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

[Monk]

Its a game.

It's a space game.

It's a s space game with spaceships.

It's a s space game with spaceships that can travel the galaxy at FTL speeds.

 

[Commdor]

That just isn't true, even if a delay happens then you will still be able to fly around and do other things besides having to jump over and over to get your ship to it's destination. Still value either way.

What if all I want to do is manage my vast and widely-distributed ship collection before I begin other activities? You would have me waste time waiting for some cooldown to finish after every transfer, spreading a task that could have been finished in minutes (moving all of my ships into one station) into something that takes hours or days, all for the sake of some arbitrary idea of "balance" or "immersion"?

 

[SzaryWilk]

I am against simplifying the game.....soooo......OPTION 2 [yesnod] .

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

Okay. I can fly from one end of the bubble to the other in a quarter of an hour.

It shouldn't take 100 minutes to travel 300 light years.

That was the max. Try doing that in a T9 with E rated FSD. (Post back in 3 hrs or more when you manage it).

 

[Niewitch]

I've had time to think this over, and I've come to my vote.

I vote option 1.

This is a game that is quite realistic, despite its Sci Fi premise...almost punishingly so at times. I just had a friend who recently decided to give Elite a shot, and was very put out by how difficult it is to really get into this game. I wanted to give him credits to help him out, but I can't do that because Frontier decided not to include that in the game. Basically, I can go on and on about how this game is not for pick up and go people, and about how the game doesn't hold your hand at all. I won't.

All I'll say it that I'm happy whenever Frontier puts in something that fits a video game, something that makes playing this game ever so slightly more fun and easier.

For those saying it will break the immersion factor, you need to stop. It's a video game, one that lets you surf black holes no less. You can almost touch the surface of a star while fuel scooping. You can get within 26k miles of a Neutron Star and live. THERE ARE ALIENS IN THE UNIVERSE AND COMING TO THIS GAME. None of those break the immersion for you? But instant ship and module transfer would though, right? It's a video game. A science fiction video game. Yes, a lot of the science in the game is based on actual real life science, but it doesn't change the fact that it's a video game. Video games are meant to be fun, and if this adds more fun to the game for me, I'm all for it.

Option 1, Please.

Alien wont brake my immersion a bit. We dont even know what is in real live, if year would be really 3302, like its in game. And nobody knows what out there in universe in real. Yes its a game, but that is also why your immersion argument, isnt relevant either.

 

[SatansMittens]

True but with Sandy's comments about getting non-forum members involved it proves to be one of the biggest polls ever of the playerbase. Assuming the message is as widespread as suggested then people that don't get involved in the vote have only themselves to blame.

Everyone used an email address to make a player account. Why don't they send the poll link to everyone who has a game account thru email?

 

[GJ51]

Elite is a game about flying a space ship. Basic and simply. Is about piloting your ship, going from point A to a point B or back to B. The origin/destination points are irrelevant to this premise, and so are the motives to do so. You play the game by flying your ship, and by definition you start in the cockpit of one. So much so, that at least to the date, you can't play outside your cockpit, and any future features promising otherwise are more like add-ons, extra features, and not the main, fundamental mechanics of the game.

What is extremely fundamental, however, in this mechanics, are the principles of transportation: distance and speed. Because flying depends on those two variables, there is a myriad of things in-game to reduce distance by adding speed in the form of better jump range in your FSD and all the set ups that this entails.

Those two variables in combination translate to time spend to complete a trip.

And make no mistake about it: from loading your cargo hold, to repairs, to combat, to smuggling, to exploration, EVERY SINGLE ACTIVITY IN THE GAME IS GEARED, JUSTIFIED AND GAUGED AROUND HOW FAR AND HOW QUICK YOU CAN FLY YOUR SHIP. The catalyst of this equation are the credits available to do so.

----

For the sake of keeping distance, speed, and time in an equation that makes sense within the already futuristic -if not implausible- universe, super cruise speed was designed: it is an elegant solution to the mind blogging huge distances in space; a mechanic that allows to have a sense of scale of it all, but more importantly, it is designed for you to fly your ship through space. It is, by that, justified as serving the main purpose of the game.

----

Transferring a ship from point A to point B, is not about you flying the ship. If anything is preventing you from doing so. However, it stands to reason that the laws of time, speed and distance, must be followed, if anything, to keep the ultimate and core concept of the game still true to itself: nothing in this universe -as it is right now- is able to travel instantaneously from one point to the other, and that's the very reason why you fly a ship, because there is the need for pilots, because there is a need for transportation.

Allowing that to exists, constitutes a slap to a basic and deep sense of justification for me to fly my ship, conceding that within the realm of this galaxy there are ways for you to travel instantaneously "we just want you to waste time and take the long way of travelling."

Under that premise, we won't see heavy combat ships struggling jumping system to system to reach a distant war anymore. In fact, the space will be filled with Asps, and Hauler, just because is so much faster to get there and then instantaneously summon your ship.

----

On the same token, the process should take a sensitive approach to the waiting time, in line with game's mechanics.

