waiting for a long distance delivery. It is not the same as being dead. It is intellectually dishonest at best, to make these comparisons.

 

[SafteyBot]

How did you manage to play the game for the last year and a half then?

By playing the game as it currently exists.

Ship transfer would be a huge advantage in the situations he described. Adding a time component to ship transfer negates the advantage.

 

[Jezzah]

Time delay sounds fine. With one caveat.

It can be done whilst you are offline so it's waiting for you when you log back in.

 

[Slopey]

No more posts about the "other" game please - they are off topic, and it has its very own threadnaught elsewhere.

 

[Labatyd]

This poll seems redundant to me, it's trivial to give everything what they want without breaking 'realism' with these three options:

1. First there's the normal way of getting your ship from A to B, using its FSD. No cost to the pilot aside of time.

2. Secondly is basically FDEV's option, moderate cost with a moderate delay. As far as game mechanics go it's down the pilot's imagination on how this happens, either with a pilot who flies the ship there or as cargo in a ship transporter. This should deliver to any station but not outposts.

3. The high cost and near instant option is available thanks to a futuristic logistics corporation which I'm going to shamefully call 'Labatyd Limited'. When you ask this fine company for a transfer, they take an inventory of your ship and modules, this inventory is used to rebuild your ship in their hanger at your location. In turn they dismantle your ship at source and all its part to their stock. (I'd restrict it to very large stations only, else what's the point of decent FSDs on specialised ships?) Labatyd Limited's impressive logistic chain keeps every warehouse fully stocked with everything needed to assemble any configuration, and let's be honest, the engineers are a bunch of chimps at the best of times so duplicating their bodgery should be easy for a mega-corp.

There you go, no need for the vote, everyone gets what they want.

 

[Sandro Sammarco]

Hello Commanders!

A second, friendly reminder! I know that everyone is very passionate about the game (which is lovely, by the way), but debate the options, please. Not targeting anyone, just want to make sure we don't have to close this thread. Sometimes, just re-reading a post before pulling the pin can reveal a more friendly phrase without weakening your point.

Also worth noting, we're looking to directly target active players over the next day or so to encourage them to get involved and vote.

Assuming this goes to plan, the potential voting pool should be the biggest one we've had, giving a chance for any silent majority to speak up and be heard.

The bottom line is, this is a hard choice, with valid opinions on both side of the fence, for us as developers as much as you the Commanders. I can assure you that neither side can claim to have objectively the "correct" viewpoint.

We feel that now is a great time to take a snapshot of sentiment, to help reinforce and confront our internal development choices.

In the end, it will be a decision we make and are accountable for - but there's nothing like having a broad set of opinions to consider!

 

[xyphic]

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.

My post was, admittedly (as I stated in the post: "there are many good reasons why not") fallacious but I also believe that your assumption about non-participation implying acceptance is also.

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.

I stated elsewhere (sorry, did mean to add it to that post) that the sample wasn't random so it's not a good indicator of actual significance. My point (however badly made) was that it's fallacious to assume that just because a small number of people are surveyed the results can be dismissed out-of-hand. What the poll *did* do (or at least *should have done*) was pick those from the population who had an interest in the problem and gauge the overall feeling from them. I don't believe that it would simply select those who didn't like the current design, and for me the conversation within the thread bore that out. There were plenty from both sides participating.

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.

I disagree. I believe that they've taken the poll (and the discussion of said poll) as an indicator that there is large scale disagreement about the implementation of the mechanic, and re-evaluated their own stance on it, taking into account the arguments presented therein. Over 2000 voters on a topic that's apparently not interesting to the majority, in a forum that only appeals to a minority, speaks to me of something that *is* of interest to the wider player base.

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).

To be fair, there's been heavy criticism of Frontier's design decisions. I'm not convinced that you can assert that "most people" would be happy with instant transfer in this regard.

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."

Again, what the devs class as fun doesn't always bear out as what the majority feel is fun. It was a nice notion at the start (making the game they want to play) but they simply don't play it in the same way as the majority of their dedicated user base. It's hard to do that when you're so invested in the production of it. I don't count myself in this dedicated group as I don't have enough time to invest in the game; ironically you'd think that instant transfer would be ideal for me, but I've been wavering fairly consistently on 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.

Again, the "fun" way and the "not-fun" way are entirely subjective. It's about more than just immersion. One thing I'll agree with you on is relying on playtesting, and I hope that the timer version of the mechanic is added to the game in a beta sooner rather than later so that we can gauge it properly. The biggest mistake Frontier can make at this point is blindly applying the change without understanding the repercussions of that change over the longer term. Many of the changes that have been implemented have sounded good on paper, but have turned out to be at best contentious and at worst damaging to the game.

FWIW, my initial reaction to this mechanic was that it sounded like a lazy implementation (it's obviously easier to do a single database transaction for a ship transfer than implementing a timer as part of the BGS to do the transfer at the correct time). Having instant access to any ship anywhere you are sounded like it had the potential to completely change the balance of the game. This remains my concern, and while I think the feature as a whole is beneficial I'm glad that Frontier are at least revisiting their decision.

 

[The Wallet Inspector]

No more posts about the "other" game please - they are off topic, and it has its very own threadnaught elsewhere.

Jeremy Brett is the definitive Sherlock Holmes...

 

[Tsao Nima]

...Why are we basing gameplay decisions on what people aren't doing in the game? Instead of deciding this on a forum poll, we could have this as a CG. Let people that actually play decide what they want.

