Player defined FC warm up / cool down time

[CaptainPugwash]

So why the arbitrary 1 hour fdev? The real problem is that you want to give players time to get off the FC before it jumps to whereever right? 1 hour doesn't solve this as a lot of players will get on the FC and log off or go and have dinner or whatever.
The only way to really solve it is:
1) If no other player is on my FC let me jump when I want (say 1min warm up / cool down)
2) When a player lands on my PERSONAL FC let me the FC owner inform him of my intentions i.e. a clear countdown message on the FC visible from the outside (similar to the ferries) and a clear FC owner defined message message once you are inside that says "I may jump at any time", "I'm a trading post, you can stay the night, I'll see you in the bar", "I'm about to jump to SAG A" or whatever.

The 1 hour hour arbitrary value is lazy ...

If someone know a good reason for it being one hour I would love to know.

 

[Crank Larson]

2 is likely to be a source of amusement. "I'm a trading post". And the docked pilot next logs in to find themselves half-way across the galaxy...

1 hour is arbitrary, sure. But it seems reasonable to me.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

A few possible reasons for 1 hour (or 2 hours total between jumps).

• It means it's not automatically better than using NPC ship transfer (it depends on the distance between the systems, the amount of ships being carried, and whether the ability to "push" the ships to the destination or even remotely order the move is useful). To near-exactly match the long-run speed of NPC ship transfer would be for warm up and cool down to each be 42 minutes, which would be a nice reference to the old Hitchhikers books, but would probably seem even more arbitrary than 1 hour does, and would mean that for a single jump (where cooldown isn't so relevant) that it always beat NPC ship transfer over all but the shortest distances.
• It means that the carriers are - rightly - much slower than a lone ship. If you can jump them every couple of minutes, then there's barely any point in limiting the jump range as such - they may as well just have an unlimited jump range solely dependent on the fuel onboard. Top buckyball speed - by very skilled and experienced players over a carefully planned neutron route in highly optimised ships that can't do much but race - is about 13,000 LY an hour. The Fleet Carriers - with a point and click jump interface that basically just requires having a bit of money, or even just a friend with money - shouldn't be able to beat that or even come close to it.
• The carrier ability to go between two selected planets makes it possible for a player to go between two stations with barely any supercruise time in-between - just however far the carrier actually ends up from the port. This is a very powerful ability especially for stations a long way from the star and especially when combined with the carrier's internal cargo storage, and needs to be balanced to some extent by not being able to do it too quickly or often. (Careful forward planning of when you set the jumps up for can still get a lot of potential use out of it, though)
• It makes things like deep space carrier rescues (either of other carriers or of stranded ships) a bit more of an epic event, rather than just a case of fueling it up at a convenient Refinery and clicking the jump button repeatedly for an hour to cross the galaxy.
• The Gnosis - the predecessor, effectively, to Fleet Carriers - has a speed of 500LY/week and people still got plenty of gameplay out of that. Fleet Carriers are potentially 84 times faster.

 

[Dommarraa]

The 1 hour hour arbitrary value is lazy ...

Or perfectly reasonable

 

[Muetdhiver]

Most likely it's a way to bog them down and make them unusable as a fast transfer option or at overtaking exploration ships.

I would set the spin up to zero and the immersion cool down to 15-30min. That way they might be able to somewhat keep up with an exploration fleet without having the owner to log in every 2h to inch it forward. Because let's face it, some of us have jobs and lives. Even with such lowered timers they would still be slower than (most) exploration vessels.

And 5B+ for an option to fast transfer across the bubble ? Seems fair to me.

 

[Quantis Trap]

OP, I had this idea which no one read. I sent it in the wrong time when everyone was only reading salt. Check it out:
Solution for slow FC exploration

 

[CaptainPugwash]

A few possible reasons for 1 hour (or 2 hours total between jumps).

