Would storing ships with cargo unbalance game?

[Caliber_az]

There was another thread about a player would wanted limpets to stay in cargo as it was a pita when he forget to sell them off when switching, In that thread there numerous statements saying that letting cargo stay with ship would unbalance the game. Is that true? Leaving cargo with a ship would make it more simple and more realistic IMO.

One of my goals is to own at least 1 of every ship made, I have 34 of them with no duplicates as of yet. Total cargo space for me is 3,640 tones. Would that much storage of cargo be game breaking? Possibly players would buy T-9's in bulk (max 784 tones with no shield) at about 70M each.

Would having 10,000 tons of an item affect the state of a station? If a player hordes a certain item is that enough storage to cause a shortage? Players have bought ships to use a module storage and since that isn't supply and demand it is different I assume.

I am not all that informed on how the BGS and station states work but in all the years of players saying cargo storage would have game breaking effects I have yet to have anyone explain how. Lastly even if it does allow for market change would that be terrible if allowed as a game mechanic for everyone?

Caliber

 

[Goose4291]

There was another thread about a player would wanted limpets to stay in cargo as it was a pita when he forget to sell them off when switching, In that thread there numerous statements saying that letting cargo stay with ship would unbalance the game. Is that true? Leaving cargo with a ship would make it more simple and more realistic IMO.

One of my goals is to own at least 1 of every ship made, I have 34 of them with no duplicates as of yet. Total cargo space for me is 3,640 tones. Would that much storage of cargo be game breaking? Possibly players would buy T-9's in bulk (max 784 tones with no shield) at about 70M each.

Would having 10,000 tons of an item affect the state of a station? If a player hordes a certain item is that enough storage to cause a shortage? Players have bought ships to use a module storage and since that isn't supply and demand it is different I assume.

I am not all that informed on how the BGS and station states work but in all the years of players saying cargo storage would have game breaking effects I have yet to have anyone explain how. Lastly even if it does allow for market change would that be terrible if allowed as a game mechanic for everyone?

Caliber

No, it wont

But that wont the anti-change team wading in citing Eve-Fear

 

[Achibot]

No, it wouldn't. As there is no way to feasibly, even with great co-operation, store and move enough cargo to actually matter to the economy (ie BGS) in any meaningful way. It's an arbitrary limitation but I doubt they'll change it, sadly.

 

[Caliber_az]

I was wondering if player groups could create shortages with effort. you say not. Cargo storage would open up options for Commanders and make the game more dynamic it would appear.

The other unknown is how easy would it be to change the code, this may be a harder question?

Caliber

 

[M00ka]

From what I can understand, the only problem could be 'groups' hording rare goods, especially if those rare goods are needed for engineer introductions etc.

 

[Factabulous]

It would probably cause no issues - people just like to theorise about why things aren't allowed

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

I think it is down mostly of additional complexity on server side code. Gameplay wise most likely there is no huge issue. I would prefer just having goods store, so you can store rare goods, some rare drops, scooped things...Something limited, and expensive to maintain, so it wouldn't be used for hoarding, but only when you really, really want to store something.

 

[Cageman]

From what I can understand, the only problem could be 'groups' hording rare goods, especially if those rare goods are needed for engineer introductions etc.

This has been solved long ago with alt accounts. Way back when Engineering blueprints had certain commodities in their blueprints (and not just materials as it is nowdays), playergroups and individuals got second accounts to act as storage space.

Say what you want about that, but it certanly added to player agency and coop gameplay.

EDIT: There is also a player group which spends time collecting the few commodities needed for Engineering unlocks and then trade them for things like Imperial Slaves and the like. Can't remember the name of the group now... but... I really like that sort of stuff. And hopefully, FD do as well.

 

[sutex]

There was another thread about a player would wanted limpets to stay in cargo as it was a pita when he forget to sell them off when switching, In that thread there numerous statements saying that letting cargo stay with ship would unbalance the game. Is that true? Leaving cargo with a ship would make it more simple and more realistic IMO.

One of my goals is to own at least 1 of every ship made, I have 34 of them with no duplicates as of yet. Total cargo space for me is 3,640 tones. Would that much storage of cargo be game breaking? Possibly players would buy T-9's in bulk (max 784 tones with no shield) at about 70M each.

Would having 10,000 tons of an item affect the state of a station? If a player hordes a certain item is that enough storage to cause a shortage? Players have bought ships to use a module storage and since that isn't supply and demand it is different I assume.

I am not all that informed on how the BGS and station states work but in all the years of players saying cargo storage would have game breaking effects I have yet to have anyone explain how. Lastly even if it does allow for market change would that be terrible if allowed as a game mechanic for everyone?

