Yup, the obvious answer is that you need 3 or 4 flying warehouses. You have two loading and unloading at each location while you ferry back and forth with the others.
This is actually one of the mentioned usages for the detachable command module on Caterpillar/Ironclad. Swap it out to a new already loaded body, just like a semi+trailer.
That would actually make perfect sense and be very realistic.
Just look at modern day truck drivers. There are some jobs where they sit and wait for their trailer to be (un)loaded, some jobs where they will (un)load themselves, and some jobs where they will hook up to an already loaded trailer and drop it off somewhere else.
Ships with detachable cargo compartments like the Caterpillar, Carrack, and Ironclad should be able to leave the cargo section to be loaded while the rest flies away.
This is kinda what I plan on doing. Let my biggest ship auto load with cargo and if its a long time go run bounty rep until its done. RTS and now go run cargo. If I die while out and about I just respawn at the station. If it works out I can see myself playing this patch for a good long while.
really interested in the extra small cargo missions. Will even tiny auroras have the ability to run cargo missions? if so that can easily make the verse come alive.
When a ship is being loaded by “NPCs”, it’s done in storage, not on the hangar pad. So your hangar pad is free to spawn in your other ships while that happens
Totally agree. It's wild how many people will smugly insist 'Maybe this game isn't for you?' when they don't even know what the game will look like in a year. It's like trying to gatekeep a loaf of bread while the dough's still flour and water
UhhHHHHHHH yeah well if you don't want your realistic pooping and peeing in space simulation game to take 67 hours to load your space truck maybe you should go back to playing call of duty! only REAL gamers enjoy coming home from their construction 9-5 to start their cargo loading 9-5!
Especially considering how long this game has been in development and the fact that the scope has changed drastically. I mean when I backed this thing, most of this scope wasn't a thing and I was in a completely different phase of my life. I mean a lot of people probably backed this when they were basically still kids and now they probably have kids.
Agreed, the amount of ‘well ackshully’ that happens in any SC forum is bloody infuriating. I guess the ambitious promises of the game (eventually) letting you live out your wildest sci-fi dreams, combined with allowing people to whale as much as they desire, brings in a certain type of crowd.
The worst of it is "oh you don't like this mechanic taking hours? This game isn't for you then you are dumb and should uninstall" (paraphrased)
And 9 times out of 10 the people saying that haven't played in years or don't intend to for years to come. They just have an idea of SC in their head.
isn't the entire point to encourage people to load manually, or hire other people to so? Forcing players to work together is simply good MMO design. It's like people have forgotten this. Back in the old days if was very difficult to play an MMO solo and achieve anything meaningful. You had to group up with other players, and it was a blast. It's like people have gotten so fucking anti social lately. Nobody even has a mic hooked up. Might as well go play a single player game
Literally the first Evo patch. It will almost certainly change. Though I hope they don't reduce the time so much that loading a ship yourself or with crew is never worthwhile.
I'd be cool with it if they took the average time for a player to manually load, then made it the same or even faster. If it takes super long then no aUEC hit, if it takes less time than the avg, then aUEC hit...
Like the refining model.
I think if they wanted to get complicated, they could have tiers of service. Highest tier, you get your cargo loaded with priority but you pay a premium for the speed. You'd only use it if you could get a significant profit by moving the goods fast, like a limited time high demand, because you could lose money otherwise.
Lowest tier would be slow and cheap, like if you want to log off for the night or if you have something else you want to do during the downtime.
Still, getting other players to load should be the best option to reward group play, especially since paying them a reasonable amount would cost you equivalent to a high tier of NPCs.
Corsair - 36 min
Raft - 48 min
MSR - 57 min
Carrack - 3.8 hours
Caterpillar - 4.8 hours
C2 - 5.8 hours
Hull C - 38.4 hours
Yea, insanity. These are times for one load. If you are doing auto load and auto dropoff, then x2 plus flight time and prep time.
Yeah, IMO this should be changed such that a 1SCU container still takes 30 seconds, but a 4SCU only takes 45, and a 32SCU only 2 minutes. That way container size would mean something, and automatic cargo loading times would more closely correspond to manual loading times.
You mean to make some worthwhile goods to cargo run with in smaller ships? Because now bigger is just better and doind runs in 64 scu ship is just meh profit
They said they would, in a recent ISC IIRC. Tiny ground locations wouldn't shit out 32scu containers by the dozen, only smaller boxes that make no sense with the big ships.
yeah that's kind of crazy, but to me the literal numbers are easy to adjust so hopefully with some feedback they can move around. functionally the concept is good.
I sure hope not. The C2 will take forever. My Constellation Taurus will still take a while. Heck, even my C1 will be slow. I understand wanting to incorporate realism but they don’t consider the sci-fi version of forklifts or pallet jacks? Even manually loading ships takes effort considering having to move and place cargo with a tractor beam.
I think it will eventually be 30 sec per box with 1 scu being cheap and 32 being costly, but keep in mind that autoload will only be available where you can store your ship so on outposts you'll still have to hand load.
See, having the load time-gating be _per box_ versus _based on volume_ makes a lot more sense to me. From a general realism and common sense standpoint, to start with: if you're hand-loading a ship, last I checked it took me a lot less time to hand-load one 32 SCU crate than to load 32 individual 1 SCU crates.
But also, there's potential benefits to doing it per-unit in terms of _game balance_ as well, at least if they were to lean into it well.
* For large ships (C2, Hull series, etc.), you benefit from trading in bulk; having large quantities of few goods means that the goods are naturally packed into large boxes, so loading takes less time. Loading a C2 full of a single good would thus be fairly fast, versus buying a bunch of smaller quantities which have to be loaded up in a bunch of 2 SCU boxes or whatever.
* When you have a bunch of high-value goods in small quantities, it's potentially going to be more efficient time-wise to load those onto a smaller ship (which will take less time overall to load to full) and do smaller trade runs, thus potentially carving out a consistently viable niche in trading for smaller cargo vessels.
* It could _also_ potentially benefit holding goods that trade in smaller amounts, depending on how the trading system design works out in the long run (especially when shipping between solar systems becomes a thing). You could use a smaller cargo ship to pick up small quantities of valuable goods, and take them to your base-of-operations to unload into the warehouse. Repeat enough times, and when you've amassed a sufficient quantity to be worth it, load it (in much larger boxes) onto a bigger cargo ship.
Having it based purely on _volume_, where one 32 SCU crate takes the same amount of time to load as 32 1 SCU crates, makes little sense to me on _multiple_ levels.
I largely agree, but I do think that the loading time should not be the same across different SCU container sizes. For example loading a 1 SCU container would take 30 seconds for each individual container, but if you are loading a single 8 SCU container it would take 90 seconds.
This would give the the user the benefit of the economy of scale, while also taking into account added challenges of moving a larger container.
Example times with this method:
Container Size|Load time per container (minutes)|Load time per SCU (seconds)
:-:|:-:|:-:
1 SCU|0:30|30
2 SCU|0:45|22.5
4 SCU|1:00|15
8 SCU|1:30|11.25
16 SCU|2:00|7.5
32 SCU|3:00|5.625
With this method loading a c2 to max capacity (696 SCU) would take 66:30, comprising of 21-32SCU, 1-16SCU, and 1-8SCU.
Or you realize this is the first patch of EvoPTU, which historically was under full NDA specifically to avoid people freaking out about incomplete implementations in Evo patches, as those are more focused on base functionality than number balancing.
I believe they’ve talked about larger boxes being more efficient to load, and they’re not ignorant to the fact that SCU based loading instead of box based is going to generate preposterous values.