• It means it's not automatically better than using NPC ship transfer (it depends on the distance between the systems, the amount of ships being carried, and whether the ability to "push" the ships to the destination or even remotely order the move is useful). To near-exactly match the long-run speed of NPC ship transfer would be for warm up and cool down to each be 42 minutes, which would be a nice reference to the old Hitchhikers books, but would probably seem even more arbitrary than 1 hour does, and would mean that for a single jump (where cooldown isn't so relevant) that it always beat NPC ship transfer over all but the shortest distances.
• It means that the carriers are - rightly - much slower than a lone ship. If you can jump them every couple of minutes, then there's barely any point in limiting the jump range as such - they may as well just have an unlimited jump range solely dependent on the fuel onboard. Top buckyball speed - by very skilled and experienced players over a carefully planned neutron route in highly optimised ships that can't do much but race - is about 13,000 LY an hour. The Fleet Carriers - with a point and click jump interface that basically just requires having a bit of money, or even just a friend with money - shouldn't be able to beat that or even come close to it.
• The carrier ability to go between two selected planets makes it possible for a player to go between two stations with barely any supercruise time in-between - just however far the carrier actually ends up from the port. This is a very powerful ability especially for stations a long way from the star and especially when combined with the carrier's internal cargo storage, and needs to be balanced to some extent by not being able to do it too quickly or often. (Careful forward planning of when you set the jumps up for can still get a lot of potential use out of it, though)
• It makes things like deep space carrier rescues (either of other carriers or of stranded ships) a bit more of an epic event, rather than just a case of fueling it up at a convenient Refinery and clicking the jump button repeatedly for an hour to cross the galaxy.
• The Gnosis - the predecessor, effectively, to Fleet Carriers - has a speed of 500LY/week and people still got plenty of gameplay out of that. Fleet Carriers are potentially 84 times faster.

Thanks for the well thought out reply.
However there is a statement about right/wrong that I don't really agree with:
- why is it 'right' that an enormously expensive ship should be slower than a much cheaper ship?

 

[CaptainPugwash]

Or perfectly reasonable

'Reasonable' for who? Not for explorers, and irrelevant for those that want to set it up as a trading post.

 

[Kellan Fell]

Does the cargo transfer option mean you can buy a fleet carrier, use a Clipper to load/unload the cargo bays and flood markets at local stations? Imagine parking a mining carrier near a ring, loading it full of Low Temperature Diamonds and Void Opals, then jumping it next to a high priced station and unloading. You could make the cost of the carrier back in a single mission.

 

[CaptainPugwash]

OP, I had this idea which no one read. I sent it in the wrong time when everyone was only reading salt. Check it out:
Solution for slow FC exploration

Checked out your idea: hmm .... I still think the jump times should be aligned with the megaships that can jump in and out of CZs within a minute. The fuel and upkeep requirements are enough of a limit in my opinion.

 

[CaptainPugwash]

Does the cargo transfer option mean you can buy a fleet carrier, use a Clipper to load/unload the cargo bays and flood markets at local stations? Imagine parking a mining carrier near a ring, loading it full of Low Temperature Diamonds and Void Opals, then jumping it next to a high priced station and unloading. You could make the cost of the carrier back in a single mission.

That's still a lot of trips to sell the cargo, and you would need to sell where they have a sufficient demand.

 

[Bob McBobblehead]

How about the current warm up and cool down time in the bubble, but as soon as your are greater than 1000ly from any human settlement the warm up and cool down at set to 5 minutes.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

However there is a statement about right/wrong that I don't really agree with:
- why is it 'right' that an enormously expensive ship should be slower than a much cheaper ship?

It's not about the price - which even at 5 billion credits is still basically just a matter of persistence - it's the effort and skill needed. If you could use a carrier to keep pace by point and click every so often with someone who is pushing their ship to its limits, it reduces the skill ceiling in the game. Regardless of how expensive they are, they shouldn't be the best option for everything in the game.

The same applies to lots of existing content, of course - more expensive doesn't necessarily mean "better at everything", which is why people own enough ships to make a fleet carrier attractive in the first place.
Hauler: max jump range unengineered 37.3 LY, cost 51,720 for the basic ship. / Corvette: max jump range unengineered 21.1 LY, cost 187,402,444 for the basic ship.
Viper III: max real space speed unengineered (also no enhanced thrusters) 512 m/s / Corvette: max real space speed unengineered 232 m/s
Type-9: armament 3 medium 2 small / Federal Assault Ship: armament 2 large 2 medium
Mamba: cargo 66t / Type-6: cargo 114t


I also think there's more actual gameplay possible with slower travel. For example, you've already got https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threa...ort-array-dssa-a-fleetcomm-initiative.540166/ being set up, which is going to be a major project to get the carriers into position, fuelled up, etc. Even starting from Colonia, which most probably will, a full initial fuel load + a full tritium market won't get them very far on a galactic scale, so it's going to inspire major expeditions to get some of the furthest ones into place, and keep people busy for months setting them up. If they were quick and easy to move them over galactic distances, then not only would a project like this be over in a week or two ... but also, there'd be less point in doing it in the first place since there'd be hundreds of carriers out there anyway.

