Would Elite Dangerous Be Better If You Could Only Own One Ship At A Time?

LeoBartlet

LeoBartlet
One of the upsides of a one ship to rule them all is Frontier could gather information on the single most popular ship and create a cockpit and other internal walky talky modules instead of having to do it for 40+ ships.
 

Arioch

Arioch
Alien said:
In Elite you could only own one ship, a Cobra MkIII. In Frontier Elite II and Frontier First Encounters, you could own any number of ships, but only one at a time. If you wanted to fly a different ship, you had to part-exchange the ship you were flying.

In Elite Dangerous we can buy a number of ships and own them at the same time, still only flying one ship at a time (we can't be in two places at once, obviously). So would Elite Dangerous be a better game if we could only own one ship at a time, like the previous games in the series? And for this discussion, let's leave Fleet Carriers out of it, because you can and can't fly them, in a manner of speaking.
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I'm going to add to the chorus of "no" - in ED there are far too many different outfitting options and Engineering effects and transfer times for equipment you might have stored.

In FE2/FFE outfitting was quick with a fairly limited amount of equipment - even if you were at a high-tech system that had all available options. There were some fun, meaningful decisions to be made - small ship with great jump range but limited kit, or one of the big vessels with everything on it but can't jump for toffee? - but I can't see that transferring to ED without some major changes to the game.

I only have a small number of ships and mainly fly my Cobra MkIII (swapping out a small number of stored weapons on occasion) - but I like being able to get into one of my specialised ships without too much delay for stuff like CGs. If I had to purchase a new ship, get it fit out etc. each time I wanted to do something a bit different - I probably wouldn't bother half the time 😅
 

CMDR Karrde Sun

CMDR Karrde Sun
Thought about that recently thinking it was definitely more intimate when you only had one ship. Being stuck in just one without a lot of work meant something to the experience.

But the benefits probably outweigh the pros, and you could always rp play it like that.

Lately I’ve been finding carriers are more destructive to the same experience when you have one... being on your carrier dilutes the in ship experience even more. If it wasn’t for cartographics I’d probably leave it behind now for the exploration account. But again no reason to turn them off though.
 

MPL3D

MPL3D
Alien said:
In Elite you could only own one ship, a Cobra MkIII. In Frontier Elite II and Frontier First Encounters, you could own any number of ships, but only one at a time. If you wanted to fly a different ship, you had to part-exchange the ship you were flying.

In Elite Dangerous we can buy a number of ships and own them at the same time, still only flying one ship at a time (we can't be in two places at once, obviously). So would Elite Dangerous be a better game if we could only own one ship at a time, like the previous games in the series? And for this discussion, let's leave Fleet Carriers out of it, because you can and can't fly them, in a manner of speaking.
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Yes
 

pnellesen

pnellesen
No, imo.

Tweaking dozens of ship builds for various purposes/reasons is one of my favorite hobbies, and being able to have them available "quickly" (the definition of "quickly" being... fluid...) is essential.
 

Vetinari

V
Asking 'Would it be better if...?' is not my idea of

Lysette said:
forcing that on everyone else.
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I am a nomad, I spend weeks in one ship at a time usually, I dont have a home base, Ive spent a fortune on transfers, a lot of my ships are scattered across the bubble where I left them with a huddle in Colonia, I rarely buy new ships so Ive still got plenty to go, I like the 'feel' of flying different hulls - the stock T9 as bought gradually improving it on the go was so much fun, I only have a couple of dedicated builds the rest are for flexibility so I dont have to change outfitting too much if at all once I get it the way I like it
 

MPL3D

MPL3D
I've played all the previous versions, one man, one ship.

Besides it was mandatory to hire crew for most medium and large ships. Up to seven were needed for a large freighter like the Anaconda, iirc
 

Zieman

Zieman
MPL3D said:
I've played all the previous versions, one man, one ship.

Besides it was mandatory to hire crew for most medium and large ships. Up to seven were needed for a large freighter like the Anaconda, iirc
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16 for Panther Clipper.
 

Bigmaec

Bigmaec
MPL3D said:
I've played all the previous versions, one man, one ship.

Besides it was mandatory to hire crew for most medium and large ships. Up to seven were needed for a large freighter like the Anaconda, iirc
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That would be something I'd love to see though.
 

GetOffMyLawn

GetOffMyLawn
I've always played this game with only 1 ship at a time. Every so often I sell my ship, engineered or not, and buy a new one for a different role. I enjoy designing ships a lot and tweaking them till they are just right. It has really helped me understand how to build effective ships.

Judging by this thread though, I guess I'm a tad weird!
 

Old Duck

Old Duck
I've got a different take on this. If ED was a game that focused on players owning the SAME ship, say the Cobra Mk III like original Elite, then it might be a better game today. Why? Because then Frontier could focus on making the game around that one ship - including a very detailed ship design with a customizable (think Sims) interior with operational panels, tweakable engines, ship repair (using a welder and our beloved space legs), a full damage model, etc. Missions offered to the player could be more specifically targeted that specific ship, compensating for the "1000 mission types require us to own 1000 different ships" situation we have now. In other words, instead of being a mile wide and an inch deep, it could be an inch wide but a mile deep. For me personally, I think I'd prefer that. I fly a pretty minimalist fleet as it is.

Perhaps this approach is more appropriate for a single-player game than an MMO, since different "character classes" are an important part of an MMO. Though I suppose we could express our uniqueness in our loadouts and paint jobs and other customizations..
 

Susanna

Susanna
Alien said:
In Elite you could only own one ship, a Cobra MkIII. In Frontier Elite II and Frontier First Encounters, you could own any number of ships, but only one at a time. If you wanted to fly a different ship, you had to part-exchange the ship you were flying.

In Elite Dangerous we can buy a number of ships and own them at the same time, still only flying one ship at a time (we can't be in two places at once, obviously). So would Elite Dangerous be a better game if we could only own one ship at a time, like the previous games in the series? And for this discussion, let's leave Fleet Carriers out of it, because you can and can't fly them, in a manner of speaking.
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No!
Definitely Not!
 

Astaran

Astaran
No.

With a restriction to one ship, you'll either get one Meta ship that can do everything exceptionally well (which would make the game extremely boring) or you'll get a few different Meta ships that dominate their respective field (Combat, Exploration, Trade) and essentially lock players out of all other activities ingame.
 
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