ED is missing out on play time from occasional gaming

[Old Duck]

I'm part of the "immersion" crowd, so I'm opposed to instant transfer, but having recently booked passage on the doomed Gnosis with its 500 LY jump range, I'd be okay with a faster transfer that costs more. It would be the equivalent to UPS / FEDEX Same Day Delivery. We also need the ability to send ships ahead of us - from any station to any station, which would also save a ton of time, since it would be in route while we are. Just like a real moving company, our "stuff" may actually arrive before we get there if we could send ships ahead!

My point about the Gnosis is that there are megaships that can cover 500 LY in a single jump, so it is conceivable that our ships could be transferred rather quickly, basically in the time it takes to move the ship off the station and onto a transport ship, single jump in the OP's case, and then offload, with a little overhead added in for "realism / immersion". It would definitely be less than 30 minutes.

 

[who?]

You need to outfit your Krait with a Guardian FSD booster. My combat Krait jumps 34 LY with it. I only use my Asp X or Exploraconda for super long range stuff.

I've just gotten back into the game in recent weeks (hadn't played since 2.3) and have been giddy with how easy things are with the recent additions.

The Guardian FSD booster, plus improved Engineering & experimental effects mean my loaded Python has a 43Ly range (more than the bare-bones exploration Anacondas pre-engineering).

Even my combat Chieftain is just over 40Ly. I don't have room for the booster and a scoop so I just dumped the scoop. With that kind of jump range you can do most journeys in the bubble on one fuel-tank, and if not you just switch to economical mode/jumponium/tweak the cargo plotter setting to make the last few jumps. It's actually nice having to use one's brain/awarenesss in-game now and then.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Until there are legs (IMO - not anytime soon), that's just semantics.

Matter of opinion. I disagree.

Yes it is. And with my suggestion, you'll never be able to fly a specific ship at a specific location unless you actually fly that ship there yourself.

But goes against game world lore and doesn't make sense. Game world lore is inportant to me, just like a game that is set around a story.

However, the shuttling between ships really isn't vital to the game - it's pretty much dead time.

I disagree. I see it as part of the overall experience.

It really isn't and again, legs isn't coming anytime soon.

Yes it is as you can have ships scattered around in convenient locations so that you don't need to hardly travel at all. It's just as overpowered as instant transfer.

When I log out I'm not in the game world anymore - immersion is broken.

That is just being silly.

I could quite happily log in again and be somewhere else to do something else.

Again ruins the experience and reduces ship choice consequences.

For me, the game is about the ships and their capabilities - I'd like to be able to spend the vast majority of my time using them and much less of my time trekking between them.

Surely trekking between them, you are in one of your ships yes, so therefore you shouldn't have an issue. When you are trekking, you are using your ship/s.

 

[MadDogMurdock]

Yes it is as you can have ships scattered around in convenient locations so that you don't need to hardly travel at all. It's just as overpowered as instant transfer.

You're wrong about all of this - but hey that's opinions for you

However, I've quoted the key point that you don't seem to have quite followed through on.
Yes, you can have ships scattered all over the place - but for them to be useful, they need to be good ships that you have earned, built, and engineered - and then you need to have put them somewhere useful.

That is a not inconsiderable effort and not nearly as simple as having your uber-combat death machine follow you around on a leash.
Dropping stock Sidewinders everywhere isn't going to do you an awful lot of good.

 

[MAUXUS]

If you just wanted a quick combat session, why did you travel halfway across the bubble to take part in the CG, particularly if you knew you were limited on time? Why didn't you simply bite the bullet and just fight in a local RES or find a nearby war within a couple of jumps?

Oh, for one participating in a combat CG rewards you double than if you are just shooting down ships in a RES and second, Smith Landing in Amber, where my ships were parked, was in some kind of lock-down yesterday due to Thargoid sensors activity and all its services were down (refuel, restock and repair where all red).
I haven't read all the comments so far but I've seen plenty of salty people suggesting that I play the game their way or a different way. Reducing the transfer time (for example) wouldn't affect these users and their gameplay one bit, yet the better solution in their mind seems to be that I should change my way of playing.
So the topic here is that ED might be missing out on accumulated play time, over a period of time, from occasional playing. Making this possible doesn't preclude others from enjoying the game with longer playing sessions, yet the latter users manage to limit the others, when doing it the other way around wouldn't be as limiting for the other group of players. And it would bring more people playing more often. This is the argument I'm trying to make.

 

[sollisb]

Combat is my fav part of the game but isn't the only part of the game and its your choice to go to the current CG no one put a gun to your head. If you want instant gratification play something that provides that, certain don't have to harakiri....

No, skill will cover that difference just fine trust me.

I think you missed his point completely!

You say go play another game, he said that's exactly what he did!

So what is your point?

