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

[OriginalBadBoy]

Ill need and want to optimize my combat ships to stay competitive and that means getting rid of unneeded A class FSD

But if want an optimised combat ship you would be doing that anyway, so whats the difference? The only difference is that you can freely move the ship around the bubble without having to go and fetch it. Or you go and fetch it yourself, the point being its your choice. If you dont want to do that then don't, if you do then do that.

The point being that if you think that this mechanic is going to ruin the game then simply don't do it. You are complaining that it will ruin the game for you, but its your choice, so only you are going to be ruining the game in the end for yourself. I dont take 'fast travel' options in a game like Skyrim for example because I know if I do I am cheating myself, but others may want it, it doesn't make the game worse because the option exists, because in the end it is an option.

If all you care about is 'staying competitive' then tbh you are in the wrong game, thats not the be all.

 

[Verax]

Just as a trader I use a T9 for cargo space. From time to time I change trade routes, so I have to engage my brain a bit and work out the best way to get to the new route, or to go and scout one out. I need to work out a balance between cargo, jump-range, refuelling. I have to do this out of necessity. As a result I've had quite a few hair-raising episodes and interesting encounters.

Now I summon my Asp. I make three jumps, or scout the easy way, summon my T9. My game has gone to one of a bit of thinking and planning to one of simple button pushing. No more do I need to compromise on the 'transit' T9. No more do I have the chance of those sweaty palms moments in transit.

Of course, I can ignore this mechanic. But many won't, and will skip out the game, jumping from 'grind' to 'grind' and moaning about the grind and how it's all the same.

At least with a delay I can still play the game, maybe use my Asp to do some trading, go and scan a few stars I would not have been to but for having the time while the T9 is shipped.

What gameplay will the mechanic add? What are the pros of the mechanic?

I've not seen a case for it yet.

There's almost no point in "scouting" when most systems along routes are empty. Additionally, most traders (and possibly even yourself) utilize EDDB to plot routes along profitable circuits-- which will still offer the highest profit margins over other exploitive techniques (at least in all the examples I've seen so far by opponents of the instantaneous aspect of this feature).

Now, onto the pros:

-For traders and explorers (although to murderhobos' detriment... yay that should please even more of you honestly), they can now enter heavily populated systems in tougher ships without fear of entering in a lightly or completely unarmed ship, and then transfer that ship there safely.

-For ALL gamers, it reduces redundant travel times that get in the way of actual gameplay and engagement in desired activities by allowing them to transfer desired ships to their location right away without having to suffer through tons of witchspace jumps just to ferry them.

-that specifically benefits gamers that have constraints on their time

-it also benefits combat players and traders that may have lacking jump ranges on their ships due to limitations of the base hull and their builds-- though not in the form of an exploit, simply a time saver of removing the requirement to watch loading screens over and over (witchspace). If these players are looking for localized gameplay in a certain region or want to group up with friends in a distant area of space, they can do so without wasting upwards of an hour or more jumping and then refitting (although they still have to jump there in something, call it a taxi. It's pretty irrelevant to anyone but the actual beholder).

-the gaming community at large benefits for the greater allure of Elite Dangerous as it will appeal to a broader audience, meaning the likelihood of more incoming new players that are no longer deterred by as much of the prohibitive timesink the game previously and needlessly required. Additionally, more players that grew bored with these elements of Elite Dangerous may return, meaning a greater population for all to enjoy. Finally both of these potential increases will demonstrate an increase in the game's overal popularity, which is known to stimulate growth, which means more money for Frontier to utilize to continue expanding and building this game into something amazing beyond what it is now. That's something everyone benefits from.

-the feature is entirely optional so it does not force anyone into a style of play they do not desire

-ship role balance is intact because it does not make any ships better at what they are not intended for. i.e. combat ships are not better for exploration, trade ships are not better for combat, and exploration ships are not better for trade. The only difference is the needless hours of ferrying ships along from known points in inhabited space will require less time-- an acceptable and OPTIONAL drop in realism for those who elect to take convenience over immersion.

Overall this is a great feature and it should be instant.

 

[CaptainKremmen]

That's huge assumption knowing all good pilots use power management cascade to use more powerful weapons while turning FSD off during combat.

But you knew that. You just needed dramatic example. Like seriously guys, cut the drama and stop snipping to each other.

