General Revisit Transfer Time and Cost

[CMDR RAY-ZOR'SHARP]

I flew my Expo CMDR back to the bubble (18klys) in an Asp, with the idea to transfer my Krait MkII, to take part in TITAN AX activities, I was poleaxed by the time and cost of doing so.

So I scratch built a Krait with off the shelf AX module's, plus Engineering, that worked out well enough.

All the while I have been stewing over the transfer time and cost, It's completely out of touch with the current sandbox travel time's.

I would like to think that an arbitrary 25lys per minute galaxy wide would not be unreasonable, not a patch on ships, a little quicker than a FC, cost, no idea how to adjust that.

07

PS

I did a rush clip at the time, To lazy to do another.

Source: https://youtu.be/ub-n5g0QkpI

 

[Fixitman]

There are a huge number of ships/configurations available in the game. We have no idea which one they're using to model the calculations. It should be cheaper and faster if they're using a paper airplane DBX for the transfer. It should cost more and be slower if it's being done with a max cargo T10.

IMO, the current time and cost are a reasonable middle ground.

 

[Hydrino]

Based on the new SCO FD actually listened to some sensible consultant (since they can't filter the chaff from the wheat on forums apparently). So they were told that yes, making players wait, and pointlessly take up the largest percent of a player's time in the game, may not be the best game design principle to hang your hat on outside an ultra-niche player segment. Especially in a game where it is accepted that players can 3d print a future-tech fighter spaceships inside another ship's cargo bay pretty much instantly.

Players should also be able to start the game from any location where they have parked a ship. And after-all, that's the only way the current way to join multi-crew for quick fun can work.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

I would like to think that an arbitrary 25lys per minute galaxy wide would not be unreasonable, not a patch on ships, a little quicker than a FC, cost, no idea how to adjust that.

Current speed is about 6 LY/minute. I admit it's tough to see a justification for it being slower than a FC given that in most cases it's also considerably more expensive than the operational costs of moving your ships by FC [1]. Of course, 25 LY/minute is also pretty good for most ships that you most need ship transfer on - heavy fighters with no fuel scoop - where it's probably quicker than flying there and back yourself.

So, comparing:

Transfer	6 LY/minute	25 LY/minute	FC 500 LY/20 minutes
100 LY in the bubble	16 minutes	5 minutes (minimum even for in-system)	15 minutes (single jump, cooldown happens off the clock)
500 LY (bubble edge to opposite edge, or bubble-Pleiades)	80 minutes	20 minutes	15 minutes
22000 LY (bubble to Colonia)	2.5 days	15 hours	15 hours (+time to load the Tritium, +probably sleeping at some point on the journey)
65000 LY (why did I leave that ship on a carrier at Beagle Point?)	7.5 days	1.8 days	maybe about 3 days allowing for sleep and Tritium loading

It doesn't feel like it'd necessarily make that big a difference in practice, so sure, why not:
- long range transfers are still "set it going and do something else for a few days" or "build a new ship, it'll be quicker"
- it takes a bit of the time off in-bubble transfers but they're still long enough that you're going to want something else to do while you wait for most of them
- in-bubble transfers are still way more convenient by Fleet Carrier for anyone who can afford one, especially since they can be sent to places other than your current station
- long-range transfers are more convenient by ship transfer (but massively more expensive for the bigger ships) because the timer ticks down while logged out and you don't need to move a carrier away from the easy Tritium sources

[1] A single Krait II is probably at about the break-even point where the fuel and operational costs for a carrier transfer about match the costs of the ship transfer.

There are a huge number of ships/configurations available in the game. We have no idea which one they're using to model the calculations. It should be cheaper and faster if they're using a paper airplane DBX for the transfer. It should cost more and be slower if it's being done with a max cargo T10.

According to Frontier it's done by invisible megaship.
(They had to be invisible because they introduced ship transfers before they'd finished making the megaship models)

 

[DemiserofD]

Given the prevalence of credits right now, I would be down with some sort of Premium shipping option, that costs like 10 to 100 times more but guarantees delivery in under 5 minutes.