(Easy to move around the bubble - one trade run to a refinery in a T-9 fuels the next jump to anywhere else in the bubble - but hard to move around deep space is I think right for carriers, given how much more potentially useful they are in deep space, and somewhat mimics the Military Fuel aspect of the FE2/FFE era)

 

[CaptainPugwash]

It's not about the price - which even at 5 billion credits is still basically just a matter of persistence - it's the effort and skill needed. If you could use a carrier to keep pace by point and click every so often with someone who is pushing their ship to its limits, it reduces the skill ceiling in the game. Regardless of how expensive they are, they shouldn't be the best option for everything in the game.

The same applies to lots of existing content, of course - more expensive doesn't necessarily mean "better at everything", which is why people own enough ships to make a fleet carrier attractive in the first place.
Hauler: max jump range unengineered 37.3 LY, cost 51,720 for the basic ship. / Corvette: max jump range unengineered 21.1 LY, cost 187,402,444 for the basic ship.
Viper III: max real space speed unengineered (also no enhanced thrusters) 512 m/s / Corvette: max real space speed unengineered 232 m/s
Type-9: armament 3 medium 2 small / Federal Assault Ship: armament 2 large 2 medium
Mamba: cargo 66t / Type-6: cargo 114t


I also think there's more actual gameplay possible with slower travel. For example, you've already got https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threa...ort-array-dssa-a-fleetcomm-initiative.540166/ being set up, which is going to be a major project to get the carriers into position, fuelled up, etc. Even starting from Colonia, which most probably will, a full initial fuel load + a full tritium market won't get them very far on a galactic scale, so it's going to inspire major expeditions to get some of the furthest ones into place, and keep people busy for months setting them up. If they were quick and easy to move them over galactic distances, then not only would a project like this be over in a week or two ... but also, there'd be less point in doing it in the first place since there'd be hundreds of carriers out there anyway.

(Easy to move around the bubble - one trade run to a refinery in a T-9 fuels the next jump to anywhere else in the bubble - but hard to move around deep space is I think right for carriers, given how much more potentially useful they are in deep space, and somewhat mimics the Military Fuel aspect of the FE2/FFE era)

This reply warrants a proper 'reply to the reply' so I took my time after further reflection... :

Your point about rewarding effort and skill rather than 'point and click' is valid, altough I would also prefer to have the chance to show effort and skill with carriers - I can't see much scope for that.
OK, sure ship size and cost is not necessarily related to jump range and the jump range of a FC is actually a lot more and is enough to explore previous unreachable systems - no issues there.
I am also ok with the idea of buying fuel or mining for it, although I would have prefered an additional skill based scooping option, as it could also get you out of trouble if you run out of fuel.

But the 2 hour jump delay means effectively that i will only move the thing once per play session, therefore once a day at best. I, like many people, can usually play for an hour at a time, max 2 hours.
I think the fuel limitation is already sufficient to 'slow down' the FCs, and I would even consider increasing the fuel requirement per ly, but with a reduction in jump time.

 

[Rubbernuke]

The other issue might be ensuring people who want to go are going, and are happy.....imagine parking one near the starter area and 'helping' new players by enticing them Child Catcher style and marooning them.

Sherbert cannons! Fuel scoops! All free todaymuhahahha!

 

[CaptainPugwash]

Sure, but if nobody is on your personal carrier why wait? The two hours just become an arbitrary 'stop it being too fast' number, which doesn't match the current jump times of the meagships you see in CZs, for one.

 

[Rubbernuke]

Sure, but if nobody is on your personal carrier why wait? The two hours just become an arbitrary 'stop it being too fast' number, which doesn't match the current jump times of the meagships you see in CZs, for one.

I think its for simplicity really, nothing more- and in the kidnapping scenario its a hard limit the carrier owner can't change. I expect FD will shave it down, I expect to something like 30 minutes, or maybe 15.

 

[CaptainPugwash]

You are probably right that it was for simplicity, and that's execlty why I don't like it. You are probably also right that the 1 hour will be reduced, and I suspect that fdev had a lower value in mind from the start (say half an hour) so they pitched it high. So half an hour would then seem 'reasonable'.
But that's why I really don't like it even more ...

 

[Ian Doncaster]

But the 2 hour jump delay means effectively that i will only move the thing once per play session, therefore once a day at best. I, like many people, can usually play for an hour at a time, max 2 hours.

Yes, that's certainly true.

Being able to plot a route for them, which they'd then jump as far as their fuel let them, might be a reasonable compromise there. It doesn't speed them up as such, but does mean you don't have to login at 4am to set the next jump up if you've already got plenty of fuel on board.