Unpopular opinion: Odyssey should introduce personal teleporters

[Captain Willard]

HeHe: The title pretty much covers it.
Unpopular opinion.

 

[House0fDerp]

For the obvious reasons that pretty much every other game has them. It can be implemented easily; when docket at a station you can teleport to any other station with a shipyard you have previously visited. Only your fleshy self is teleported, not your ship, so you either need to go to a station where you left another ship, buy a new one or have one send over. This way traveling to somewhere is still rewarded (by unlocking the 'fast travel point') and you can participate in fun events elsewhere. I know some will argue that having fun isn't realistic or immersive, but I'm willing to make that sacrfice.

Spoiler

I wouldn't mind Eve style clones. Though I wonder if restrictions in range should be a part of the idea. Would there be downsides to having Colonia or the like be only a click away?

 

[PiggyPiggyPig]

The easier this game gets, the more boring it becomes.

 

[Arsen Cross]

For the obvious reasons that pretty much every other game has them. It can be implemented easily; when docket at a station you can teleport to any other station with a shipyard you have previously visited. Only your fleshy self is teleported, not your ship, so you either need to go to a station where you left another ship, buy a new one or have one send over. This way traveling to somewhere is still rewarded (by unlocking the 'fast travel point') and you can participate in fun events elsewhere. I know some will argue that having fun isn't realistic or immersive, but I'm willing to make that sacrfice.

Spoiler

I want to see this but the way I see its implementation is different. You use the telepresence feature we see in fighters and multi crew and apply that to Achilles robots you can remotely control. Both are already established parts of the game/lore.

You can only telepresence to somewhere you have been, purchased an Achilles droid and parked it there; or to any major social hub Frontier is intending to implement where Achilles droids are able to be remotely purchased; allowing you to telepresence to the major social hubs from anywhere or places you’ve already been.

This next part is important to make sure that telepresence is not viewed or used in entirely the same manner as where your player actually is. That is to make it so if you are controlling one of your ships with a telepresence Achilles droid, insurance does not cover rebuy or engineering on the ship that is lost. So if you lose it, it’s gone. If that is too hard core the alternative is in order to have the ship and engineering replaced you have to pay the full value of the ship. This ensures that players using this for pvp can’t consequence free jump to strategically placed droids in all the populated systems to murder hobo to find targets. It will still happen, but destroying one of those players would be a major blow.

For the odyssey portion controlling a telepresence droid, boarding someone else’s ship and disembarking at a combat zone to aid friends would be awesome. Inviting friends to multi crew could have them control Achilles droids you have onboard which they can then atm from your stockpiles onboard for combat sorties.

The coolest thing though would be the fact that where your player is at and where you have placed droids would be different and meaningful.

imagine parking on a fleet carrier bound for colonia from the bubble. Mining when needed but otherwise controlling other ships via telepresence to attend to other matters in the bubble.

 

[VR CMDR Novindus]

I generally like fast travel, but it needs to make sense in the game it's implemented in.

I don't think it makes a lot of sense in ED, which is big on exploration and trade runs, etc, all lore/immersion breaking stuff aside.
Having said that, what I advocate for in ED is that rather than fast travel, we should have fun travel (or engaging travel if you're pedantic about the more subjective nature of what is fun).

By that I mean two things:

1. Have more varied and meaningful events to break up the repetition (could be based on system and security states, among other things).
2. Have skill-based requirements for dealing with at least some of those events, if not all.

I've also suggested in the past to allow skillful play to slightly shorten travel time.

For example, you might be able to chain two or three jumps together using a skill-based mechanic, so that you skip like a stone over the systems in between. You'd still be in those systems for a time (without the game actually loading them, so it would be represented in a backdrop, if at all), but it would be less time in each middle system (say half) than if you had done each jump as normal.

Another example would be to allow the use of stellar bodies to somehow increase your supercruise acceleration (say up to 20 or 30 percent), again based on a skill requirement.
This would be mostly useful in giving players a better start to long hauls.

Of course, the actual implementation of the events and skill-based mechanics would need to be well thought through.

 

[Bob McBobblehead]

Teleporting straight to Colonia would be a nice time saver.

 

[Captain Willard]

No need . You have FC's.

 

[Taimaru]

No thanks unless it costs 1000 Low Temperature Diamonds per teleport.

 

[Morbad]

If by 'teleporter', you mean 'canister'--where your CMDR climbs in a can with a box of MREs and a few jugs of water and a bag to crap in while you wait for someone to take a transport mission and hope your can isn't jettisoned, sold to a black market, or lost with the ship it's in--then I agree!

Otherwise, I'd just make everyone walk everywhere.

 

[Rubbernuke]

With telepresence into androids who project your holo me features?

