Frontier, thank you for a wonderful game! Many times I have recommended Elite to friends, and when they do finally give it a shot, we always have this issue where there is not much for us to do together, as there is not much gameplay that is conducive to someone with 800+ hours in game, and someone with 5... A thought I had, (and maybe this has been brought up before) was Rent-A-Ship! Basically, you could choose to let a commander borrow your ship, outfitting and engineering would be locked and no extra system permits (other than those already unlocked) would be issued while in a rented ship. The Ship owner takes on insurance responsibilities and would have to cough up the rebuy should the sip be destroyed. Additionally, all fines gained in the ship would be the responsibility of the original owner. in return, the owner gets a percentage of any credits earned while the ship is being rented. I can't think of a way this would break the game, but I admit, I'm probably not thinking of some aspect. But this will lower the barrier of entry to allow new players to take part in the same activities as seasoned vets with a decent risk/reward. Thank you for your time!
I love the idea of ship rentals. It was brought up during the fleet carrier betas but died off since. I personally think the owner should pay the rebuy outright in the form of a deposit. If they die they loose the deposit and respawn back where they originally rented it.
This was my thought! When the owner rents out their ship, the rebuy is taken from their bank and put into a "holding" when the ship is returned, it gets released back to the owner, if the renter gets destroyed, like you said, the ship is replaced with the rebuy, and the renter is returned to their last ship (probably where they rented from)
But there are still plenty of stuff todo together, you can fly in the smaller ships alongside with your friends.
One thing that many find fun in the start is to do combat, and even if you are in the same ship, and engineered, you will for the most part do most of the damage, and thus have the attention of your target, and that would allow your friends more time to learn how to fight. Also some of the activities for unlocking engineering also can be done as group activities.
This is just another way to fast track players in to the "big" ships and where they have no skill and then we start to see another round of how boring and bad all the big ships are, just like we have all those players that fast track their way into an Anaconda then complains what a big lump of garbage the Anaconda and how unfun the ship is to fly...
I have spent alot of time whipping together a small ship to play with some new players, without any engineering, to show them how things can be done, and if they want to get into some tougher action, I usually switch to a more suitable ship that is engineered, to provide more staying power and cover for my friends, while they get to learn the art of hit and run, to avoid getting the focus of the enemy. they have had great fun and got some incentive as to why they would like to unlock some engineers, so we usually start with Felicity Farseer and that alone is great start to get some basic stuff going. and not for the FSD upgrade, but for the thrusters and powerplant.
So be very careful when you add fast track stuff like this. as the easier things are to get, the faster people get boored with there is "nothing" left todo. I do not see how this would be beneficial in the long run to lend your ships to friends, why should your friends ever bother to unlock any engineers themselves, if they can piggy back on your effort? or care for ranking up in Federation or Empire to get access to these ships etc.
One thing that many find fun in the start is to do combat, and even if you are in the same ship, and engineered, you will for the most part do most of the damage, and thus have the attention of your target, and that would allow your friends more time to learn how to fight. Also some of the activities for unlocking engineering also can be done as group activities.
This is just another way to fast track players in to the "big" ships and where they have no skill and then we start to see another round of how boring and bad all the big ships are, just like we have all those players that fast track their way into an Anaconda then complains what a big lump of garbage the Anaconda and how unfun the ship is to fly...
I have spent alot of time whipping together a small ship to play with some new players, without any engineering, to show them how things can be done, and if they want to get into some tougher action, I usually switch to a more suitable ship that is engineered, to provide more staying power and cover for my friends, while they get to learn the art of hit and run, to avoid getting the focus of the enemy. they have had great fun and got some incentive as to why they would like to unlock some engineers, so we usually start with Felicity Farseer and that alone is great start to get some basic stuff going. and not for the FSD upgrade, but for the thrusters and powerplant.
So be very careful when you add fast track stuff like this. as the easier things are to get, the faster people get boored with there is "nothing" left todo. I do not see how this would be beneficial in the long run to lend your ships to friends, why should your friends ever bother to unlock any engineers themselves, if they can piggy back on your effort? or care for ranking up in Federation or Empire to get access to these ships etc.