Caliber

What a good Question, sure the trolls will be all over you like "buy a second account" rash, while saying that old gem "stop hording"

Simple truth ED is a p2p game and the idea that players can move to another ship and not have cargo follow you, is seen as heresy for dare exposing the limitation of the network model Frontier adopted

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/369641-Off-Ship-Storage-2-4-if-not-when

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

Yes it would.

If everyone stores thousands of tons of painite on the same side of the Bubble the whole thing will tip over and all the ice diamonds will fall out and get lost down the back of the couch.

 

[Cageman]

Yes it would.

If everyone stores thousands of tons of painite on the same side of the Bubble the whole thing will tip over and all the ice diamonds will fall out and get lost down the back of the couch.

Painite is pennies compared to what can be deep-core mined.

 

[Stealthie]

I suspect the main obstacles would be technical rather than strategic.

If you take on a mission, the unique cargo goes into your ship and the mission fails if you lose possession of it again.
Seems like resolving that issue and changing the game so you could, theoretically, have 20 unique cargos stored in ships dotted all around the bubble might be a PITA to sort out.

Personally, though, I'm not keen on the idea that somebody could just load cargo/passengers onto a suitable ship, swap into a different ship that's more suited to travel or combat, fly to their destination and then transfer the ship with the cargo in it.
Seems like a good way to bypass 90% of the gameplay assossiated with running missions.

 

[Misty_Dark]

There was another thread about a player would wanted limpets to stay in cargo as it was a pita when he forget to sell them off when switching, In that thread there numerous statements saying that letting cargo stay with ship would unbalance the game. Is that true? Leaving cargo with a ship would make it more simple and more realistic IMO.

One of my goals is to own at least 1 of every ship made, I have 34 of them with no duplicates as of yet. Total cargo space for me is 3,640 tones. Would that much storage of cargo be game breaking? Possibly players would buy T-9's in bulk (max 784 tones with no shield) at about 70M each.

Would having 10,000 tons of an item affect the state of a station? If a player hordes a certain item is that enough storage to cause a shortage? Players have bought ships to use a module storage and since that isn't supply and demand it is different I assume.

I am not all that informed on how the BGS and station states work but in all the years of players saying cargo storage would have game breaking effects I have yet to have anyone explain how. Lastly even if it does allow for market change would that be terrible if allowed as a game mechanic for everyone?

Caliber

I know that FDev before have spoken out against this, this was when engineers needed commodities...

 

[Alex Brentnall]

99% of the time no, it wouldn't really cause an issue. However, if hoarded appropriately players could bomb a community goal with hundreds of thousands of tons of cargo. Or repeatedly drain a system of all commodities preventing others accessing anything there. Or (prior to 3.3) horde UA's and bomb a whole cluster of stations.
In the end T9s are fairly cheap, as are cargo racks. Some players have billions of credits and lets face it, if they could then they would.


The biggest thing I can see that would legitimately break lots of things is using it as a block transport. Buy 10x T9s and fill with cargo -> jump to system -> ship transfer -> sell cargo -> jump back -> ship transfer back & repeat. Would make trade CG's a joke. Blocking ship transfers would work but can you imagine how annoyed you'd be if you jumped 200ly then realised the ship you want to transfer had a limpet in storage, or a few tons of material.


Personally I think the issue is also data storage. FD have said a lot of their data storage has a "idle" state which comes out as a zero which saves on data storage space given how many "zeros" there are at any given time. By having the possibility of cargo in a stored ship it's a whole bunch of more datapoints to store. How much cargo, what type of cargo, which ship etc.

 

[Mugur]

I also think the main reason is technical.

 

[babelfisch]

What a good Question, sure the trolls will be all over you like "buy a second account" rash, while saying that old gem "stop hording"

Simple truth ED is a p2p game and the idea that players can move to another ship and not have cargo follow you, is seen as heresy for dare exposing the limitation of the network model Frontier adopted

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/369641-Off-Ship-Storage-2-4-if-not-when

Wait, what? How is cargo storage related to P2P? By the way, you can move to another ship with cargo following you.

 

[Caliber_az]

I can see the coding may be an issue but I suspect it wouldn't be a big one. Like modules you could sell your cargo in the port it is parked and not allow any ships to be transferred that have cargo on them. Those with excess credits already have ways to affect markets and usually it is short term anyways. Buy and dumps, short sells, market flooding is done in the real world so why not allow it in ED. Players already affect BGS with combat and missions etc, this would be just another tool for the non pew pew crowd to use.

I agree that FD is unlikely to change this but part of my OP was to prove that this would be game breaking as tons of players have stated. I don't see any proof yet and feel it would enhance more than hurt but that is my opinion.

