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

[Flimley]

Ship transfer..... Excellent !
Instantaneous... Not good !

The new travel method will be made via high jump range Asp explorer only, then call/transfer ship required. ......Resulting in all other ships FSD's being made redundant. Grade 'D' FSD will be very popular on combat builds now.

Flimley

 

[Bambi]

This mechanic already exists in the game when you get destroyed. Your ship is instantly rebuilt, modifications and all to exact specs, instantly.

Just have it cost the rebuy value. Your other ship is destroyed, the new one is built at the new station.

Do you complain about immersion when you respawn in call of duty too? There's a difference between these two mechanics, do not compare them.

 

[DragoonKnight]

Really appreciate the transfer - but instantaneously is right back into the "magic insta-repair/refuel of the SRV" area.

I'd prefer at least a minimal delay, plain based on Range.
You know, keeping it at least a tiny bit realistic. Something as little as having your ordered stuff appear as "Enroute - ETA X : XX " with a moving Timer in the Shipyard or Outfitting.
Tiny, dirt cheap detail to implement - big effect on realism and whatever is left of immersion in our gamey world.

Because let's face it, Players docking at Jaques and instantly "beam" their entire fleets there or something?
Dunno, Range is still Range. I'd like the Game to still respect and show that, even if the actual time is kept rather on the low side for practical/usability/gameplay reasons.

It could be reasonable if it is a 1 minute wait for every 1000 LY distance. Then you could get your combat ship delivered to Jacques in 22 minutes or so. Any longer would be just frustrating.
It would be kind of travel to Jacques, order ship, go to work or sleep, come back and pickup your ship. Not fun.

 

[Frambitam]

This.

Why would I bother having to wait and pay to have my ships moved for the same amount of time it would taken me to start of with?

1) Because you can do something else with that time, which is actually half the time it would take you to do it yourself (travelling to collect the ship then back again to deliver it), and 2) Because it's less of an arcade game and more of a simulation game. If you consider it to not be worth it to pay and wait for a ship transfer of say 50LY, then that's actually quite nice emergent balance. It's already a huge quality of life improvement to have ship transfers WITH a realistic delay, why destroy any concept of consistent rules within the universe by making it instant?

 

[ThatFuzzyTiger]

It would be a poor game that sat a commander useless in an escape pod from Beagle Point to Jaques (or wherever).

EVE does this, and it's possibly one of the most tense moments of the game, having to flee BY ESCAPE POD from your attackers, believe me, when it's your *LIFE* and your XP and Skill Implants on the line, it's brown trousers time. No joke, that makes anything in Elite Dangerous feel muted by comparison, you jump into a gate trap and it's beg, beg for your VERY LIFE.

 

[bitstorm]

Ship transfer..... Excellent !
Instantaneous... Not good !

The new travel method will be made via high jump range Asp explorer only, then call/transfer ship required. ......Resulting in all other ships FSD's being made redundant. Grade 'D' FSD will be very popular on combat builds now.

Flimley

You know, the more I think about it, the more I think I don't want ship transfer at all.

I mean for me having to transfer a ship is at most a rare issue, but the inconvenience of a low jump range is so tied into ship balance that I'm really not sure allowing players to sidestep that is such a good thing.

 

[[DOOK] Droogie]

I agree, immersion is the least of the problems that come with instantaneous ship transfer. It's more the impacts on gameplay that I find worrying, to put it kindly. Where before you had to travel the distances with the ship you want engineered for example, or travel the distances with another ship and carry the modules back to where your, say FDL or Vulture, were docked and swap the modules, you can now take your Conda from engineer's system to engineer's system and summon your FDL or Vulture at every stop. Noone will ever travel more than a couple dozen ly in any other ship than the Conda, DBX or AspX again, unless the costs of transfer are so prohibitively high that the feature doesn't help much in the first place.

I think all of this could be solved if transfer would take some amount of time, optimally scaling with distance. It's not even that important how much time it would take, I'd personally prefer something close to what it would take a player to fly the ship there himself, but there must be at least some sort of delay to prevent this feature from hurting the game.

