The Galaxy - Is its size now considered to be a barrier to gameplay by the Developers?

[Boomer Kay]

Wow, I didn't think it was even remotely possible to come up with a simpler implementation.

Which also removes the moneysink factor ship transfer is.
Game is not exactly littered with moneysinks and taking some of it out of the ever-growing bank accounts is a good thing.
Paying for upkeep instead of convenience is pretty crappy game design.

Maybe it's time all the disgruntled players who're much better than FD at game design go and kick start their own version of ED. Cobra engine can be licenced afaik, so you don't need to depend on that cryengine hack straight out of the uncanny valley.

 

[Ironwolf]

Why even have a transfer option.

Just make it that wherever you dock that has a ship yard the "stored ships" tab just becomes "your ships" tab.

That's basically what this feature amounts to. Your ships are now an attribute of the player that follow you around.

How pathetic.

Wow, I didn't think it was even remotely possible to come up with a simpler implementation.

Both ideas involve very little coding to implement, IMHO.

 

[Phord Prefect]

Why even have a transfer option.

Just make it that wherever you dock that has a ship yard the "stored ships" tab just becomes "your ships" tab.

That's basically what this feature amounts to. Your ships are now an attribute of the player that follow you around.

Rats.. I can't rep you again. Virtual +1. Don't even remember the last one, but apparently I like the cut of your jib.
Succinctly put.. I'm thinking of distilling this into something that'll replace my current opinion regarding this ever so delightful development in my sig..

 

[Ironwolf]

Thanks for the memory:

•Players can only swap their current ship whilst in a registered storage location
•If the desired ship isn’t present then the player must arrange a transfer which costs a fee and takes time based on the distance the transferred ship needs to travel to get to the current storage location
•The same restrictions and pricing as above are applied here too

•Once the transfer is complete the player is notified and is able to dock and swap their ships putting their old ship in storage at that location providing they can also pay the storage fee accumulated for the transferred ship since it went into storage (including all previous storage locations it’s been at and transferred from since last flown)
•Cargo and equipment can be transferred for a fee, as with ship purchase.


https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/6753-Elite-Dangerous-Multiple-Ship-Ownership

 

[BostromNZ]

If you can use ships quickly as you argue, the ships become less meaningful. They become less special. Worth considering.

But ultimately I don't expect anyone here I've replied to, to agree, I'm just hoping they'll understand this isn't a silly issue, but there are serious reasons why people are against it that aren't "butthurt".

I get your points and I believe they are valid, there are valid points on both sides which is why this is creating so much discussion. You can see in the poll on the other main thread how evenly the community is divided on this one.

In respect to your comment about the ships becoming less meaningful, I believe the opposite, I think your ships will become even more meaningful because you will be able to specialise them for a role (as you can now) but actually use them more often. How many times have you thought, it would be great to jump into my Vulture because of this capital ship CZ but it's 20 jumps away and if I go and pick it up then I'll be leaving my Cobra there and will have to go back and pick it up at some stage, I'll probably have to dock my Vulture at a more convenient location and grab a taxi hauler back to my Cobra.... in the end you don't do any of it.

If anything, it brings the ships to the fore.

 

[Boomer Kay]

Thanks for the memory:

•Players can only swap their current ship whilst in a registered storage location
•If the desired ship isn’t present then the player must arrange a transfer which costs a fee and takes time based on the distance the transferred ship needs to travel to get to the current storage location
•The same restrictions and pricing as above are applied here too

•Once the transfer is complete the player is notified and is able to dock and swap their ships putting their old ship in storage at that location providing they can also pay the storage fee accumulated for the transferred ship since it went into storage (including all previous storage locations it’s been at and transferred from since last flown)
•Cargo and equipment can be transferred for a fee, as with ship purchase.


https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/6753-Elite-Dangerous-Multiple-Ship-Ownership

Fun fact, you can play that scenario with a combination of simple mechanics we have.
- You set a bookmark at your target system and call it travel destination
- You travel to your destination
- You transfer your ship, but don't change ships .. You do not actually see your ship in the shipyard, it's just a database entry
- You wait for however long you deem appropriate (or do other stuff)
- once that time has passed, you change ships.

Added bonus, you buy some commodity and discard it as payment for the storage.