 

[CMDR Dumbfries]

My suggestion to make the game far more accessible is to scrap ship transfer altogether, but allow you to login to any ship you own.

That way, if you only have half an hour you could login to:
- your freighter at the trade CG to make a run.
- your combat build at the combat CG to pew pew for a bit.
- your explorer out in the deep to continue on for a few jumps.
- your ship out at the Guardians to grind another blueprint.
- your ship at a wing-friendly location for a pickup session with your mates
- etc.

Of course, the lack of ship transfer means that you would've had to put those ships in those places yourself first.

And of course, it creates new exploits that would need to be closed, mostly by associating more things with the ship instead of the pilot.

But the end result is:
- no more taxis
- no more waiting for ships to arrive
- more time spent doing your preferred gameplay.
- far more spontaneity

How this wasn't a consideration from day one is mind boggling. Almost every other modern game has some version of this whether it's a character selection screen, loadout or garage menu.
If elite was a racing game, you would have to drive your Ferrari from silverstone to suzuka just to use your Lamborghini.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

You're wrong about all of this - but hey that's opinions for you

However, I've quoted the key point that you don't seem to have quite followed through on.
Yes, you can have ships scattered all over the place - but for them to be useful, they need to be good ships that you have earned, built, and engineered - and then you need to have put them somewhere useful.

That is a not inconsiderable effort and not nearly as simple as having your uber-combat death machine follow you around on a leash.
Dropping stock Sidewinders everywhere isn't going to do you an awful lot of good.

If your idea did become a thing it would just end up with people creating a load of death machines which they would have scattered around the bubble in convenient places (probably moaning about the grind they had to endure creating said ships).

No, in my view it would be nearly as overpowered as instant teleportation, and I still think it would not sit well within the games lore which to me is important.

I don't mind a push or a pull feature, but anything that has instant teleportation is a big no from me. Sorry.

 

[UmbraRex]

How this wasn't a consideration from day one is mind boggling. Almost every other modern game has some version of this whether it's a character selection screen, loadout or garage menu.
If elite was a racing game, you would have to drive your Ferrari from silverstone to suzuka just to use your Lamborghini.

Commodity Storage.

There is no commodity storage for players. Allowing log into whatever ship you want would by necessity enable storing cargo on ships, and that's something FDev have said they don't want if memory serves.

 

[fu9ar]

To be fair i only had two options. They offered two CGs, one trading and one combat. I opted for the combat but if i chose the trading one instead, it would have taken an even longer playing time. I just wanted a quick combat session. What’s the other choice? Exploration? So i am faced with 3 options that all take longer than 30 minutes. I switched to a different game and played that instead. If i had the option to do some combat in ED in a reasonable amount of time, i would have stayed. Now, making some changes so to make it possible to enjoy the game in shorter gaming sessions, doesn’t affect those who want to play longer. But By not making those changes instead, the shorter sessions players are affected and leave and the only ones left are The longer sessions players. So who is limiting who here really?

That's hooey! You could do a trading CG loop of up to maybe 20 jumps end to end in 30 minutes time... (up to five minutes of docking either side plus a bit of wiggle room to figure out where you are going.) There are millions of tons of the goods for the festival all within two, maybe three jumps for a heavy trader, much less an AspX. You could have done a couple trade loops while you waited for your ship to transfer, easily. Maybe you need to practice a bit more and git gud at navigation and docking?

 

[Nadreck]

In the example given in the OP, he could simply have flown his Krait there instead. So faster ship transfer wouldn't have helped, unless it was so fast that the AspX flight time plus the Krait transfer time would still be less than the Krait flight time.

So for faster transfer time to be a benefit in this case, it would have to be possible to transfer the Krait in less time than it's actually possible to cover that distance in that ship.

IIRC, faster-than-light comms generally doesn't exist in the ED universe (other than the widely-derided multicrew telepresence), hence the need for data-deliveries in ships. So I think transfer times should indeed be slow, as basically you need to get a message relayed back to where you came from, and only then can you recruit an anonymous NPC pilot (who then needs time to get ready) to fly your ship to you. Of course, the ability to send the ship on ahead of you - push transfers - would help, but this still shouldn't be shorter than the Krait's flying time.

If the AspX could do the journey in 4 jumps, the Krait probably needed about 8. So the difference is the time taken to make 4 jumps, which should be slightly less than 4 minutes. If the Krait has a significantly shorter jumprange than that, then that's a design decision that should have in-game consequences.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

How this wasn't a consideration from day one is mind boggling. Almost every other modern game has some version of this whether it's a character selection screen, loadout or garage menu.
If elite was a racing game, you would have to drive your Ferrari from silverstone to suzuka just to use your Lamborghini.

So not a comparable example!

