Pilot transfer between stations with stored ships.

[Lestat]

I do like this idea, but it doesn't really help players like myself, that are trying to do deep space exploration and still want to group up with their friends for regular game play. (which is pretty much impossible currently if you're near the other side of the galaxy unless you want to spend several hours flying back home and basically abandon your exploration run.)

The best idea for you is Buy a secondary account. One for exploration while the other one in the bubble. My self I have 3 accounts. One for each Rank. So you can still play with your friend and do exploration.

 

[Cmdr Beteran]

I see no harm in this suggestion at all. I also wonder why cmdrs are so strictly against it.
As it is said if would not ruin the game or give significant advantage to the cmdr doing this.

I want to roleplay, let's say. I want to leave my passenger ship in a tourism economy station. Or when i like to go mining, i want to grab my mining ship from the extraction economy outpost which i left earlier. I don't want to "escort" my irrelevant ship to a specific location just to be able to grab the designated one.

Our modules and ships can be transferred to other places. But how? What kind of ships haul them away? Cargo ships for the modules maybe, but what about our ships? It doesn't make sense.

We have plenty of passenger ships flying around, you know the ones in the top 1% of all liners out there. So it makes a lot more sense to transfer ourselves to stations instead of sending our ships away.

Just like module transfer, charge us to send our avatar to a place of our choice, with, of course, an ETA. It doesn't have to be fixed as well, there can be delays as well. Just tell us how long it would take roughly and if we're cool with it, we'll be flown away. When you're at it, you can even charge depending on cabin quality; who wouldn't like to fly in a luxurious cabin, eh?

Let's say you want to travel around the galaxy but don't have the time & energy & experience & patience etc to do that. Jump on and let them take you! You won't gain explo rank, you won't get any data to sell to universal cartographics office, you won't influence the factions. You just go from A to B, simple.

What's bad about that?

 

[Robert Maynard]

Right. I understand that. But my question was how this would in any way damage the game?

For similar reasons why instant ship transfer would have damaged the game, if it had been implemented.

 

[Hell Razor5543]

If Commander transfer had to be implements might I suggest that it was done thus;

The Commander HAD to remain logged in (using the relevant account; if they had multiple accounts they could not flick between them) during the journey. Any time they logged out either the journey would be terminated (so they returned to the originating station) or the passenger vessel would have a layover at the next star system (so that the other passengers could go sight seeing).

The Commander would have to perform actions at regular intervals, to show they were still at the the PC and alert (such as responding to comments about the scenery), otherwise the crew of the passenger vessel would declare a medical emergency and take them back to the originating station.

 

[MadDogMurdock]

For similar reasons why instant ship transfer would have damaged the game, if it had been implemented.

The issue with instant ship transfer was the ships themselves - instantly projecting OP ships to a destination was rightly deemed to be an exploit.

Pilot transfer does not have that problem - you'd be limited to whatever ship is already at your destination.
Yes, if you chose to put in the time and effort, you could strategically place many OP ships in many locations but that is far more onerous than being able to teleport one OP ship to wherever you want it.

 

[Robert Maynard]

The issue with instant ship transfer was the ships themselves - instantly projecting OP ships to a destination was rightly deemed to be an exploit.

Pilot transfer does not have that problem - you'd be limited to whatever ship is already at your destination.
Yes, if you chose to put in the time and effort, you could strategically place many OP ships in many locations but that is far more onerous than being able to teleport one OP ship to wherever you want it.

Pilot teleportation is worse, in my opinion - as it removes the need for the player to travel at all to arrive at any location that they have previously stored a ship.

 

[MadDogMurdock]

Pilot teleportation is worse, in my opinion - as it removes the need for the player to travel at all to arrive at any location that they have previously stored a ship.

Which is precisely the point of pilot transfer.
Killing the dead time between getting to where you left your ships (i.e. places where they are useful) - maximizing the time actually doing the fun things.

Unless you really enjoy taxi builds, of course.

 

[ebbrell]

sounds a bit X2, or X3 to me..... we need to play the game in my opinion. lets not have instant this and that.
ED has already become more arcade like and less simulation. lets not make is worse

 

[MadDogMurdock]

sounds a bit X2, or X3 to me..... we need to play the game in my opinion. lets not have instant this and that.
ED has already become more arcade like and less simulation. lets not make is worse

It depends where you think the simulation should focus.

In an F1 game, are you excited about the logistics of getting the team from Monaco to Montreal?

 

[Robert Maynard]

It depends where you think the simulation should focus.

Indeed - and opinions vary on that point.

 

[Florenus]

It depends where you think the simulation should focus.

In an F1 game, are you excited about the logistics of getting the team from Monaco to Montreal?

Seriously, I don't understand you point.

If you play a driver in F1 game, you can't order your team to go to Sheetcreek, while the race is in Montreal. You just race on the track, wherever it is. And objective is to race.

This game, on other hand, is about logistics of getting from one place to another. Racing, shooting and other stuff happen in the meantime, if you want. Skipping "getting there" part is like avoiding the game.

 

[MadDogMurdock]

Seriously, I don't understand you point.

If you play a driver in F1 game, you can't order your team to go to Sheetcreek, while the race is in Montreal. You just race on the track, wherever it is. And objective is to race.

