Choose ship to spawn into on game start

[ZeroAi]

Suggestion: If I end a game session docked at a station, when I start my next session I would like to be able to choose which of my docked ships I spawn into.

The choice could be limited to those docked ships that my commander could have taken a passenger liner to while I was offline.

The reason for this is simple - allow my friends and I to go off our own ways during the week but easily Wing Up for our weekly livestreams.

To work around this, one of my friends started another account so he could explore and travel to Colonia while still being able to Wing Up with us once a week.

Unfortunately, I've already started over several times so I'm not interested in spinning up another character (I have 4 copies of Elite - 2 on PC, 1 on Xbox, and 1 on PS4)

In summary, being able to retroactively have my commander take a passenger liner to one of my ships when I boot the game will increase Fun, and decrease the need to fly from A to B just to play with friends.

Reincarnation is unrealistic too.

I know some will say my ship spawning idea is unrealistic, but come on - reincarnation isn't worse?

How about instant fueling, repairs, loading/unloading, painting, decal application, and so much more that is in the game already.

But they are in the game for the single reason: to make the game more fun, and that's what my suggestion would also do.

Thanks for listening!

Grey

PS - I would also love to see more ways for crew members in a multi-crew session to make money. Currently MC this is not an option for us because it seems crew members can only make serious credits via combat.

 

[Stellar Gambit]

So if I get a ship to Colonia, I can just log out in the bubble, and log back in and "hey I'm 11,000ly away"

It is annoying, the prospect of doing a tonn of jumps to get to another place, but that's the vastness of space for ya.

I for one, despite you saying that I'm travelling offline, feel like it breaks immersion

 

[Stellar Gambit]

Having thought about it, you could implement a system like ship transfer, where if your about to log out, you select your destination and you transfer yourself, but it takes time and credits. The problem with that though is your basically barring yourself from playing while you transfer. It should also only be to stations where you have ships located.

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

It could probably be exploited.

And it would break a lot of things unless FD altered the entire mission and C&P system.

 

[TopCat160]

How is it possible that someone that's been around as long as the OP, does not know that this is a discussion that has been done to death squillions of times?

 

[Ian Doncaster]

So if I get a ship to Colonia, I can just log out in the bubble, and log back in and "hey I'm 11,000ly away"

At 61 hours transfer time - which, by the original proposal, you'd have to spend all of logged-out with any log in resetting the clock - this wouldn't be particularly useful, especially since any relatively fast ship on a neutron route could make the journey anyway in under two hours with some of the changes coming in Beyond.

Testing in Beta I got from Sol to Colonia in under 3 hours, and that was just using the built-in neutron plotting rather than a proper route, and with a basic 50 LY Asp rather than a fully optimised one. (I did use the pay-for-fast-travel option Beyond adds to the Skaudai base, of course). Someone going all-out for speed could probably do it in about 1 hour once Beyond is out, based on the current speed record for the trip.

(Nevertheless, I don't think Frontier are going to add an option which works better the longer you don't play the game for)

 

[Aashenfox]

At 61 hours transfer time - which, by the original proposal, you'd have to spend all of logged-out with any log in resetting the clock - this wouldn't be particularly useful, especially since any relatively fast ship on a neutron route could make the journey anyway in under two hours with some of the changes coming in Beyond.

Testing in Beta I got from Sol to Colonia in under 3 hours, and that was just using the built-in neutron plotting rather than a proper route, and with a basic 50 LY Asp rather than a fully optimised one. (I did use the pay-for-fast-travel option Beyond adds to the Skaudai base, of course). Someone going all-out for speed could probably do it in about 1 hour once Beyond is out, based on the current speed record for the trip.

(Nevertheless, I don't think Frontier are going to add an option which works better the longer you don't play the game for)

This introduces another major issue. It will now be faster to get to Colonia from Sol, than to Hutton. Erm...yeh.

I think it's time they introduced a mechanic where we can choose which body we drop in at when jumping to a system, maybe even say it has to have a certain mass, so only stars and gas giants, that would satisfy cos the problems usually arise with a distant binary or trinary star.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

This introduces another major issue. It will now be faster to get to Colonia from Sol, than to Hutton. Erm...yeh.

The same "shave half off the journey by rebuy" which will work to Colonia will also work to Hutton, though - get slightly over half way so that Hutton is the closest station, and self-destruct while Clean, and you should respawn in Hutton in 3.0. So it balances out.

