Idris upgrade lasted < 60 seconds :(

You misunderstood me, or I was unclear, or both.

NPC’s are second to Players in performance and CIG has verified that will be the case.
As for preference, well that is entirely subjective. I was speaking to measurable performance.

Ohh, yes, I did misunderstand, and that makes a lot more sense :slight_smile:

CIG gets to try to balance “every station must be fun and enjoyable” with “NPCs or automation can do the boring stuff”, and I hope they lean more towards NPCs, or at least decide to draw a line somewhere and commit to it.

By the way, I do hope that CIG come out with an Idris-P to M add-on kit as well as an Idris K to M add-on kit. Not that I want to be a bully or anything but it’s fulfilling a claim that was made when the Idris-P was released.

I tend to believe that the newer and lower cost ships have had fire power creep that has left the Idris-P somewhat underwhelming for its price.

Highly unlikely, the M and the Scythe are basically “Completionist” perks that will never be sold to the masses.

But as far as we know we have a couple of options we can execute to get back to our hangar. If what holds true now into the future as long as our ships aren’t at a port (like PO) we can call them to whatever location we’re at. So it would make sense to spawn smaller ships like an Aurora and reclaim them immediately after we land.

The second one is a bit of a stretch but I think is a question we should pose to CIG:

Will commercial flights as passengers be handled similarly to going to jail? Will we experience that when we buy a ticket on a Genesis Starliner to go from point A to point E will there be a time/space crunch so we don’t have to wait a long time in QT to get back to a location we can “relate” to?

I’ve not seen anything that says we can “call” our ships to us. Our ships are at fixed ports, that’s been said a few times. And CR has also said, more than a few times, that getting around without a ship is part of the BDSSE experience. Your ships are at A, you are at B (for whatever reason), you get to work it out. That, combined with charging for hangar space, which will limit people having ships everywhere, and being without a ship and having to “hoof it” is likely to be a common occurrence.

So the current system of claiming destroyed (or stored) ships to the location we’re at will no longer happen once the game goes live?

Anything that’s in the alpha now is a placeholder, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t necessarily represent what might happen. So, if your ship is destroyed, I guess potentially the replacement can be delivered to you, with delays for bigger ships.

But what if your ship wasn’t destroyed? You hop onto my Idris, we do an op, 4 systems away from home, and suddenly the power goes out in my house and I’m down for the night, and your trapped. Maybe it “ports” you to a nearby planet? Maybe you’re logged off until I can get back on. How do you get your ships then?

This is the complexity Sim and I are discussing. No other MMO has ever tried anything like this. There is no other MMO where you “group” with another player to the point where you are no longer autonomous, carried along without a way to get out. Barring all of the horrible griefing that comes to mind when I think of this (fill a Genesis up with players who need a ride, fly out to nowhere and log it out forever, I’ve other ships to fly), it’s a level of group management that is hitherto unheard of in the industry. I have a ton of ideas on how they can do it, but all of them will break the “immersion” and reality that they’re shooting for.

IMHO, Agent Smithing is the absolute best option. I crew my ship with NPCs who are doing jobs, and you jump on when you can get online, take over one of them, play as long as you can, and when you leave, the NPC takes back over. This allows you to be where you want to be, with your ships, AND join my crew and help with an op, without impinging upon the freedom of your play.

I get your idea and I agree it makes perfect sense to go that route by “Agent Smithing”. For all intents and purposes when we join your crew we’re breaking immersion intentionally. If logic follows than I understand that I gain nothing more than that crewman’s share of the mission prize that he would upon it’s completion and I’m personally fine with that.

I recall a part of the movie “We Were Soldiers Once” where Mel Gibson comes up to the chopper and tags the leader as dead, making the next person take responsibility from there. He can’t make a decision so he dies too, then Mel goes into a speech about being trained to do the job of the man above you and teach your job to the man below you, being in the Army I understood that concept from basic training. This is a fairly simple thing to do programming wise I believe, you just change the ratios of success based on the NPC’s stats should the leader die or disconnect.