That's not exactly as cut-and-dried as it used to be. A number of newer changes now overlay each other, making it harder to say, "all good pilots disable FSD". eg.

- FSDs being given "boot-up" time.
- Engineer mods that change boot-up time
- Powerplant 0% being likely to reduce output, rather than being an ammo-rack style detonation

If a 'priority 1' for thrusters+FSD gets under the powerplant "reduced output" threshold, it retains swift high-wake exit capability at PP 0%.

 

[Boomer Kay]

I do care and I accept your arguments.

What do you think of my proposal here https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...le-Transport-Yay-or-Nay?p=4384663#post4384663 ? It's designed to counter the immersion breaking aspect of instant transfer but with practically the same outcome (except for requiring a little bit of forward planning).

That's a quite sensible way of better visualization. +rep

 

[Gimi]

This would solve the local module availability issue. And would partially solve the immersion issue. However, it would still destroy the meaning of having ships with different jump ranges, since people would just fly their fastest ship everywhere.

All you'd ever see would be Anacondas and Corvettes. Or AspXs and FDLs.

Agreed, that is a possibility. But ship transfers are coming, so looking at pros and cons, I think sending your ship rather than summoning it is a good compromise.

 

[ThatFuzzyTiger]

How is this different from receiving a commodity as part of a mission reward?

*grumbles*

I didn't really want to get dragged into a tech quagmire but fine.

Missions are stateless, how is this possible? Missions themselves are essentially a lookup which is joined to the pilot record with a time-stamp for when the mission expires (the mission and the timestamp already exist, when you take the mission all you are doing is joining it to your pilot entry). Those are the only two bits of info that the game actually needs to append to the pilots record. The mission lookup then points to the relevant entry on the database, tells it what SORT of mission, and what conditions might need to be fulfilled for it to branch, chain, etc. Fairly simple IF THEN statements. The mission lookup also has what conditions need to be fulfilled but doesn't actively track them, it will just perform the check at the point of submission (tracking can be done locally at the client level).

If the job is to provide cargo, that's easy, it just has to check the transaction server ONCE, when you get to the destination, do you have Cargo A at Point B, if so, issue reward C. If the job is to transport cargo, also easy, issue cargo A at mission start, if cargo A is at point B, issue reward C ELSE issue fine D. See? This is all stateless, you don't have to have this stuff stored server level. Only bits and checks.

For moving player assets around, you have to trust nothing and assume everything is hostile, and since credits are involved too, that means a scheduler. So the whole lot goes server-side, if you add a time delay, that's made it stateful, suddenly things get complex.

 

[Ozram]

Exactly... and if that person knew any better they would realize downgrading FSD hardly gives any significant advantage. I've tried it. The only benefit was a shorter list of systems to select from on the hi wake menu and a guarantee it would use less fuel. Not really a huge advantage at all.

Bull excrement! It makes a huge difference depending on the combat ship.

 

[Gimi]

That's huge assumption knowing all good pilots use power management cascade to use more powerful weapons while turning FSD off during combat.

But you knew that. You just needed dramatic example. Like seriously guys, cut the drama and stop snipping to each other.

No they don't. That depends on the role. With the current way the power module works (delivering 50% when severely damaged) and the FSD charge up time, setting up priorities so that you end up with just the basic modules working for escape, is a very valid outfitting choice, even for combat ships.

 

[Verax]

Bull excrement! It makes a huge difference depending on the combat ship.

No it doesn't and I'd wager I'm far more of a combat expert than you. Do I need to quote stats or are you just going to tout out the "e-peen" tangent? Lol. It makes no significant difference and it will not win a battle in a fight with experienced players.

 

[Ziljan]

We all (most of us anyway) have real lives and limited playtime. It is a bogus and pathetic argument.

The argument "but my time is precious" boils down to:

1) their time is more valuable than yours
2) they only sort of care about ED anyway, and will be gone in a month regardless of what Fdev does.

Either way, Frontier should not be designing the game with disloyal transient players with narcissism issues. They should be designing the game for people who will potentially be around in the 10th season. Unless they are counting on a steady stream of fresh transient narcissists?

 

[Ozram]

No it doesn't and I'd wager I'm far more of a combat expert than you. Do I need to quote stats or are you just going to tout out the "e-peen" tangent? Lol. It makes no significant difference and it will not win a battle in a fight with experienced players.

