Traffic congestion in open

[FuzzySpider]

Hello Frontier. Hoping this finds you in good health, I am fine, the weather is nice.

However, due to recent changes to Elite: Dangerous docking is now difficult. Very difficult, in fact impossible in some places. These are the two issues which have led to the existence of this problem:

1. Shields. They don't instantly charge when you supercruise anymore. That's fair enough, it was an exploit. But that means that if you swap a shield or powerplant in a large ship you could be waiting for ages to get your shield back, and the best place for people to wait is parked in a station.

2. Powerplay. That mechanic that gives you the ability to either shell out 100,000 to get 10 tons of leaflets or whatever now, or wait 30 minutes and get them then for free. This has people running Elite in the background, parked up, while they accrue whatever that is to let them get more stuff.

Both of these new features massively reward station idling. And for a smuggler like myself who needs to get to a station and get inside FAST it is something of an open killer. Can you please consider:

1. Making shields instantly (or nearly instantly) recharge in stations.

2. Removing that 30 minute wait altogether, or having it tick away regardless of whether someone is playing or not (like repuation decay).

 

[SpitTheDog]

Hello Frontier. Hoping this finds you in good health, I am fine, the weather is nice.

However, due to recent changes to Elite: Dangerous docking is now difficult. Very difficult, in fact impossible in some places. These are the two issues which have led to the existence of this problem:

1. Shields. They don't instantly charge when you supercruise anymore. That's fair enough, it was an exploit. But that means that if you swap a shield or powerplant in a large ship you could be waiting for ages to get your shield back, and the best place for people to wait is parked in a station.

2. Powerplay. That mechanic that gives you the ability to either shell out 100,000 to get 10 tons of leaflets or whatever now, or wait 30 minutes and get them then for free. This has people running Elite in the background, parked up, while they accrue whatever that is to let them get more stuff.

Both of these new features massively reward station idling. And for a smuggler like myself who needs to get to a station and get inside FAST it is something of an open killer. Can you please consider:

1. Making shields instantly (or nearly instantly) recharge in stations.

2. Removing that 30 minute wait altogether, or having it tick away regardless of whether someone is playing or not (like repuation decay).

It appears your main issue is that you expect FD to develop the game to meet the expectation of Open players. They are adding all of these things without consideration as to whether they work in Open.

Go Solo or Private Group as that is how the game is designed to be played.

 

[Alex Brentnall]

Hello Frontier. Hoping this finds you in good health, I am fine, the weather is nice.

However, due to recent changes to Elite: Dangerous docking is now difficult. Very difficult, in fact impossible in some places. These are the two issues which have led to the existence of this problem:

1. Shields. They don't instantly charge when you supercruise anymore. That's fair enough, it was an exploit. But that means that if you swap a shield or powerplant in a large ship you could be waiting for ages to get your shield back, and the best place for people to wait is parked in a station.

2. Powerplay. That mechanic that gives you the ability to either shell out 100,000 to get 10 tons of leaflets or whatever now, or wait 30 minutes and get them then for free. This has people running Elite in the background, parked up, while they accrue whatever that is to let them get more stuff.

Both of these new features massively reward station idling. And for a smuggler like myself who needs to get to a station and get inside FAST it is something of an open killer. Can you please consider:

1. Making shields instantly (or nearly instantly) recharge in stations.

2. Removing that 30 minute wait altogether, or having it tick away regardless of whether someone is playing or not (like repuation decay).

1) Agreed, quick/insta station recharge would be nice.

2) It does tick away regardless of logged in or not, personally I agree it is broken but the instancing issues have hit me so I've been playing open for 4 hours at the Antal CG and haven't seen another player :S

 

[Ism]

I like the idea of fast shield generation docked in station.
Since we are hooked up to station power, that should allow for a fast charge same as shield cells do.
If I change my load-out and it involves shields, they have to recharge once I exit outfitting.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

traffic congestion? that is strange as there are posters in another thread suggesting open is deserted with no one around

joking aside, charging shields when docked - possibly for an optional fee - makes sense to me.

 

[rootsrat]

Hello Frontier. Hoping this finds you in good health, I am fine, the weather is nice.

However, due to recent changes to Elite: Dangerous docking is now difficult. Very difficult, in fact impossible in some places. These are the two issues which have led to the existence of this problem:

1. Shields. They don't instantly charge when you supercruise anymore. That's fair enough, it was an exploit. But that means that if you swap a shield or powerplant in a large ship you could be waiting for ages to get your shield back, and the best place for people to wait is parked in a station.