If you want to carry cargo or even data to the other end, it'll still be at least twice as long to reach Colonia as Hutton (plus, that speed to Colonia requires a hyper-optimised ship, route and pilot ... whereas Hutton is much the same time in a fully-laded ship)

 

[Aashenfox]

The same "shave half off the journey by rebuy" which will work to Colonia will also work to Hutton, though - get slightly over half way so that Hutton is the closest station, and self-destruct while Clean, and you should respawn in Hutton in 3.0. So it balances out.

If you want to carry cargo or even data to the other end, it'll still be at least twice as long to reach Colonia as Hutton (plus, that speed to Colonia requires a hyper-optimised ship, route and pilot ... whereas Hutton is much the same time in a fully-laded ship)

True, but still, 3ly vs 22kly and it only takes twice as long, simply due to crazy supercruise mechanic. It occurred to me (for not the first time) that choosing the body you drop into would solve this, so I created a suggestion for that.

 

[ZeroAi]

Ok, looks like some folks didn't buy into my idea. Let's see...

So if I get a ship to Colonia, I can just log out in the bubble, and log back in and "hey I'm 11,000ly away"

If I flew the 21,000 LY to Colonia, docked, and logged off for a week, then YES.

Just like thousands of NPCs also did while I was offline.

I for one, despite you saying that I'm travelling offline, feel like it breaks immersion

I disagree.

I think the fact that you can load 1,000 tons of cargo in 1 second breaks immersion. Try it sometime irl...

And painting a ship the size of an Aircraft Carrier in one second? Dude, I'm lucky if I can get a room painted in an afternoon!

Having thought about it, you could implement a system like ship transfer, where if your about to log out, you select your destination and you transfer yourself, but it takes time and credits. The problem with that though is your basically barring yourself from playing while you transfer. It should also only be to stations where you have ships located.

Yeah, I get what you're saying, and that idea was discussed in a different thread last week.

I like the idea, and the simple work around to the issue you pose is an "abort" option that drops you and your ship at the closet station you have already passed.

Basically it backs you up a little as a penalty for aborting.

It could probably be exploited.

And it would break a lot of things unless FD altered the entire mission and C&P system.

Hmm, dozens of things in the game is exploited already, so I'm sure it could.

Oh, you know it would be child's play to disallow passenger liner travel to any commander with open missions or bounties - that's just two bits which act as permissives to use the feature. Lots of stuff in the game that does that already.

How is it possible that someone that's been around as long as the OP, does not know that this is a discussion that has been done to death squillions of times?

Dude, in my two years I haven't seen anyone else pushing for this idea. Other ideas, sure, but not this one.

AND, since I think it's such a good idea, I'll keep suggesting it :-D

At 61 hours transfer time - which, by the original proposal, you'd have to spend all of logged-out with any log in resetting the clock - this wouldn't be particularly useful

I imagine your partly responding to the other post, however I would add that my proposal states you can only travel to docked ships you can reach via passenger liner during the time you were offline.

So when I log back in I would see a list of ships I "could have" traveled to while offline, and if I'm off for three days and had a ship in Colonia, yeah I likely could choose it.

This introduces another major issue. It will now be faster to get to Colonia from Sol, than to Hutton. Erm...yeh.

Uh, not sure on your math?

Let me ask this - can a passenger liner get to Colonia before it reaches Hutton?

I only as as this feature suggestion doesn't change how fast liners fly.

I think it's time they introduced a mechanic where we can choose which body we drop in at when jumping to a system

Great idea - I've been supporting that one too


In summary, I would really like a way to Wing Up with friends on a regular basis without having to worry about jumping back to a common system each time we meet up.

I've also had friends who wanted to wing up with us, but then found they couldn't jump fast enough to make it before we were done for the night.

And since most players are off sleeping and working for most of the day, I thought it would be cool if when we do logon to play with friend it would be great if we could choose our ship closet to them versus spending an hour mindlessly jumping just to meet up.

I guess if Multi-crew had the promised features that were stripped out, it wouldn't be a huge issue as support for four players and roles beyond combat would have fit nicely with our game style.

That said, without this feature I end up forgoing traveling too far from my friends, which honestly leaves me playing games other than Elite.