Travel between planets

[John B Knight]

In recent discussions here in the space section i have seen some people that mindark should bring T back because traveling between planets would be easy enough as it is already by privateer and mothership and that it should be more easy by quad sleipnir as well - i think thats where the whole issue actually starts with the mindset that it should be easy because it has been easy far to long already. In my opinion for an effective separation of economies there should be no easy way - not for sleipnirs, not for quads, not for privateers nor motherships. It should be hard to do it should require effort there should be no way for someone to just buy a large spacecraft and to expect being able to provide safe flights between planets. A trained crew should be required to fly a large spacecraft through space. IMO it would get us alot closer to that stage if there were patrouling robotfleets out there and if we as well as them had radars and if larger ships would have a larger signature to be detected by enemies from higher range. This would assure that small ships had the advantage of sneaking past the robots if they made extended efforts in dodging aggro radar range - medium sized ships would already have to fight but still also in need of dodging the robot motherships - and the large ships would get the most attacks but still needed to be carefull to not run into to many opponents at once dodging the enemy fleets. Killing a robot ship or even attacking it should sent an alarmcode to the closest other robot ships to put pressure on playerships in having to move on. This type of space would force people to work together to make their way between planwets - be it that scouts on smalll ships which would scout passageways for other small ships or even for the larger ones or be it as working in a team together in keeping the large ships alive. There should be no way to jump inside a large ship to loose aggro the ship itself should have mob aggro and should continue to be damaged even if everyone from the outside seats would exit and go inside.
This would mean separation of economies and it would create markups exspecially if robots could loot players and if a ships signature would be furter increased by the number of people on board regardless whether they were online or offline...

 

[John B Knight]

Could a mod please change thread title to 'travel between planets' seems my mobile screwed up with the headline.

 

[Serica]

Could a mod please change thread title to 'travel between planets' seems my mobile screwed up with the headline.

as requested

 

[SpikeBlack]

It's a question of AI. Can MA add an AI system that allows mobs to act in set patterns and then break out of them and then return to pattern yet keep it synchronised between all clients / players in the area.

The concept was suggested as an alternative to the lootable pvp space just after it launched i.e. the mobs acts as the barrier between planets rather than a few pirates - mobs can be active 24x7 in all areas, pirates can't.

I'm not sure you'd get away with the bots being able to loot the players though, we've already got people complaining about ninja mobs imagine you're traveling in empty space and suddenly you're surrounded by thousands of bots and you loose everything (it already happens planet side). MA would surely have accusations being thrown at them that it's an asset collection system - MA looting the players.

The biggest barrier though are the players, we're lazy we like an easy life and anything that makes it even slightly more difficult we avoid.

 

[das]

1st step in the right direction would be disabling warps, you do realize that?

 

[Solo4711]

i vote for removing space from EU and rename the Planet Partner Program into "Planetary Continent Program" where one huge awesome planet is build and every PP gets his planet added to be a continent on this planet.

This would allow the complete planet to be designed in a very nice surrounding of diversity like it is in the real world where local continents are able to create own cultures and economies which live from fast travel of the colonists to everywhere and help each others.

In times of communication platforms which connect the world and enable people to talk to each others withing seconds EU should not exclude itself by supporting systems of warfare.

EU should be a lightning example of cutting down borders of warfare and hate so the real world may take it as example.

Imagine theres no space - it isnt hard to do...
Imagine all the people - living live in peace...

You may say I am a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

 

[John B Knight]

1st step in the right direction would be disabling warps, you do realize that?

Warp should definately work different and warping ships should generate a much higher signature to be detectable from far away by players and robots - early enough to allow placement of electronic warfare like warp mines. Warp should be way faster then subwarp but at least 10 times slower then it currently is or the better way the distances should be ten times greater. That would allow actual electronic warfare to happen directed against specific targets and not like its currently. The pilot should have control over the ship and be able to change direction even while warping.

 

[John B Knight]

i vote for removing space from EU and rename the Planet Partner Program into "Planetary Continent Program" where one huge awesome planet is build and every PP gets his planet added to be a continent on this planet.

This would allow the complete planet to be designed in a very nice surrounding of diversity like it is in the real world where local continents are able to create own cultures and economies which live from fast travel of the colonists to everywhere and help each others.