The game will proceed with the mission as planned using AI imitating you until you return. If you are unable to (within a time allotted) than it will complete the mission following a set of serialized algorithms to determine an outcome. Your character will still be there, but now as an NPC it will take your metrics and apply them in an RPG style stats page to that NPC standing in your place.

However if I’m a pilot on your crew but not in the command staff of the bridge than my game play is unaffected unless the ship is destroyed or I am killed as the NPC I’ve replaced. If the ship is destroyed than I would assume I show up next to you in a hospital and I get to choose to remain in your employ (if you remain online) however I’d still have to remain in the NPC’s body. Otherwise I’m asked to re-log into my account and become my character wherever I may be.

Tony seems to have a grasp on what he wants to do in cases like this based off of the CitCon panel and various other interviews I’ve seen him do. However I will never claim to understand the madness that it inside TZ’s brain, I can only hope to understand the methods.

Same, no clue what TZ wants, but I’m here to see it, whatever it is.

It’s just hard for me to fathom the balance between fun gameplay and realism in this situation. “Realistic” would genuinely suck, but fun gameplay would be completely unrealistic.

The current system will not be at all what it will be like in the game.
Eventually your ship will be purchased at a location and delivered to the nearest hangar. Any ships you start the game with will be “packaged” until you “unpack” them at the hangar of your choosing.
The hangars you have right now on your account are actual hangar locations where you own hangar space. You can “claim” a hangar in any port that you choose while you are in that port.

So for instance: I start the game with an Aurora, a Prospector and a Hull B and each of those ships comes with a hangar. When I start up in the game world for the first time I begin at Terra. (not confirmed that is possible location to start, but as an example) While in Terra I decide to claim one of my hangars and “unpack” my Aurora. So now I have a hangar always available in Terra, and my Aurora is parked there. I fly my Aurora all the way to Nyx and find a space station where I claim another hangar (I now have 1 left) and choose to “unpack” my Prospector. So now both my Prospector and my Aurora are parked at my hangar in Nyx and my hangar at Terra is empty.
Later I can choose to claim my last hangar, or unpack my Hull B at one of my existing hangars if I fly back to that location.
So my ships will remain in the last location where I parked them, in my personal hangar. If I claim one of my ships for being destroyed or stolen, then my ship will be delivered either to my current port location, or to one of my existing hangars.

At least that is the way it was talked about working a long time ago. I don’t think that has changed any, but we also have not heard much about hangars in the last 18 months.

I can clearly and plainly see the balance between the two, I am just hoping that one of two things happens:

A - CIG sees it too and makes it the way it should be done.
B - CIG hires me to do it

Hmmm, makes me wonder if hiring an NPC to fly your ship to you will be a thing too…

I hope so, Kurupt. For me, I hope we can have NPCs do stuff for us beyond crew. For example, can I have NPCs fly escort for me, so I can be my own fleet op? If I have the money, pay 20 NPCs to crew 2-3 ships and I go off and do my own thing.

I doubt they’ll go that far. If memory serves CR wants us to be actively involved in the game, he doesn’t want us to own production facilities and allow us to make money while we’re not playing the game. I can see CR allowing us to have an NPC fly a ship to where I’m at, but as a compromise I have to store the cargo that’s in it in my hangar, they can’t bring it to me.

I hear you, but if I’m in 1 of the ships in the fleet, I’m “there” and playing. If I can crew the ship I’m on with NPCs, hopefully I can also crew adjacent ships as well.

Oh so you’re talking large scale combat escort missions?

If I know Mac, he is talking about having his C&C ship, where he is in command, and then having a mining ship, fuel ship, cargo ship and a few escorts all crewed by NPCs

Sim’s pretty close, but not that big. I’m talking as simple as my Cat and 2 fighter escorts, or my Orion and a cap on that, 2-3 fighters. Babysitting mining has to be one of the most boring jobs in the 'verse, next to mining itself of course, and I’d hate to inflict that on actual living people.

The main example I have is my Carrack with a 315p. I’m out scanning, an NPC is flying escort in my 315p. I find a wormhole I want to investigate, I Agent Smith the 315p and fly into it while my Carrack sits. I map it out, fly back, return to my body and upload the data to the bigger ship for analysis, then take the Carrack through if it’s big enough.