"You came in that thing? You’re braver than I thought"

[silvio076]

Exploring apart, through time, ships are always in perfect condition: in every major station we can click on "repair", spending some credits and instantly the ship is brand-new, no more a space old crate!

My idea? Repairing take time, like transferring ship and modules throughout station. More severe the damage or more big the system or more system to repair, it take more time to accomplish the task (from seconds to minute).
When we will spend a lot of time in the same game session, sometimes we will forced to play with systems that are not at 100%, and below certain % accident and malfuction may occur (ok, not so frequent just to not ruin gaming experience)...heat sink faulty, engine power loss, scanner malfunction, etc...and not only after a strenous combat mission.
We have to choose between complete the mission at all cost, with the ship making "water" from everywhere or withdraw temporarily for fixing...maybe, meantime, piloting a spare ship.

Maybe a repair limpet can restore only the malfuction and make an emergency repair...

I wish that my ship is not only a cokpit with flight specification but something more else, with more "soul". Leia Organa one time said: "You came in that thing? You’re braver than I thought."

 

[sidereal6]

Something I do, just for role play purposes, but I've found it to be a lot of fun, is to not use the station repair facilities - or at least not use them often. Particularly when I'm participating in a CZ, it gets interesting. You should try it. What I do in a CZ is "pretend" that it's going to take at least a day to repair any ship. That means sometimes I have to go back to a CZ in a damaged ship. Sometimes I have to swap modules to repair what I can. Sometimes I have to hastily outfit a transport for use in combat.

Add to this the fact that I care about the minor faction I'm supporting - it turns elite into a whole new game.

 

[Hellfire85]

It's a good idea for immersion and world integrity, but should something like this ever be added, be sure to find a humongous amount of threads from whiners and other players on short time budget complaining about how much of a "terrible time sink this game is" and "please respect my time FDev!!!"

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

If FDev were to implement a pointless time-wasting 'feature' like this, I'd simply buy a second AspX and alternate between the two. If you want to 'immerse' yourself, do what @sidereal6 suggests - leave the rest of us to play the game.

Also 'respect my time'

 

[space voyager]

It's a good idea for immersion and world integrity, but should something like this ever be added, be sure to find a humongous amount of threads from whiners and other players on short time budget complaining about how much of a "terrible time sink this game is" and "please respect my time FDev!!!"

Yes, and I'd be among them.

OP, RP the hell outta this and sit in the station for 10 minutes before repairing the ship. I won't mind.

 

[silvio076]

Something I do, just for role play purposes, but I've found it to be a lot of fun, is to not use the station repair facilities - or at least not use them often. Particularly when I'm participating in a CZ, it gets interesting. You should try it. What I do in a CZ is "pretend" that it's going to take at least a day to repair any ship. That means sometimes I have to go back to a CZ in a damaged ship. Sometimes I have to swap modules to repair what I can. Sometimes I have to hastily outfit a transport for use in combat.

Add to this the fact that I care about the minor faction I'm supporting - it turns elite into a whole new game.

yeah, this is a good idea to try, thank you! It is a nice "house rule" for a bit more diversity in gameplay.

I know that my idea is a rough idea, and the purpose was not to waste the time of other player but to find a way with some help (any good way of course) to give a little more importance to the ship maintenance... obviously preserving the fun of everyone

 

[sidereal6]

give a little more importance to the ship maintenance

Yeah, and I agree with you. You have more fun if you feel more attached to your ship - when you feel like "we've been through a lot of tough ____ (profanity is not allowed) together." In a way, you're robbed of that feeling by the ease with which you can erase the consequences of combat. "Wow, that was a difficult fight! What a close call! Almost bought it!" <click> "All better, back to the CZ!"

Another thing I do that helps is to keep a spreadsheet with all my ships on it. If one is destroyed, I do pay the insurance to get it back (can't afford not to) but afterwards, I sell it and mark it as lost on the sheet. The ship ID numbers are the role, and the ship's number. So for example, the 12th ship I bought is a transport, it's ID starts with T12 so the stations greet me with "tango one two."

 

[Aaron T]

Lets see here, someone wants mandatory preflight checklists, this guy wants time consuming realistic maintenance, some want to cut jump ranges in half, others want to make gathering engineering mats more difficult, just to name a few.

Great, let FD implement them all, for the sake of immersion.

Hey, I have an hour to play to play ED, cool, what fun.

Let's fire it up, I think I'll take this mission here, I can go it in 10 minutes but I have another hour before I'd fail it, perfect.

Let's fire up the ship, what? What in the world is this, it says my ship has to have some maintenance before I can leave the station?

I never saw it say that before, oh, yeah, the update was last night, it is a new feature.

I'll head over, get it fixed, and head out.

"The required maintenance will take 3 hours."

