Book marking does not solve the 250 ship limit

Raduk · Mar 26, 2016

Greetings commanders.

As you may or may not be aware, there is a 250 limit on the number of ships that you can own in the game; before you open yourself up to some strange bugs when switching ships that ultimately will lead to where I am which is entirely unable to play. I own approximately 400 ships, I don't know how many exactly because one of the bugs is that the game can't seem to keep an accurate count. The worst of the bugs leads you to being kicked out of the game and then unable to log in with a message that says "LOAD FAILED" along with advisement that commander data is not available. The only way to begin to fix this is to contact support. Support can put you back in your ship; but you will be told to reduce the number of your ships to below 250. Which of course where I am at. Spend 25 hours of my own time to fix the bug so I can play, is the current recommendation. I'm hopeful that they will find another solution but until they do take this message as a warning. You don't want to end up in my position.

I recognize that this is not a problem for everyone, but really no problem is. My point here is that an enhancement to the galaxy map should not be seen as a way to solve the problem with commanders being limited to 250 ships. Book marking is a feature that a person can enjoy from the very first moment they log in to play. Ship purchase is reserved for those who have played more, and obviously being able to buy 250+ ships is reserved for those of us who are or nearly are Elite. Limiting me, an Elite trader, from being able to buy more ships is like limiting an Explorer from being able to discover more first systems. It essentially puts me into a box around how much money I can spend. Which basically limits game play.

When people talk about day 1 bugs that haven't been fixed this is what they mean. I reported this issue back in September.

777Driver · Mar 26, 2016

Out of curiosity, what do you do with all those ships? I have around 180, at least 100 are bookmarks, 20 are big ships like Cutter/Conda/T9/FDL/Python etc, the rest are shuttles/Canyon runners/Light smugglers etc etc..

I can't imagine having 400 ships, especially once bookmarks arrive.

Ian Skippy · Mar 26, 2016

FD has to allocate resources based on what is most important for most people. With the current limit you can buy about nine of each ships, and you can spend up to about 250 billion in total. That 'limiting box' is pretty darn huge I'd say. IMHO that seems enough to not make it any kind of priority at all. I'd probably even rank 'improved bobblehead physics' as a higher priority. To each his own ofcourse...

Viking84 · Mar 26, 2016

While I agree it seems odd to arbitrarily limit the number of ships we can own - what on earth do you do with 400 ships, apart from using them as bookmarks?

Raduk · Mar 26, 2016

777Driver said:
Out of curiosity, what do you do with all those ships? I have around 180, at least 100 are bookmarks, 20 are big ships like Cutter/Conda/T9/FDL/Python etc, the rest are shuttles/Canyon runners/Light smugglers etc etc..

I can't imagine having 400 ships, especially once bookmarks arrive.

It's been an evolution of sorts. It started off as a way to bookmark locations. Then it evolved into a way to map out the bubble, based on where I had visited.

Today I'm in the position where much like I'm sure you are doing I setup ships at certain stations so that I can do missions. I've enjoyed allowing the game to lead me around by the nose a bit; so I base myself out of a long distance smuggling system and pick up a few missions. When I get to where it's lead me I buy a Cobra so that I can do some classified data missions. That might lead to discovery of a trading route, so maybe I buy a trade boat there.

bookmarking is fine, I'm sure I will use it, but it doesn't solve the ship limit. I hope the game continues to evolve so that there are more reasons to own more ships.

Chris Simon · Mar 26, 2016

Just out of curiosity, could you explain HOW exactly is this cap limiting your gameplay?
Unless your goal simply is "To have 1000 ships" I don't see any reason to have more than two or three of every ship. (Except the bookmarks, of course, but that will be solved soon)

andy_3_913 · Mar 26, 2016

777Driver said:
Out of curiosity, what do you do with all those ships? I have around 180, at least 100 are bookmarks, 20 are big ships like Cutter/Conda/T9/FDL/Python etc, the rest are shuttles/Canyon runners/Light smugglers etc etc..

I can't imagine having 400 ships, especially once bookmarks arrive.

Meh.
I have 1

Janichsan · Mar 26, 2016

I have to agree with the others: I don't see why being limited to 250 ships is a problem.

Raduk · Mar 26, 2016

sleutelbos said:
FD has to allocate resources based on what is most important for most people. With the current limit you can buy about nine of each ships, and you can spend up to about 250 billion in total. That 'limiting box' is pretty darn huge I'd say. IMHO that seems enough to not make it any kind of priority at all. I'd probably even rank 'improved bobblehead physics' as a higher priority. To each his own ofcourse...

