2.2's Instant Ship and Module Transport - Yay or Nay?

[Shar]

Wow... Firing people and dead game... You really are THAT worried about this game right now aren't you?

I actually am, i have no regard for my own convenience i love this game and am distressed by the careless disregard shown here don't get my wrong i do want ship transfer but not at the cost of the core balance that gives the game it's magic.

I have no malice toward my fellow players i just wont whats right for the game as a whole.

 

[Trueno33]

No one force you to use a feature you dislike.

You are defending "your vision" of the game.

Things are bit different.

Well, whatever

 

[Omgzzwtf]

When this feature goes to beta, they will see how it gets abused and hopefully make the adjustments necessary to balance it. As far as balance goes, putting it behind a credit wall doesn't go far enough. Sure it will be super expensive to transfer a ship to Jaques' Station, but that's not going to stop CMDR's that have a lot of credits to spare, though I don't really know anyone that would want to move an entire fleet out there, possibly spending hundreds of millions of credits to do so, only to realize that there really isn't much to do at the moment. The only way to balance this is to put in a transfer delay, OR a transfer cooldown after the first transfer.

I agree with many of the people on this thread that by adding instant transfer, you essentially remove the need to upgrade certain items on your ships, no need to buy a-rated FSD's or AFMU's. No need to d-rate anything or sacrifice weapons or other modules, since you can just transfer your ship from one dock to the next instantly, fitted as if you were just tooling around in supercruise. I'm pretty sure that Fdev will create some sort of balance for this, but I think we're going to have to wait and see.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

Not at all, and listeing to the off site/pre recorded interviews with DB back to back to the staghe presentatiom did more then just sting a little, to be honest...

indeed. I wonder if that is why DB was not there.....

 

[who?]

One: Jaques has shown that matter can be thrown through hyperspace over huge distances given enough resources. Why shouldn't it be possible to do that to a ship, paying for the necessary fuel that is then used to feed an Inanimate Matter Accelerator to transport an object that has an infinitessimal fraction of the mass of a station? There is no real argument against that IMAO at this point in Elite history.

Two: You can die at Beagle Point and instantly respawn in the safety of a core system. Maybe that should take into account the time it would take a measly little escape pod to bridge that distance? Would a few weeks be a good amount of time for that?

Three: When you detonate your souped-up Clipper with all the best engineer modules that time an money could buy, you can instantly buy it back for a fraction of its value. Would you feel better if that process cost a lot on top of the travel time from point Two?

One: Jacques has always been a bit...weird. He/it is almost a piece of lore unto itself. Thankfully, not all stations can go hopping across the galaxy. That would be naff.

Two: Certainly, this is logic-defying. There is a mechanism which explains your return - you can pick up escape pods and return them to the bubble, so it also stands to reason others can return yours when your ship is destroyed - but nothing explains how this appears to be instant. This is simply one of the cases where there's virtually no other option. You can't tell a player "Wait 3 months before you can do *anything*". On the other hand, when summoning a ship there are many, many things you can do while you wait.

Three: I actually would prefer if the replacement cost were more, but some form of insurance does make sense. Even if how insurance exists in the game is a bit.. odd. (You don't pay any premiums, you just get your ship costs subsidised. Unless, of course, the Pilot's Federation skims off the top before you get paid for your missions/bounties etc., which is a possibility).

 

[Dbrn47]

i think the issue here (and this imo is the devs fault ) You are clearly happy playing Sandro's vision of the game.

I bought David Braben's vision of the game, and whilst if pressed on the matter they would both probably swear they are singing from the same hymm sheet, if you listen to them speak, they clearly are not imo.

That does seem to be the problem for some. I bought Elite because I was excited about a new space themed game in the same vein as Freelancer and Independence War. I hadn't even ever heard of Elite until Dangerous so really all the Braben's Vision talk is above my head. I did get glimpses of the DDF though and that had some really cool, albeit ambitious ideas in it. Who's vision was that? Braben? Sammarco? E Community? In any case, space sandbox, keep adding stuff and I'm happy... Maybe it's too simple a view for you or others, but I enjoy the game a lot more now than I did when I took my first break a month or so after release.

 

[CMDR Robyn Highart]

Right! I want a personal teleporter in every station now. After all I only have 10 minutes every full moon, apart from leap years and stellar alignment events to play.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

That's not a bad idea, actually

back in the day i believe we were not even going to start with a ship, we were going to be working for "The (wo)man" before we could get our own ship.

I too would not have an issue waiting for an insurance ship to be bought to us, and in the mean time use another of our ships or a loner.

the sweeter the ship the longer it would take to source one - with a limit of course -Dare i mention the "other" game but i think Star Citizen is doing something along those lines

 

[WeirdWizard]

i think the issue here (and this imo is the devs fault ) You are clearly happy playing Sandro's vision of the game.

I bought David Braben's vision of the game, and whilst if pressed on the matter they would both probably swear they are singing from the same hymm sheet, if you listen to them speak, they clearly are not imo.

This has been pretty clear for a very long time though. Right back to pre launch it was obviously Sandro making the big decisions and he wanted this online gamey type of experience.

 

[TomR]

Right! I want a personal teleporter in every station now. After all I only have 10 minutes every full moon, apart from leap years and stellar alignment events to play.

That's a good idea, I bet it would add a lot of chances for fun in the game.

 

[Trueno33]

Agreed. I can't believe Michael Brookes is in favour of the instantaneous idea. I think his take would be, "Space is big - deal with it." Definitely some delay is required in my view, or you effectively wear all your ships on a key ring.


Or risk being asked, "Are you pleased to see me, or is that in an Anaconda in your pocket?"

Dear mods, I did not name the ships!