What makes you say that about your e-peen expertise? Go by the weight of the ships. Drop it bellow a certain threshold and the performance increases noticeably. ICourier is a great example of where this is really obvious, but works generally on most ships. On the more expensive ones there is also the aspect of a cheaper rebuy price. Please stop talking nonsense and making assumptions about others you couldn't possibly know.

 

[Robert Maynard]

*grumbles*

I didn't really want to get dragged into a tech quagmire but fine.

Missions are stateless, how is this possible? Missions themselves are essentially a lookup which is joined to the pilot record with a time-stamp for when the mission expires (the mission and the timestamp already exist, when you take the mission all you are doing is joining it to your pilot entry). Those are the only two bits of info that the game actually needs to append to the pilots record. The mission lookup then points to the relevant entry on the database, tells it what SORT of mission, and what conditions might need to be fulfilled for it to branch, chain, etc. Fairly simple IF THEN statements. The mission lookup also has what conditions need to be fulfilled but doesn't actively track them, it will just perform the check at the point of submission (tracking can be done locally at the client level).

If the job is to provide cargo, that's easy, it just has to check the transaction server ONCE, when you get to the destination, do you have Cargo A at Point B, if so, issue reward C. If the job is to transport cargo, also easy, issue cargo A at mission start, if cargo A is at point B, issue reward C ELSE issue fine D. See? This is all stateless, you don't have to have this stuff stored server level. Only bits and checks.

For moving player assets around, you have to trust nothing and assume everything is hostile, and since credits are involved too, that means a scheduler. So the whole lot goes server-side, if you add a time delay, that's made it stateful, suddenly things get complex.

Mission rewards are player assets (materials and commodities) and/or credits - taking on a mission requires a server transaction.

A time delay relating to ship "arrival" at the destination station would be a Boolean result of a timestamp comparison between the "time docked" of the player's ship in the server record and current server time - just as the server checks the location of ships before allowing the player to elect to change to a stored ship. We already change ships - presumably the system for ensuring security of the transaction is already there....

 

[Boomer Kay]

The argument "but my time is precious" boils down to:

1) my time is more valuable than yours
2) i only sort of care about ED anyway, and will be gone in a month regardless of what Fdev do

Either way, Frontier should not be designing the game with unloyal transient players with narcissism issues. They should be designing the game for people who will potentially be around in the 10th season. Unless they are counting on a steady stream of fresh transient narcissists?

The probability of me being around in the 10th season increases with less time spent sitting in front of the screen, literally fiddling my thumbs.
That was the reason I quit games like EverQuest.
Sitting and waiting is not "playing the game". Sitting and waiting works for some time .. until you realize all you do is sit and wait.
Active traveling is not "sitting and waiting" btw. and I never really had an issue with that, but simply adding a timer for a ship to arrive somewhere is exactly that.

 

[rootsrat]

I voted "Transfer should take a large fraction of the time it would take manually."

To me Elite is a role playing game and a simulator. And I prefer such games to be as realistic as possible. Obviously compromises have to be made for gameplay and while I agree with more common things like unloading, refuelling etc. to be instant, something more serious like a ship transfer should not be instant in my opinion.

The transfer itself is a desirable thing, for a number of reasons:

1) It will get players more attached to their ships. Rather than buying yet another disposable combat ship when I come across a profitable combat mission etc. while in my trading ship, I could ask for my Vulture to be transported to my location. You build a bond with your ship, it rises to a valuable asset, it gets a name etc. Things like that help get players immerse (yeah I said it!) themselves in the game world and it becomes more believeable and gains integrity.

2) Convenience - rather than spending time on kitting out the new disposable combat ship, I can simply request for my own ship to be transported to me and (assuming it's not instant) use the waiting time to make another trade run etc.

3) Gameplay reasons - because games are supposed to be fun!


The instanenous transfer would kill the feeling of realism and simulation that Elite currently does really well. The world will become more believeable in 2.2 due to little details like station variants, but at the same time it will lose A LOT of "believeability" due to magical ship teleportation. What is the explanation for this? 3D print? What's the point of having shipyars and Engineers at all then, if it all can be recreated in a 3D printer?

I understand that it's realism vs fun gameplay factor, but that needs to be balanced and I think that going into either extreme is bad - waiting an hour for a ship is certainly not fun! But at the same time an instant, magical <PUFF - here's your ship> style teleporation seems completely unrealistic and - to me personally - also isn't fun at all.