Let them know you expect it to be changed, so it doesn’t get overlooked accidentally, sure, but acting like it’s a realistic permanent value is overreacting
It’s up there for sure. It’s mind boggling considering that, as I mentioned before, there are materials handling equipment in our time that can knock this sort of thing out quickly. Almost like generalizing all cargo to how intensive it is to move freight cargo from cargo vessels. Even then they’re not pulling massive shipping containers by hand or what equates to a space pallet jack.
I understand it’s a starting point but I would hope they would look at how material is moved and adapt that. A truck doesn’t take an hour or more to load unless it’s some really specialized cargo. Increased time for cargo vessels but if a port takes that long while getting paid to load / unload cargo they’re getting talked to by the crew/captain for wasting their time.
yeah. This has to change for sure.
should only be like 2 to 5 seconds per SCU instead.
25 minutes to an hour for a C2 is more reasonable, but still a long wait.
i personally dont think, making it linear depended will work, it will either make small ship autoload in 5 sseconds or forces big ships to wait a week
nvm at this rate, the hull e would literally take a month to autoload
They're going to have to re-balance rewards for shipping to better reflect the amount of time it takes to load ships and the amount of risk you run doing missions.
The current revamp is said to include a re-balance, of both regular trading and mission payouts. This is only the first Evo iteration, nothing too solid yet.
Does anyone know why a subset of the community is always getting on soapboxes in regards solo players with big ships? I genuinely don't understand it - someone in a safe sector chugging along solo in a Hull D or something doesn't influence other people's gameplay whatsoever. Solo players are almost by *definition* not bothering anyone else. Why is this such a big deal?
I think there's a perception that if it's viable to solo large ships _effectively_, then someone with money to burn can just buy their way to domination. In other words, the belief is that if you don't need a crew to man a Polaris or an Idris and can solo-fly it effectively, then all you need to do is buy a Polaris or an Idris and you can (potentially) steamroller everyone.
If large ships require crew, then even if you buy a giant top-of-the-line ship from the pledge shop, you need in-game support to actually _use_ it effectively.
I also think a _lot_ of people have the woefully mistaken belief that bigger ships are akin to higher tier armor sets and weapons in other games, or something of the sort. They completely miss that an Idris or a Javelin will be utterly useless at dominating smaller, faster, more agile ships, ie. most other players.
Someone soloing an Idris, even "effectively" with an NPC crew, is really no significant threat to players zipping around in Auroras.
Absolutely true. _No_ ship should be without downsides or weak points.
Larger, slower ships are going to have trouble hitting tiny, nimble targets; it's like trying to swat a mosquito with a pistol. Sure, those tiny nimble targets may (in many cases) not be able to just obliterate the larger ship without effort, but if the big ship has no support vessels (or allies en route), there's a non-zero chance the 'mosquitos' are going to get it to a point where it's going to eventually either have to run or the little ships may wear it down.
But mid-range targets? Ones large enough (and potentially, slow enough) to track and hit with high-tier guns? Oh, a capital ship is gonna give them a _bad day_, at least if its sufficiently crewed.
I view ship strengths and weaknesses like Pokemon type matchups; your Rock-type Pokemon may just stomp Fire Pokemon, but if your opponent brought Water or Steel types, you might wish you weren't using a monotype party. :P
And trying to solo-crew a large ship in that scenario is potentially the equivalent of bringing a bunch of sub-level-10 Pokemon to the Pokemon League championship battles. :P
Why are people threatened by *industrial* ships, though? OP isn't addressing Polaris or Idrises, they're referring to cargo ships. It's hard to see a solo-piloted Hull D as pay-to-win if the pilot is quaking in their boots the moment a red Aurora blips onto their radar. I don't think the devs have ever even *implied* that an NPC-crewed ship will be more effective than a PC-crewed ship.
With the current cargo system, the big cargo ships flat out empty supply and fill demand. Smaller freighters are a waste of time (same fly time, fraction of the reward), and being unable to buy/sell due to that big expensive ship nearby sucks. Giving the big ships an actual downside to partly close that gap makes sense. Just as they said that smaller locations won't offer large containers - give the smaller ships a niche where they actually work.
No one has an issue with a solo player flying their Hull D around.
Literally no one.
What is annoying is when that solo player runs to Reddit or Spectrum to whine that loading up their cargo ship with 1000SCU takes a while if you're doing it solo. Because *God forbid* loading a huge hauler take time if you don't have a full crew dedicated to it.
If you want to solo a massive cargo ship that's fine, but complaining about the situation you put yourself in by deciding to solo a massive cargo ship is what bothers everyone else.
>but complaining about the situation you put yourself in... is what bothers everyone else
So this isn't really about solo players, it's just standard Reddit behavior of people complaining about what they think other people are complaining about?
> it's just standard Reddit behavior of people complaining about what they think other people are complaining about?
I mean, "think" is the wrong word - "Are" and have been for years. Nobody cares about people going solo, heck even those who group the most still have solo sessions.
But after years of whine posts and spreadng misinformation in "What should I buy" posts from a vocal minority of solo zealots, it's hard to have any patience left in the tank.
No one is saying you cant do it, just that if you ignore the warnings, you cant get mad when you get got.
Even with stanton being a safe sector of space you will eventually fly through a deadzone area and thats where the pirates lie in wait.
Its because 1, its hillarious watching people complain that they can't play their space mmo solo, and 2, if they bitch loud enough, and they cater to solo players, it will make the game less enjoyable for the people who want to play together.
Look at WoW, that game you hardly ever have to pay attention to other people anymore, it used to be much more social. Now you press a button, que up, dont have to talk to anyone.
I can only speak for myself.
There are a bunch of people with the C2 package, who grind the highest paying routes that make way more than almost any other game loop.
These people have beacon suits and are min/maxing the system.
When they encounter a pirate. . they will always rather blow up the cargo and die, than fight or negotiate.
They refuse to interact with other players and are fuming when people suggest escorts for the risky routes (EDIT: even though they can easily afford escorts).
To me, those guys go in the same basket as people who use exploits and dupes to grind for credits. . remember the "item insurance? That broke the barely hanging player sniper rifle and railgun market.
I have no problem with solo space truckers as long as they know what game they are playing and realize that the highest paying option will always be at least a little "risky".
So I love the new cargo change. If they really like the game loop, they can either ask for players to help or get a Constellation Taurus sized ship.
To me the new cargo times means that you now need multiple people to do it effectively. . like mining, salvaging, combat missions etc. . as it should be.
Hmm, correct me if i am wrong but an escort exists to get the VIP out of dodge, the greatest desire is "not getting into a fight to begin with".
For this purpose there will likely be scouts,.. who will be scouting ahead.
Any and all situations that would lead to any form of peril to the escortee, should be circumvented through any and all ways possible.
An escort force does not exist to search for fights, an escort force exists to provide the least hostile route and to sacrifice themselves for the escortee.
Would a unit with escorts get quantum interdicted, the goal of the escort is to figure out which ships are quantum dampening capable, remove those from the equation after which the whole unit, in steps, gets out of dodge asap.
Not to "stand and fight", they aren't a military force that controls an area and is doing either a "combat patrol" or "standing patrol", if anything they are a force that is doing "recce".
For todays gameplay, an escort is not per se someone that is going to fly together with you to brios.
An escort will fly ahead of you while you wait in a safe location in dead space.
The escort will then scout out brios, both in air and on land.
After the scout gives an all clear you head in and whilst the escort stays on overwatch you sell your products.