Yet here you see players who honestly dont seem to grasp the spirit of the game, doing the dirty work for them.

 

[Yaffle]

That isn't true. You could "rent" a ship while the repairs are done to your other ship. You could still play the game. Realism!

You conflate realism and continuity again.

As it happens, this would be a nice thing to have. Your rental choices could be limited by what's in that station (a freewinder always being an option). Or you could buy a whole replacement module. It does leave a bit of a problem with 'I can rent a ship, but I can't test fly one.' and 'why can't I just rent a ship?' which spirals off elsewhere. They maybe good gaming ideas, but they are not in this game, and if they were it would not have the same effects as this change. Indeed, if they were suggested then I'd be open to discussing them.

But, for the sake of continuity it's not how it works. The game rules are - there is no instant teleport. Everything has to be shipped physically from one place to another. Now we are saying 'there is a teleport, but only for ships that you already own.' which is starting to sound a bit like 'gravity is optional on Tuesdays' it is so arbitrary.

 

[ThatFuzzyTiger]

Sorry. But that's really over-complicating it. I mean really, really, over-complicating.

...Really, there are AWS technologies that FD could likely use off the shelf for some of this stuff. I use Azure, but I'm certain AWS has comparable.

You're looking at one person. I'm thinking in terms of hundreds of thousands of transactions. Your idea sounds lovely when you think about it as an individual thing, all neat and shiny, but there's a lot of holes missing.

Start with the following :

* Where is arrival time stored, how does the server govern arrival time? Remember, the client cannot be trusted to hold the arrival time. As the server governs arrival time, it's going to need a queue for all these ships in transit otherwise there's going to be database blocking issues with all the ships being sent back and forth, that's going to need a scheduler. We're back to where we started.

* If you're going to query every ship that the player owns, then you're sending lots of queries where you should only be sending the relevant ones (i.e. the ones only for that shipyard) , now granted we could optimise it by limiting queries to say, the ship transfer window and once when you dock at a new station, but that still drives up the load significantly.

* Notification queue? Nice. Now we have TWO queues, one scheduler (and a partridge in a pear ~treeeeee~ )

* Oh, and a messaging app that pushes the messages through, but that's going to need either an update to the UI or some extra additions in the existing UI to allow people to handle ship transfer notifications.

* What happens if the push fails? Does this force a disconnect due to data not received by the client and lack thereof of response?

 

[Marc Alexander]

Sandi,

Here is your answer: The Dream Sequence Mechanic

[video=youtube;1QGWgyss9wE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QGWgyss9wE[/video]

"Hey, I must have slept through my ship transfer. Ookay then.."

 

[Apocryphic]

All for it, even the instantaneous transfer.

The cost appears to scale by distance and mass, and I'd rather not force players to await delivery. Of course, I thought there was no good reason to make the heat indicators lag, either.

 

[Andovar]

wow. over 3200 posts in just over 2 days.
kinda hard for FD to not take notice on this one.
though even if they are discussing this internally, I doubt they'll let us know.

 

[Frambitam]

indeed. I wonder if that is why DB was not there.....

Come now, let's not start inferring some kind of drama in the upper echelons of FD. Braben is surely a very busy man who can't be everywhere at once and can't micromanage every aspect of game development.

 

[Eymerich]

How on earth could you have missed the posts with good reasons for being against instant ship transfer?, oh that's right, selective viewing. Come on, the potential effects on powerplay, community goals, gold rush elements, Jaques and many more have been well presented. Ship transfer with a decent delay is still a quality of life improvement on what we have now, instant transfer, could potentially at least, have a real adverse effect on many elements. This absolutely reeks of instant gratification, and sorry, just because I have 2 flies in my soup, (instant travel upon death, instant repair etc), does not mean that I want 20 more in it with a lazily implemented and ill conceived mechanic such as insta-tranfer.

The alternative beetwen insta transfer and the other 2 options (same time as player would use, of course approximatly) or a small % of the time are still worse than insta trasfer.

The first solution remove your ship for weeks. Tell me your problem if:

1) I go to jaques with an asp and then call my Fdl or corvette;

2) I directly fly to jaques with my Fdl or corvette.

I can do both and still I can be with Jaques with my corvette (or with my asp + my corvette). Why is this bothering you?

Why I should play for week when i can get To jacques with my conda and then call an other ship over there? It's just "I" have played that bother the others. Because of that, I "blessed" the new feature.
Btw: just completed to upgrade 2 more Fsd ship in my fleet (courier and gunship): While I was travelling to that good old witch I was wandering here, on the forum. Nice way to play the game, uh?

2 option.

Only a % of the time.

This solution bring the same problem (things should be debatalbe but I am going to gliss) of the instant trasfer but a less degree. Unfortunatly, I don't have fun in watching a clock going to zero so for me the Insta trasfer is still a win.

Is it realistic? No, most probably no.
Is it coherent with Elite's lore? No, I doubt it.

Doesi it solve more problems than it creates? Hell, yes.

That's enough to me.

Do 10 times a trip to the professor with 10 ship different and then we could talk again about the insta trasfer.

Untill then, insta trasfer got my simpathy....

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

Come now, let's not start inferring some kind of drama in the upper echelons of FD. Braben is surely a very busy man who can't be everywhere at once and can't micromanage every aspect of game development.

true enough.... my apologies!.

 

[WeirdWizard]

Right! I want a personal teleporter in every station now. After all I only have 10 minutes every full moon, apart from leap years and stellar alignment events to play.

You jest but the ability to teleport TO your ships is the next logical step and one that many would welcome as it would make teaming up and playing with friends vastly easier. It's not the game I would of liked ED to be but it IS the game ED is becoming and it's a valid type of game.