In times of communication platforms which connect the world and enable people to talk to each others withing seconds EU should not exclude itself by supporting systems of warfare.

EU should be a lightning example of cutting down borders of warfare and hate so the real world may take it as example.

Imagine theres no space - it isnt hard to do...
Imagine all the people - living live in peace...

You may say I am a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

As a good and shining example i suggest you tt all your guns and armor and stop hunting forever

 

[Xavier Target]

If they make it impossible for me to travel between planets in my own personal ship, I am done with this game. I regularly travel between Caly and Arkaidia with the quad/space thruster/oil I purchased for that purpose, if they nerf that, I'm finished with being a depositor. I don't ever transport anything, so pirates are just a minor annoyance, but if you think forcing all players to use the big ships to go to other planets is a good idea, you are highly mistaken.

 

[RobBuona]

People still think this player base can support five independent economies?

 

[FallenAngel]

People still think this player base can support five independent economies?

there are not even 2 real economies as of yet so really nothing to separate, only ark comes close to having a economy atm. I am not against space or even pirates but talk of separating economies is a bit of nonsense if you ask me, if PP's want a economy its really quite simple, make a place that ppl want to be at, and advertise!
have enough "native" players and PP's will have their economy, at the moment i just see the PP's trying to cannibalise calypso and MA helping them out.

 

[Sidney]

I have not seen any pp doing any commercials or anything like that.
Therefore I'll keep myself focused on calypso only.
Though I bring the better newly gear to port Atlantis , this takes a lot of time as the travel is long time consuming.
Taking a bigger class ship is a no go as owner's simply ask to much money to travel all planets.
I could use them services but I would need to tripple the price and newly player's wouldn't be able to afford them.

So I'll keep flying my tiny rocketeer ;-p

 

[nlnforever]

Sorry man, but I see bullshit here.

I understand your feeling, brother. You invested too much in SI, which is quite useless. Decent SI is good to discourage pirate attack, but too much SI is waste, and your ship is the biggest waste in this universe. Now, because you cannot rip the benefit from space for yourself alone, you'd rather destroy it at all?

We have not seen any big issue with space so far. Many MS owners are doing well, and of course, they do not need to earn a lot of peds to pay back the waste from upgrading SI to a ridiculous amount.

 

[Samuel Robet]

i vote for removing space from EU and rename the Planet Partner Program into "Planetary Continent Program" where one huge awesome planet is build and every PP gets his planet added to be a continent on this planet.

This would allow the complete planet to be designed in a very nice surrounding of diversity like it is in the real world where local continents are able to create own cultures and economies which live from fast travel of the colonists to everywhere and help each others.

In times of communication platforms which connect the world and enable people to talk to each others withing seconds EU should not exclude itself by supporting systems of warfare.

EU should be a lightning example of cutting down borders of warfare and hate so the real world may take it as example.

Imagine theres no space - it isnt hard to do...
Imagine all the people - living live in peace...

You may say I am a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

+Rep This would surely be awesome. But Space is a money maker for MA, and also people like JBK, SBiI, and Narfi have put such large investments into space and spacecraft, that it would mean they loose quite a bit as well.

MA would have to compensate them nicely for all this. But regardless it would rock

except the whole peace stuff... i say let there be war!

 

[mastermesh]

MA would have to compensate them nicely for all this. But regardless it would rock

just like the compensated the tamers?

 

[dalewj]

I still don't see how T'ing will hurt anything but not having it will take away people who will space travel in their own crafts.

Coarse if you want to be on call when i need to change planets then I'll gladly take a service. But nobody seems to be ever on when i travel.

 

[narfi]

I have a huge amount of respect for you JBK,(even if you posted a wall of text without any line breaks ) I consider you to be THE primary man and owner to have opened up space and space travel, and although space has always been my passion, it was time spent on your ship that really gave me the drive to go out and try to obtain my own ship or ships. You and your crew are outstanding.

That being said though, we are in the service industry. Our primary goal and means of making ped from our investments should be from helping people, and seeing opertunities that exist within the Universe to help others and benefit ourselves.

It should NOT be our goal to screw over all our potential customers.
From some of your recent posts I wonder how much time you have actually spent playing the game (as a game, hunting, mining, crafting) on the fringe planets. How much time have you spent running a society spread out among those planets actively participating in the game.