Like other wanted changes to crew members, limpet controllers and such, if we don't express the changes we want then FD would not know about them. They may decide to ignore these requests but there is always the chance they will listen.

Caliber

 

[Ian Doncaster]

If you knew a CG was coming (player-submitted, perhaps?) you could store a bunch of pre-loaded T-9s there to get a head start. But you can already stockpile bounties for a BH CG you know is coming and that doesn't seem to break anything ... and you can already have full material stores for a research CG.

You could do some interesting stuff with BGS states and trade stockpiles [1]. e.g. buy goods from a station when they're cheap, wait for the price to increase, sell them back without even launching. But in terms of the amount of time it would take you and the profit you could make from it, I suspect you'd do better just having one T-9 and actually hauling the goods to somewhere which wants them. (Personally, I think being able to do this sort of "futures trading" without having to mess around with a fleet of T-9s would be a good addition to make trading more interesting)

The BGS already has mechanisms to cope with that sort of thing (and more added in 3.3) so that should be manageable.

Powerplay might get hit by it a bit. At the moment fortification is instant but undermining can be stockpiled for a snipe. With the ability to store cargo with ships one could also snipe the fortification bar. There's a risk that this make Powerplay more interesting, so it would have to be approached with caution.

UA-bombing isn't there anymore so you couldn't stockpile hundreds of them for a mass attack.

Rares I can see being a bit of a problem - you could buy a bunch of cheap Cobras, store your allocation of rares in them one at a time, then transfer those allocations to your main freighter to get a full hold of rares. But you could do exactly the same now with an alt account or a friend, so it's probably not a big deal.

You could stockpile commodities for tech broker unlocks or engineer gifts ... but that's only a marginal convenience on getting them as and when you need them.

[1] I'm basing this on 3.2 behaviour. There's something largely similar in 3.3 but it'll take a while to get the exact numbers together again.

Or repeatedly drain a system of all commodities preventing others accessing anything there.

You can do that today if you have money to burn - just buy the cargo and abandon it on the pad (it's not like you're going to spend time selling an entire station's worth of commodities to recoup the money anyway - it'd be quicker to just sell the fleet of T-9s and earn the rest back some other way). And some of the expensive commodities are slow enough that you can do this with normal trade.

The biggest thing I can see that would legitimately break lots of things is using it as a block transport. Buy 10x T9s and fill with cargo -> jump to system -> ship transfer -> sell cargo -> jump back -> ship transfer back & repeat. Would make trade CG's a joke. Blocking ship transfers would work but can you imagine how annoyed you'd be if you jumped 200ly then realised the ship you want to transfer had a limpet in storage, or a few tons of material.

Yes, you'd have to block transfer of ships containing cargo - maybe have an option to abandon the stored cargo remotely so you didn't get messed up by a stray limpet?

 

[Shiro Akai]

Spot on.

I suspect the main obstacles would be technical rather than strategic.


Personally, though, I'm not keen on the idea that somebody could just load cargo/passengers onto a suitable ship, swap into a different ship that's more suited to travel or combat, fly to their destination and then transfer the ship with the cargo in it.
Seems like a good way to bypass 90% of the gameplay assossiated with running missions.

Smuggling now goes extinct. Load your Cutter/ T-9 / Anaconda full of contraband, switch to Sidewinder, go to destination, recall your previous ship, hand in missions. You have now successfully smuggled 780t of slaves.

High threat cargo running now trivial. Load up 700t + of gold, diamonds or meta alloys. Do Sidewinder trick to move yourself, recall previous ship and hand in mission without worrying about pirate interdictions.

 

[Factabulous]

Spot on.





Smuggling now goes extinct. Load your Cutter/ T-9 / Anaconda full of contraband, switch to Sidewinder, go to destination, recall your previous ship, hand in missions. You have now successfully smuggled 780t of slaves.

High threat cargo running now trivial. Load up 700t + of gold, diamonds or meta alloys. Do Sidewinder trick to move yourself, recall previous ship and hand in mission without worrying about pirate interdictions.

Yeah - this is a good point - any wing cargo mission becomes:

1) Take mission
2) Buy ships, take on cargo until all good are taken
3) Travel to destination
4) Transfer ships
5) Do other stuff - probably more wing missions
6) When the ships arrive offload and claim CR
7) Sell ships

Unless you disable xfer with cargo - which would be annoying, or have to discard before xfer - which would be annoying.

Per-ship cargo would also be annoying in situations like when I have Thargoid stuff aboard my DBX and I want to transfer to my 'vette to harvest some NPC mats (NPC pirates love Thargoid goodies) - if the goods are per-ship then I can't do that. Then I suppose you want inter-ship xfers - more work.

Simplest thing for FDev to do : leave it as it is.