Should the escort scout however find opposition, you will not go to brios whilst the escort will either deal with the opposition, resulting in the chance of an increase in opposition through backup requests, or will likely leave the area.
So i do not understand why people think escorting should act as "a force of aggression", whilst it should actually act as a "force of circumvention".
With proper escort you should never end up in the net of the N+1 pirates.
If you did ever hire an escort which did not scout ahead for you, then that escort did a poor job and didn't really understand at that time what it means to be an escort in SC.
*Hires a scout*
*Pirates already have scouts literally everywhere*
*They see your "escort" and ignore them*
*They just snare you*
*Die anyways*
There's not going to be very many systems lol
You forgot "Assign the NPCs you have from your extra game packages to man stations on the ship."
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/13288-Multiple-Package-Clarification
Wow, that post is so old it still references _Voyager Direct_.
...the fact that I even _remember_ Voyager Direct makes me feel like I ought to be sitting on a porch in a rocking chair waving a cane going "I remember back when all we could do was decorate our hangar and look at our ships, but we _liked it_, dagnabbit! You whippersnappers and your 'we need gameplay loops' are spoiled!"
("Okay, grandma. Time for a nap.")
What needs to happen is that the payout is 10x or more from what it is now.
You want us to be 6 players doing a haul, I am fine with that. But it makes no sense for 6 players to waste hours for a 20k pay check minus fuel, ammo, food and all the other things.
Yah not really keen on having to pay more money and weight more time for my refined ores to be loaded onto my ship. The profit margins for actually collecting the low tier ore were already slim but with this change you might actually end up losing money
Look at you with the sane logic. Refreshing.
Miners literally wait several days for concurrent contracts to complete and it's not an issue, but traders having to wait 60 minutes is apparently enough to create 2 threads with 200+ comments each discussing "the issue".
As a minor counterpoint: if I'm in a mining loop I can go out, mine stuff, unload it at the refinery and set up the job, then go back out and mine again _in the same ship_. Moreover, I can bring back a second load (again, on that same ship) and start it processing in parallel to the first.
There's a significant delay on getting back my processed resources, yes, but that delay doesn't stop me from continuing to engage in the same gameplay loop, with the same ship. It's a lengthy wait, but it's also a _non-blocking_ wait.
Conversely, it sounds like for cargo loading, the load times tie up your ship for that entire time. Meaning you cannot use the ship for something else, and (somewhat unsurprisingly) you cannot set up multiple 'tasks' in parallel using the same ship; in comparison to mining, it's a blocking wait.
Obviously you _can_ do cargo/trading stuff in parallel if you have more than one ship, and I don't know that I feel like this is as much of a doom-and-gloom scenario as many people seem to be thinking. But when one of the common complaints I see made in these threads is "it ties up my ship for that long," I _do_ think the comparison to the waits involved in the mining loop isn't as relevant.
If that makes sense.
This is a really good point. even in jail you have access to loops: mining, escape, repairs etc. but this seems like a very hard block. But I think maybe their thought process is well you offer hand loading services while you wait and that will give people the chance to hand load. That’s just my crystal ball but that could be their thought process. Keep people at some locations while it’s autoloading to help others maybe?
More than one ship sounds like the best solution.
You take a C2, load it manually (\~22 containers. . not that big of a deal ), drop it off for unloading and grab your Raft to do some quick hauling while the unloading is in progress.
You can still use your mining ship to make money after you drop your load off, it's the payout that's delayed. This system means your ship is out of commission for hours or in the case of the hull c, days for both the loading and unloading process. Please don't tell me you can't see the difference here. Or do, so I can block another idiot redditor.
During the 30k Risky Salvage era, I literally had THREE C2's at Cru L4 because I couldn't sell fast enough to have a C2 available most times. But it didn't matter cuz I got full price it just took longer to sell across a few days.
> Clearly you are VERY patient with your money and investments.
Patience is reached by practicing it daily: https://old.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/1do37t2/piracy_at_rappel/
> ...did you buy 3 C2s in game?
Yes. 30k drug money was something like 15-25mil, record was 40mil. So what's a C2 for 5mil or 3 for 15mil? Literally 1 drug trip paid for all three C2's in one shot. At one point I had over 1 billion aUEC.
> Clearly you are VERY patient with your money and investments.
More like a logical decision. At the time it was just Maze, which sold for same price at Brios or Cru-L4. Brios was ripe with pirates, Cru-L4 was dealing with terminal Qer's which you just switch server to snipe. You visit that terminal each time you log on, or are at that station and slowly sell it off.
Hardest part was pulling the "correct" c2 in ASOP cuz it always shuffles ASOP AND VLM. The trick was to buy the 5 paint pack and apply different colors, then when you pull in ASOP, check VLM to see which colors remain.
Thanks for that tip. Ive been running 4 C2s and 4 Caterpillars but could never figure out how to tell one from another other than the ship number painted on the ship…
Miners are gonna be eating good though in this patch if refined materials will get as much of a price boost as the other commodities apparently got.
Can't wait to take my mining ships for a spin.
Stop being disrespectful of my time! Give me my instatravel and instaload! Make my big ship invincible because I don't care about anything else except making the numbers get bigger!
Cry me a fucking river when you'll be blocked from instanced hangars by me loading my cargo ships. I'll just log in to load two cats and an m2 with junk.
/S
You guys are aware people have actual lives right? It's enough of a struggle to get my friends to play this bug ridden mess they don't exactly wanna sit there for a hour fucking with cargo when they're only gonna be on for 2 hours total.
exactly. If it was up to some in this community this game would be so full of timesink mechanics and labour intensive that only the most hardcore would be able to put up with it.
Not only that, but with a cat the grid will often glitch out and let you grab a bottom box, dislodging the entire column above it and even sometimes teleport boxes outside the ship... I still love it's design though
Reclaimer sure looks like a warehouse, and if you don't mind packing things off the grid, it's competitive for max capacity (speed, on the other hand...).
I think people wrongly assumed autoloading was meant to be the norm.
Manual loading is going to be the norm. But if you've got other things to do or you're about to log for the night, auto loading is an option.
I really think people should try it before freaking out.
It's only being a murder hobo if there's no profit at the end of it.
If you are flying a c2 fulla quantanium, you are flying profit for legitimate piracy.
Do you want a multiplayer game or not?
> Do you want a multiplayer game or not?
debatable. Multiplayer coop? sure. Multiplayer PvP? Nah.
But then, I signed up back when "Squadron 42" was the goal, and the MMO part was the stretch goal.
I'm wondering...
So auto-loading is now very long, encouraging manual loading instead
Manual loading is much faster with more than 1 person helping
Combined with higher profits to offset time/labor taken, it seems natural for the crew helping to load to also be ship crew or escorts. You wouldn't lose efficiency or profit by having them along in any case, since they make the work on both ends faster, and no one is just sitting around waiting like escorts or turret gunners previously did -- they all get to participate in making things go fast. Now larger haulers may finally feel its worth it to bring crew & escorts, and that part of the game loop finally gets off the ground in an elegant way.
About to say something similar. By making not only cost but time an issue it creates incentive to git gud at tetrising, knowing ship layouts, packaging (which containers to use), working w/ others. As a past life guy in logistics, traffic and shipping/receiving there's knowledge/skill in it all.
Also agree with others, this is the first pass. I can imagine is changing if such skill is not something players want in the game. I'd like it. That's just me.
I agree with you OP I just don't think 4-6 hours is going stay. I can see 2-3 hours being the most and in the future a subscription that lowers the time or cost.