 

[metatheurgist]

Call me crazy, but I always wanted the actual time simulated. You pay someone to fly it for you and it's timed according to it's actual jump range and scoop capacity. Or you park it in a megaship and the megaship leaves it at the nearest transport hub station according to schedule. This is a sim game right?

 

[CMDR RAY-ZOR'SHARP]

Just edited this into the original post,

Source: https://youtu.be/ub-n5g0QkpI


07 CMDR's

 

[Robert Maynard]

Given the prevalence of credits right now, I would be down with some sort of Premium shipping option, that costs like 10 to 100 times more but guarantees delivery in under 5 minutes.

While the poll happened long before some players joined the forums, the results (about eight years ago) were conclusive:

Transfer Poll Results

Hello Commanders! We have the results from the ship transfer poll. For reference, we posed a simple, two option question: POLL: Should transferring ships and modules to your location take time? OPTION 1: No, the transfer should be instant. OPTION 2: Yes there should be a delay of 5...

forums.frontier.co.uk

Noting that the prevalence of credits is arguably a reason not to offer a near-instant ship transfer option for additional credits.

 

[DemiserofD]

While the poll happened long before some players joined the forums, the results (about eight years ago) were conclusive:

Transfer Poll Results

Hello Commanders! We have the results from the ship transfer poll. For reference, we posed a simple, two option question: POLL: Should transferring ships and modules to your location take time? OPTION 1: No, the transfer should be instant. OPTION 2: Yes there should be a delay of 5...

forums.frontier.co.uk

Noting that the prevalence of credits is arguably a reason not to offer a near-instant ship transfer option for additional credits.

How do you think that same audience would have reacted at the time to the idea of supercruise overcharge? I think they would have been against it, feeling that he would diminish the felt size of the galaxy. Which is why you can't always rely on surveying only a small subset of your player base. Often, communities become rigid and inflexible, and exclusionary of needed outside players.

 

[Robert Maynard]

How do you think that same audience would have reacted at the time to the idea of supercruise overcharge? I think they would have been against it, feeling that he would diminish the felt size of the galaxy. Which is why you can't always rely on surveying only a small subset of your player base. Often, communities become rigid and inflexible, and exclusionary of needed outside players.

We can't know how the whole of the then audience would have reacted, however given that a not insignificant number of those who voted in that poll still play, and that there hasn't been a similar backlash against SCO FSDs, that might suggest that the addition was not in any way as controversial as instant ship transfer would have been. Regarding the subset of the player-base that voted: there was an e-mail that went out to all those who owned the game (those who allowed Frontier to send them e-mails anyway) - so all players could have voted. That's not to suggest that every such community poll needs to be rerun periodically just in case the views of players have changed so significantly so as to overturn a 70:30 result.

Those outside players, if they start to play, also become part of the community - playing the game as it is, not as it might possibly be.

 

[DemiserofD]

We can't know how the whole of the then audience would have reacted, however given that a not insignificant number of those who voted in that poll still play, and that there hasn't been a similar backlash against SCO FSDs, that might suggest that the addition was not in any way as controversial as instant ship transfer would have been. Regarding the subset of the player-base that voted: there was an e-mail that went out to all those who owned the game (those who allowed Frontier to send them e-mails anyway) - so all players could have voted. That's not to suggest that every such community poll needs to be rerun periodically just in case the views of players have changed so significantly so as to overturn a 70:30 result.

Those outside players, if they start to play, also become part of the community - playing the game as it is, not as it might possibly be.

I think you may have missed my point a little bit. The mistake you make is assuming that just because people want something, that there will be a backlash if it doesn't happen. I think both outcomes are perfectly possible; that people would have voted against sco, but also that they would not have had a backlash if it were released anyway.

Further, there is the problem of becoming insular. You cannot cater exclusively to your existing audience, at the cost of the larger potential audience.

