Why can we not select one of our ships to start with at beginning of play?

[surfarer]

I often wonder why we cannot select a ship we own at the beginning of play. e.g. I have a ship at Ceos and a few around the homeworld. I CAN jump in my Asp and travel back to Ceos to do missions but this takes over half an hour of play from me just to travel!!! WHY??? some say to keep the realism. Well, guess what... None of the concepts are real. Warp drives are not real!! It is a game and we are made to work at times as if it is a job. I do that during the day. I come tyo Elite to use my imagination and enjoy a game but there is just so much wasted time having to do 20, 30, 40....50 jumps to get somewhere. Why not just increase the jump range? Maybe allow us to jump a few hundred light years . That will open up the game a LOT! Also allow us, as I said at the beginning, to just select one of the ships we have parked anywhere in the game (we can imagine that we travelled to that location, rather than have to do it EVERY time!)

Sorry to go on but this is a great looking game that could be amazing with a few GRINDS removed. Lets leave the grinding for the day job?

 

[Para Handy]

This is totally against my idea of what the game is.

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

This is totally against my idea of what the game is.

Likewise.

 

[MadDogMurdock]

This is totally against my idea of what the game is.

I more or less agree with you, but I can see a lot of merit in the OP's suggestion, especially because we're never going to get multiple commander slots.

I'm struggling to see how it could really be exploited either.
The only benefit I can think of would be something like going out to the Guardians, gathering the mats., parking up and then logging back into a different ship back in the bubble to unlock the Guardian Broker modules.
That's pretty small beans in the scheme of things.

Actually, the obvious exploit would be to park a Sidewinder at each type of Material Broker for instant material trading.

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

I more or less agree with you, but I can see a lot of merit in the OP's suggestion, especially because we're never going to get multiple commander slots.

Some people want ED to have an 'instant action' mode, like some flight simulators do - get straight to the dogfighting without all that pesky taking off and flying business.

It works fine in single-player games, but for an online game it really doesn't work, unless the game is designed that way, which ED totally isn't.

Multiple commander slots wouldn't stop people complaining about having to jump to wherever the action is.

FDev could solve all these problems by having CQC pay 200MCr/hr.

 

[Ethaidan]

I'm struggling to see how it could really be exploited either.
The only benefit I can think of would be something like going out to the Guardians, gathering the mats., parking up and then logging back into a different ship back in the bubble to unlock the Guardian Broker modules.
That's pretty small beans in the scheme of things.

Actually, the obvious exploit would be to park a Sidewinder at each type of Material Broker for instant material trading.

I think you have answered your own question. I know I'd have different ships set up for different roles parked all over the bubble, in Thargoid space, in Guardian space, Colonia, etc. While that may seem like an incredibly convenient system - mining ship at pristine rings, passenger ship at tourist station, asp parked at a barnacle forest, a few FAS's scattered around, etc. - just log in/out to jump into different ships/activities... it really would break the intent of the game wouldn't it?

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

I think you have answered your own question. I know I'd have different ships set up for different roles parked all over the bubble, in Thargoid space, in Guardian space, Colonia, etc. While that may seem like an incredibly convenient system - mining ship at pristine rings, passenger ship at tourist station, asp parked at a barnacle forest, a few FAS's scattered around, etc. - just log in/out to jump into different ships/activities... it really would break the intent of the game wouldn't it?

Especially with the new C&P system with notoriety - just log out and log in with a sidey parked at a system with an IF. Pay everything off and go back to murdering.

Oh, and exploration data.

 

[MadDogMurdock]

I think you have answered your own question. I know I'd have different ships set up for different roles parked all over the bubble, in Thargoid space, in Guardian space, Colonia, etc. While that may seem like an incredibly convenient system - mining ship at pristine rings, passenger ship at tourist station, asp parked at a barnacle forest, a few FAS's scattered around, etc. - just log in/out to jump into different ships/activities... it really would break the intent of the game wouldn't it?