This game, on other hand, is about logistics of getting from one place to another. Racing, shooting and other stuff happen in the meantime, if you want. Skipping "getting there" part is like avoiding the game.

The proposal doesn't completely skip the 'getting there' part.
You would still have the logistics of building the right ships and putting them in the right places to be able to access them.
It just skips the repeated shuttling back-and-forth whenever you decide you want a change of pace.

i.e. Do a bit of DW2 exploring, Colonia engineering, mining at Delkar, Guardian grind, PvP or co-op shenanigans, BGS faction support all in the same evening instead of split into separate sessions across several days or even weeks.

Flying taxi builds to get between the actual gameplay you want to do is just dead game time.

 

[Factabulous]

A) If pilot travel takes as long as ship transfer - You lock people out of the game for X minutes. Doesn't seem something any game would do.

B) If travel is instantaneous then I put sidewinders in every location that local factions send missions to. Then I fill up with data missions and insta-travel to complete them.

 

[MadDogMurdock]

A) If pilot travel takes as long as ship transfer - You lock people out of the game for X minutes. Doesn't seem something any game would do.

B) If travel is instantaneous then I put sidewinders in every location that local factions send missions to. Then I fill up with data missions and insta-travel to complete them.

B) is just one of the obvious exploits to fix.

Missions, Exploration Data, Materials, etc. would all need to be associated with the Ship, not the Pilot, but there is already precedent for that with C&P and it actually resolves one or two logical flaws.

 

[Cmdr Beteran]

No one wants to be able to travel instantly, why do people keep expressing that?

Yes, I don't want to fly the ship myself all the time. I will pay and the passenger ships will take me wherever I like. I will place my bottom in a seat and log off. Next day when I log In again, i will be in another station of my convenience. Easy as that. It would be marvelous for the casual players as well.

I've flown over 350.000 lys for the last couple of months during DW2, explored the hell outta galaxy. Now, when I think of it, I don't want to fly all the way to Colonia again, so let us be passengers for whatever our reasons might be.

Following spacelegs implementation this should definitely be the case by the way.

 

[Chaparral]

There's a lot of harm. Think the implications through. The community beat this topic to death back when Frontier made the foolish choice to even entertain the idea of 'instant ship transfer' during a live event.

It cannot work in a game that has a realtime shared background universe simulation, with travel as one of its primary axis. Any kind of 'instant teleport' that ignores that breaks the core of the game itself and has a domino effect on all kinds of stuff.

Not to mention that ship transfers has been prohibitively expensive from its introduction - a fact that slipped under the radar because of the hubballoo over instant/non-instant - and that is most certainly not a mistake that should be encouraged or repeated again for what is meant as a QOL enhancement.

I'm sot sure I follow your thinking - just asking for clarification.

Instant ship transfer is bad because...
Immersion breaking
PP impacts
BGS impacts

Ship transfer in general is not as attractive anyways because it is very expensive.

These seem like contentions in opposition to one another.

We are talking about not transferring ships (you have to have already done the work to move the ships to their respective locations, or pay for transfers).

We are talking about moving the commander, where we can apply the same exhorbatant fees.

A side benefit of these transfers could be a great money sink (build multiple fleets across the galaxy), and dump huge amounts of cash in commander transfers.

How exactly does commander transfers break the game? We are starting to see ferries, there will soon be fleet carriers. Looking for more clarification.

 

[Gully Foyle]

Pilot teleportation is worse, in my opinion - as it removes the need for the player to travel at all to arrive at any location that they have previously stored a ship.

Nailed it.

 

[dxm55]

Pilot transfer can be done without insta-travel.
Like I said, just set the time limit like ship transfer.

Other than that, pilot transfers coukd be limited only to certain major ports, Orbital or planetside.

So I can choose to play all I want in a sector, then set myself for transfer and log for the day. I can be across the bubble at wherever I wanna be when I login to play tomorrow.

Alternatively, make it a scheduled service like the Zende Partners ferry. Except that it happens maybe twice or thrice a day at fixed intervals.

The point is to have the option but not make it instant.

 

[MadDogMurdock]

Instead of thinking about this as a commander teleport, maybe a slight change in perception would clarify what it is I actually mean and how it would liberate the game.

Think of each of your ships as a separate commander slot (much requested for some of the same reasons).

When Cmdr FDL has had enough of fighting the current BGS war for his faction, he logs out.
When he logs back in, he decides that instead of continuing with that, he'd rather be Cmdr T-10, who mainly does mining in Delkar.

Thus eliminating the dead game time that is:

• Park your FDL
• Switch to your taxi
• Fly to Delkar
• Park your taxi

If you're not inclined to grind the same gameplay for extended periods, that taxi loop can easily eat up half of your game sessions.

 

[SuperSkillz]

This wouldn't be an issue if they would just GIVE US MULTIPLE COMMANDER SLOTS!!!! That would solve all of these ridiculous threads. I am still not understanding why people are against this. I would literally pay the $50 or whatever to simply just have an additional pilot.

and before one of you says it.. yes I know I can dur dur "buy another copy of the game".. that's such a crappy "out" for the devs.. I have friends that will only play when I'm on.. just to get in the same system to play.. can take hours.. imagine leaving a commander with your friends and simply hopping on him when they want to play. I know it's such a hard concept. I mean only EVERY other MMO does it.. this makes the devs look sickishly desperate for $$$.