Mission failed, degraded to friendly.

Three days later I have 2 hours to play ED, and thankfully my ship is in great condition.

Open board, accept mission 250 Ly's away and have an hour and a half to complete it, woo hoo!

Fire up the ship and... what? Since when do I have to do a preflight? Oh, yeah, the g update.

30 minutes later (Oh, it cannot be a simple preflight, it has to be deeply involved to be reaLISTIC) I am out the door and ready for the 10 jumps, WHAT?

When did my jump range go down by half, oh yeah the stupid g update to make everything more immersive.

20 jumps later, fly into the slot, and just before touching down you hear "Mission update" you touch down the words MISSION FAILED are glaring at you.

Demoted from friendly to courteous, and "Oh man, I don't even have time to fly back to my home stattion now, I'll have to do that next week.

And, I am going to have to tell the girl friend we can't go to the amusement park on my next day off, I dare not tell her it's because I need to spend a full day getting allied with the station again, she'd kill me.

And, now I have to totally change the way I play, and if I ever want to get anywhere in the game I am going to have to quit church, my second job, and thursday nights out with friends.

Sigh...

 

[trollson]

Too many credits in the game and too easy to buy or fully fix modules and ships makes for unchallenging and, daresay, lazy play.

If Star Wars was like Elite then Obi Wan would have paid 1MCr for a single jump passenger mission, and the Falcon would have been in mint condition at the next port of call.

That would not have been the story you were looking for.

The thing is, its much more ¤FUN¤ to play on the edge, to struggle against the odds. There is a greater sense of achievement in finding that thermocouple to fix your stabiliser than any amount of megacredit grind. Your goals are different, more focused and meaningful, than the way the game is currently played.

So its unlikey you'll afford the biggest ship within a week? So fraggin what? There are no prizes for that - the only metric that matters is how much fun you have by investing your (limited?)free time playing Elite.


Changing the way Elite gameplay is structured now would be traumatic though.

FD could go down the path of adding commodity and materials requirements to the repair costs. But this is pointless unless buying new modules and ships isn't as easy as it is now.

In this scenario players would be able to perform heir own repairs in the field, given parts, and perhaps with the help of a NPC ship's engineer crew person. Repair would be some percentage of the damage (adjusted by skill), repeatable with more and different parts - so 100% health becomes rare.

Perhaps when you buy new it comes at a percentage health (subject to price, local technology, contacts/influence, bargining skills) - so you don't jump into a new 100% vessel so easily.

I'm seeing a lot of player driven goals and motivation in this, shame its not how Elite works...

Addendum: In response to comments, nothing here implys that the act of repair should take any more time than now, only that the result would no be 100% mint condition. Yes you'd have to find and source materials - but that is game play.

 

[space voyager]

Fun is in the eye of the player. I'm sure some players would fund it fun to spend an hour or two in a 'realistic' simulation of ship workshop, repairing parts and their assembly. Hell, I'd love to play that for two hours. But that is all. Then I wouldn't want to be bothered by it ever again.

Please, stop asking for more time waste.

 

[Chrystoph]

Because Frontier has asked us to put our opinions in the thread, -1. It adds nothing of value to the game play.

Color me a whiner if you wish, but, if you want worthlessness in your recreation time, go find a brown dwarf star to LOOK at for 20 minutes while you do nothing else.

I'm seeing a lot of player driven goals and motivation in this, shame its not how Elite works...

I'm seeing other games in what you wrote because Elite makes even less sense than it did, and has become even more of a job than it is now.

 

[jmp470]

I would like something like that implemented. I would also like to see my ship being repaired.

 

[Aaron T]

If I were not medically retired I would have zero time for this game.

I would have some leisure time, sure, not a whole lot, but it would not be wasted on a game that is basically a second job.

And as much of a grind that it is to do anything in the game other than fly around aimlessly not having goals or rank, folks want to add more grind and time to do a simple thing.

Hey, I have a great idea, I noticed there is something in the game that happens quickly, lets slow it down, heck, why not make us have to wait for a fuel truck to come fuel us up when they can.

 

[silvio076]

Ok, I see that the only important thing is the waste of time and, of course, it is a very important matter, no doubt.
But from the idea to implement in fashionable way the possibility to give a LITTLE more depth to the system's ship to the idea "go find a brown dwarf star to LOOK at for 20 minutes while you do nothing else" the way is very very long...
At this point I think that it does not make sense to have the advanced mainteinance screen if the only logical thing to do is click "repair all".