I have played (as hard as my budget allows) on Rocktropia for over 2 years, and I have active members of my soc who primarily reside on both Rocktropia and Arkadia.
And now I am actively running a Mothership business.

So I can see both sides of this coin.

The disabling of T in no way benefits Mothership owners, it only hinders other players and actually hurts MS owners because its that much longer before the person who would have Ted without loot is on the next planet cycling their ped until they have the loot needed to transport in a MS. Basically this has shot everyone in the foot, both active players and MS owners.

There is a fine line between playing the game as it is presented to you on one side, having hopes and dreams and requests while actively playing the game presented to you in the middle, and being overly obnoxious with unreasonable or selfish requests at the other extreme.

You may not see it because you are too close to the situation, just as the Pirates who troll the forums here tend to be too close to the situation with their posts. But there is actually a pretty fair balance in space and between the planets right now. There IS a separation of economies that funnels 'fees' to the Mothership owners. There are still incentives in the form of people risking their stacks in quads for the pirates to be aggressive.

Don't get me wrong. I want space to become better, and for there to be more systems and fun activities in space. But this can NOT be done at the cost of the general public. There are lots of ways to make space a better place without preventing the majority of players from playing the game like they want.

As owners in this service industry I think a much better approach would be to find the best way to help our customers, they will see that and respond accordingly.
In the same way they will see if we actively try to screw them over and also respond accordingly.

IMO Greed and Pride can easily destroy space.
Think with your heart, not with your wallet.

narfi

 

[Alainax]

I think its more that many have grand visions for space, imagine huge potentials and capabilities that lie before us. Ideas and ways to make it more exciting, more dangerous and more of an all encompssing experience. ( some like to speak of the ideas, see what others suggest etc, some just like to imagine )



Some like space just how it as, as we all get by just fine, there are plenty of options for every one.

some dont like when changes are made - as we had just got everything working smoothly...

And others want it to be removed completely....


I like how far space has come from the early days, and look forward to what the future might bring- and im sure all of us space inhabitants will continue to grow and adapt with what ever happens

 

[Xane]

I wonder how much time you have actually spent playing the game (as a game, hunting, mining, crafting) on the fringe planets. How much time have you spent running a society spread out among those planets actively participating in the game.

You may not see it because you are too close to the situation, just as the Pirates who troll the forums here tend to be too close to the situation with their posts. But there is actually a pretty fair balance in space and between the planets right now. There IS a separation of economies that funnels 'fees' to the Mothership owners. There are still incentives in the form of people risking their stacks in quads for the pirates to be aggressive.

Don't criticize John's ideas because you think he lacks the experience/knowledge you have and then turn around and talk about pirating which you have zero experience doing. You know nothing of this coin.

 

[FallenAngel]

Don't get me wrong. I want space to become better, and for there to be more systems and fun activities in space. But this can NOT be done at the cost of the general public. There are lots of ways to make space a better place without preventing the majority of players from playing the game like they want.

As owners in this service industry I think a much better approach would be to find the best way to help our customers, they will see that and respond accordingly.

as a customer of MS services i can only agree with this sentiment, apart from some casual players who might not care so much about costs and costs vs risk, i imagine the main regular users of MS services are three sets of people, the traders, crafters moving resources to craft with, and miners with a high turnover, i know my margins are pretty tight, i dont think those of others are that high either, if the risks or costs start to outweigh the "reward' i think that space travel will be greatly reduced, personally there will come a point, if too many of the suggested changes are taken up by MA, where it would make more sense to me to sell to a trader instead of transporting the goods myself. if/when the planetary economies take off and there is sufficient growth the home markets will challenge the need to use a MS service for some if not many of the people that most use that service now.
of course i want improvements to space and to make it more interesting and worthwhile for those who spend much of their time there, but be careful of what you wish for, there might be unintended consequences.

 

[John B Knight]

I have a huge amount of respect for you JBK,(even if you posted a wall of text without any line breaks ) I consider you to be THE primary man and owner to have opened up space and space travel, and although space has always been my passion, it was time spent on your ship that really gave me the drive to go out and try to obtain my own ship or ships. You and your crew are outstanding.

