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

[gazmoid]

I've voted instant ,, but I was VERY torn. If we were being totally realistic there should be a fee, it should take as long to transfer as it would take you as a pilot to do it, and it must also be possible ( some ships couldn't make it to certain places ) .. But seriously we have a life outside Elite and just travelling back to get a ship is a pointless waste of time. This is a game after all. A shock to some I know but this isn't your actual life.
Hehe,
Gary.

PS , in fact you should be able to actually go and watch the ship fly to you. Betcha they won't do that now. Way to realistic.

 

[Cmdr *Hawk*]

Holy Crap! A two thousand post thread over an absolute no brainer - why the hell would you expect a game that faithfully tries to reproduce the entire galaxy to permit instant travel??? But just in case I'm mistaken I did what the guy on the front page of the thread suggested - I stopped, thought carefully for a while and came to the conclusion that this is an absolute no brainer!

 

[Arubeto]

Nobody asked for it not to be instant either. See I can play the I have no proof game as well.

Really?

Has anyone had the idea of having a sort-of towing/transport mechanic in the game? In the same way you would pay to have a car imported into another country, what if you could pay credits based on ship size/type and distance, in order to have a stored ship moved to another station?
Don't make it too cheap to use, and don't make it instant of course, but rather have it take real-time to move the ship. A combination of those things I should think wouldn't make it abusable if it was balanced correctly.

My thought would have been, make transport convoys of large hauler escorted by six to eight fighters. Make its jump range dependent on the weight of the cargo, I mean that is what we have to do. Then make a fee associated with it, such as half the insurance fee of each ship transported. Can't be free. So if you have to travel 200ly, let it take as long as it would take us, an hour or two, traveling at 20ly per jump plus time to fuel scoop. This would open up possibilities for player escorts, or pirate raids. The more the value of the cargo, the better quality and quantity of escorts.

It would be nice, if it would be possible to have owned ships be transported to new locations.
It could cost some credits and it could take an hour of game time to have the ship transported to a new hangar. Having ships sit in one place only makes owning more than one ship really not a viable thing.

These are all from before the big discussion after the announcement started.

And the list is easily expandable: just search for "ship transfer" in the forum search and most of the requests started by users will specifically ask for ship transfers to take time.

On the other hand, I haven't found a single one asking for instant transport!

 

[Ozram]

Thats a strange argument. The ship you are sitting in , it cant do anything? Its a tin can to fly around in circles? All ships can do one of the three.

Not if they have instant transfer, then you just need one scout ship (quickly the only ship anyone will generally see in Open between points of interest) and the highly specialised low jump ships at the point of interest spots near the local spawn points (I mean stations). It's ludicrous because it's an entirely different game than the one we've had to this point. It's a true 180 in development direction. I'll be very sad if that comes to be.

 

[Scoopy Doopy]

My other worry about this vote is that it's the tip of the iceberg.
Now the mob have a taste for having a say in the direction the game goes, they'll demand they have a say in everything.
Not good; game design by democracy rarely works.

It is possible that this is not game design by democracy but a situation where FD have announced something and then decided that it wasn't a good idea after all. This poll allows them to reverse their announcement.

Or, as you say, it could be getting the opinions of people before implementing something.

 

[Zambrick]

That's not for you to decide and frankly I would be happy "instant" people to find something else to do with their free time, because this is getting annoying. This is not arcade shooter. FD has done enough trade offs to sate "me me me" crowd. Enough is enough.

Also please don't give me this 'I have too little time to play' . This game is designed this way for a reason. If you don't find those reasons appealing, just up and leave. I have said this for very few players, but this time is really something you should understand clearly - this game is not done for money. FD profits almost nothing from it. Everything goes back into development. It is passion project. And that passion is not only FD, but many people who put their hearts and souls into supporting this game. You don't like it? FINE. Move on. There's other space games out there.

What happened that FD have been overlooking major gameplay elements regarding instant transfer. It takes balls to walk back and admit that. Considering FD has done it very few times - wouldn't you think is good to consider devs actually understand issues here? It is not about immersion we talk about, we talk about balance and feel of the game. This changes everything in the game. This is not fast food Minecraft or NMS.



It doesn't. There's no feature yet. It will be helpful for everyone. it just won't be instant.



LOL this is scenario why it shouldn't be instant. It has nothing to do with ship transfer. Like seriously.

Also if instant will stay, it will be capped by distance and Jaques will be excluded.

I heard a l"ike seriously" come out of a supposed adult. Hmm who knew?

I would frankly be happy if the people who dont want instant transfer would just go play Eve already. Its exactly what you want. The games done. No more waiting. Go shoo have fun doing nothing.