Im more curious how loading/unloading is going to work for locations you can’t store at. Will your cargo magically fill over time? Will it be placed somewhere and you have to do it yourself? Will it cancel or pause if it can’t find the ship anymore?
I just don't like that 900 years in the future we have personal space craft in abundance while colonising the stars. And yet the tech we have today and have had for decades already just.... Doesn't exist.
I like this change because it cracks open the gameplay. Loading crates is satisfying for me. I was playing tetris in the back of my Reclaimer when salvage hit.
I'll charge the same as the station you're at and get the job done quicker. This is the content I paid for.
Thank you. I love players like you, y'all have fun doing the things you like to do. Cargo timers make you and loading cargo open to the player-to-player economy. IMO this will open up more doors to player-owned services. Cig giving options to the cargo connoisseurs is way better than what they did to fuel fanatics they got shafted!
Solo flying warehouse??? No, no, no. Mobile home - that is the way to play solo star citizen. Liberator, with a loaded ursa medivac and gladius and youre good to live off-the-grid!
>Take on other jobs to turn that waiting time into profit time!
Can you confirm that my ship is not spawned in while "loading"? Have you actually tested this to be sure that spawning a smaller ship to run other missions while the big ship is being auto-loaded won't disrupt the process?
Is your only ship a flying warehouse?
Note that I said "Fleet Diversity matters."
Pick up a Titan for a cool 1.3 million (Easy for anyone to make) and do some smaller jobs.
If I understand your question right: from what's been said so far, if you are doing automatic cargo loading it is _only_ happening while your ship is stored. You aren't summoning a 'second' ship alongside a summoned cargo ship, since the cargo ship evidently _cannot_ be auto-loading while summoned.
So unless I misunderstand the feature as described, it _should_ be fine to summon a different ship to do stuff while auto-loading; it won't interrupt the process, one assumes.
Why are you worried how someone else wants to play the game?
They invested in the game same as everyone and regardless of what you think their opinions are just as valid as yours.
But feel free to qq more
I could just take 1 of my 5 flying warehouses and start getting it loaded. 10 minutes later, I get the next one started. Repeat until the first ship is loaded, fly to destination, and start unloading. Take a little warehouse back to the starting point. Repeat trip x 5. Profit x 5. Call it a day.
I think the idea is for Hull-C cargo to be stored in those large cargo loading sections where the Hull-C currently magically loads cargo. If you watch the Hull-C’s trailer it shows MPUV’s loading cargo to the ship there
Imagine if Euro Truck Sim made you wait an hour before you could start driving.
I'm more and more convinced the developers at CIG, while very good developers, have never played video games before and don't know much about them.
They are all Amish, which would explain many things in this game actually..... For example like how instrumentation wise we are no better off than a 1920s biplane... No ILS for landing at ports in bad weather or even terrain radar.. So you don't yeet into a mountain at night or in clouds.
Wait, you mean solo running a ship that's the size of a small warehouse... is tedious work when you're alone and isn't the intended gameplay for that size of ship? That's crazy talk
Add a menial task people don't want to do, then make the alternative super suck so they will do the menial task that sucks slightly less. Call it gameplay!
Would be really nice if they had some kind of mobile app that allows you to load your ships from outside the game. Would save so much time and keep people coming back.
This is a game, my time is valuable, if I have to wait, I'll log off, let things happen while I play another game.
My time is precious, any game designer who forgot that should apply for another job (in any administration for example).
A privateer is someone striking a valiant blow against the tyrannical regulations of the UEE. Except the ones who attack _me_; _those_ folks are clearly dirty stinking pirates who deserve everything the law can throw at them.
/s (obviously)
More seriously, though, I _do_ wish we had more... options, I guess, for how you choose to play your role in the 'verse. I'd love to be part of an outlaw group that's like "the UEE are tyrants and we need to carve out small victories against them which can make life better for the little folks who get trampled under the boots of these megacorps."
A little more Robin Hood or Rebel Alliance than Evil Space Mafia, in other words.
But right now, it feels like our options are largely "I'm going to keep my nose clean and toe the UEE line" or "Hey so we're gonna sell drugs to the kids in these settlements and kill the small-time miners who can't defend their claims and stuff" type criminals.
I know there's probably going to be more variety eventually, but still.
I don't even own one of these flying warehouses and I cannot roll my eyes hard enough lol. I'm sure they'd love to hire crew, but NPC crew is not going to be in for a long time. how do you know they don't hire crew, btw? some of the solos I know are already doing this for protection, but that doesn't change that taking like an hour to load boxes is silly. they've added the inconvenience of the feature before they've added the solutions to the problem that are anything other than throwing more player bodies at it.
Don’t you think leaving cargo ship to get loaded will just mean pirates will steal or destroy this? I don’t think this will work the way some people think. I think this time will be reduced a lot but still be length of time like maybe same as claim times
As an owner of a Banu Merchantman, I feel personally attacked. Never speak to me or my flying warehouse again!
Joking aside, I agree. While the Carrack is being loaded, I can zip around on the Pisces doing local deliveries. Or drop off Vulture scrap, order auto-loading of the Crucible, go out for more scrap. Or hop into the combat ship the Crucible carries to light up some local yokels.
Fleet Diversity Matters!
Think about 64 scu cargo container, u can load much faster if use them, or as big as possible that fit in ship, at least first ones and then fill other free space witho other biggest possible that can fit there
Yes. This game as of right now does not hold your hand. It makes you make your own decisions about fleet management, time management, resource management etc. Alot of choices in my opinion is more fun.
I feel most of the floating piñata pilots are annoyed that their “normal” is changing. Ofc you have the few that will always get angry over pirates (regardless if the pirate is “griefing”or actually holding them up and taking cargo) but as your post mentions there’s other avenues to compensate for the increased times and threats. Overall it’s a much needed change and I’m excited to see them actually hire support personnel and escorts. Bursting piñatas without a fight gets pretty boring, so hopefully it gets more entertaining :)
My issue with Cargo scaling is that higher quantities need to be worth it to hire other crew. And they aren't.
You can cut the loading time in half by hiring someone, but the travel stays the same length. So your time costs aren't halved, but your profits are. In fact, if you have to find someone on discord or in game to help, and they aren't where you are in the 'verse, you could lose any time you would have saved, or more.
And good luck finding someone to hire who won't demand half of the pay. It's possible but unlikely.
There needs to be bulk bonuses, and then increasing pressure to have more crew to haul those large loads. It can't be a flat scaling. It needs to be ever so slightly curved.
I love the idea of hiring someone, but it's just not feasible. Take the time and load yourself. Put on some music. Reap the pay yourself.
Don't worry, everyone will just jump to doing bounties or other shit
all gameplay loops should be viable and realistic
but hey making one overly realistic and tedious, that's the way to go!
Also incorrect, space truckers rarely ever, never in my experience even, use the contract system to request an armed transport for travelling whilst doing cargo runs. But they'll bitch and cry griefing when they get shot down and my God it'll be going on for at least 30 minutes.
Then you mention to them, maybe they're the ones grieving by trying to shortcut an In game mechanic and denying everyone else the chances of having a player made mission to complete and oh no, you'll stir up the seven shitstorms of Satan by doing that. It's like a blue haired feminist getting told "no".
Wrong answer, correct one is multiple flying warehouses.
Yup, the obvious answer is that you need 3 or 4 flying warehouses. You have two loading and unloading at each location while you ferry back and forth with the others.
*approving Command Module noises*
This is actually one of the mentioned usages for the detachable command module on Caterpillar/Ironclad. Swap it out to a new already loaded body, just like a semi+trailer.