 

[mossfoot]

A thought. It's been mentioned before about how printing ships for instant transfer will cheapen the (virtual) sense of ownership for many players. Every time you move your ship it's no longer your ship, just a copy.

But some have also suggested the idea of two movement methods - fast transfer (expensive) and slow transfer (cheap).

What if the instant transfer was fast and used the 3D printing tech (and is hopefully expensive enough that it feels like you're paying a premium to have a copy of your ship right away), while the slow transfer uses a fixed rate of time/distance (say, 100LY an hour) regardless of FSD range (for the sake of ease of mechanics) as it's slowly couriered over in normal space?

 

[Redan]

Hello, everyone!

Special thanks to Mr. Brookes for all of the replies. This truly separates FD from other developers.

Have we considered perhaps adding the option for a cheap, delayed ship transfer as well as an instant transfer for a severely jacked up price?

Maybe we could explain it away lore-wise as using similar hyper-jump tech as capital ships, and not being limited to Nav Beacons and star-to-star jumps?

 

[Ironwolf]

A thought. It's been mentioned before about how printing ships for instant transfer will cheapen the (virtual) sense of ownership for many players. Every time you move your ship it's no longer your ship, just a copy.

But some have also suggested the idea of two movement methods - fast transfer (expensive) and slow transfer (cheap).

What if the instant transfer was fast and used the 3D printing tech (and is hopefully expensive enough that it feels like you're paying a premium to have a copy of your ship right away), while the slow transfer uses a fixed rate of time/distance (say, 100LY an hour) regardless of FSD range (for the sake of ease of mechanics) as it's slowly couriered over in normal space?

Unfortunately, although that is a nice idea, compromise and all, it does not remove 3D printing out of the equation.

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3D printing wont be expensive.

Right now ship insurance is the cost to print a new ship.

The formula for instant transfers will be % of ship value (like insurance now) * by distance factor.

 

[Boomer Kay]

Unfortunately, although that is a nice idea, compromise and all, it does not remove 3D printing out of the equation.

Of course it does. You add your own delay and justify it with not using printing facilities.
Like that guy from star trek who refused to be beamed.

None of that stuff is actually visualized in the game. It's just a few buttons you push and your stored ships dont exist as textured, full feature entities in the station.

 

[Ironwolf]

Of course it does. You add your own delay and justify it with not using printing facilities.
Like that guy from star trek who refused to be beamed.

None of that stuff is actually visualized in the game. It's just a few buttons you push and your stored ships dont exist as textured, full feature entities in the station.

Do you play other games like that?

 

[TankMaster]

Hmmm...it occurs to me that while I'm very much in the instant transfer camp perhaps a fairer way to implement the feature would be to have a configurable delay timer during beta, for every ship transfer the player selects how long it should take from anywhere between 0 and 15 or 20mins, FD could then calculate the average of what all players select during beta and apply that as the fixed global duration for any ship transfer.

To make it fair, those who choose 0 (instant) as the transfer delay shouldn't count towards the average but should be counted instead as the percentage of players who would prefer it to be instant and be made that way if they turn out to be the majority.

 

[Boomer Kay]

Do you play other games like that?

Yes.
But ED offers by far the greatest sandbox potential to play it my way.

 

[Ironwolf]

FDev have already said we get instant, no change to that idea.
They have already thought about it and made the decision.

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I like to play games, like how they are designed.

For me, instant 3D ship printing destroys immersion when I think about its implications for the sandbox.

 

[mossfoot]

Unfortunately, although that is a nice idea, compromise and all, it does not remove 3D printing out of the equation.

I can make my peace with 3D printing. I know not everyone will, but I can.

But consider some ideas here:

-3D printing is only part of the process. Maybe it doesn't make everything. Just the bulky easy to assemble stuff like the hull and whatnot. I'm thinking of this more in terms of the proposed hanger bay mechanics for fighters. Maybe when you buy a "kit" it's a matter of having the engines and weapons and whatnot already assembled, but the ship creates hull and whatnot it all goes into. Win win - because it uses up significantly less space without feeling quite like magic by assembling everything (including a power source)

-In order to make an exact copy of your ship (engineer mods included) you can't just scan it or upload datapoints - it has to actually be disassembled at a molecular level (3D DEprinted ) to get it exact. Those materials on the starting end are then used in construction of other ships on the station. At your destination station, your licence allows you to receive an exact copy based on that deconstruction, at which point the information is purged. Technically you could make copies, sure, but the bureaucracy of the galaxy and the power that corporations wield pretty much ensures that messing with licences and IP isn't going to happen (a whole station could be shut down over such infractions, etc...)