Like I said, realism vs fun factor is all about the compromises and while I accept that minor things like refuel are instant, because most people probably wouldn't like idling 10 minutes in the dock waiting for refuel, but ship transfer is a major thing and we can do other things while waiting for our ship to be delievered.

 

[OriginalBadBoy]

So games that don't appeal to people who don't have a lot of time are not allowed to exist? Never understand that argument that game has to do what people X (whoever said group is defined as) wants.

I never said that ... Did I ? You are twisting my words now. Simple fact is that people who don't have a massive amount of game time available will more likely go to a game which is more simplistic. That much is obvious. If I only had 2 hours a week to play a game I wouldn't choose Civilisation for example, I would more likely choose Call of Duty. Frontier are trying to make the game more palatable to people with less play time, there isnt anything wrong with that in a general sense.

Ironically the 'core' Elite players, or those who played the original games, are the very people that do have limited play time given their average ages I would imagine.

 

[Verax]

I do care and I accept your arguments.

What do you think of my proposal here https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...le-Transport-Yay-or-Nay?p=4384663#post4384663 ? It's designed to counter the immersion breaking aspect of instant transfer but with practically the same outcome (except for requiring a little bit of forward planning).

It wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, and I could live with it... but I really don't think it's important. The immersion aspect is completely overplayed on this entire debate IMO. There are so many other things in this game that break immersion in the exact same way as this feature. Even worse at times. Why do my ships' hardpoints all contain every weapon of every size in them? Clearly they do... according the the outfitting animations. Whenever I change weapon... the old one just retracts into the slot... and magically a new, totally different one emerges. How can people reconcile these complaints about this instant transfer feature (as is) but not some of these other things... without being completely full of hot air?

Either way, I could accept the feature as you described it... although it almost completely changes nothing, aside from making the feature slightly less convenient. It's still better than nothing though... or a wait timer.

 

[M. Grey]

To make it short:

Yay for ship transfer.
Definalty NAY for instant. It should take some time both gameplay and immersion wise.

 

[Ozram]

The probability of me being around in the 10th season increases with less time spent sitting in front of the screen, literally fiddling my thumbs.
That was the reason I quit games like EverQuest.
Sitting and waiting is not "playing the game". Sitting and waiting works for some time .. until you realize all you do is sit and wait.
Active traveling is not "sitting and waiting" btw. and I never really had an issue with that, but simply adding a timer for a ship to arrive somewhere is exactly that.

Why would you be sitting and waiting in the first place? Your argument is nonsense. Plan ahead for gods sake.

 

[Marc_Hicks]

The probability of me being around in the 10th season increases with less time spent sitting in front of the screen, literally fiddling my thumbs.
That was the reason I quit games like EverQuest.
Sitting and waiting is not "playing the game". Sitting and waiting works for some time .. until you realize all you do is sit and wait.
Active traveling is not "sitting and waiting" btw. and I never really had an issue with that, but simply adding a timer for a ship to arrive somewhere is exactly that.

So tell us, if Ship Transfer took around 20 minutes to an hour (depending on distance & the max range of your ship), wouldn't this still be a massive time saver? After all, you're not having to travel back to the original ship to bring it to you, & you know the ship will get to you safely. In the time you're waiting for the ship to arrive, you can do other things (thus negating the "time sink" issue).

Having a modest timing element to the arrival of transported ships is thus still a major time saving element, but doesn't break the game as a result.

 

[Gaarp Kobayashi]

Love it? Hate it? Use it or don't use it. If it increases the player base and brings in more earnings for FD. Then thats a good thing for all of us.

That's your argument? Ruin the game, so that more people play its watered-down version?

The thing which is going on here is pretty serious imho. Look at the amazing commotion this "little" feature (which is having it's impact on the whole gameplay way too underestimated by the Frontier imho) raised.

This game is to be played for years. Meaning it's solid gamers' base isnt a casual, lazy gamers who come and go. I still think the developer did not fully understood yet the totally unique devotion of it's major fan base to the game's concept, the devotion not to be seen anywhere else. Imho, they should definitely re-cap the case and adjust it's actions bit more properly, as messing up with their most devoted fans is a really slippery thing to do. And actions/decisions like that are simply shooting in their own feet.

I still have the impression it's all going on without David Braben's authorisation, or..., simply lack of understanding of the case fully. Whatever it is, as many said before my here - it's very, very disturbing...