Does anyone use Comms?

[Hanni79]

I actually managed to talk to two people and had like 5 or so responding to my hails. Nice to meet those And I hope I will hear from the rest here in the future, too

This game needs FTL- communication, since you can't restrain people from using other methods, but this would again split the userbase completely unnecessarily.
Voice is somewhat bad right now and needs to be polished, text is not very practical for HOTAS users.
Therefore the best way to go would be a proper voice chat which is not restricted to Star-systems, this is one of the very rare cases I have to admit I do not care for any immersion or similar reasons.
Not being able to talk to friends (wherever they are) won't do this game a good deed.

 

[wstephenson]

Voice is somewhat bad right now and needs to be polished, text is not very practical for HOTAS users.

I'm wondering whether, in this age of Siri, Cortana and Google Now, whether a speech to text option would be handy for HOTAS users. Apparently screaming babies in the background is a more common problem in games with voice comms than the stereotypical basement dweller gamer demographic would suggest.

As the parent of an active toddler I often shout at my phone to compose text messages anyway ("We're coming home now, the nappy has overflowed!") rather than typing/swiping them in manually.

> CMDR WINGMATE "I'm coming in to dock Wanted and being pursued but my lateral thrusters are burned out and I've got a screaming baby on my lap"

It would be a nightmare to implement and maintain on more than one platform, though.

 

[forger]

as a non native English language speaker i can only say that voice to text is same as thinking to text it just do not work at all.

but if you can pronounce all perfectly and for pc to understand maybe, i mean you can now already have voice attack convert your voice commands like "greetings" into "hello fellow commander, how are you today, need any assistance" etc.

i can do same with my hotas, like program my X55 throttle in MODE2 to spit out different txt on different switches, like:
1-Hello, have a nice flight
2-I don't want to fight but if you attack me again you will be history
3-Need assistance?
etc.

actually i might do just that as taking KB every time i am greeted just to write nothing and you or hello back is little pointless

 

[Aewarin Jameson]

Regarding the current (Beta1) implementation: - "Well, you have to start somewhere"

Room for massive enhancement and ease of use - right now I just don't bother with it as it's far too cumbersome to use, coupled with the instancing problems the only time I do get to use it is during Supercruise and then it stops working when either party is interdicted

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

I actually managed to talk to two people and had like 5 or so responding to my hails. Nice to meet those And I hope I will hear from the rest here in the future, too

This game needs FTL- communication, since you can't restrain people from using other methods, but this would again split the userbase completely unnecessarily.
Voice is somewhat bad right now and needs to be polished, text is not very practical for HOTAS users.
Therefore the best way to go would be a proper voice chat which is not restricted to Star-systems, this is one of the very rare cases I have to admit I do not care for any immersion or similar reasons.
Not being able to talk to friends (wherever they are) won't do this game a good deed.

By design (newsletter #30 - 33 somewhere there) text chat has to work over FTL (it is a bug that it doesn't at the moment) - you will be able to chat with friends no matter in which system they are. That's for text only though (as it works trough servers). Audio comms are done via peer to peer I guess that will stay limited to instances.

 

[Hanni79]

By design (newsletter #30 - 33 somewhere there) text chat has to work over FTL (it is a bug that it doesn't at the moment) - you will be able to chat with friends no matter in which system they are. That's for text only though (as it works trough servers). Audio comms are done via peer to peer I guess that will stay limited to instances.

I know, but thanks for the reminder.
What could be really interesting ( for pirates for example) could be the ability to intercept calls / messages. I wonder if someone already had this idea.
Imagine this : Some people agree to meet up somewhere and some pirates manage to listen in to the conversation and immediately gather up there to intercept them. This could of course bring balancing / exploit issues, but as far as I'm aware of, this would be something new at least.

 

[Treyshon]

Also, when you are docked you can target and speak to people out in open space around the station. They, however, can't respond to you because you are docked and can't be targeted. Take this into consideration when thinking someone is ignoring you.

During my work at FTPS I have had many prospective tax payers messaging me from the safety of Freeport Station without the ability to respond. This left both parties aggravated.

 

[Mkstnbrnr]

What about a Comms tower or something that you would have to tune to to see radio chatter? Like a channel for bases and SC chat channel. maybe an area wide channel for connecting sectors? All of which you would need to tune too, for emersion.