 

[WR3ND]

The "my immurshion" crowd did ruin the ship transfer feature... I'm okay with wait times (particularly if it's going someplace like the Pleiades or Colonia), but a transfer shouldn't take longer than it takes to just do it myself. At the very least there should be options (slow transfer, cheap price or fast and expensive)

Just doing it yourself should be faster, otherwise everyone with any reasonable amount of credits would just transfer ships and pilot long range ships from place to place. Flying your own ship yourself shouldn't be a disincentivized option.

I think there may be an argument to be made to rebalance jump ranges, bringing up the low end a bit, even though I personally don't have an issue with it.

...

I personally haven't used ship transfer yet, just piloting my ships myself as needed and outfitting them accordingly for the tasks at hand. I'm not apposed to it; I just haven't really had the need. If I ever move out to Colonia or something along those lines, then I'm sure I'll use it then.

If you want to min/max a ship to the extent that you can't reasonably pilot it yourself somewhere, then that's the choice you made, including the compromises (the min part). So, presumable, waiting for the transfer was more desirable than the alternatives to you.

Personally, I'd rather enjoy my time playing the game in general than waiting around for my ships, so for me ship transfer is more of a fleet/FOB logistics option than something I'd use for one time events, unless maybe I happen to get caught off guard by something very compelling and unforeseen, which hasn't really happened in the game so far for me in this sort of scenario, unfortunately.

 

[[VR] M4st0d0n]

Sometimes I watch this timer then I think it's just the lasiest mobile game design I ever paid for in a "real" game. Then I log of, but I don't have Far Cry 5. So I just cry, but not that far, for an hour or two.

What's quite sad is that this should be the perfect scenario for CQC. Fly your bubble jumper, call in your combat ship, switch to CQC for half an hour then back to the main game for the CG. Even if CQC isn't your favourite aspect of ED, you'd still be playing ED for that 30 minutes.

But CQC is just so badly implemented as to be chronically unappealing to the bulk of players. How tragic that the OP (a combat-oriented pilot!), along with many other players myself included, would sooner switch to another game or activity for half an hour than use the one aspect of ED that's supposed to provide a quick fix of action when the main game is not an option. CQC should be absolutely alive with players whose main game ships are in transit. A massive missed opportunity by FD.

Make CQC Great Again.

Amen to that. If they make a matchmaker from the mission board, I'll buy every SLF skins. Must be a functionnal matchmaker.

 

[Brian of Ardagh]

What did people do before ship transfers were added to the game?

I guess I don't get the argument that ship transfers not being immediate is a terrible thing. You have 3 options, no ship transfers, delayed ship transfers, or instant transfers; between none and instant, delayed seems like a decent compromise. Of course, I don't see too many arguing to remove ship transfers altogether but there was "none" before there was delayed. Old Duck's suggestion about megaships is a good idea and would make short transfers pretty quick. I also approve of the oft-quoted idea about shipping to destination as an option.

 

[MadDogMurdock]

Commodity Storage.

There is no commodity storage for players. Allowing log into whatever ship you want would by necessity enable storing cargo on ships, and that's something FDev have said they don't want if memory serves.

Easy workaround for that. If you leave cargo in a ship, that's the only ship available to log in to.

 

[WR3ND]

Easy workaround for that. If you leave cargo in a ship, that's the only ship available to log in to.

I'm not a fan of the logging in anywhere idea. I like the idea of Commander presence in the game over things like telepresence, etc.

Sending ships ahead and even booking passage somewhere and optionally buying a ship when you get there sound better to me, but then I suppose players really would be stuck waiting, unless they cancel the flight, taking the insta-pod back.

If we can move around and do things in ships other than piloting them, this might not be so bad. What do they do for entertainment in 3304? Perhaps I shouldn't ask... On the other hand, things like holo-me squadron conference calls in virtual boardrooms or lounges, market/faction negotiations, below deck ship crew operations, or similar might be kind of nice.

These might not be the best examples, and implementing these sort of things isn't trivial, but it goes to show what sort of potential this game has if it were more fully fleshed-out and realized.

These sort of things are in part what I had hoped to pay for with my comparatively expensive Horizons pre-order LEP back in 2015. Just saying.

 

[Lobstris]

The "my immurshion" crowd did ruin the ship transfer feature...

You say that like that's a bad thing. It's not. Be glad there's transfer at all. And I'll happily go for immersion over convenience in Elite.

 

[IndigoWyrd]

Here’s a secret:

The amount of time required to transfer a ship is greater than the amount of time required to fly that same ship to a destination.

Test it out yourselves.

 

[WR3ND]

You say that like that's a bad thing. It's not. Be glad there's transfer at all. And I'll happily go for immersion over convenience in Elite.

To be fair, I think there is a balance to be reached, but for me, things like instant ship transfers would cross the line, for both meta and immersive gameplay reasons.