For instance, we could agree that before engineers the ~40ly jump range of the anaconda was widely taken as the max speed a ship could go. We also know that it takes ~45 seconds to complete a jump before starting the next.

Hence, 40 ly / 45 seconds = 0.89 ly/sec. (I)

Then, 1 ly = 1.12 sec

From this, we get a waiting time in function of the distance, assuming the NPC pilot doing the transportation didn't have to bother with fuel scooping, route plotting, interdictions, or traveling in SC to the target station upon arrival to destination system.

We could, of course, add some 2 or 3 hundredths of seconds to the equation to account for that, but making a compromise here with instant supporters, let's leave it at that and call it a day.

Under that model, you would have to wait just 2 minutes and 48 seconds for a 150 light year transfer. Add a standard fee in credits per light year in transfers -say 2,000 credits?- and then you will have a system that makes sense within the Elite universe and will have people thinking twice before taking the decisions lightly.

Finally, just to be clear, the transfer mechanics is all welcomed, but needs to make sense within the immersion rules of Elite. It would negate many elements that have been well thought and designed so far.

Wow - I'd give you more much deserved rep if I could.

I need to return to the bubble asap to sell all my fuel scoops on my fleet before the market glut depresses the prices.

They will be obsolete rather soon methinks for all but your taxi.

So it goes...

 

[Tsao Nima]

True but with Sandy's comments about getting non-forum members involved it proves to be one of the biggest polls ever of the playerbase. Assuming the message is as widespread as suggested then people that don't get involved in the vote have only themselves to blame.

And it's the assuming that's the problem here - if the way people get involved is a link on the launcher, it's kind of a cop-out. Give people a bit of a reward for responding, and you'll get some real turnout.

 

[Rupoe]

Well I will live with your decision for a time delay, as I did with every other decision before.
But I won't respect it.
I'm happy for everyones rescued immersion and sad for all the ones with limited time, that would have happily traded immersion for playtime.

My lessons learned from this -and I am sure that is the big takeaway for the community as well- is just keep shouting until you get what you want.

Fly safe commanders!

Bit dramatic, no? We won't know the results of the poll (which is pulling players from Steam, Reddit, etc) until Monday.

 

[Diomedian]

I believe he means real world money not ingame credits.

If it’s me that you’re referring to, I actually meant in-game credits, not real-world money. Sorry for the confusion!

Anyway, I suppose that my initial concern was whether the instant-transfer fee would disadvantage players who are new to the game, or who have invested much of their time in some of its less lucrative activities. (Exploration comes to mind, even though I enjoy it thoroughly.)

But as the OP has since suggested, this fee could be prohibitively high, such that even the haves would only be able to use instantaneous transfer situationally—a bit like the Synthesis mechanic that launched with Horizons. Otherwise, they’d need to use delayed transfer, along with most other Commanders.

 

[m.stitek]

Every time someone praise the immersion and realism of the E, I immediately remember how we need to install several ton heavy computer just for our ship to be able to (sometimes) safely dock itself. 1300 years in the future. We don't have any radio communication with the station except the docking request, so we need to dock to actually talk to the people there (although we have instant galaxywide galnet). And so many other non-sensible things. I don't know if having realistic delivery times is hypocrisy or just plain stupid idea.

 

[Alex Brentnall]

What if all I want to do is manage my vast and widely-distributed ship collection before I begin other activities? You would have me waste time waiting for some cooldown to finish after every transfer, spreading a task that could have been finished in minutes (moving all of my ships into one station) into something that takes hours or days, all for the sake of some arbitrary idea of "balance" or "immersion"?

Then don't use the ship transfer mechanic or do it before you go to bed. You can only move ships to your current location anyway so it's hardly management or cooldown. What he's saying is it's impossible for this to be an issue as it's an addition not something that is being changed.

Everyone used an email address to make a player account. Why don't they send the poll link to everyone who has a game account thru email?

Actually a really good idea. They may do that... <- Sandro?

And it's the assuming that's the problem here - if the way people get involved is a link on the launcher, it's kind of a cop-out. Give people a bit of a reward for responding, and you'll get some real turnout.

See above, we have no idea if launcher link or in game message or email etc

 

[Straha Yeagar]

I've had time to think this over, and I've come to my vote.

I vote option 1.

This is a game that is quite realistic, despite its Sci Fi premise...almost punishingly so at times. I just had a friend who recently decided to give Elite a shot, and was very put out by how difficult it is to really get into this game. I wanted to give him credits to help him out, but I can't do that because Frontier decided not to include that in the game. Basically, I can go on and on about how this game is not for pick up and go people, and about how the game doesn't hold your hand at all. I won't.

All I'll say it that I'm happy whenever Frontier puts in something that fits a video game, something that makes playing this game ever so slightly more fun and easier.