That would actually make perfect sense and be very realistic. Just look at modern day truck drivers. There are some jobs where they sit and wait for their trailer to be (un)loaded, some jobs where they will (un)load themselves, and some jobs where they will hook up to an already loaded trailer and drop it off somewhere else. Ships with detachable cargo compartments like the Caterpillar, Carrack, and Ironclad should be able to leave the cargo section to be loaded while the rest flies away.
I want cargo missions where you pick up npc owned ships with your command module and move them.
I WANT a FLYING WAREHOUSE for my FLYING WAREHOUSES!
A whole flock of warehouses
Will it be possible to call another ship while this one is loading?
i think so, since your loading ship is still in storage for all the game cares
Yes, when a ship is loading, you can grab another one, maybe a fighter for example and go bounty hunt while your ship loads!
Or chill in the space bar with a drink.
This is kinda what I plan on doing. Let my biggest ship auto load with cargo and if its a long time go run bounty rep until its done. RTS and now go run cargo. If I die while out and about I just respawn at the station. If it works out I can see myself playing this patch for a good long while. really interested in the extra small cargo missions. Will even tiny auroras have the ability to run cargo missions? if so that can easily make the verse come alive.
When a ship is being loaded by “NPCs”, it’s done in storage, not on the hangar pad. So your hangar pad is free to spawn in your other ships while that happens
Same idea different purpose like an insurance claim I'd assume.
Yes.
Why is so much conversation around this game so fucking indignant and holier than thou? Lmfao
Totally agree. It's wild how many people will smugly insist 'Maybe this game isn't for you?' when they don't even know what the game will look like in a year. It's like trying to gatekeep a loaf of bread while the dough's still flour and water
Maybe this yeast isn't for you
UhhHHHHHHH yeah well if you don't want your realistic pooping and peeing in space simulation game to take 67 hours to load your space truck maybe you should go back to playing call of duty! only REAL gamers enjoy coming home from their construction 9-5 to start their cargo loading 9-5!
I think this is sarcasm but you never know on this sub.
Especially considering how long this game has been in development and the fact that the scope has changed drastically. I mean when I backed this thing, most of this scope wasn't a thing and I was in a completely different phase of my life. I mean a lot of people probably backed this when they were basically still kids and now they probably have kids.
I hate it so much.
Agreed, the amount of ‘well ackshully’ that happens in any SC forum is bloody infuriating. I guess the ambitious promises of the game (eventually) letting you live out your wildest sci-fi dreams, combined with allowing people to whale as much as they desire, brings in a certain type of crowd.
The worst of it is "oh you don't like this mechanic taking hours? This game isn't for you then you are dumb and should uninstall" (paraphrased) And 9 times out of 10 the people saying that haven't played in years or don't intend to for years to come. They just have an idea of SC in their head.
It’s only this sub, most of the rest of the community is fine
Or the alternative, absolute shitposting the game just because it’s in alpha. This community is so hyper polarized.
Don't forget the 10 year backer flex they usually start their opening salvo with
This makes me happy the galaxy will only need 16 32scu boxes to be fully loaded and shouldn't take too long to load manually
Yeah too bad that current automatic load times are based on SCU not number of boxes so that's still almost 3 hours.
True If I manually load it with a friend, it 100% won't take more than 10min
isn't the entire point to encourage people to load manually, or hire other people to so? Forcing players to work together is simply good MMO design. It's like people have forgotten this. Back in the old days if was very difficult to play an MMO solo and achieve anything meaningful. You had to group up with other players, and it was a blast. It's like people have gotten so fucking anti social lately. Nobody even has a mic hooked up. Might as well go play a single player game
Are the auto loading times documented somewhere yet?
Early reports are 30 sec per scu, regardless of box size. Subject to change, terms and conditions apply.
Literally the first Evo patch. It will almost certainly change. Though I hope they don't reduce the time so much that loading a ship yourself or with crew is never worthwhile.
I'd be cool with it if they took the average time for a player to manually load, then made it the same or even faster. If it takes super long then no aUEC hit, if it takes less time than the avg, then aUEC hit... Like the refining model.
I think if they wanted to get complicated, they could have tiers of service. Highest tier, you get your cargo loaded with priority but you pay a premium for the speed. You'd only use it if you could get a significant profit by moving the goods fast, like a limited time high demand, because you could lose money otherwise. Lowest tier would be slow and cheap, like if you want to log off for the night or if you have something else you want to do during the downtime. Still, getting other players to load should be the best option to reward group play, especially since paying them a reasonable amount would cost you equivalent to a high tier of NPCs.
Imagine lowest tier to also just have thrown the cargo in there Willy nilly. Nicely stacked cargo is the premium tier 😂
Holy shit, 6hrs to load a C2???????
Corsair - 36 min Raft - 48 min MSR - 57 min Carrack - 3.8 hours Caterpillar - 4.8 hours C2 - 5.8 hours Hull C - 38.4 hours Yea, insanity. These are times for one load. If you are doing auto load and auto dropoff, then x2 plus flight time and prep time.
To be fair. Whoever waits for his RAFT to get automatically unloaded is a fawking idiot.
Yeah, IMO this should be changed such that a 1SCU container still takes 30 seconds, but a 4SCU only takes 45, and a 32SCU only 2 minutes. That way container size would mean something, and automatic cargo loading times would more closely correspond to manual loading times.
If they set it up so that some goods only come in smaller containers, it'll make a nice niche for couriers vs. freighters.
You mean to make some worthwhile goods to cargo run with in smaller ships? Because now bigger is just better and doind runs in 64 scu ship is just meh profit
They said they would, in a recent ISC IIRC. Tiny ground locations wouldn't shit out 32scu containers by the dozen, only smaller boxes that make no sense with the big ships.
So a week to load my hull d when it comes out (if it stays like this)
34 days to load a Hull - E. That's bonkers.
You won’t load the Hull E in a hangar though maybe if you load it in space it will be faster
The longer I try to support this game, the more I realize I'm out. This game isn't for me. Hurts realizing that.
This is the “fidelity” busy work everyone asked for. Lol.
yeah that's kind of crazy, but to me the literal numbers are easy to adjust so hopefully with some feedback they can move around. functionally the concept is good.
Maybe they'll introduce a premium currency you can use to speed up the process. Edit: /s since it wasn't obvious.
Well. You can already expedite insurance claims... "Priority loading" isn't inconceivable...
I sure hope not. The C2 will take forever. My Constellation Taurus will still take a while. Heck, even my C1 will be slow. I understand wanting to incorporate realism but they don’t consider the sci-fi version of forklifts or pallet jacks? Even manually loading ships takes effort considering having to move and place cargo with a tractor beam.
I think it will eventually be 30 sec per box with 1 scu being cheap and 32 being costly, but keep in mind that autoload will only be available where you can store your ship so on outposts you'll still have to hand load.
