Reducing distance costs by 50

If they just increase the jump range of a handful of ships (Corvette, FDL, Vulture, Viper, etc) and then give us a real usable Neutron/WD Highway, then the solution to an open galaxy will be well in hand.

*ahem*

(but as for your OP, for the record, I completely agree) [up]
 
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You're advocating using this as a taxi feature for large ships. Yet you do not see the next domino?

I look forward to your complaint posts about waiting for your big ship to arrive. In exactly 3, 2, 1...

Please prove me wrong.

1. If I have to wait for my big ship to arrive, but it is affordable for me to do so then it has absolutely no affect on your gameplay.
2. The alternative is that ship transfer is so expensive that I have to transfer my hauler taxi, go get my big ship, and fly my big ship back. Defeats the entire point of ship transfer in the first place.
 
This is such a NON-ISSUE, I don't have the words to express how wrong the OP is about this. It would almost be worth saving his post and reposting it a year from now when NONE of his predictions have come to pass.

The cost needed to be reduced to an "affordable" level so that more of the community could use this feature for the long distance moves the feature will ultimately be used for by the majority of players.

Once the shine wears off, the 100-200 Ly moves are going to stop for most players, leaving long distance moves to locations such as Colonia/Jaques as the standard use case. If FD hadn't lowered the cost, we would have had the 100-200 Ly transfers for the next month and then the sound of crickets.

I tend to agree with a lot of what the OP normally posts here, so I have no idea why he has completely lost his mind on this particular subject. ??? [???] [wacko]
 
This is such a NON-ISSUE, I don't have the words to express how wrong the OP is about this. It would almost be worth saving his post and reposting it a year from now when NONE of his predictions have come to pass.
One year from now....

Long I pondered my Ziljan's cryptic talk of dominoes. But time has proven him wise, for from free cmdr to free cmdr the word was spread that bold Ziljan and his Asp, so far from home, laid down their credits, not just for modules, but for all ships and the promise insta-transfer holds. Now, here on this ragged patch of earth called Colonia, Transfer delays face obliteration! Just there the 70% gather, sheer terror gripping tight their hearts with icy fingers....
 
Can all of you agree that x amount of players is the income for the development of this game? There is no monthly subscription so FD has to rely on getting more players to buy the game. If they make a game too grindy or too long to accomplish something or little rewards do you think casual players will get the game? I really don't think so. Do you honestly think all the hardcore players is gonna be enough to see this game through? When I went to Sag A, I put on a movie and hit J every minute. Stopping every 1,000 ly to reboot. How is that gameplay? That is waiting and waiting and waiting.
 
You are encouraging taxis as the default transport mode now. Ergo encouraging people to sit around waiting for their ships, until they're bored and complain that ED = a waiting game.

You are setting up ED for bad reviews going forward. And this direction of change is difficult to roll back, and will lead to increasing cries to make ship transfer times shorter and shorter, until they're irrelevant. Then the 30/70 ratio is going to increase to 50/50 and there will be larger scale unrest. So you're painting yourselves into a corner where more and more players will become unhappy about a QoL enhancement.

Please think this through, and consider your next step very carefully.
I noted this 50% reduction.
I do not know what effect this reduction will have on how the player base plays the game.
But I would like to know FDev's reasoning for it. ED 2.2 has not been that long out there; has FD got enough player behaviour stats in this short time to give a basis for this reduction?
This is the trouble with FD from my own personal perspective; I cannot see any ryhme or reason to many of FD's design decisions for ED. Of course the financial botton line can always be stated as the prime motivator but I still remain at a loss for FDev's reasoning or apparent lack of it.
 
On release the transfers were too expensive. The time limits not so.

Too many features in this game are locked behind credits which are locked behind grind/time sinks. Therefore if you are a billionaire and the wait times are low then taxi gameplay takes over. All the rich folk are flying haulers and ordering a corvette on arrival because money is no object and the wait time for delivery is basically popping into the kitchen and making a cuppa. No incentive to fly any of your ships apart from your mega jump taxi anywhere by yourself.

On the other hand the poorer folk are very concerned by the cost and are shut out from using the transfers because it is, as a percentage of their wealth, a lot more costly to do so. Transfer then becomes again a bonus to allow the rich to get richer by being where they need to be sooner and in effect removing anytime sink that stands between them and even more wealth. The poor guys still have to grind on as before because the outlay in credits is not worth the return.

I had hoped that this feature would have not been credit dependent at all (nominal charge) and as such accessable as a useful tool by all. I was a delay voter and I stand by that. You can do other stuff while you wait (see negates taxi use as you need a useful ship with you while you wait, or else prepare for some thumb twiddling). However the service should be very cheap, this eliminates any advantage from this feature that players who have more available game time/credits enjoy. As players get richer the stuff in game becomes more trival to buy, however time is always a constant whatever your level or wealth. That then is the currency to charge this cost to surely!! The richer will always see time as an inconvienience to them min/maxing more money out of the game whereas the poorer know not to waste their precious time they have sitting around waiting for a ship to arrive when they can be doing other stuff in a none taxi ship.

Now doing as FD have and making it cheaper and take less time is like giving it away for free to all. This will as the OP say's eventally tend to instant transfers and fast travel which rather makes having a full size galactic playground somewhat pointless.

Not on a slipperly slope yet but our backs are to the wall shimmying across a very narrow ledge above one I feel!
 
The cheaper it is, the more people will use it, the more people will fly otherwise-useless fast taxis, and wait for their main ships rather than play the game... Then complaints about waiting will follow.

Its a domino effect. People look at the first domino fall like they won something, but don't think about that last domino.