I like all three posts so far even though I am to lazy to read them in full. I too find the idea of renting ships to others very attractive, but see the issue that there's an easy way to obtain lots of credits early on etc. But I see the tip of the balance swinging towards the added opportunities.
Fair point. The idea that spawned this thought experiment was a get together set up in a group I'm in that involved thargoids. I have a friend that's been playing for only a few weeks, but would have gotten a kick out of the event. but there was no way he'd have a good time in anything he'd be able to through together with such limited resources. The idea then being, you give suitable risk to the owner of the ship, that people wont be out there running rental websites, but would rent to a friend for short term use. Since nothing on the rental ship can be changed, and nothing can be unlocked, the thought is that the newer players would still be incentivized to continue their journey, but also take part in things going on now that might not be there when they are able to participate.
And yes, I do a lot of flying with and helping my newer friends too. The above was a specific situation, but there are many situations of this nature that I think we would get more benefit than detriment from.
And then we have multicrew. both as Gunner and the SLF offers things todo together in these sort of situations. Several of the unlockable weapons are multicrew compliant from start, so you can have your fixed weapons and then they become turrets if you get a gunner.
If the objective here is to let a friend borrow your ship, then perhaps the ability to give a "key" to your friends (like MMO player housing) would be a potential solution. You add someone to a whitelist for your ship, it shows up in their stored ships list when they're at the correct station, and they're able to swap into it. I definitely agree that the rebuy cost should come out of the pocket of the person flying, but if you have to "put down a deposit" in order to rent the ship, that adds in a barrier for newer players being able to use it, so that might not be a good idea. I haven't had to deal with too many rebuys - is there some sort of "overdraft" system, where if you get destroyed and can't afford the rebuy, you get the ship back but get a % skimmed off your profits until you've repayed the cost? (My brain feels like that's a thing, but it's late and I could easily be misremembering!)
I feel like this could be a really useful tool for the game. If you've got a spare Type 9 kicking around, you can lend it to a squad-mate to get wing missions done faster. If you're relocating your fleet from one place to another, you can get a friend to help you fly rather than paying for your ships to be delivered when you arrive. If you've got a cool build, or a friend who wants to try before they buy, you can just give them the keys. If you want to stage photographs of all of your ships alongside each other, you can lend ships to friends to make that happen. I think it's one of those features that, if it was there, the community would find a heck of a lot of fun uses for it.
Nah, I don’t think this is a good approach.
Players that don’t know how to dock, or play the game flying about in ships worth 60m Cr or whatever isn’t a good idea...
The alternative is fix multi-crew so that they can earn a decent portion of the income... so 50% always to the captain, and then the remaining 50% gets split to the rest of the crew.
They earn money quicker allowing them to get to a better ship to start with, but they’re forced to buy it, and understand how much investment each ship is, and how expensive it becomes crashing it and struggling to land, or starting fights you don’t know if you can win etc.
Essentially they have to work for it, not just get a high tier ship for “free” essentially.
Oh also, in Odyssey, the whole multi-crew thing could literally just be people asking to come aboard a ship and work as a gunner/navigator/pilot etc... so if they can’t afford the ship they want, and don’t want to be in a sidewinder, they can work on a bigger ship for a percentage of the profits, to help fund their next buy.
Players that don’t know how to dock, or play the game flying about in ships worth 60m Cr or whatever isn’t a good idea...
The alternative is fix multi-crew so that they can earn a decent portion of the income... so 50% always to the captain, and then the remaining 50% gets split to the rest of the crew.
They earn money quicker allowing them to get to a better ship to start with, but they’re forced to buy it, and understand how much investment each ship is, and how expensive it becomes crashing it and struggling to land, or starting fights you don’t know if you can win etc.
Essentially they have to work for it, not just get a high tier ship for “free” essentially.
Oh also, in Odyssey, the whole multi-crew thing could literally just be people asking to come aboard a ship and work as a gunner/navigator/pilot etc... so if they can’t afford the ship they want, and don’t want to be in a sidewinder, they can work on a bigger ship for a percentage of the profits, to help fund their next buy.