I'm fine with a delay. Not days. Not 10's of hours. I've already made the trip, eating up days, possibly weeks, getting there. Sitting around waiting for a long time doesn't sound like an enjoyable experience. By then, I want out of the ship I'm in.

 

[ahwala]

Won't a transfer require a shipyard at both endpoints?

Probably. But I cant think of an engineer right now that doesn't have a station with a shipyard in the same system. Ah well, Palin.

 

[Ozram]

I agree, immersion is the least of the problems that come with instantaneous ship transfer. It's more the impacts on gameplay that I find worrying, to put it kindly. Where before you had to travel the distances with the ship you want engineered for example, or travel the distances with another ship and carry the modules back to where your, say FDL or Vulture, were docked and swap the modules, you can now take your Conda from engineer's system to engineer's system and summon your FDL or Vulture at every stop. Noone will ever travel more than a couple dozen ly in any other ship than the Conda, DBX or AspX again, unless the costs of transfer are so prohibitively high that the feature doesn't help much in the first place.

I think all of this could be solved if transfer would take some amount of time, optimally scaling with distance. It's not even that important how much time it would take, I'd personally prefer something close to what it would take a player to fly the ship there himself, but there must be at least some sort of delay to prevent this feature from hurting the game.

Indeed, because if all you are using it for is to conveniently relocate a fleet to a new home system, then having the time be realistically in line with how long it would take a player to fly the ship from A to B (or even slower) would not be an issue. It's only an issue for those who want to "game" the mechanic. Making costs prohibitive only rewards grinders and creates a pointless feature for near everyone else. At a reasonable cost, but a realistic time frame, relocating a fleet of ten or more ships would still be worthwhile if going to a new home base is what you are after. All this will do is throw another wrench between players who grind credits and materials and those who play in any other way. This may even turn open into the very thing people have been complaining about (which really it isn't yet).

 

[Bambi]

It could be reasonable if it is a 1 minute wait for every 1000 LY distance. Then you could get your combat ship delivered to Jacques in 22 minutes or so. Any longer would be just frustrating.
It would be kind of travel to Jacques, order ship, go to work or sleep, come back and pickup your ship. Not fun.

Maybe travel in the ship you wanted to use in the first place? You're making it not fun by thinking of it as a cheat or exploit, in that case, it surely should be instant. Why not just enable fast travel to anywhere in the galaxy then?

 

[[DOOK] Droogie]

EVE does this, and it's possibly one of the most tense moments of the game, having to flee BY ESCAPE POD from your attackers, believe me, when it's your *LIFE* and your XP and Skill Implants on the line, it's brown trousers time. No joke, that makes anything in Elite Dangerous feel muted by comparison, you jump into a gate trap and it's beg, beg for your VERY LIFE.

Your life has value in EVE. You lose a lot of progression when you die. That's how pirates operate. They basically ransom your own life to you, in exchange for not killing your pod.

 

[kofeyh]

Can we possibly, possibly see how much Frontier have cooked this, before having a collective aneurism?

No, transport should not be instant; this disincentivises long distance travel. If it's a very small delay, then inside the bubble it will be near instant. A few minutes perhaps. That's important. It should always, always be more effective to just drive a a few jumps, than have your ship delivered.

Because suddenly Jaques and other long range places may be (many) hours delay. So sure, I can ask for a ship to be sent. But it might take a day or so to arrive at Jaques.

And I don't see how that's unreasonable. Yes I still have to drive out there (it's a delivery service, so come to you, not be dispatched elsewhere).

There is always instant travel back to the bubble care of sidewinder suicide. That's cheap and easy. But your ship might take a day or so to join you. I don't see how that's unreasonable?

Again - short distances (a few hundred to a few thousand) it's measured in minutes or so. But if it's long range, then the AI theoretically has to scoop fuel. It doesn't sleep or eat or poop though so buckyball run to Jaques is what, 18-20 hours or something depending on jump range?

Bit over a day for low range ships, bit under for higher range? Sounds pretty reasonable to me. I mean frontier are simply spawning the ship wherever, so immersion wise find something else because your ship transits thousands of LY to the last station when you go for a drive in SRV. And that's instant.