No time to play being ? I stated on an average week I spend around 11 hours of game time. Thats a lot of damn time to be playing a video game. Especially if you have a job a family a life or any kind of meaningful responsibility. That is more than enough time that you should be able to feel like you might have done something. Your idea of a game player is casuals only play like 3 hours a week and they want everything. Meanwhile your so called hardcore spend 25 hours a week or more in the game and they like it where it is. I fall right in the middle like a lot of players, yet we dont count because you have thousands of hours of disposable time a year? Please come up with something a little better next time.

Also somehow you now know how much money ED makes? You also assume that these people dont live off of a Salary and that the game must not have some kind of profit? Do you live in a fantasy land? Frontier is a publicly traded company. Look it up they have the abbreviation of FDEV on the London Stock Exchange. They have to try and make profit or their share holders shut them down. You make a lot of assumptions and you have nothing to back it up but your biter vitreous attempts and shutting down the conversation. Yes I understand that they must love the game to put as much time into it. But they answer to a higher authority just like everyone else. They must appease them ever so slightly otherwise they get shut down. No this is not Activision or EA we are talking about, but they are a business and they must run it as one. Otherwise nobody gets to have fun.

You speak of balance yet this game is anything but balanced. Its not complete yet. You get executed for getting stuck in a space station but you can be the galaxy best serial killer and you get a slap on the wrist? Somehow all cargo weights a ton o and a 3 foot long gun weights 10 tonnes. A lot of things are being done in the name of game balancing but this is not one of them.

Remember the part where this is a game right? This isnt real life. However I enjoy playing this game and waiting for no reason is not fun. You may like it but you are not everybody.

 

[Dave G]

I voted delay, just for some semblance of realism, but I understand the voters for "instant". We already have a number of "instant" things in the game:

When our ship explodes we are instantly returned to a station
When we buy/sell commodities they are instantly loaded/off-loaded from our ships

These are done for gameplay improvements, and no-one complains about these.

Once we are walking around stations, then we will get the instant commodities complainers, who want to see people/robots loading our cargo, but let's cross that bridge when we get to it.

 

[Niamhy]

Thats a strange argument. The ship you are sitting in , it cant do anything? Its a tin can to fly around in circles? All ships can do one of the three.

you left off the first part, "you're in an Asp with no weapons or shields" eg an Asp that has been out exploring for the last 2 months. Its built for one thing. You get to a station on the rim, after being out for two months, it CAN'T "do everything". Unless you refit it.

 

[LKx]

I think you should have separated the polls for ship transfer and module transfer.

While there are "coerence and realism" reasons to have both the same way, we know that a lot of aspects of the game don't follow realism at all, and probably not even coerence, so i'm evaluating gameplay impact of those features.

Having ship transfer istant or with a delay makes a huge difference in gameplay, while i don't consider module transfer that relevant, so if it makes the implementetion much more complicated, i think that for modules you could go the easy way.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

None of those examples are the result of community voting.
In addition, when they asked for feedback during development or the various betas, that feedback was based on players being exposed to existing, prototypical systems.
Transport of ships, with or without delay, isn't currently in the game, so Joe Public is voting from an uninformed position.

Wrong, lot of those things, including MT btw, has been put on vote by FD.

 

[Mephane]

Also this ship transfer makes it easy to change home base, just pick a new place to base your operations from, order all your ships there.
Previously you had to buy taxis, go get them , sell taxi and shuttle your baby to new area of operations. Not so fun with a fleet.
For this even a 24 hours waiting period would be insigificant. Order ships, go to bed, after work they are basically transfered.

Moving a "home base" base was actually the original primary use case when we asked for ship transfer.

 

[CMDR Zhon Daeli]

that's not how people play the game though.

And whose fault is that?

You're suggesting everyone fly a multipurpose ship, just in case they have to wait around for two hours? What point is a full weapons rig on an Asp that is out at Beagle Point? What is the point of mining lasers on an Imperial Eagle? You're not being realistic now. Seriously.

I'm suggesting that if you plan to go exploring, you build an exploration vessel but if you might want to do a little mining on the side at BP, you build a ship capable of mining whilst taking a small knock to exploration range, instead of building an exploration vessel getting to BP and only then crying about it.

I'm suggesting that with the way the game is right now, not planning ahead is just silly and players who do this have nobody to blame but themselves - I'm further suggesting that with the way the game is right now, planning ahead is both realistic and sensible.

If thinking ahead and anticipating the consequences of your actions doesn't come naturally to you, in whatever you do .. well, I can only shake my head and laugh that someone would outfit an Asp for max exploration, get to Beagle Point and then cry because they can't do anything there.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

you left off the first part, "you're in an Asp with no weapons or shields" eg an Asp that has been out exploring for the last 2 months. Its built for one thing. You get to a station on the rim, after being out for two months, it CAN'T "do everything". Unless you refit it.