Sure thing. If 50% of the 10 people using this feature complain there will be 5 complaints - if it's a thousand people it'll be 500 complaints.
Still, it's kind of a good sign, because it means more people use it. If there were only 5 complaints the work in creating the feature might have just been a waste of money.
 
One year from now....

Long I pondered my Ziljan's cryptic talk of dominoes. But time has proven him wise, for from free cmdr to free cmdr the word was spread that bold Ziljan and his Asp, so far from home, laid down their credits, not just for modules, but for all ships and the promise insta-transfer holds. Now, here on this ragged patch of earth called Colonia, Transfer delays face obliteration! Just there the 70% gather, sheer terror gripping tight their hearts with icy fingers....

I have him blocked so I only see his comments in the quotes of other people lol
 
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Odds are people will be flying a stripped down taxi that is good for 1 purpose: travel. So the amount of waiting around in the game will increase. It's an inevitable consequence of incentivizing fast travel, and the basis of the argument for making transfers instant. => Undermining the popular support for delays.

So you're telling me people will just fly stripped down taxi ships to "save time", then gripe that they have to wait for their ship? Sounds like a great way to waste money, fly in a paper-thin ship, and not actually save any time...
 
OP has a point, but I think it's more of a symptom that the game mechanic is at odds with itself.

If it's intended as a QoL feature than it should promote a QoL experience. I.E., little delay, little cost, with the purpose of getting rid of hauler taxi-ing.

If it's intended to convey scope and reward planning around the BGS then delays and costs should remain substantial.

Trying to do both satisfies neither. I made this point in the transfer megathread when I suggested instant is the way to go.


The problem is, Fdev have conflicting goals here, and the way they are using this timed-transfer mechanic cannot satisfy both goals. They want to encourage commanders to use multiple ships, but they also don't want to cheapen the scale or encourage taxi ships. They want to reward planning, but they also want to allow a specialized ship to be ready to go to take on a mission regardless of where it is in the galaxy.

Keeping it instant and balancing around cost may have satisfied both goals, as it would have allowed multiple ships but encouraged planning by saving credits. Throwing the, quite significant time cost in there forces commanders to plan around time, a resource that can't be earned in-game and actively managed and is often conflicts with IRL activities and cannot be managed to the extent that credits are. Furthermore, there's no magic number, formula, or rate that time transfer should take and cost that commanders will magically agree on and feel comfortable with.

So which is it fdev? Choose a design goal and commit at the cost of the other. Fully. I don't care which. QoL or Galactic Sim? You're past the point of no return on this.
 
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OP has a point, but I think it's more of a symptom that the game mechanic is at odds with itself.

If it's intended as a QoL feature than it should promote a QoL experience. I.E., little delay, little cost, with the purpose of getting rid of hauler taxi-ing.

If it's intended to convey scope and reward planning around the BGS then delays and costs should remain substantial.

Trying to do both satisfies neither. I made this point in the transfer megathread when I suggested instant is the way to go.


The problem is, Fdev have conflicting goals here, and the way they are using this timed-transfer mechanic cannot satisfy both goals. They want to encourage commanders to use multiple ships, but they also don't want to cheapen the scale or encourage taxi ships. They want to reward planning, but they also want to allow a specialized ship to be ready to go to take on a mission regardless of where it is in the galaxy.

Keeping it instant and balancing around cost may have satisfied both goals, as it would have allowed multiple ships but encouraged planning by saving credits. Throwing the, quite significant time cost in there forces commanders to plan around time, a resource that can't be earned in-game and actively managed and is often conflicts with IRL activities and cannot be managed to the extent that credits are. Furthermore, there's no magic number, formula, or rate that time transfer should take and cost that commanders will magically agree on and feel comfortable with.

So which is it fdev? Choose a design goal and commit at the cost of the other. Fully. I don't care which. QoL or Galactic Sim? You're past the point of no return on this.

When they announced the feature they had made a decision based on the goal of the content. Initially, it was to be instant to encourage spontaneity. That goal was rejected by the players. What we have now is the price we pay for letting the mob decide what to do. FD can't be blamed for where we are with this feature.
 
*ahem*

(but as for your OP, for the record, I completely agree) [up]


Erimus, thanks for posting. I checked out your video. It's an impressive effort, however 83 minutes to go 4660 LY is about Asp speed with a normal 46LY jump range. My Anaconda could go much faster. Especially in the central bulge where stars are much closer together and you can nearly max range on every jump.

83 minutes = 110 standard jumps = 4600 LY for an Asp or 5500 LY for an Anaconda.

I also noticed you had bookmarked a metric ton of Neutron Stars. Did you time how long it took to manually enter them, and number them? How many man hours did it take to search the galaxy map and create the list for this partial path? And did you run out of available space for bookmarks without having to delete any to get from Jaques to the Bubble? The number of book marks is fairly severely limited for use with Neutron Highways for any long distance, so running out of space means that you have to re-enter these whenever you go back. And then delete old ones.

I am guessing that this 83 minute trip was really more like 200 to 300 minutes minimum, but probably much much more.

------------------------

While I agree that this cannot be used for exploration or even true fast travel, I would like to see the functionality of superchage enhanced either by higher multipliers on the boost, working in combination with FSD injection, and/or auto-matically replotted for the first boost jump without having to manually select a max range star.

If they did all three, then hunting neutron stars could become a viable way to hop around the galaxy at a slightly slower (initial) rate than normal jumps. Rather than as much 3-4 times slower than normal jumps.

I would also like to see special lists of bookmarks, and pre-plotted paths with way-points that could be saved and filed away without mucking the galaxy map UI with jumbles of unrelated bookmarks all showing at the same time.
 
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