That being said though, we are in the service industry. Our primary goal and means of making ped from our investments should be from helping people, and seeing opertunities that exist within the Universe to help others and benefit ourselves.

It should NOT be our goal to screw over all our potential customers.
From some of your recent posts I wonder how much time you have actually spent playing the game (as a game, hunting, mining, crafting) on the fringe planets. How much time have you spent running a society spread out among those planets actively participating in the game.

I have played (as hard as my budget allows) on Rocktropia for over 2 years, and I have active members of my soc who primarily reside on both Rocktropia and Arkadia.
And now I am actively running a Mothership business.

So I can see both sides of this coin.

The disabling of T in no way benefits Mothership owners, it only hinders other players and actually hurts MS owners because its that much longer before the person who would have Ted without loot is on the next planet cycling their ped until they have the loot needed to transport in a MS. Basically this has shot everyone in the foot, both active players and MS owners.

There is a fine line between playing the game as it is presented to you on one side, having hopes and dreams and requests while actively playing the game presented to you in the middle, and being overly obnoxious with unreasonable or selfish requests at the other extreme.

You may not see it because you are too close to the situation, just as the Pirates who troll the forums here tend to be too close to the situation with their posts. But there is actually a pretty fair balance in space and between the planets right now. There IS a separation of economies that funnels 'fees' to the Mothership owners. There are still incentives in the form of people risking their stacks in quads for the pirates to be aggressive.

Don't get me wrong. I want space to become better, and for there to be more systems and fun activities in space. But this can NOT be done at the cost of the general public. There are lots of ways to make space a better place without preventing the majority of players from playing the game like they want.

As owners in this service industry I think a much better approach would be to find the best way to help our customers, they will see that and respond accordingly.
In the same way they will see if we actively try to screw them over and also respond accordingly.

IMO Greed and Pride can easily destroy space.
Think with your heart, not with your wallet.

narfi

Im very much with you narfi that its our tasks to make spacetravel as secure and comfy to the public as can be - though i dont count asking people to stop playing and watching a webpage for arrival dates as 'playing the game' nor 'being intended' this way by mindark.

Back when i first discovered the possibilty of logged out transports, there was a statement of kim shortly after that this was not an intended way - the statement was removed shortly after.
Though back since then it was clear to me that something didnt go to plan and would be adjusted some day in future in one or another way.

What im doing since then is voicing ideas and concepts towards the players and towards mindark to support possible solutions which one day - no doubt - will come.

Never forget its still beta space in which we run our operations - its our task to help mindark to make the space concept work out and not to utilize every possibilty on how to best surpass what was designed. And a claim of doing it in the best interest of the players while its mainly the interest of the wallet that motivates current spacecraft owners to skip SI upgrades and seek ways to improve the 'logged out transport part'/'playing the game by skipping it part'.

Since long over a year now the ToS Normandie is actually the only spacecraft in the universe offering a transport service based on staying logged in and i think its time that others start playing the game instead of skipping it as well. Whatever ideas may help to improve the actual gaming experience should be voiced and mindarks design team sure will evaluate space related feedback and see for themself what might work best in the end.


about my person and point of view as implied by you:
Speaking of respect and implying that someone who makes suggestions from a different point of view then yourself is narrow minded should not be our way to field this discussion Narfi nor does it show respect if you put other opinions down claiming them blind for some aspects of the game instead of considering them and fielding proper arguements against the raised concerns. A discussion thread about game mechanics and suggestions should also not be the way to aim winning market share by profiling the mister nice guy image...
If you really read up on most of my threads then you should know that im looking at all of this from a universal point of view based on what mindark officials said to be intended for space and the universe.
This includes considering the impact of several changes i suggested in regards to planetary economies as well as universal economy and how markups might be effected by those changes.

I realize that many of my suggestions are not well received by those who made their bussiness plans based on the 'log out feature', but please do not attempt to imply that the way certain people run their transport bussinesses is the most customer friendly one.