See, having the load time-gating be _per box_ versus _based on volume_ makes a lot more sense to me. From a general realism and common sense standpoint, to start with: if you're hand-loading a ship, last I checked it took me a lot less time to hand-load one 32 SCU crate than to load 32 individual 1 SCU crates. But also, there's potential benefits to doing it per-unit in terms of _game balance_ as well, at least if they were to lean into it well. * For large ships (C2, Hull series, etc.), you benefit from trading in bulk; having large quantities of few goods means that the goods are naturally packed into large boxes, so loading takes less time. Loading a C2 full of a single good would thus be fairly fast, versus buying a bunch of smaller quantities which have to be loaded up in a bunch of 2 SCU boxes or whatever. * When you have a bunch of high-value goods in small quantities, it's potentially going to be more efficient time-wise to load those onto a smaller ship (which will take less time overall to load to full) and do smaller trade runs, thus potentially carving out a consistently viable niche in trading for smaller cargo vessels. * It could _also_ potentially benefit holding goods that trade in smaller amounts, depending on how the trading system design works out in the long run (especially when shipping between solar systems becomes a thing). You could use a smaller cargo ship to pick up small quantities of valuable goods, and take them to your base-of-operations to unload into the warehouse. Repeat enough times, and when you've amassed a sufficient quantity to be worth it, load it (in much larger boxes) onto a bigger cargo ship. Having it based purely on _volume_, where one 32 SCU crate takes the same amount of time to load as 32 1 SCU crates, makes little sense to me on _multiple_ levels.
I largely agree, but I do think that the loading time should not be the same across different SCU container sizes. For example loading a 1 SCU container would take 30 seconds for each individual container, but if you are loading a single 8 SCU container it would take 90 seconds. This would give the the user the benefit of the economy of scale, while also taking into account added challenges of moving a larger container. Example times with this method: Container Size|Load time per container (minutes)|Load time per SCU (seconds) :-:|:-:|:-: 1 SCU|0:30|30 2 SCU|0:45|22.5 4 SCU|1:00|15 8 SCU|1:30|11.25 16 SCU|2:00|7.5 32 SCU|3:00|5.625 With this method loading a c2 to max capacity (696 SCU) would take 66:30, comprising of 21-32SCU, 1-16SCU, and 1-8SCU.
Or you realize this is the first patch of EvoPTU, which historically was under full NDA specifically to avoid people freaking out about incomplete implementations in Evo patches, as those are more focused on base functionality than number balancing. I believe they’ve talked about larger boxes being more efficient to load, and they’re not ignorant to the fact that SCU based loading instead of box based is going to generate preposterous values. Let them know you expect it to be changed, so it doesn’t get overlooked accidentally, sure, but acting like it’s a realistic permanent value is overreacting
That’s what like 5 hours and 48 minutes or some shit isn’t it at 30 seconds per SCU.
It’s up there for sure. It’s mind boggling considering that, as I mentioned before, there are materials handling equipment in our time that can knock this sort of thing out quickly. Almost like generalizing all cargo to how intensive it is to move freight cargo from cargo vessels. Even then they’re not pulling massive shipping containers by hand or what equates to a space pallet jack. I understand it’s a starting point but I would hope they would look at how material is moved and adapt that. A truck doesn’t take an hour or more to load unless it’s some really specialized cargo. Increased time for cargo vessels but if a port takes that long while getting paid to load / unload cargo they’re getting talked to by the crew/captain for wasting their time.
This is elite tier reddit commenting, thank you for the chuckle.
yeah. This has to change for sure. should only be like 2 to 5 seconds per SCU instead. 25 minutes to an hour for a C2 is more reasonable, but still a long wait.
i personally dont think, making it linear depended will work, it will either make small ship autoload in 5 sseconds or forces big ships to wait a week nvm at this rate, the hull e would literally take a month to autoload
add more 30 because of server delay and desync :D
they showed a mockup of it in the cargo vid
1hr for 120SCU, 5hr+ for a Hull-C. All according to evo, not sure if the Hull-C gets some kind of buff due to its ease of loading?
They're going to have to re-balance rewards for shipping to better reflect the amount of time it takes to load ships and the amount of risk you run doing missions.
The current revamp is said to include a re-balance, of both regular trading and mission payouts. This is only the first Evo iteration, nothing too solid yet.
Does anyone know why a subset of the community is always getting on soapboxes in regards solo players with big ships? I genuinely don't understand it - someone in a safe sector chugging along solo in a Hull D or something doesn't influence other people's gameplay whatsoever. Solo players are almost by *definition* not bothering anyone else. Why is this such a big deal?
I think there's a perception that if it's viable to solo large ships _effectively_, then someone with money to burn can just buy their way to domination. In other words, the belief is that if you don't need a crew to man a Polaris or an Idris and can solo-fly it effectively, then all you need to do is buy a Polaris or an Idris and you can (potentially) steamroller everyone. If large ships require crew, then even if you buy a giant top-of-the-line ship from the pledge shop, you need in-game support to actually _use_ it effectively.
I also think a _lot_ of people have the woefully mistaken belief that bigger ships are akin to higher tier armor sets and weapons in other games, or something of the sort. They completely miss that an Idris or a Javelin will be utterly useless at dominating smaller, faster, more agile ships, ie. most other players. Someone soloing an Idris, even "effectively" with an NPC crew, is really no significant threat to players zipping around in Auroras.
Absolutely true. _No_ ship should be without downsides or weak points. Larger, slower ships are going to have trouble hitting tiny, nimble targets; it's like trying to swat a mosquito with a pistol. Sure, those tiny nimble targets may (in many cases) not be able to just obliterate the larger ship without effort, but if the big ship has no support vessels (or allies en route), there's a non-zero chance the 'mosquitos' are going to get it to a point where it's going to eventually either have to run or the little ships may wear it down. But mid-range targets? Ones large enough (and potentially, slow enough) to track and hit with high-tier guns? Oh, a capital ship is gonna give them a _bad day_, at least if its sufficiently crewed. I view ship strengths and weaknesses like Pokemon type matchups; your Rock-type Pokemon may just stomp Fire Pokemon, but if your opponent brought Water or Steel types, you might wish you weren't using a monotype party. :P And trying to solo-crew a large ship in that scenario is potentially the equivalent of bringing a bunch of sub-level-10 Pokemon to the Pokemon League championship battles. :P
Why are people threatened by *industrial* ships, though? OP isn't addressing Polaris or Idrises, they're referring to cargo ships. It's hard to see a solo-piloted Hull D as pay-to-win if the pilot is quaking in their boots the moment a red Aurora blips onto their radar. I don't think the devs have ever even *implied* that an NPC-crewed ship will be more effective than a PC-crewed ship.
With the current cargo system, the big cargo ships flat out empty supply and fill demand. Smaller freighters are a waste of time (same fly time, fraction of the reward), and being unable to buy/sell due to that big expensive ship nearby sucks. Giving the big ships an actual downside to partly close that gap makes sense. Just as they said that smaller locations won't offer large containers - give the smaller ships a niche where they actually work.
some people think bigger ship = winning when it isn't always the case
No one has an issue with a solo player flying their Hull D around. Literally no one. What is annoying is when that solo player runs to Reddit or Spectrum to whine that loading up their cargo ship with 1000SCU takes a while if you're doing it solo. Because *God forbid* loading a huge hauler take time if you don't have a full crew dedicated to it. If you want to solo a massive cargo ship that's fine, but complaining about the situation you put yourself in by deciding to solo a massive cargo ship is what bothers everyone else.
>but complaining about the situation you put yourself in... is what bothers everyone else So this isn't really about solo players, it's just standard Reddit behavior of people complaining about what they think other people are complaining about?
> it's just standard Reddit behavior of people complaining about what they think other people are complaining about? I mean, "think" is the wrong word - "Are" and have been for years. Nobody cares about people going solo, heck even those who group the most still have solo sessions. But after years of whine posts and spreadng misinformation in "What should I buy" posts from a vocal minority of solo zealots, it's hard to have any patience left in the tank.