For those saying it will break the immersion factor, you need to stop. It's a video game, one that lets you surf black holes no less. You can almost touch the surface of a star while fuel scooping. You can get within 26k miles of a Neutron Star and live. THERE ARE ALIENS IN THE UNIVERSE AND COMING TO THIS GAME. None of those break the immersion for you? But instant ship and module transfer would though, right? It's a video game. A science fiction video game. Yes, a lot of the science in the game is based on actual real life science, but it doesn't change the fact that it's a video game. Video games are meant to be fun, and if this adds more fun to the game for me, I'm all for it.

Option 1, Please.

Immersion is often a matter of personal opinion, but one thing that is actually completely objective is internal consistency. A summoned ship should have to be equipped to otherwise make the trip as if it had a human pilot. Auto transfer should NOT be a method players can use to bypass core mechanics of the game. Honestly, I would be perfectly fine with instant transfer so long as the ship was equipped such that a human pilot could make the trip manually.

 

[Weps]

You just want the game to be more annoying to play.

Are you playing the game right now? I'm just curious. Considering that it must be even more annoying to play at the moment, while there is absolutely no ship transfer at all.

 

[Zesty Crab Legs]

So play the game while the other ship is in transit.

At the moment you have no ship transfer, but I'm guessing you manage without it, right?

We can best of both worlds this. Instant transfer, but you can set a kitchen timer before you allow yourself a play. What do you care how other people play?

True but with Sandy's comments about getting non-forum members involved it proves to be one of the biggest polls ever of the playerbase. Assuming the message is as widespread as suggested then people that don't get involved in the vote have only themselves to blame.

That's some elitism you got there. Not a pun.

 

[Mr_Foxhound]

will poll for instance ship transfer ...bit lazy on the rest of the games bugs and in balances

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

You just want the game to be more annoying to play.

There's no reason to deny that. It's true.

You're right, there's no point in denying it anymore. You're on to us.

We want games to be more annoying because we hate fun

And it's the assuming that's the problem here - if the way people get involved is a link on the launcher, it's kind of a cop-out. Give people a bit of a reward for responding, and you'll get some real turnout.

The reward is being a part of decision making process man!

We can best of both worlds this. Instant transfer, but you can set a kitchen timer before you allow yourself a play. What do you care how other people play?

Can you address my post please when you're quoting it?

 

[Eymerich]

So play the game while the other ship is in transit.

At the moment you have no ship transfer, but I'm guessing you manage without it, right?

At the moment you have Elite, so I can guess there is no need of 2.2....

 

[Leo Sagan]

This thread keeps growing and growing and seems to be heavily in favor of delayed ship transfers. This is awesome. Thanks Sandro and FD for listening to the community !

 

[Iskariot]

Firstly, thank you for getting in touch with the community. I'm thankful for this and I believe many players don't recognize and appreciate this fact enough.
Since the start (gamma for me) the evolving game, feedback and communcication with you, the devs, felt like we were always part of it.
You made decisions not everyone in the community liked but it is your game and your jobs depend on its success.
Still you listened to feedback and changed stuff whenever possible/reasonable.
I liked that stance. I understood the resons behind it. I respected every decision because of that.

I didn't like your decision regarding the offline mode. The community went berzerk, you stood your ground.
I didn't like the introduction of powerplay. The community shot it down in place, you stood your ground.
I didn't like the time-stretching mechanics of the engineers. (no subscription model...so good lord why?) The community is upset right now about it, you partly stood your ground.

I respected all that, I lived with it, tried to embrace it as best as I could.
I knew there where people out there enjoying the parts I didn't. So I focused on the parts that I enjoyed.
I even managed to get fun out of the mechanics that I disliked that way and thought 'well I understand why they thought that was a good idea'.
Right now I have only 2 engineers to unlock...this is how desperate I am trying to get myself an understanding of why other CMDRs are enjoying it.
After all I had to admit that your disliked decisions so far made sense for me and I said to myself: 'Well done FD for standing your ground on this!'

You introduced 2.2 at Gamescom. Fighters, Tourism, VIPs, maybe Aliens and ship transfers.
Oh god I can't tell you how lucky and excited I was.
Nothing for me to dislike.
The reasoning behind the instant transfer hit my nerve. Getting rid of a time sink, getting more playtime out of a session.

And then the community went amok again. You stood your ground once again.
Your very own explanation gave me hope "Adding time delay would counter the underlying idea of the concept!".
The case was closed for me.
But not for the community, resulting in this thread.
Reading through the developers comments, countering their own previous reasoning leaves me just with disbelief.

Now if I'd happen to be in my T9 and seeing a conflict zone, I will call my ship and not go fighting.
I will wait or do other things instead, because of that.

Well I will live with your decision for a time delay, as I did with every other decision before.
But I won't respect it.
I'm happy for everyones rescued immersion and sad for all the ones with limited time, that would have happily traded immersion for playtime.

My lessons learned from this -and I am sure that is the big takeaway for the community as well- is just keep shouting until you get what you want.

Fly safe commanders!

Just go vote.

FD has listened to player feedback many times.
You are just afraid that this time the result will not be to your liking.
I would like a delay myself, but if the vote turns the other way I will still respect FD for listening to all the diverging voices on the forums.