 

[Snagletooth]

The only solution the logout issue isnt to remove logout, but to remove loot from the logout. Lootable Storage. When enetring an MS/Privateer, or when entering space in Quad/VTol, you get message that loot must be moved to ship storage, would you like to do this now? Yes and you continue on, No, and you cannot board, or enter space. Loot is automatically return to person when re-entering planet or Space Station, or if booted from ship. No loot can be carried on person while in PvP space, it must be in "storage". If you log or CTD, you're loot is still in play, locked in storage.
This is already somewhat doable, as you cannot enter PvP with non PvP-designated weapons/armor on Cyrene (Hub). The only glitch I haven't figured out, is how to handle space-mob loot, but perhaps that can be automatically sent to ship storage instead on person.

 

[minim]

as a customer of MS services i can only agree with this sentiment, apart from some casual players who might not care so much about costs and costs vs risk, i imagine the main regular users of MS services are three sets of people, the traders, crafters moving resources to craft with, and miners with a high turnover, i know my margins are pretty tight, i dont think those of others are that high either, if the risks or costs start to outweigh the "reward' i think that space travel will be greatly reduced, personally there will come a point, if too many of the suggested changes are taken up by MA, where it would make more sense to me to sell to a trader instead of transporting the goods myself. if/when the planetary economies take off and there is sufficient growth the home markets will challenge the need to use a MS service for some if not many of the people that most use that service now.
of course i want improvements to space and to make it more interesting and worthwhile for those who spend much of their time there, but be careful of what you wish for, there might be unintended consequences.

Agreed to this.

If a lot of this time wasting stuff is implemented it will only reduce space travel since it's already on the edge to what ppl bother to hassle with. Most players don't like pvp, most don't like lootable and if they add a risk to the lootable pvp (not rly a risk now) I'm 100% sure that most will just drop the traveling or TT loot before traveling..

 

[KennyRS]

<removed123>

 

[minim]

Uhm...that was the whole point to have the planets seperated in the first place.
Question is if MA decides to hold on to that "risky" barrier and introduce some rebalancing towards the risky side OR listens to the majority in here and gets rid of any danger parts in space

Doesn't matter what the whole point was when they where launching it. They need to adjust when they see that it's not wanted..

 

[Xen]

Sorry man, but I see bullshit here.

I understand your feeling, brother. You invested too much in SI, which is quite useless. Decent SI is good to discourage pirate attack, but too much SI is waste, and your ship is the biggest waste in this universe. Now, because you cannot rip the benefit from space for yourself alone, you'd rather destroy it at all?

We have not seen any big issue with space so far. Many MS owners are doing well, and of course, they do not need to earn a lot of peds to pay back the waste from upgrading SI to a ridiculous amount.

Why did MA design ships with SI if it had no use and you could do just the same by having your passengers log out? It seems pretty obvious that the logout thing was unintended. In fact I would even call it an exploit if MA had not explicitly condoned it, but that may only be temporary. Now that there are warp drives, there has been time for SI upgrades and arranging crews, it's time to come up with a solution for logging out to become invulnerable.

 

[Xavier Target]

When space was implemented, They had talked about the MS torpedos and how they'd be like 1k-10k ped each(don't remember which it was). The SI may become very important when there are ships armed with torpedos flying around in space... Perhaps a ship blown up with a torpedo would result in logged off players getting looted? I think MA has been trying to make this game have aspects for the poor player and the rich player. Pirates in quads are nothing, but put some torpedos on the big ships and keep those MS buses flying around loaded with loot, space may become more interesting.

 

[Neil Stockton]

I agree with Narfi's post. I just want to add that the issues of "T" and distance between planets are unrelated. For me, independent travel in a quad is a lot more fun than waiting around to hitch a ride on a mothership and not having any control over the flight. For some I'm sure it's the opposite.

I don't see the point in eliminating useful features now (e.g. "T") in hopes of some "glorious future" in which those features will no longer be needed. The fact is, we have space as it is NOW. Will MA change ever upgrade space? Maybe... maybe not. Lately they've only been removing features from space, not adding anything new, and over the last year space development has been a very low priority for them. The only significant upgrade to space was the addition of 5 new mobs (one of which was quickly removed, probably because it was too much fun to hunt).

Right now, space is boring. And removing "T" just increases the time for everyone to be bored. Space was a lot more fun in the first couple months, because we actually had challenges... we had to smuggle materials from one planet to another. We had to rely on friends and work as a team to avoid pirates. Then along came warp drives and space trading became as boring as sweating. Warp drives and logout on motherships have made space travel safe, but uninteresting.