One of the things i really enjoyed from x:rebirth ( not enough to justify the purchase, but eh. You win some, you loose some.) was the way cargo was transferred from a ship to a station. I know this is quite a bit of work for what is essentially a cosmetic feature, but it fits quite well into the discussions here:

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2452
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2647#p41886

This still seems loke a good option and would let stations be full of life. It could also remove the "transfer beam" as that is one of the weirder parts of Lt as it stands. A fightere could have a single transfer drone or have to be serviced by someone who has one while larger ships can put out a steady stream of cargo drones. The best part is that they dont have to think, all they need is some pathfinding, and barely even that. You could have a single pathfinding solution for all of them when the ships are stationary relative to eachother.

With houndreds of ships utilizing these drones the world is suddenly really crowded around popular stations, which is good.

i asked for something like this a couple of times in differen threads (once in one josh was actively participating, posting every 5 minutes) but sadly got no answer.

I dont see the transfer beam as a "arkward" feature, but i'd prefer to see it only to be used for mining/harvesting asteroids and maybe wrecks, and shuttles used for transfers between hangar equipped ships.

Let me play devil's advocate for a moment here.

Beyond helping the world feel more alive (for more immersiveness, which I support), what active gameplay would cargo drones add to LT?

Would this mean that every time I want to transfer a hold full of cargo out of my ship, I have to wait for drones to physically move it?

To me, that seems mostly like a cost, not a benefit. Forced waiting is the opposite of active gameplay.

So what are the benefits of this idea -- how can it be designed so that it gives the player more enjoyable things to do? (And would that be valuable enough as gameplay to justify the time required to implement it?)

One possibility is that it creates more uses for the "drones" feature. What other benefits does it offer?

Please note, I'm not trying to knock this idea down. I'm asking for help understanding what's so much fun about it that I'll want to advocate it, too.

Flatfingers wrote:

Spoiler:      SHOW

Let me play devil's advocate for a moment here.

Beyond helping the world feel more alive (for more immersiveness, which I support), what active gameplay would cargo drones add to LT?

Would this mean that every time I want to transfer a hold full of cargo out of my ship, I have to wait for drones to physically move it?

To me, that seems mostly like a cost, not a benefit. Forced waiting is the opposite of active gameplay.

So what are the benefits of this idea -- how can it be designed so that it gives the player more enjoyable things to do? (And would that be valuable enough as gameplay to justify the time required to implement it?)

One possibility is that it creates more uses for the "drones" feature. What other benefits does it offer?

Please note, I'm not trying to knock this idea down. I'm asking for help understanding what's so much fun about it that I'll want to advocate it, too.

im mainly thinking of drones as a way to "dock" for larger ships with other ships/stations that are too small to have mooring points for them.

and for such cases i dont want to have to micromanage my shuttles to carry the cargo that i want to exchange

Cornflakes_91 wrote:im mainly thinking of drones as a way to "dock" for larger ships with other ships/stations that are too small to have mooring points for them.

and for such cases i dont want to have to micromanage my shuttles to carry the cargo that i want to exchange

OK -- again, though, what active gameplay does this add, when I can use a (ugh) transfer beam to move cargo quickly so I can get back to mining?

I think I see you're saying it solves what you see as an immersiveness problem -- really big ships can't dock with smallish ships/stations. But I'm not seeing how that's better for gameplay than transfer beams, which if they also don't add any gameplay are at least (I assume) relatively fast so that I can get back to actual active gameplay.

well, eyecandy and immersion

i honestly think that cargo transfer shouldnt be instantaneous.

on no scale.

so that a superfreigter which carries a systems daily output worth of resources isnt unloaded in a second.

it should take some time.

also to make trade stations more ... inhabitated.

if cargo transfer would be instantaneous AI ships would dock, unload and undock in a second and that would just look.. off to me.

i dont want that loading takes minutes for small freighters/Shuttles, transfer rate should be big enough that this only takes a few seconds for them.

but big ships should take some time loading/unloading

it would promote the feeling of a trade harbor when you see a big ship unloading, using its shuttles to carry the wares around.



also: if you have a large enough ship that you have to wait for your cargo to unload you should have enough to do otherwise not to mind the short wait...

another thing is that you could intercept cargo and hinder it's transfer.

Flatfingers wrote:Let me play devil's advocate for a moment here.

Beyond helping the world feel more alive (for more immersiveness, which I support), what active gameplay would cargo drones add to LT?

Would this mean that every time I want to transfer a hold full of cargo out of my ship, I have to wait for drones to physically move it?

To me, that seems mostly like a cost, not a benefit. Forced waiting is the opposite of active gameplay.

