Focused Feedback - Ship Transfer Times

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Paul_Crowther

Senior Community Manager
Frontier
Greetings Commanders!

We'd like to hear your opinions on the following:
  • Ship Transfer Times
  • Module Transfer Times
Would any changes to these cause life itself to cease all meaning? Are there any changes you would like to see? Let us know in the comments!

This is NOT a confirmation of any changes, this is a Focused Feedback on a topic we would like to know more from you about.

Thread Rules
  • Please keep to this topic
  • Please avoid discussing other peoples feedback
  • Please keep your comments concise and on topic
  • Usual forum rules apply
 

Scimitar101

S
Pointless "feature" that adds literally zero positive value to the gameplay. The only thing it achieves is me shutting the game down and playing something that doesn't waste my time for the day instead. Cut the waiting times down and set a maximum ceiling.

I was here back then during the original votes. You scammed even those who voted for transfer times. Even they felt cheated. The beta we were supposed to vote on had significantly shorter times. The time they took once this was released were and still are insane for a bloody videogame, nobody wanted it to be this bad.

And it's been years and we STILL cannot transfer our stuff remotely to places before we arrive there, in a taxi ship for example. Just a terribly made feature.
 
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Florenus

Florenus
Paul_Crowther said:
We'd like to hear your opinions on the following:
  • Ship Transfer Times
  • Module Transfer Times
Would any changes to these cause life itself to cease all meaning?
Click to expand...
Well, yeah. Kind of.
I'm certain that Frontier wants to make the game more appealing to wider audience, making it easier, more casual, so now I'm afraid you're thinking of reducing or removing transfer time to please certain kind of players.
I think that ship and module transfer times influence the feeling of galaxy size, make certain decisions matter - all this makes me care about the game. We already have option to buy ship for ARX and not think about rebuy.
I would prefer to leave transfer times as they are.
 

PIKE99

P
money does not matter, as the whole economy is upside down in ED, but the transfer time should be adjusted - imagine you as a taxi/lorry carrier - how much would it take for player to transfer particular ship/module on demand of the other player? that should be comparable - like transferring ship with 9 ly jump range should take "a bit" longer than transferring a jumper with 70 ly. Also modules transfer should be calculated on basis what ship can take it onboard and what would be her jump range. It just numbers.
 

rootsrat

Volunteer Moderator
rootsrat
Personally I think the transfer times should be reduced by about 50%, depending on distance, with some minimum stil there like maybe 5 minutes minimum.

At the same time, the cost should be significantly increased.

Or:

Keep the times as they are, but introduce additional fee to speed things up 50%.

__

Please do not make ship transfer instant. This would further add to "arcade" element and would take away a "world sim" element.
 

Fixitman

F
I'm old and set in my ways.

That being said, I think the current system is fine as it is. Anything faster would feel like teleportation. Anything slower would aggravate the impatient players more. As it is now, it actually feels like someone flew from point A to point B.

You didn't mention anything about transfer costs, so I won't state my opinion on that.
 
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Robert Maynard

Volunteer Moderator
Robert Maynard
If travelling in the game isn't to be reduced down to "use a long legged Mandalay to get there then insta-summon the ship you really want to play the game in", effectively removing jump range as a consideration when designing each ship build, then time to transfer a ship should remain.

Noting significant increases in jump range of ships since the original ship transfer poll of 2016 by the introduction of the Guardian Frame Shift Booster in 2018, pre-engineered Frame Shift Drives and, most recently, SCO FSDs, the time to transfer ships could reasonably be reduced.

The credit cost of longer transfers is excessive and should be reduced - as credits are relatively easy to come so keeping the price high represents a disadvantage to newer players.
 

Knuttin Atoll

K
I'm not a fan of transfer times, even though I understand why (some) want them in the game.

Given how many times I used the Suicidewinder fast travel approach when in Colonia as I couldn't be bothered to travel back to the bubble the 'official' way, the concept of a ship transfer taking X amount of time doesn't really mean much as far as the "space is big" argument goes.

An option could be to let the player choose between immediate (but expensive) transfer, or cheap (but time wasting) transfer. Problem with this will be balancing but then that's always going to be an issue with how credits are obtainable in game, so an option would at least let people who prefer one over the other stick to that for their head canon.
 