I thought that was us anyway right now.

If its good enough for Motoko Kusanagi its good enough for me too.

 

[varonica]

For example. Going from Colonia to the Bubble is pretty much hands-down no-contest the most boring experience in gaming, in the history of gaming.

Maybe it's boring because people make it boring? And why, if people find it it's boring, are they doing it? You know you can get to the bubble from anywhere in the game instantly any time right, just press the suicide button and select the freewinder option, that gets you right back in the bubble to a station where you can buy a ship.

 

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

I have pretty much all major space games, see no reason to pick just one. Btw, did you install NMS on a fast SSD? Teleports should be a matter of seconds.

Lol. My macs are all modern, the gaming pc is still kicking from 2012 with a low mid graphics card from 2017ish. Sdd is from the previous generation, just at sata speeds. What it still works. To see how long it kicks on for is a thing now. I'm running 30 inch monitors, so maybe that's why its lasted for so long Oh wait i got a case this year that's got way too many lights. Worth more than the graphics card. That's new.

 

[Factabulous]

One reason issues like this don't concern me is - I have multiple alts, so I can be in multiple places at the same time. I think multiple CMDRs is a better solution (ideally fdev would build alts into the game and allow us to 'earn' a number in-game). Maybe allow alts to share ships

The ability to teleport anywhere in the galaxy would expose the fact that the galaxy is procgen - so is pretty similar where-ever you go. One of the advantages of the current 'slow' travel is that you see it change as you get into different areas, and I think fast travel would spoil that (but I can see why others would disagree).

The 'Colonia travel is boring' is a funny one - I think the attitude varies over time:

• 1-2 trips : Wow! This is new! How do I outfit for this? Will I die! Oh, the exploration! Of course I will fly back myself!
• 3-10 trips: This is boring! I just want to be there! How can you do this to us fdev! Suicidewinder back makes me feel dirty
• 11+ Trips: This time I'll use a prison taxi, see how that goes, maybe visit some nebulae on the way. Suicidewinder back as usual

(a lot never make it to 11 )

 

[norlin]

For the obvious reasons that pretty much every other game has them

At first, for me it's obvious that any fast travel system (even partial) will kill the most of the ED gameplay.
Second, just no. Big NOPE.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

For the obvious reasons that pretty much every other game has them. It can be implemented easily; when docket at a station you can teleport to any other station with a shipyard you have previously visited. Only your fleshy self is teleported, not your ship, so you either need to go to a station where you left another ship, buy a new one or have one send over. This way traveling to somewhere is still rewarded (by unlocking the 'fast travel point') and you can participate in fun events elsewhere. I know some will argue that having fun isn't realistic or immersive, but I'm willing to make that sacrfice.

Spoiler

Oh god not for me. If the problem is it is too long to get to places then the problem is FD made the size of habited space too large. Making it essentially how NMS works would imo lose even more of the games sense of scale . Fast travel would be a huge error imo.

 

[amigacooke]

I went to Colonia as a macOS commander and returned as a Windows one. I must admit to being underwhelmed when I got to Colonia, it seemed to be much the same as the bubble, just with less facilities.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

Look at the Steam numbers. Making the game harder means fewer people buy it. Telling FDev to go back to making a niche game is pointless. May as well just embrace it.

Using game numbers scares the hell out of me. The entire reason I responded to FDs cap in hand with a stupid amount of cash for 1 game was precisely BECAUSE FD promised to do their own thing and not water down for mass appeal.
Lots of games are more popular than ED will ever be no matter what FD do. It doesn't mean ED would be a better game if FD adopted them.
I dare say more people play Mario kart than iracing but that does not mean iracing should take features from MK.
Imo there is nothing wrong with making a game for a niche but you have to make sure that niche stay engaged.
ETS2 has received heaps of expansions and does really well but that is a huge niche game

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

Bringing up NMS/SC is a familiar forum trope for those who've been here for years.

You'll get used to seeing it rolled out every second thread its like Godwins law but for nerds.

NMS is a great game and imo after a disaster launch the Devs have turned it around. But that game was never anything other than a fantasy game set in a fictional universe.

I held ED in much higher regard. It has a bigger team and I was more than happy to pay far more for it but with that comes higher expectations.

 

[[VR] M4st0d0n]

One reason issues like this don't concern me is - I have multiple alts, so I can be in multiple places at the same time. I think multiple CMDRs is a better solution (ideally fdev would build alts into the game and allow us to 'earn' a number in-game). Maybe allow alts to share ships

I dont think having to grind multiple toons is very realistic.

 

[Factabulous]

I dont think having to grind multiple toons is very realistic.

What do you mean 'realistic'? As in RP?

And if you think you need to 'grind' them, then you already lost