2. Powerplay. That mechanic that gives you the ability to either shell out 100,000 to get 10 tons of leaflets or whatever now, or wait 30 minutes and get them then for free. This has people running Elite in the background, parked up, while they accrue whatever that is to let them get more stuff.

Both of these new features massively reward station idling. And for a smuggler like myself who needs to get to a station and get inside FAST it is something of an open killer. Can you please consider:

1. Making shields instantly (or nearly instantly) recharge in stations.

2. Removing that 30 minute wait altogether, or having it tick away regardless of whether someone is playing or not (like repuation decay).

Good constructive feedback, here's some rep for you Cmdr!

I like the first idea, it makes sense!

(The second one is good too, but I don't personally care, as I'm not (yet?) involved in PP).

 

[FuzzySpider]

It appears your main issue is that you expect FD to develop the game to meet the expectation of Open players. They are adding all of these things without consideration as to whether they work in Open.

Go Solo or Private Group as that is how the game is designed to be played.

You're in the wrong thread.

2) It does tick away regardless of logged in or not, personally I agree it is broken but the instancing issues have hit me so I've been playing open for 4 hours at the Antal CG and haven't seen another player :S

Are you sure it ticks away? I tried it briefly for 3 days. When I logged the first time I came on the next day, fully expecting to be able to load up with tons and tons of thingies. I could only load up on 10t.

Just to be clear, are you saying that it just counts down the for the first 10t and then stops, it doesn't repeatedly count down allowing you to buy, for example 60t if you wait for 3 hours? Because if so that's even more odd than I first thought.

EDIT: I have to admit I've found some of powerplay very confusing.

 

[Ryder35]

If you enter the hanger does it not make that pad available for others at that point? If so people need to get in the habit of entering the hanger once docked.

 

[Alex Brentnall]

You're in the wrong thread.

Are you sure it ticks away? I tried it briefly for 3 days. When I logged the first time I came on the next day, fully expecting to be able to load up with tons and tons of thingies. I could only load up on 10t.

Just to be clear, are you saying that it just counts down the for the first 10t and then stops, it doesn't repeatedly count down allowing you to buy, for example 60t if you wait for 3 hours? Because if so that's even more odd than I first thought.

EDIT: I have to admit I've found some of powerplay very confusing.

Ok, the power commodity is the allocation bit on the rank rewards. You can only ever load up on 10T per 30 minutes unless you are rank 2 (15 per 30min), 3 (20), 4 (25) and 5 (50). If you logout the 30 minutes tick down all the same until you can load up another "?"Tons depending on rank.

Yeah you can buy to get that next 10T or whatever quicker but unless you have tons of credits it isn't worth it.

 

[Mephane]

1. Making shields instantly (or nearly instantly) recharge in stations.

2. Removing that 30 minute wait altogether, or having it tick away regardless of whether someone is playing or not (like repuation decay).

1. Scale shield regeneration by class and rating, with no need to idle docked for 10 minutes or more.
2. I am thinking the powerplay commodities would be better served similarly to rare goods - you have a fixed allotment (depending on your rank; and you would always be able to grab the full amount, unlike rare goods where it is a semi-random number) and can grab up to that much, and no more, until you deliver the stuff.

 

[Zplintz]

Not had any issues getting docking slots. No additional waiting.

 

[EUS]

From a nerd/game POV, when my shields go down, what is happening in my ship while shields are being restored, and the red bars fill, and what ability would the station have that would short cut this? It can't just be about power, because shutting everything down, and adding pips doesn't make the red bars fill faster. /rambling

 

[CATPAIN KIRK]

Are you sure it ticks away? I tried it briefly for 3 days. When I logged the first time I came on the next day, fully expecting to be able to load up with tons and tons of thingies. I could only load up on 10t.

Just to be clear, are you saying that it just counts down the for the first 10t and then stops, it doesn't repeatedly count down allowing you to buy, for example 60t if you wait for 3 hours? Because if so that's even more odd than I first thought.

EDIT: I have to admit I've found some of powerplay very confusing.

It just fills up that single quota and stops after that whilst logged out. And you're right - since PP landed, I almost always station idle when I'm at home, read a book, watch TV, browse the web or play different games and tab to ED every 30 minutes, cash in, reset my timer - rinse and repeat.