Then....refit it? Why ship transfer has to mitigate your outfitting choices? In fact, it SHOULDN'T. Your choices, your burn.

 

[Duedy]

A suggestion.

Ship transfer is instant, ( its a game we have finite time to play and enjoy )


However I would say then limit the time for that ship to be able to be transferred to say 1 hr ("Immersion" Refuel, repair, safety checks run by NPCs in Docks before they will fly it to you), to stop possible trading exploits.

 

[Ozram]

you left off the first part, "you're in an Asp with no weapons or shields" eg an Asp that has been out exploring for the last 2 months. Its built for one thing. You get to a station on the rim, after being out for two months, it CAN'T "do everything". Unless you refit it.

Not sure you noticed but I answered that hypothetical just a page back.

 

[Angus]

Originally Posted by SaliVader View Post (Source)

I have a question for those that think it shouldn't be instant: What would non-instant ship transfer add to the gameplay that instant transfer doesn't? Would you seriously be ok with halting game sessions for literally no other reason than "immersion"?

you at no point have to stop playing, you still have ship capabale of doing things while the other is on the way. If you prefer to just wait and do nothing thats you choice.

Yes, the logical extension of that attitude is I can't currently play the game because instant ship transfer isn't a feature yet. :-/ Not exactly a compelling argument.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Holy Crap! A two thousand post thread over an absolute no brainer - why the hell would you expect a game that faithfully tries to reproduce the entire galaxy to permit instant travel??? But just in case I'm mistaken I did what the guy on the front page of the thread suggested - I stopped, thought carefully for a while and came to the conclusion that this is an absolute no brainer!

Because there are people who hold a different opinion to you. No brainer to you for it to be one way, for another person its a no brainer for it to be another way, and yet a third person might think any form of transport is bad.

 

[Niamhy]

And whose fault is that?

You're basically suggesting everyone play the game YOU want it played, rather than how they actually play it.

well, I can only shake my head and laugh that someone would outfit an Asp for max exploration, get to Beagle Point and then cry because they can't do anything there.

Again, you're imposing your playstyle. I build an exploration ship, it's basically an engine with scanners on the front. I'm cataloging planets. Not going out to Beagle Point to do mining, or fighting, or anything else. Same with my fighting ship. Same with my trading ship. Instant transfer will make this game 100% better for me. And probably for the "silent majority" who dont' constantly bang on about it being a gamebreaker. Cos it isn't. In no shape or form.

 

[Mephane]

that's not how people play the game though. You're suggesting everyone fly a multipurpose ship, just in case they have to wait around for two hours? What point is a full weapons rig on an Asp that is out at Beagle Point? What is the point of mining lasers on an Imperial Eagle? You're not being realistic now. Seriously.

Well, yes, I do in fact suggest you use a multi-purpose ship with a jack of all trades loadout if you want to be able to change activities on a whim. That's what you get with the trade-off that the multi-purpose ship is never as good as the specialized ship at any given activity. Instant transfer eliminates this and many other significant trade-offs.

Don't get me wrong, I can empathize with you. I also often times change gameplay style rapidly, even more so when looking for missions for specific engineer materials or commodities - when there is a mission for an Exquisite Focus Crystal, I can't be too picky (except for illegal activities, which I don't do). Thus I heed my own advice and therefore fly 90% of the time in a Python equipped for general purpose, the only thing for which I would have to change ships or loadout is mining.

 

[Vasious]

-

that's a bogus argument though.

Scenario: you're in a station on the outer rim. In an Asp with no weapons or shields. You send for your Python. It will take 2 hours. In those two hours, do you:

a) do some mining? erm no, cos you don't have your mining ship
b) do some bounty hunting? erm no, cos you don't have your fighting ship
c) do some trading? erm no, cos you don't have your trading ship.

so other than scan planets (that you've probably already scanned) for 2 hours, there is nothing else you can do without instant-transferring other ships to your location. Or switching ED off and going off and playing another game for two hours. And for people who only have 2 hours to play in an evening after work, for example, that is a whole play session lost.

What do you do currently?

In that scenario

You are in a station on the outer rim. In an Asp with no weapons or shields, and you decide you want to mine bounty hunt or trade?

---

Also
2 hrs assumes you are at the 100 minutes maximum suggested plus 20 minutes for across the entirety of human space, so you have, in your example, your Python on the exact opposite side of the Human bubble when you suddenly want it.

Why pick that specific set of conditions?

Why deny outfitting is an option, why deny missions, which may be done without refitting , why deliberately inflate the time scales on an edge case, yet claim an opposing point of view is bogus?