I'm not sure it would.
I think there's quite a lot of merit in being able to park up your different kinds of ships at the appropriate places and then pick that ship when that particular gameplay mood strikes you.
It's not like you can do two things at once.

Is there any real harm in me logging out of my Xeno-Killer parked in the Pleiades and logging in to my FDS-Miner parked at Delkar?

There are obvious data, materials, and C&P exploits though.
Without tying these things directly to the ship they completely rule the idea out.

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

I'm not sure it would.
I think there's quite a lot of merit in being able to park up your different kinds of ships at the appropriate places and then pick that ship when that particular gameplay mood strikes you.
It's not like you can do two things at once.

Is there any real harm in me logging out of my Xeno-Killer parked in the Pleiades and logging in to my FDS-Miner parked at Delkar?

There are obvious data, materials, and C&P exploits though.
Without tying these things directly to the ship they completely rule the idea out.

It would also allow de-facto commodity storage - your mining ship could be filled with painite and I doubt very much that your Xeno-killer has any cargo racks fitted.

On the surface, being able to log in to a different ship sounds like a harmless QoL change, but when you drill down into the details it becomes a colossal change to the whole game functionality.

 

[MadDogMurdock]

It would also allow de-facto commodity storage - your mining ship could be filled with painite and I doubt very much that your Xeno-killer has any cargo racks fitted.

On the surface, being able to log in to a different ship sounds like a harmless QoL change, but when you drill down into the details it becomes a colossal change to the whole game functionality.

I still think the fear of commodity storage is overstated - apart from UAs, how much damage can a shipload of cargo do?

Transferring that Painite to another ship 400LY away however would clearly be exploitable.

 

[Ethaidan]

There are obvious data, materials, and C&P exploits though.
Without tying these things directly to the ship they completely rule the idea out.

There are also the obvious storage, trade, BGS, and PP exploits as well.

For many people, it might well lead to simple convenience, but to many others a multitude of new exploits - the BGS and PP potential being the most likely to impact other peoples games.

 

[MadDogMurdock]

There are also the obvious storage, trade, BGS, and PP exploits as well.

For many people, it might well lead to simple convenience, but to many others a multitude of new exploits - the BGS and PP potential being the most likely to impact other peoples games.

Again, how much damage can a cargo load really do?

And as far as BGS and PP goes, is going to the effort to purchase, load, deliver, and park a bunch of T9s really worth the effort on the off-chance that later circumstances make it beneficial to bulk sell or buy?
Also, anything that finally kills off the walking dead thing that is PP must be a good thing right?

Joking aside, the OP's suggestion would transform the game for me.
Changing role often consumes an entire play session with the trip back to base to change ship and re-outfit.
If you only have limited time, that might be it for the week.

In some cases the benefits really do outweigh the problems, and I think this might be one of those times.
As someone who opposed instant ship transfer, I sometimes surprise myself!!

 

[Ian Doncaster]

There are obvious data, materials, and C&P exploits though.
Without tying these things directly to the ship they completely rule the idea out.

Missions, too.
1) Move a ship to a Tourism system in the bubble.
2) Pick up data courier missions to Colonia
3) Relog to a ship (or ships - it's quicker to park a Sidey at each destination than to fly between them) in Colonia
4) Hand in missions
5) Relog to Tourism ship, pick up some more missions

Should get about 50 million credits every five minutes or so, once you've gone through it a few times to get the Allied reputations at the Tourism system.

 

[MadDogMurdock]

Missions, too.
1) Move a ship to a Tourism system in the bubble.
2) Pick up data courier missions to Colonia
3) Relog to a ship (or ships - it's quicker to park a Sidey at each destination than to fly between them) in Colonia
4) Hand in missions
5) Relog to Tourism ship, pick up some more missions

Should get about 50 million credits every five minutes or so, once you've gone through it a few times to get the Allied reputations at the Tourism system.

I did mention that things would need to be tied to ships or the whole idea is dead in the water.

Hot Ships has already started that trend so it's not entirely out of the question.
Also, the god-awful Telepresence malarkey for multi-crew has opened the door a smidge to this concept.