So what are the benefits of this idea -- how can it be designed so that it gives the player more enjoyable things to do? (And would that be valuable enough as gameplay to justify the time required to implement it?)

One possibility is that it creates more uses for the "drones" feature. What other benefits does it offer?

Please note, I'm not trying to knock this idea down. I'm asking for help understanding what's so much fun about it that I'll want to advocate it, too.

I would second this. It really only adds a small amount of "immersion," while at the same time, greatly increasing the downtime of your cargo ships, not to mention the potential for cpu overhead once you have very large fleets coming and going, even though zones could mitigate it somewhat.

I just don't think it would add to the FUN. It would most likely turn to the tedious. Immersion is great up to a point, but I want a game and fun, not tedious waiting, reading out of date magazines while sitting in the doctors office.

EDIT

Think about this. The immersion is ONLY going to be immersive, IF you happen to be there. Do you really plan on being there for EVERY single transaction? Otherwise its not really immersion if you aren't there to see it.

When you arrive in a system, being able to see cargo being physically shipped about not only looks good, but gives you an instant read on the business of the system. It's eyecandy with a purpose. A much quicker way of seeing just what's going on round here than going into a market screen and looking at how many transactions the system has. I think pretty things that give useful information are worth having.

As far as it slowing the game down and such, again we're into "stuff you like" vs "stuff I like" rather than a serious argument about genuine gameplay balance. You know what else slows down the game? Having to fly places. Or having to mine stuff. We could just say "yeah skip that bit" for pretty much everything. It's reasonable to say that we should seek to balance the times things take so that we are not into unfun territory, but why is it that a mechanism for adding realism to the concept of "unloading many tonnes of stuff from a supercarrier" is immediately perceived to be totes unfun, whereas the concept of "flying the same trade route a couple of times at 10 minutes a pop" is totally fine? I can see both things getting boring if done badly. And I could see no amount of time shaving being actually fun for someone who wants to play space invaders.

I suspect that the optimal way of implementing something like this is to do it in a way that won't even make much difference until you're into heavy hauling. And then, well, if you've chosen to play as a freighter pilot or a shipping magnate, I can't see the idea of cargo logistics being something that bores you anyway.

Use a transfer beams mechanically, show drones visually, immersion and effectiveness.
I don't see what's wrong with cargo-colored beams though for showing how active trade is.

it isnt just eyecandy though, if drones are transferring cargo you can shoot them down and potentially loot it. it provides means for piracy.

ravener96 wrote:it isnt just eyecandy though, if drones are transferring cargo you can shoot them down and potentially loot it. it provides means for piracy.

I dunno about you, but I certainly wouldn't bother with a cargo drone that only carries small amounts, in an area that is likely fairly heavily defended. I would go after large transports in out of the way places, or at least lightly defended and a long way from any help.

TL;DR Do both, including replacing ships with chains of transfer beams like a conveyor belt

Just a thought as to the fundamental nature of moving items in LT. Items are harvested from asteroid et al shaped boxes via beams. Said items are then moved a much greater distance in ship shaped containers until they arrive at a location which uses them. Now, there is nothing particularly special about little ships inside larger ships moving crates of boxes to and fro. It does make for a pretty scene, seeing ships move about like a colony of ants, but of things can be moved just as easily by beam, would that not also make sense in terms of the rules laid down thusfar?

Now here is where I had an interesting thought: Why does this universe need ship shaped containers to carry objects from the asteroid shaped boxes to the station? It seems mainly that it is a problem of the beams having a limited effective range. What if instead of ship shaped containers, there could instead be a chain of beams extending out to their maximum range to gather up materials from within another box which has its own beam doing the same thing. You could in theory have a conveyor belt extending from the station out to the asteroids, where it could branch out like a tree, or just be a much closer hub for those ship shaped boxes to go to. Essentially it would be a warp lane for cargo. Certainly these beams would need to be protected, but thats a regular job like any other, no? "Mission: Guard Resource Artery Beam, Do not let any node be destroyed, do not let resources be intercepted"

Another thought on this... what if the beams could reverse direction, and suddenly send out materials to a distant location, like ammo supply lines.

Since this is the future, I have to presume they have a much more efficient way of xfering cargo than using a multitude of little ships. A freighter pulls into the freight docking area, a huge capture device of some kind extends toward the ship, boom, cargo jettisoned into awaiting capture device. Offload complete, freighter pulls away and the next takes it's place, final sorting done at facilities leisure.



EDIT
Time is money so they say.

MORE EDIT
Heck, I could design a system right now that would work using todays stuff, that would facilitate extremely fast offload and xfer as well as cargo routing using maglev and railgun tech.