Improving bobblehead physics doesn't stop a player for having to spend 25+ hours to fix a bug with the game so that they can play. If FD wants to put a limit on things, then they should advertise that there is a limit on things. This is a very easy feature to enable. Simply list in the Shipyard for example 24/250 so that people get the message that there is a limit. There is also a limit to the number of ships that you can own in a shipyard, and at last check it was well below 29.

Viking84 · Mar 26, 2016

Raduk said:
Improving bobblehead physics doesn't stop a player for having to spend 25+ hours to fix a bug with the game so that they can play. If FD wants to put a limit on things, then they should advertise that there is a limit on things. This is a very easy feature to enable. Simply list in the Shipyard for example 24/250 so that people get the message that there is a limit. There is also a limit to the number of ships that you can own in a shipyard, and at last check it was well below 29.

Totally agree with this - a limit would not affect me (I have maybe 12 ships including bookmarks), but having one and not making it clear is just shoddy design.

Raduk · Mar 26, 2016

Chris Simon said:
Just out of curiosity, could you explain HOW exactly is this cap limiting your gameplay?
Unless your goal simply is "To have 1000 ships" I don't see any reason to have more than two or three of every ship. (Except the bookmarks, of course, but that will be solved soon)

Currently I run long distance smuggling missions. Upon arrival, I generally like to run missions in the local area. So that normally leads me to buying and outfitting a Cobra. It might lead to me buying a trade boat if I find a good route. Last I checked, not including planets, there were ~19,000 space stations. I think ~9K of those have the potential of a shipyard (don't quote me, spit balling here) The problem is that I now have to factor in "total ship management" as a part of my game play. I have 400 ships, right now. In order for me to get below 250 I need to spend about 25 hours doing that. Once that's complete, I'm then in the position of constantly reducing the number of ships I own so that I can continue playing...

mistohise · Mar 26, 2016

Raise a ticket to have 150 of your ships, selected at random, assigned to me. I'll take care of them for you, cos I'm helpful like that.

EUS · Mar 26, 2016

All this could be a non-issue if FD would implement basic in-game tools not limited to proper map bookmarks (in the works I know, hopefully they will allow more than 10 bookmarks), proper CMDR logs that include travels, missions, personal notes, etc.
It's silly that there's hard limit to the qty of ships allowed.
The OP is playing his way, with the (non-existant) tools at his disposal, to say there's no issue is false.

NathanM · Mar 26, 2016

Its an arbitary limit (sounds like a single byte is used to store the ship number) so fixing it isnt crazy, however, you cant play more than a few ships each time you log on and the pirority are bugs that hurt people every time they log on.

DocPossible · Mar 26, 2016

NathanM said:
Its an arbitary limit (sounds like a single byte is used to store the ship number) so fixing it isnt crazy, however, you cant play more than a few ships each time you log on and the pirority are bugs that hurt people every time they log on.

If it's stored in a byte then it isn't an arbitrary limit

Changing it may or not be trivial, depending on what database they're using - anyone happen to know this by the way?

Raduk · Mar 26, 2016

NathanM said:
Its an arbitary limit (sounds like a single byte is used to store the ship number) so fixing it isnt crazy, however, you cant play more than a few ships each time you log on and the pirority are bugs that hurt people every time they log on.

As they should be. I am not rage posting here in a demand for the developers to fix my issue right now. I am obviously disappointed that I'm pretty limited on what I can do right now. You see the last time this happened they told me the ship limit was 50. Then it was explained the limit tested was 250. At the time I had around 270 ships. So I started selling ships to get below 250, got down to 243 and then had more problems. I then had to wait for release 1.4 in order for it to be fixed which was just about 10 days. After 1.4 is released they tell me it's fixed, I again ask what the limit is, and I'm told that nothing over 250 is tested so let them know if I have problems. So I think I'm doing a good thing here by continuing to buy ships. I don't have a problem for months. I get to around 400 and here is where I am today. Back experiencing the same bug that I reported back in September. Support never told me not to buy more than 250 ships, to the contrary I was congratulated for owning so many ships. I'm frustrated because it's impacting me but on a larger scaled the "right" thing to do here is to implement a feature that advises commanders on the station/overall ship limits.

xaisis · Mar 26, 2016

Dammit! And i wanted 251 conda's >.<

tagos · Mar 26, 2016

Okay, I don't know what the most important problem devs need to deal with but I sure have the Least Important one totally nailed down.

Moritz Norman · Mar 26, 2016

Haha, I do not have this problem yet.

But after reading, I kind of feel for the OP. Logistical ship management is an absolute hassle. I would love having ships spread all across the bubble.

Commander Dave · Mar 26, 2016

I'm at 200+ now.
I do use them as bookmarks. So when they come along I'll probably go and sell a shedload of them.
Probably won't stop me accumulating ships however.