 

[bitstorm]

Dogg, people will demand and get a delay and then discover the immersion and depth of talking to support about getting their ship unstuck from transport because they made a terrible mistake and realised the ship they need is taking the slow boat to China and won't be available for another 3 days.

Or in the case of Jaques, about 2-3 months. It'll be fine.

Is what I worry about, almost wish we could try a clunky barebones prototype in some extended beta and see how it feels.

Still haven't voted, but like when you're outfitting your ship and remove a weapon and you have to wait 5 seconds while the hardpoint retracts. [mad] Like why?? Only reason is some misguided sense of "realism" in actuality it serves no purpose and really is just an annoyance.

Instant transfers is arguably more immersion breaking but for me the jury's still out on whether it actually matters.

 

[TheOneWithNoLife]

I feel like the two options should be included in the game. The instant one should be more expensive, but for the ones that have the time and don't want to spend the credits there should be the option to wait. Also instant can be justified by "Having the exact same ship in the station and just selling the old one and getting the new one here". I understand that not all stations have all the modules/ships and engineers upgrades but that something. Having both options should satisfy everybody I believe. You can simply not use the instant one if you don't want to break your immersion, like with re-logging to get new missions. Also I think that both prices should be based on the actual jumps the stored ship would need to get there. This way you wont be able to just put the lowest FSD on your fighter ship and just summon it to other stations.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

Time delay sounds fine. With one caveat.

It can be done whilst you are offline so it's waiting for you when you log back in.

Sandro said delay will continue while offline, so yes, you can log off and on and ship will be there.

 

[BigZiggyHD]

Why won't you make both options viable with a price tag on the transfer depending on distance?

Longer distance = more expensive to instantly transfer.

Let players pick how long they want to wait and let them pay accordingly.

Because for a large amount of the player base credits are of no consequence. Money is not an acceptable fee there needs to be a real cost. Time or loss of engineering upgrades. (And here comes the I'm a heathen for suggesting loss of engineering upgrades. My preference is for time of course)

 

[Soban]

No more posts about the "other" game please - they are off topic, and it has its very own threadnaught elsewhere.

Thanks Slopey, and sorry, really [sad]
The goal wasn't to talk about it but to talk about timer on ship destruction, and that was more on topic
I will edit my post to delete that reference.

 

[DatonKallandor]

And for those who don't want to spend any time on travel/logistics/immersion and just want to get into the pew-pew as fast as possible...

Welcome to CQC!

Okay when CQC pays more than bad joke we'll maybe play it. I could haul literal      less than 10 light years and get more money than CQC match in a fraction of the time.

Again, what the devs class as fun doesn't always bear out as what the majority feel is fun. It was a nice notion at the start (making the game they want to play) but they simply don't play it in the same way as the majority of their dedicated user base. It's hard to do that when you're so invested in the production of it. I don't count myself in this dedicated group as I don't have enough time to invest in the game; ironically you'd think that instant transfer would be ideal for me, but I've been wavering fairly consistently on it.

Many of the changes that have been implemented have sounded good on paper, but have turned out to be at best contentious and at worst damaging to the game.

You are not the majority. This forum is not the majority. You are making a great case for why this poll should be ignored.

Also, please name an idea they had that sounded good on paper but turned out bad. I can't think of a single one where the issues weren't immediately apparent (and publicly predicted to be terrible if implemented a certain way) and it was implemented badly anyway (PP, Engineer RNG, CQC payouts, etc.)

 

[SafteyBot]

...Why are we basing gameplay decisions on what people aren't doing in the game? Instead of deciding this on a forum poll, we could have this as a CG. Let people that actually play decide what they want.

That could be a fun way to do it.

 

[Alex Brentnall]

Hello Commanders!

A second, friendly reminder! I know that everyone is very passionate about the game (which is lovely, by the way), but debate the options, please. Not targeting anyone, just want to make sure we don't have to close this thread. Sometimes, just re-reading a post before pulling the pin can reveal a more friendly phrase without weakening your point.

Also worth noting, we're looking to directly target active players over the next day or so to encourage them to get involved and vote.

Assuming this goes to plan, the potential voting pool should be the biggest one we've had, giving a chance for any silent majority to speak up and be heard.

The bottom line is, this is a hard choice, with valid opinions on both side of the fence, for us as developers as much as you the Commanders. I can assure you that neither side can claim to have objectively the "correct" viewpoint.

We feel that now is a great time to take a snapshot of sentiment, to help reinforce and confront our internal development choices.

In the end, it will be a decision we make and are accountable for - but there's nothing like having a broad set of opinions to consider!

Sounds good, big headlines on the launcher "Get involved with Elite's future!"
I heavily support listening to the players and asking us questions even if you don't always agree with the answer. Closed result polls like this one are perfect as no one can complain since only FDev see the result and act as they choose but regardless the players feel engaged.

Thanks Sandro and the entire Dev team for making this possible and I'm hopeful more of the "what do you players think about this?" come in the future.

P.S. Yes I was the one at Lavecon asking about a more involved beta/player testing/feedback process.

 

[SafteyBot]

Sandro said delay will continue while offline, so yes, you can log off and on and ship will be there.

Ultimate Solo Mode - So solo, you're not even playing!

 

[Lunchmunny]

Hello Commanders!

Also worth noting, we're looking to directly target active players over the next day or so to encourage them to get involved and vote.

Assuming this goes to plan, the potential voting pool should be the biggest one we've had, giving a chance for any silent majority to speak up and be heard.

YES, this poll will totally capture the voice of the silent majority... who never use or look at the forums and will assume Fev will design a game with the best gameplay option in mind. Oh wait... it won't... because they don't look at, or are likely not even aware, of the activities in this forum.