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

I did mention that things would need to be tied to ships or the whole idea is dead in the water.

And the amount of development work that would be necessary to implement that behavior does indeed make the idea dead in the water.

Hot ships has indeed started the trend and as you may have noticed, it's not exactly going swimmingly just now.
Imagine the problems C&P is currently suffering being multiplied across every single activity in the game!

All that, just to make ED even more 'gamey' than it already is?
I'll take a hard pass, thanks.

 

[rebelarms]

The game is a space sim, so there is a certain type of consistency expected, switching ships on the fly would not mix well with the rest of the game

 

[ZeroAi]

I often wonder why we cannot select a ship we own at the beginning of play. e.g. I have a ship at Ceos and a few around the homeworld. I CAN jump in my Asp and travel back to Ceos to do missions but this takes over half an hour of play from me just to travel!!! WHY??? some say to keep the realism. Well, guess what... None of the concepts are real. Warp drives are not real!! It is a game and we are made to work at times as if it is a job. I do that during the day. I come tyo Elite to use my imagination and enjoy a game but there is just so much wasted time having to do 20, 30, 40....50 jumps to get somewhere. Why not just increase the jump range? Maybe allow us to jump a few hundred light years . That will open up the game a LOT! Also allow us, as I said at the beginning, to just select one of the ships we have parked anywhere in the game (we can imagine that we travelled to that location, rather than have to do it EVERY time!)

Sorry to go on but this is a great looking game that could be amazing with a few GRINDS removed. Lets leave the grinding for the day job?

+REP

I so want this feature! (and have said so many times!)

Well, first we need the bugs fixed because playing in a wing is becoming truly frustrating. But after that, YES, please add this feature!

I also proposed that it could be limited to which ships our virtual commander could have taken a passenger liner to while we were offline. This wouldn't affect me much since I work full time and therefore I'm offline for more than 12 hours at a time ;-)

But, I don't think it will even happen, and it's because of the few who will post here that, "oh it would be so fake, it would break the immersion, it would be all magical unicorns, and blah blah blah." (I have not read the current replies because I'm sure there's some of that already)

Basically that's all a totally hollow argument that can't be defended.

Why?

First, these are the same people who have no issue using instant repairs, instant cargo loading, instant paint jobs, instant restocking, instant reincarnation, on and on and on and on and on and on and on... ad nauseam

Seriously realism hawks, JUST HOW REALISTIC is it to...

Paint a battleship sized ship in under 1 second?

Load 700 tons at the push of a button?

Repair 99% hull damage in less time than it takes to say 99%?

Come back to life when you die?

And do a hundred other things in Elite that are that way because it's a game and not a life sim.

(those are rhetorical questions btw, lol)

To each his own.

I for one would love this feature, and if it doesn't come to Elite it will come to another spaceship sim, that I'm certain of.

o7

 

[Para Handy]

...........
Seriously realism hawks, JUST HOW REALISTIC is it to...

.............

So you want basically to have it that the commander actually is doing everything by telepresence - so you are going to sit at a computer simulating someone in the future sitting at a computer?

Retreating from my reductio ad nauseum - there are things that happen for gameplay reasons and things that happen as a form of simulation. You might not like the mix and you can ask for it to be changed but I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you.

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

But, I don't think it will even happen, and it's because of the few who will post here that, "oh it would be so fake, it would break the immersion, it would be all magical unicorns, and blah blah blah." (I have not read the current replies because I'm sure there's some of that already)

If you'd bothered to read any of the current replies you'd have seen that nobody has mentioned immersion - the arguments against have revolved around how it is incompatible with pretty much all the existing game mechanics and would be open to abuse and exploitation.

I'm sure you feel better now that you've blown off some steam, so maybe you could respond to some of the comments that actually exist

 

[ArchEmperor]

If everything is easy, the least easy option is the hardest.

You are able to fly your body around in space, lets keep that illusion shall we?

"Two to beam up. .... Engage!"
- "Why are we flying in space when we can beam around like this?"