Every starting idea, in its primordial shape, is always "a not so good idea". But I think that the "Suggestions & Feature Requests" is the right place to shape all together any starting idea (put that; remove this; change this part; in that manner it can not work, why we don't change in this way?; ecc) to shape the starting concept in a playable way. Is it not possible to realize that idea for too many reasons? Good, we have done a great job anyway. And this is for ALL the idea in this forum.
Elite Dangerous is a world of "choice"..this is the real difficulty: to find a way to implement new feature preserving "the choice"

trollson put in the plate interesting concepts. Concepts that are worth to shape so we can have the right compromise for everyone. [cool]

 

[Chrystoph]

I understand that you desire more "realism" in the game, but it IS a game. I spent 12 years in the Navy before I was medically discharged, and maintenance was part of that. I get that it takes time and that it is a necessary activity in the real world. I was in the worker, fire watch for welding and the lead roles, so I can tell you definitively that watching maintenance/repair be performed is only entertaining in very limited circumstances.

I am here to be entertained, and adding what would ultimately be hours to the game play for no quantifiable benefit strikes me as a good way to encourage me to go do something with a higher return on investment.

I would also point out that this is an equivalent argument to the requests for cut scenes. People want cinematics for the game, but other people point out that they would only be watched once or twice before they become something to escape out of because, "Been there, seen that". How long before you get sick of having to invest that amount of time every time something needs repair?

 

[Iskariot]

Exploring apart, through time, ships are always in perfect condition: in every major station we can click on "repair", spending some credits and instantly the ship is brand-new, no more a space old crate!

My idea? Repairing take time, like transferring ship and modules throughout station. More severe the damage or more big the system or more system to repair, it take more time to accomplish the task (from seconds to minute).
When we will spend a lot of time in the same game session, sometimes we will forced to play with systems that are not at 100%, and below certain % accident and malfuction may occur (ok, not so frequent just to not ruin gaming experience)...heat sink faulty, engine power loss, scanner malfunction, etc...and not only after a strenous combat mission.
We have to choose between complete the mission at all cost, with the ship making "water" from everywhere or withdraw temporarily for fixing...maybe, meantime, piloting a spare ship.

Maybe a repair limpet can restore only the malfuction and make an emergency repair...

I wish that my ship is not only a cokpit with flight specification but something more else, with more "soul". Leia Organa one time said: "You came in that thing? You’re braver than I thought."

I can see where you are coming from and I do sympathize, but I am afraid this would not work in a game.
It would cause too much frustration and people will simply switch between ships.

Perhaps it would be nice to have some kind of cool looking ship repair mechanic that needs player interaction.
Currently we click a "repair all" button on the station main menu. This is very unsatisfying.
It is too casual, too meaningless. We don't even hear the sounds of someone repairing the ship.
As a minimum we should have to switch to a separate techy looking screen and see some technicians working on our ship in the background.

 

[Marc_Hicks]

Elite II did it right, IMHO. Repairing ships didn't take more time, but did cost more money (relatively speaking)-not merely to fix combat damage, but to do routine maintenance as well. Yes you could forego this, but at ever increasing risk of system failures.

Something that draws on this as inspiration, the idea of modules having some kind of "wear" value, as well as hit points.

-modules would wear out at different rates, depending on use. So ships that are frequently in combat would see weapon, shield modules wearing out quickest, whereas exploration ships would see scanners & FSD's wear out quicker.

-physical damage would increase the speed at which a module would wear out, as would pushing it beyond its rated specs (like using Jumponium or using a Neutron Star boost).

-players would be encouraged to get regular servicing done after every X hours of game time. This would be a credit sink, not a time sink.

-players could also choose to "jury rig" their ship, using a combo of various manufactured & encoded materials, that can temporarily reduce the wear value of modules. This is an activity that players might make use of during long trips in Super-cruise.

Anyway, just an idea.

 

[Lestat]

I think a good compromise would be the Lower cost of repair but take longer to do But you get complete repairs. While higher cost repair are instant. Also, add % stuff accidentally not fully repaired.

 

[Aaron T]

I understand that you desire more "realism" in the game, but it IS a game. I spent 12 years in the Navy before I was medically discharged, and maintenance was part of that. I get that it takes time and that it is a necessary activity in the real world. I was in the worker, fire watch for welding and the lead roles, so I can tell you definitively that watching maintenance/repair be performed is only entertaining in very limited circumstances.

I am here to be entertained, and adding what would ultimately be hours to the game play for no quantifiable benefit strikes me as a good way to encourage me to go do something with a higher return on investment.

I would also point out that this is an equivalent argument to the requests for cut scenes. People want cinematics for the game, but other people point out that they would only be watched once or twice before they become something to escape out of because, "Been there, seen that". How long before you get sick of having to invest that amount of time every time something needs repair?

Thank you for your service, I was medically disharged from the Army.

 

[Chrystoph]

Likewise, Soldier, and I was not throwing it in anyone's face, I just have encountered people that look at being over the halfway point and discredit me as a source because I must have been a failure.