 

[brumster]

I'll chip in here. Quite simply, in-game comms needs to allow me to communicate with my buddies wherever they may be, so that we can co-ordinate travel and timing, even when we are in different systems. To have it also provide comms to non-friends within the same immediate vicinity, for the purposes of communicating intentions, is valuable but secondary for me.

As such, with it working as currently implemented, I will not be using it - instead resorting to teamspeak. Apart from the fact that it wasn't reliable at all currently, which kind of prevented me from even making much of a judgement of it, it was rather one-directional!

 

[flibblesan]

I'll chip in here. Quite simply, in-game comms needs to allow me to communicate with my buddies wherever they may be, so that we can co-ordinate travel and timing, even when we are in different systems.

It would be more realistic and practical to have voice comms when you are in range of another ship or further out if you have diverted power to systems to effectively increase transmitter power. If a player is too far then text based is the only option. Voice would be better to have as a CB radio style system so the game would implement a delay if the recipient is further away to make things a bit more realistic.

Players are always free to use Teamspeak, Mumble, Skype, Steam etc if they want to remain in touch with friends at all times. But I think it would ruin the game feeling and experience if it would allow universe-wide voice comms.

Edit: Thinking about this again.. how about two modes for voice communication which the game automatically switches between. Short-range and long-range communications. If a ship is within a certain range they short-range comms will be available which allows for real-time voice communication. If you go out of range then you use long-range which means it'll function like a CB Radio with the game implementing an audio delay depending on the distance of the recipient. It would make things extremely realistic, allow the voice comms that players want and would be a relatively simple system to implement.

 

[Bruce Warren]

I don't have a working mic so can't do voice comms. It sounds v cool with the NASA style static an all.

I've tried the text comms. Had a few replies, but not many so far.

That said, I'm not sure I'd want the CB style open broadcast capability some posters are advocating where everyone could hear the conversation. Sooner or later we'd get hauler/L6/L9 pilots singing the "We like trucking" song to all and sundry.

 

[Titus Balls]

I'll chip in here. Quite simply, in-game comms needs to allow me to communicate with my buddies wherever they may be, so that we can co-ordinate travel and timing, even when we are in different systems. To have it also provide comms to non-friends within the same immediate vicinity, for the purposes of communicating intentions, is valuable but secondary for me.

As such, with it working as currently implemented, I will not be using it - instead resorting to teamspeak. Apart from the fact that it wasn't reliable at all currently, which kind of prevented me from even making much of a judgement of it, it was rather one-directional!

I'd raised this before - seemed to be some general agreement, and FD can easily do some Science Handwavium with "Subspace frequencies" McGuffins

 

[Zenicetus]

Whatever they decide to do, I don't think FD can rely on a "no FTL comms" excuse. There are too many mechanics already in the game that imply some kind of Ansible.

For example, the Bulletin Board messages in the station, the Galactic Average prices in the Commodity screen, and the K-scanner that somehow pings every known system for warrant info within a few seconds. None of that works without FTL comms of some kind.

 

[Paelen]

It would really be nice to have forums and message boards in game.

 

[PaulBM]

I'll chip in here. Quite simply, in-game comms needs to allow me to communicate with my buddies wherever they may be, so that we can co-ordinate travel and timing, even when we are in different systems. To have it also provide comms to non-friends within the same immediate vicinity, for the purposes of communicating intentions, is valuable but secondary for me.

As such, with it working as currently implemented, I will not be using it - instead resorting to teamspeak. Apart from the fact that it wasn't reliable at all currently, which kind of prevented me from even making much of a judgement of it, it was rather one-directional!

I know this is really another 'me too post', but I agree 100% and I feel this is so important that I'm prepared to take the 'me too' stick.

Without global comms with my firends in the game, it will be reduced to a single player game. Currently, I login and see my friends are on online and that's it. I can't speak to them so, I just potter about on my own.

At the very least we need the text chat to the level that games like Everquest and World of Warcraft provided. Notifications of players logging in and out. Group chat to discuss where we're going and what we're hoping to achieve. The ability to muster a team to take down a rare dragon... no that's not quite right, but you get the idea.

 

[Dizzy B High]

I have some voice attack commands that send basic messages, I say "comms" to open comms panel select the person I want to send a message to (if they are not already targeted" then say "open channel".

I then have a few commands one for saying hello, one for asking them to drop cargo or die" and a few others, they are set up so I have a pool of sentences, which it picks randomly.

Works ok, but comms is not perfect. Needs a good revamp.