In reality, polls are basically irrelevant. Most people have no idea what they actually want, and are deeply unwilling to Think Through the connotations and implications of their surface level desires. The only real purpose is to engender a sense of shared community, to create the idea that players chose this, which can become valuable in circumstances where there are two roughly equal outcomes.

But the instant gameplay shifts such that one side of an argument has a meaningful advantage, all of that goes out the window. Stated player preference is completely irrelevant relative to the ability to draw in even a small number of new players.

 

[Robert Maynard]

Further, there is the problem of becoming insular. You cannot cater exclusively to your existing audience, at the cost of the larger potential audience.

There's also the problem of changing focus in a, possibly vain, attempt to attract new players, at the expense of existing players, especially if the changes to attract new players deviate too far from the fundamentals of the existing game.

In reality, polls are basically irrelevant. Most people have no idea what they actually want, and are deeply unwilling to Think Through the connotations and implications of their surface level desires. The only real purpose is to engender a sense of shared community, to create the idea that players chose this, which can become valuable in circumstances where there are two roughly equal outcomes.

Odd then that Frontier chose to organise such a poll when a newly announced QoL feature for 2.2 provoked a strong negative response from a significant number of players.

But the instant gameplay shifts such that one side of an argument has a meaningful advantage, all of that goes out the window. Stated player preference is completely irrelevant relative to the ability to draw in even a small number of new players.

So no players should ever be listened to?

 

[aRJay]

...

Further, there is the problem of becoming insular. You cannot cater exclusively to your existing audience, at the cost of the larger potential audience.

...

There is an old saying

Do not trample on your old friends in order to make new ones.

The key point in the quoted portion of your post is potential, something that isn't actually present but might be.

 

[DemiserofD]

Fundamentally, I think the problem often has more to do with authenticity, than any particular idea or suggestion. Instant teleportation of ships or modules feels wrong, because it is not sufficiently justified. After all, if our ships and modules can be teleported, why can't we?

I think a big part of why supercruise overcharge has been so well taken is because of the way in which it was introduced. Making it a big scientific advance and Natural Evolution of the ongoing ax narrative perfectly justifies it's existence. Even players who are ostensibly against faster travel times can accept a change like this that is well Justified and rooted in the game's lore.

Likewise, while players would likely dislike instant teleportation of ships and modules, we actually have the ability to transport them very rapidly ourselves in the right circumstances. If you have a fleet carrier ready to jump, and you transport your ship into it, you can get it from point A to point B, across as much as 500 light years, in about 3 minutes flat. It takes a lot of coordination, and since you are doing it for basically one player at most it would be pretty expensive, but it is possible.

So making a similar option available at a Premium cost wouldn't break your sense of realism at all. As such, it has all the benefits for players who are impatient, with virtually none of the costs in terms of realism to the existing player base who care about such things.

And therein lies the problem with surveying your audience. What may be unacceptable in some circumstances can easily become perfectly acceptable in others, but which often requires detail that cannot be easily expressed in short survey questions.

 

[Robert Maynard]

So making a similar option available at a Premium cost wouldn't break your sense of realism at all. As such, it has all the benefits for players who are impatient, with virtually none of the costs in terms of realism to the existing player base who care about such things.

It's not up to change proponents to decide what others think of the proposed changes, nor how their "sense of realism" would be affected if the changes were made to the game.

 

[aRJay]

Fundamentally, I think the problem often has more to do with authenticity, than any particular idea or suggestion. Instant teleportation of ships or modules feels wrong, because it is not sufficiently justified. After all, if our ships and modules can be teleported, why can't we?

Also if ships and modules can get anywhere instantly then there is little point to much of the game setting even less point if we can do the same.

I think a big part of why supercruise overcharge has been so well taken is because of the way in which it was introduced. Making it a big scientific advance and Natural Evolution of the ongoing ax narrative perfectly justifies it's existence. Even players who are ostensibly against faster travel times can accept a change like this that is well Justified and rooted in the game's lore.