Jean Lapin

Jean Lapin
Hi Paul,

I would say that time transfert could be just as long as if you do it yourself, regarding ship tranfert. Considering modules, as long as if it was shipped with an engineered cargo ship (high jump distance) would be nice.

As a suggestion, the ability to put modules in cargo, and the ability of engineering them inside the cargo, would be a great thing :love:
 

Michael Ryan

Michael Ryan
Ships/modules transfers are totally fine. It needs time almost exactly like delivering them by a carrier, what makes sense, because huge Galaxy is what is core thing of Elite for me. Even if they can be little shorter it is like 24-30% time maximum for far distances. (I need 3 days to travel from Bubble to Arcadia, but my modules need 4 days, so that's all).
 

Disemboweled Ego

D
Paul_Crowther said:
Would any changes to these cause life itself to cease all meaning? Are there any changes you would like to see? Let us know in the comments!
Click to expand...
For me it's just an annoyance and frustration.

Transferring modules/ships less than 100-200Ly should be instant. This preserves remoteness of some outer areas of the bubble, nebula colonies, colonia and such but means ship/module transfer won't really be an issue when you're just doing stuff in the bubble.

Reducing transfer times for longer distances wouldn't be bad, but if the starting time is 5min at transfers above 100-200Ly then it's mostly a non issue for anything in the bubble.

An obscure suggestion post that I made a while ago also touches on this: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/customizable-apex.603187/

Instead of having fast transfers you could solve a lot of the issues in an even better way by having a second ship slot that you can recall/switch to at any time.
 

Ezekil n Amai

Ezekil n Amai
Hm, to be honest, I don't think that current system of ship/module transfer is bad in any aspect, and don't see any way to make it better, only worse. In addition, it seems to me that attention should be focused on other aspects of the game that require more improvement. Changes to a perfectly working system of module/ship transfer, in my opinion, are not necessary.
 

ketaknight

K
I've argued for a change for a long time. We had a bug a while ago allowing instant teleporting of modules and it was such an improvement in Quality of Life, it made engineering a breeze. I was devastated when the bug was fixed.

On top of that, a huge portion of early game players is inevitably gonna be: ask the friend you want to play with where they are, fly there with your bubble bus, transfer the ship you actually wanted to use, discover it's half an hour wait time and play something else. This was certainly true for me, when I was new.

It's better once you do get a carrier although with the current jump times I'm not even sure if that's true anymore.

It's a very anti-fun mechanic and I don't see any benefit to it. Please, remove transfer times entirely.
 

Vincore

Vincore
Transfer times and costs are fine the way they are.

I often call modules and ships and don't have an issue with the cost or delay. The current approach seems balanced in that a bit of planning and forethought is needed when managing your fleet across distances. Engineering ships for high mobility is a tradeoff, and balanced against other design choices. Shorter transfer times will likely mean I just run a jumpship/taxi out to where I'm going and "call" my beefy combat and trade ships every time I need them; I think this takes away from the gameplay and funnels everyone into a META of just making the best bubble taxi and having their ships follow them via transfer - all the time.

However, I note that reductions would likely to reduce Fleet Carrier usage (purchase and jumps), but at a cost of meaningful gameplay and immersion.

I would definitely say "It's not broken, so don't fix it." - Fix FC jump times and increase module storage instead.
 

Wheeltalk

W
Right now, for transfers between the bubble and Colonia, you're looking at ~3 days, and at a higher cost than the ship is worth. Perhaps cap those to a maximum of no more than 48 hours and no more than the value of the ship.

Also, when carrier jump times are congested and carriers are taking 3-6x their normal time to make a jump, provide 15 minute ship transports as a relief from the congested carrier traffic.
 

Tetra Trash

Tetra Trash
If fleet carriers can jump pretty much anywhere within 15 minutes, then longer transfer times make no sense in game. The longest time should be no longer than the shortest possible in-game time for an FC jump sequence to start and end. The longer wait adds nothing to my gameplay, and the "space is big" argument holds no water since we're arbitrarily shortening times to be able to traverse mind-bogglingly large distances within a time frame that's consistent with fun gameplay.

Edit: above applies in the bubble; it's not unreasonable for longer for Colonia or other far flung locations, but on the order of hours, not days.
 
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