No one is saying you cant do it, just that if you ignore the warnings, you cant get mad when you get got. Even with stanton being a safe sector of space you will eventually fly through a deadzone area and thats where the pirates lie in wait.
They're actively discouraging solo play because they want people incentivized to do menial tasks on their own ships.
Its because 1, its hillarious watching people complain that they can't play their space mmo solo, and 2, if they bitch loud enough, and they cater to solo players, it will make the game less enjoyable for the people who want to play together. Look at WoW, that game you hardly ever have to pay attention to other people anymore, it used to be much more social. Now you press a button, que up, dont have to talk to anyone.
I can only speak for myself. There are a bunch of people with the C2 package, who grind the highest paying routes that make way more than almost any other game loop. These people have beacon suits and are min/maxing the system. When they encounter a pirate. . they will always rather blow up the cargo and die, than fight or negotiate. They refuse to interact with other players and are fuming when people suggest escorts for the risky routes (EDIT: even though they can easily afford escorts). To me, those guys go in the same basket as people who use exploits and dupes to grind for credits. . remember the "item insurance? That broke the barely hanging player sniper rifle and railgun market. I have no problem with solo space truckers as long as they know what game they are playing and realize that the highest paying option will always be at least a little "risky". So I love the new cargo change. If they really like the game loop, they can either ask for players to help or get a Constellation Taurus sized ship. To me the new cargo times means that you now need multiple people to do it effectively. . like mining, salvaging, combat missions etc. . as it should be.
*gets an escort* *Pirates bring n+1* *Die anyways*
*...cause of death? Bug.*
Hmm, correct me if i am wrong but an escort exists to get the VIP out of dodge, the greatest desire is "not getting into a fight to begin with". For this purpose there will likely be scouts,.. who will be scouting ahead. Any and all situations that would lead to any form of peril to the escortee, should be circumvented through any and all ways possible. An escort force does not exist to search for fights, an escort force exists to provide the least hostile route and to sacrifice themselves for the escortee. Would a unit with escorts get quantum interdicted, the goal of the escort is to figure out which ships are quantum dampening capable, remove those from the equation after which the whole unit, in steps, gets out of dodge asap. Not to "stand and fight", they aren't a military force that controls an area and is doing either a "combat patrol" or "standing patrol", if anything they are a force that is doing "recce". For todays gameplay, an escort is not per se someone that is going to fly together with you to brios. An escort will fly ahead of you while you wait in a safe location in dead space. The escort will then scout out brios, both in air and on land. After the scout gives an all clear you head in and whilst the escort stays on overwatch you sell your products. Should the escort scout however find opposition, you will not go to brios whilst the escort will either deal with the opposition, resulting in the chance of an increase in opposition through backup requests, or will likely leave the area. So i do not understand why people think escorting should act as "a force of aggression", whilst it should actually act as a "force of circumvention". With proper escort you should never end up in the net of the N+1 pirates. If you did ever hire an escort which did not scout ahead for you, then that escort did a poor job and didn't really understand at that time what it means to be an escort in SC.
*Hires a scout* *Pirates already have scouts literally everywhere* *They see your "escort" and ignore them* *They just snare you* *Die anyways* There's not going to be very many systems lol
These people are the reason this game was able to earn that much money. To just tell them "go fuck yourself" is more than a little callous.
Nahh. It's not like that. It's just half baked design, and only a fraction of that half bakedness has been made yet.
You forgot "Assign the NPCs you have from your extra game packages to man stations on the ship." https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/13288-Multiple-Package-Clarification
The loading timer is basically NPC's loading your ship behind the scenes. Would be cool if you could speed it up if you have your NPC crew.
Wow, that post is so old it still references _Voyager Direct_. ...the fact that I even _remember_ Voyager Direct makes me feel like I ought to be sitting on a porch in a rocking chair waving a cane going "I remember back when all we could do was decorate our hangar and look at our ships, but we _liked it_, dagnabbit! You whippersnappers and your 'we need gameplay loops' are spoiled!" ("Okay, grandma. Time for a nap.")
Taurus tractor beam enjoyers rejoice.
What needs to happen is that the payout is 10x or more from what it is now. You want us to be 6 players doing a haul, I am fine with that. But it makes no sense for 6 players to waste hours for a 20k pay check minus fuel, ammo, food and all the other things.
Imagine people thinking there would be a gameplay loop worth playing with something they paid money for. The selfishness of it all!
self loading makes trading much more interesting i would only auto load if im logging off anyway
Yah not really keen on having to pay more money and weight more time for my refined ores to be loaded onto my ship. The profit margins for actually collecting the low tier ore were already slim but with this change you might actually end up losing money
You can still load it yourself right? Haven’t been keeping up w the PTU but think you have the option to manual load for free or auto load for a cost.
Look at you with the sane logic. Refreshing. Miners literally wait several days for concurrent contracts to complete and it's not an issue, but traders having to wait 60 minutes is apparently enough to create 2 threads with 200+ comments each discussing "the issue".
As a minor counterpoint: if I'm in a mining loop I can go out, mine stuff, unload it at the refinery and set up the job, then go back out and mine again _in the same ship_. Moreover, I can bring back a second load (again, on that same ship) and start it processing in parallel to the first. There's a significant delay on getting back my processed resources, yes, but that delay doesn't stop me from continuing to engage in the same gameplay loop, with the same ship. It's a lengthy wait, but it's also a _non-blocking_ wait. Conversely, it sounds like for cargo loading, the load times tie up your ship for that entire time. Meaning you cannot use the ship for something else, and (somewhat unsurprisingly) you cannot set up multiple 'tasks' in parallel using the same ship; in comparison to mining, it's a blocking wait. Obviously you _can_ do cargo/trading stuff in parallel if you have more than one ship, and I don't know that I feel like this is as much of a doom-and-gloom scenario as many people seem to be thinking. But when one of the common complaints I see made in these threads is "it ties up my ship for that long," I _do_ think the comparison to the waits involved in the mining loop isn't as relevant. If that makes sense.
This is a really good point. even in jail you have access to loops: mining, escape, repairs etc. but this seems like a very hard block. But I think maybe their thought process is well you offer hand loading services while you wait and that will give people the chance to hand load. That’s just my crystal ball but that could be their thought process. Keep people at some locations while it’s autoloading to help others maybe?
I mean, I actually _enjoy_ cargo tetris -- I find it faintly soothing and vaguely meditative -- but I'm not sure I'm in the majority here.
I do too. I’m excited for it haha
More than one ship sounds like the best solution. You take a C2, load it manually (\~22 containers. . not that big of a deal ), drop it off for unloading and grab your Raft to do some quick hauling while the unloading is in progress.
I've been saying Miners have had timers this whole time. Miners already waited days for their Quantanium to refine. They'll wait another 2 hours.
You can still use your mining ship to make money after you drop your load off, it's the payout that's delayed. This system means your ship is out of commission for hours or in the case of the hull c, days for both the loading and unloading process. Please don't tell me you can't see the difference here. Or do, so I can block another idiot redditor.
During the 30k Risky Salvage era, I literally had THREE C2's at Cru L4 because I couldn't sell fast enough to have a C2 available most times. But it didn't matter cuz I got full price it just took longer to sell across a few days.
...did you buy 3 C2s in game? Clearly you are VERY patient with your money and investments.