However. I'd like to think this is just a useful way to get a good ship transited, with the commander having rocked up in something else. Convenience, but with a cost.

I am not Frontier so may be way off base with what the community wants versus what it should probably get. So let's see how far they have boned this (or not) first.

 

[[DOOK] Droogie]

Maybe travel in the ship you wanted to use in the first place? You're making it not fun by thinking of it as a cheat or exploit, in that case, it surely should be instant. Why not just enable fast travel to anywhere in the galaxy then?

Because you still have to make the initial trip to get there.

 

[ahwala]

I'm fine with a delay. Not days. Not 10's of hours. I've already made the trip, eating up days, possibly weeks, getting there. Sitting around waiting for a long time doesn't sound like an enjoyable experience. By then, I want out of the ship I'm in.

I think that's personal preferance really, you could do all kinds of other things while you "wait". But I see your point and in my opinion even a relatively short delay could help to prevent the feature from being exploited.

 

[Ziljan]

It is exactly the same thing. New ship is rebuilt instantly. No in game time passes. The game clock doesn't skip ahead. Just like all modules are instantly added to your ship, all cargo instantly loaded and offloaded, you are instantly refueled and restocked.

SRV is instantly fixed, refueled, and rearmed by clicking a button using materials in your magic storage that somehow travels with you.

I understand the concerns, but not with immersion. This is common in the game already. In fact, the game kind of revolves around it.

It's similar but it's not the same. The time on the clock is the exact same. But that is not the only consideration here. The impact on the game play is also a consideration. We don't die that often. I often go months without dying. And when I do, the pain of it is large enough that I don't worry about the realism or passage of time, because I am too busy worrying about lost exploration data, failed missions, shame, analyzing tactics, etc.

However, transferring ships is something I do ALL THE TIME. And when I do it, I am well aware of the passage of time because that is the limiting factor. It drives my choice of ship (unlike death/respawn) and I usually pick the most efficient ship for the job. So now every damn time I want to get from A to B, I will be doing an involuntary and unconscious comparison of the time wasted travelling to the cost of having my ship fairy'd with pixie dust to a new location. It's not even something I want to think about! And yet I will be forced to think about how distance is an illusion every time I log into the game.

I understand people not having a lot of time to play, but there are BETTER solutions to that problem. Like making the MAXIMUM modded range of all ships roughly the same (~50LY). But if they are going to make having short jump range ships become more costly to own, then that will just bias the game and create lots of negative unintended consequences for everyone. Meanwhile, respawning instantly has a very limited impact on the game. Mostly because it is a net negative consequence, can't be gamed, and doesn't influence ship choice.

 

[Bambi]

A few minutes perhaps.

As far as the timescale used in ED gameplay, a few minutes is indistinguishable from instant. Manual travel doesn't take that long, really. It feels longer because you're doing a repetitive task. So there's no particular reason not to have it resemble manual travel time.

 

[[DOOK] Droogie]

Do you complain about immersion when you respawn in call of duty too? There's a difference between these two mechanics, do not compare them.

There is no difference. Your ship is rebuilt, mods and all, instantly. You get the exact same mods. The engineers cant even pull that off. It's RNG every time.

Also, I never complained about immersion.

 

[Odys]

Definitely love the transfer.

Want it to cost LESS than the normal time to get there, but not much less. A large fraction of that ships normal time.

This is still fantastic because you no longer have to buy a temp ship just to fly back and move a ship to your new homebase, as well as the cost for fuel and making sure you have enough fuel to arrive etc. Making it cost time will deter the worst of it, and frankly, in space, my ship could drone fly itself. So this is perfectly real.

Love it!

 

[Flimley]

You know, the more I think about it, the more I think I don't want ship transfer at all.

Its just the wrong decision for ship transfer to be instantaneous. It also feels wrong...like 'magic' when so much of the game is based in as much as possible real science. Even if theoretical physicists can mathematically calculate mutiples of light speed. No-one has calculated instantaneous travel.

Flimley

 

[Bambi]

Because you still have to make the initial trip to get there.

Some ships are faster than others. You are still intending to use it as basically a cheat that makes a slow ship just as fast as a fast one.