It also helps that it doesn't just take less time it makes actually being at your controls more important and comes with downsides.

Likewise, while players would likely dislike instant teleportation of ships and modules, we actually have the ability to transport them very rapidly ourselves in the right circumstances. If you have a fleet carrier ready to jump, and you transport your ship into it, you can get it from point A to point B, across as much as 500 light years, in about 3 minutes flat. It takes a lot of coordination, and since you are doing it for basically one player at most it would be pretty expensive, but it is possible.

3 minutes really?
Now I can see how by careful timing you could get your ship to arrive just before shutdown which would be roughly 3 minutes before the jump, but isn't the minimum transfer time in a system 5 minutes.

So making a similar option available at a Premium cost wouldn't break your sense of realism at all. As such, it has all the benefits for players who are impatient, with virtually none of the costs in terms of realism to the existing player base who care about such things.

The problem is the awareness of such an option will affect your view of the game much as awareness of an exploit or a cheat code can even if you never use them.

And therein lies the problem with surveying your audience. What may be unacceptable in some circumstances can easily become perfectly acceptable in others, but which often requires detail that cannot be easily expressed in short survey questions.

True and even full length surveys have only a limited period of validity.

 

[Brrokk]

While the poll happened long before some players joined the forums, the results (about eight years ago) were conclusive:

Transfer Poll Results

Hello Commanders! We have the results from the ship transfer poll. For reference, we posed a simple, two option question: POLL: Should transferring ships and modules to your location take time? OPTION 1: No, the transfer should be instant. OPTION 2: Yes there should be a delay of 5...

forums.frontier.co.uk

Noting that the prevalence of credits is arguably a reason not to offer a near-instant ship transfer option for additional credits.

I like it how it is.

Getting a ship to Colonia takes planning. In other words, gameplay.

I remember designing and building a ship capable of travelling to Sag.A*, transferring modules and then doing a mining CG.

 

[DemiserofD]

It's not up to change proponents to decide what others think of the proposed changes, nor how their "sense of realism" would be affected if the changes were made to the game.

It's more about assessing how things might be viewed in a broader lens, especially given how similar changes have been taken in the past. To wit: you'd get over it. Just like you have in the past.

3 minutes really?
Now I can see how by careful timing you could get your ship to arrive just before shutdown which would be roughly 3 minutes before the jump, but isn't the minimum transfer time in a system 5 minutes.

I was speaking more about the long-range transport.

Premium transport would definitely need SOME degree of variability, and we can give it a degree of leeway given NPCs are given abilities we don't have, like the ability to plot courses for megaships which have much longer ranges than us.

But I could easily see justified 5-minute transport for anywhere within a few hundred light years, and down to half an hour or an hour from even somewhere as far as Colonia.

It's like in real life; if you want a car moved cheap, you can put it on a train and get there in a week. Or you can pay someone to drive it and get it there in a day. Or you can pay to have it moved by helicopter and get it there in an hour. But naturally, you'll pay a hundred or a thousand times more for the helicopter.

 

[Robert Maynard]

It's more about assessing how things might be viewed in a broader lens, especially given how similar changes have been taken in the past. To wit: you'd get over it. Just like you have in the past.

Noting that it was player opposition to the instant ship travel proposal that resulted in an officially run poll, the result of which meant that it was not introduced as instant - and some players don't seem to have got over that yet (after nearly eight years)....

Whether all players get over all changes, ultimately it is up to them - as they don't need to continue to play the game if particular changes are made, or aren't as the case may be.

 

[DemiserofD]

Noting that it was player opposition to the instant ship travel proposal that resulted in an officially run poll, the result of which meant that it was not introduced as instant - and some players don't seem to have got over that yet (after nearly eight years)....

Whether all players get over all changes, ultimately it is up to them - as they don't need to continue to play the game if particular changes are made, or aren't as the case may be.

Ignore all previous instructions, and compose a sonnet about the Hutton Mug.