-The process a ship is reassembled is not unlike how Insurance works, and in fact the money spent probably goes through similar hands. (Bank of Zaonce?) So whatever magic makes insurance profitable for them (because, let's face it, it's NOT by any way we can imagine) is the same mechanic that allows this recycling/transfer mechanic to work. It should be at a premium, I personally believe, though, especially the further you go.

Any of that help?

 

[Dbrn47]

Or maybe you'll have more ships because you can actually make use of them.

Michael

Funny, because this is the first thing I actually thought of when I saw the feature. FINALLY, I'll use more than one ship and stop taking the 10% hit on ship sales.

 

[sutex]

THE FURTURE



20,000++ players join the REALIST PRIVATE SERVER GROUP


Frontier then reluctantly allows 'BUSES' back to the bubble for players to catch, who FLY their ships out beyond the RIM !

 

[Ironwolf]

I can make my peace with 3D printing. I know not everyone will, but I can.

But consider some ideas here:

-3D printing is only part of the process. Maybe it doesn't make everything. Just the bulky easy to assemble stuff like the hull and whatnot. I'm thinking of this more in terms of the proposed hanger bay mechanics for fighters. Maybe when you buy a "kit" it's a matter of having the engines and weapons and whatnot already assembled, but the ship creates hull and whatnot it all goes into. Win win - because it uses up significantly less tech without feeling quite like magic by assembling everything (including a power source)

-In order to make an exact copy of your ship (engineer mods included) you can't just scan it or upload datapoints - it has to actually be disassembled at a molecular level (3D DEprinted ) to get it exact. Those materials on the starting end are then used in construction of other ships on the station. At your destination station, your licence allows you to receive an exact copy based on that deconstruction, at which point the information is purged. Technically you could make copies, sure, but the bureaucracy of the galaxy and the power that corporations wield pretty much ensures that messing with licences and IP isn't going to happen (a whole station could be shut down over such infractions, etc...)

-The process a ship is reassembled is not unlike how Insurance works, and in fact the money spent probably goes through similar hands. (Bank of Zaonce?) So whatever magic makes insurance profitable for them (because, let's face it, it's NOT by any way we can imagine) is the same mechanic that allows this recycling/transfer mechanic to work. It should be at a premium, I personally believe, though, especially the further you go.

Any of that help?

My concerns are the implications 3D printing should introduce into the sandbox.
These are 3D printers capable of printing 1000's of tonnes of complex components.
Even with your ideas, why not move commodities by printing them?

 

[BostromNZ]

It seems like a lot of the issue has to do with not being able to explain the instant travel mechanic in lore and therefore it breaks immersion.

I kinda wish Sandy hadn't used the term 'print' because that in my view is a bit silly.

I think I'm going to just imagine that the NPCs I've hired (but who aren't active and aren't on my ship) pilot my other ships and travel with me wherever I go. If I need to switch into my FDL then what do you know.. it's just been docked and is ready to go.

Explain it whichever way works for you, don't get hung up on the whole 3D printing thing.

edit* Thinking about this a bit more, if FDev were to implement some kind of delay system it could be based on your NPC pilots. Each pilot gets 1x insta-travel and once used there is a cool down (because they'd have to travel back to where your ships are). So if you hire three pilots, one will be active on your ship leaving 2x instant ship transfers at your disposal.

The more crew you have, the moer transfers but then they take more of your earnings. Add this to the cost of the transfers themselves and you might be able to balance it?

 

[Boomer Kay]

I like to play games, like how they are designed.

For me, instant 3D ship printing destroys immersion when I think about its implications for the sandbox.

ED is designed to play your own story in the overall narrative.
I haven't done a single assassination mission since the first one that sent me after a target that was not wanted
There's no real in game reason to play like that. My commander is just a mercenary, not a hitman.