 

[Marra Morgan]

1. Shields. They don't instantly charge when you supercruise anymore. That's fair enough, it was an exploit. But that means that if you swap a shield or powerplant in a large ship you could be waiting for ages to get your shield back, and the best place for people to wait is parked in a station.

2. Powerplay. That mechanic that gives you the ability to either shell out 100,000 to get 10 tons of leaflets or whatever now, or wait 30 minutes and get them then for free. This has people running Elite in the background, parked up, while they accrue whatever that is to let them get more stuff.

Both of these new features massively reward station idling. And for a smuggler like myself who needs to get to a station and get inside FAST it is something of an open killer. Can you please consider:

1. Making shields instantly (or nearly instantly) recharge in stations.

2. Removing that 30 minute wait altogether, or having it tick away regardless of whether someone is playing or not (like repuation decay).

I'm in the same line of business as you, but I've not come across any traffic congestion, only at the occasional outpost where there isn't a security patrol putting any pressure on me. Are you getting it at the larger stations too?

1. Aye, replenishing shields should be part of the Repair All feature.

2. It does tick away regardless of you playing or not. [EDIT: Ah I see what you mean now - no, it doesn't tick away to allow you to accumulate multiple loads, which is shame].
If available, I'll grab my free allowance before I log off for the night and pick up another free load straight away when I log in the next day.
It strikes me as odd that people would just idle around in stations waiting for it, though. Those 30 mins could be spent running a few missions for the local faction of choice, making some cash on the side. vOv

 

[FuzzySpider]

If you enter the hanger does it not make that pad available for others at that point? If so people need to get in the habit of entering the hanger once docked.

Nope. The pad is still occupied.

traffic congestion? that is strange as there are posters in another thread suggesting open is deserted with no one around

Some areas are empty. Some are like Glastonbury during a festival when there is free onionhead.

I was pledged to Felicia Winters for a brief time to try out powerplay. I unpledged not long after as I couldn't really get into it, but I am still hanging around the general area doing smuggling missions in my Cobra. Rhea and the surrounding systems are quite well occupied.

 

[Jockey79]

You're in the wrong thread.



Are you sure it ticks away? I tried it briefly for 3 days. When I logged the first time I came on the next day, fully expecting to be able to load up with tons and tons of thingies. I could only load up on 10t.

Just to be clear, are you saying that it just counts down the for the first 10t and then stops, it doesn't repeatedly count down allowing you to buy, for example 60t if you wait for 3 hours? Because if so that's even more odd than I first thought.

EDIT: I have to admit I've found some of powerplay very confusing.

Yes, it stops between collections - so you can only get 10T (or more depending on your rank) when you login.
Even if you idle in the station, it stops at 1 collection load. Hence the people staying online but semi afk.

 

[SpitTheDog]

You're in the wrong thread.

Nope, you're just having a sarcasm deficiency moment.

Everything you say is right, I just don't think FD are really playing attention to how these things pan out when you apply them in Open.

 

[Spidy]

[...]
2. It does tick away regardless of you playing or not. If available, I'll grab my free allowance before I log off for the night and pick up another free load straight away when I log in the next day.
It strikes me as odd that people would just idle around in stations waiting for it, though. Those 30 mins could be spent running a few missions for the local faction of choice, making some cash on the side. vOv

I for example have Elite running in the background at work with an alarm set for 30 mins and I stock up on Stuff for PP. So I'm not actually playing the game, but staying docked at one station/outpost all day long.
To be fair, I do this in Solo, cause theres really no need to do this in open. But if one would do it in open, I can see how it could be a problem at outposts. Stations on the other hand do have more landing pads than the max number of players that can be in an instance if I remember correctly, so that shouldn't be an issue.

 

[LeetNoob]

Nope. The pad is still occupied.

So what happens if you dock in a pad and log out, then someone else comes along and docks in the same pad, and you log back in?
I'll tell you what, the game goes funny. I've a screenshot at home of what happens.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

So what happens if you dock in a pad and log out, then someone else comes along and docks in the same pad, and you log back in?
I'll tell you what, the game goes funny. I've a screenshot at home of what happens.

maybe you hit a bug, but my understanding is it is *meant* to put you in a separate instance until which time it can safely merge.