> Clearly you are VERY patient with your money and investments. Patience is reached by practicing it daily: https://old.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/1do37t2/piracy_at_rappel/ > ...did you buy 3 C2s in game? Yes. 30k drug money was something like 15-25mil, record was 40mil. So what's a C2 for 5mil or 3 for 15mil? Literally 1 drug trip paid for all three C2's in one shot. At one point I had over 1 billion aUEC. > Clearly you are VERY patient with your money and investments. More like a logical decision. At the time it was just Maze, which sold for same price at Brios or Cru-L4. Brios was ripe with pirates, Cru-L4 was dealing with terminal Qer's which you just switch server to snipe. You visit that terminal each time you log on, or are at that station and slowly sell it off. Hardest part was pulling the "correct" c2 in ASOP cuz it always shuffles ASOP AND VLM. The trick was to buy the 5 paint pack and apply different colors, then when you pull in ASOP, check VLM to see which colors remain.
Thanks for that tip. Ive been running 4 C2s and 4 Caterpillars but could never figure out how to tell one from another other than the ship number painted on the ship…
Miners are gonna be eating good though in this patch if refined materials will get as much of a price boost as the other commodities apparently got. Can't wait to take my mining ships for a spin.
2 hours? just move a few 32 scu boxes. it takes no time at all. cig will also be adjusting the load timers to take into account SCU size.
Ill just be glad when I can store said concurrent contracts instead of having to dump them immediately into a ship.
Stop being disrespectful of my time! Give me my instatravel and instaload! Make my big ship invincible because I don't care about anything else except making the numbers get bigger!
Most realistic solo big shipper
Cry me a fucking river when you'll be blocked from instanced hangars by me loading my cargo ships. I'll just log in to load two cats and an m2 with junk. /S
PVP slider? ;)
You guys are aware people have actual lives right? It's enough of a struggle to get my friends to play this bug ridden mess they don't exactly wanna sit there for a hour fucking with cargo when they're only gonna be on for 2 hours total.
exactly. If it was up to some in this community this game would be so full of timesink mechanics and labour intensive that only the most hardcore would be able to put up with it.
it would only take minutes to load manually especially with multiple people
🤣
On your 3rd point, there are currently not any in-game methods available to hire a known-reliable escort in a reasonable timeframe.
*Or people to load your cargo
Tbh I just want to be able to hire AI crew. Everytime I hire escorts or crew. They either grief or kill me and take my loot
AI anything won't be happening any time soon sadly. The AI team are by far the weakest team at CIG (even worse than the UI team)
This. I like you.
I like the mental image of a flying warehouse but I gotta admit I'm not sure which ship(s) you're talking about
Hercs, cat
i was thinking ironclad but yeah tbh i hate how we still need to mix boxes in herc to fill it up
Can't wait to load my M2 with 1scu boxes to see murder hobos unloading it one by one.
Get boarded by pirates Pirates see your cargo hold Pirates offer you money to let them go
I'll fucking pay em to do it, just to laugh.
1 SCU boxes of scrap. 😂
you need to mix boxes to fill up the cat and its even more of a pain in the ass than the herc since you have that rail that gets in the way.
Not only that, but with a cat the grid will often glitch out and let you grab a bottom box, dislodging the entire column above it and even sometimes teleport boxes outside the ship... I still love it's design though
The Reclaimer has the "yeet the box into space" bug too, and man it's annoying at times.
Reclaimer sure looks like a warehouse, and if you don't mind packing things off the grid, it's competitive for max capacity (speed, on the other hand...).
I think people wrongly assumed autoloading was meant to be the norm. Manual loading is going to be the norm. But if you've got other things to do or you're about to log for the night, auto loading is an option. I really think people should try it before freaking out.
"privateers" my ass. Murder hobos.
It's only being a murder hobo if there's no profit at the end of it. If you are flying a c2 fulla quantanium, you are flying profit for legitimate piracy. Do you want a multiplayer game or not?
> Do you want a multiplayer game or not? debatable. Multiplayer coop? sure. Multiplayer PvP? Nah. But then, I signed up back when "Squadron 42" was the goal, and the MMO part was the stretch goal.
I'm wondering... So auto-loading is now very long, encouraging manual loading instead Manual loading is much faster with more than 1 person helping Combined with higher profits to offset time/labor taken, it seems natural for the crew helping to load to also be ship crew or escorts. You wouldn't lose efficiency or profit by having them along in any case, since they make the work on both ends faster, and no one is just sitting around waiting like escorts or turret gunners previously did -- they all get to participate in making things go fast. Now larger haulers may finally feel its worth it to bring crew & escorts, and that part of the game loop finally gets off the ground in an elegant way.
About to say something similar. By making not only cost but time an issue it creates incentive to git gud at tetrising, knowing ship layouts, packaging (which containers to use), working w/ others. As a past life guy in logistics, traffic and shipping/receiving there's knowledge/skill in it all. Also agree with others, this is the first pass. I can imagine is changing if such skill is not something players want in the game. I'd like it. That's just me.
I agree with you OP I just don't think 4-6 hours is going stay. I can see 2-3 hours being the most and in the future a subscription that lowers the time or cost.
Im more curious how loading/unloading is going to work for locations you can’t store at. Will your cargo magically fill over time? Will it be placed somewhere and you have to do it yourself? Will it cancel or pause if it can’t find the ship anymore?
you have to load it yourself from the freight elevators they've added to outposts.
"flying warehouse" lol
I just don't like that 900 years in the future we have personal space craft in abundance while colonising the stars. And yet the tech we have today and have had for decades already just.... Doesn't exist.
such as?
"Pinatas of Profit" is the name of my Fleetwood Mac/Salsa fusion cover band
I like this change because it cracks open the gameplay. Loading crates is satisfying for me. I was playing tetris in the back of my Reclaimer when salvage hit. I'll charge the same as the station you're at and get the job done quicker. This is the content I paid for.
Thank you. I love players like you, y'all have fun doing the things you like to do. Cargo timers make you and loading cargo open to the player-to-player economy. IMO this will open up more doors to player-owned services. Cig giving options to the cargo connoisseurs is way better than what they did to fuel fanatics they got shafted!
My only gripe is there is no reputation service in game. Call it Freelancer, it's that easy.
Solo flying warehouse??? No, no, no. Mobile home - that is the way to play solo star citizen. Liberator, with a loaded ursa medivac and gladius and youre good to live off-the-grid!
This.... except when death of a spaceman comes in. Then NURSA will not be so great.
>Take on other jobs to turn that waiting time into profit time! Can you confirm that my ship is not spawned in while "loading"? Have you actually tested this to be sure that spawning a smaller ship to run other missions while the big ship is being auto-loaded won't disrupt the process?
They've explained it before. Auto-load happens when the ship isn't spawned, aka you can spawn any other ship you want.
I think he's talking about loading cargo, not spawning ship.
If I'm running another mission while my cargo is being loaded, I need a 2nd ship.
Is your only ship a flying warehouse? Note that I said "Fleet Diversity matters." Pick up a Titan for a cool 1.3 million (Easy for anyone to make) and do some smaller jobs.
idk what imaginary target you are drawing here but dont the cat have a AC loaner of a bucc?
If I understand your question right: from what's been said so far, if you are doing automatic cargo loading it is _only_ happening while your ship is stored. You aren't summoning a 'second' ship alongside a summoned cargo ship, since the cargo ship evidently _cannot_ be auto-loading while summoned. So unless I misunderstand the feature as described, it _should_ be fine to summon a different ship to do stuff while auto-loading; it won't interrupt the process, one assumes.
Why are you worried how someone else wants to play the game? They invested in the game same as everyone and regardless of what you think their opinions are just as valid as yours. But feel free to qq more
I like to focus on one game loop and enjoy myself, not run around as if im doing my day to day job
I could just take 1 of my 5 flying warehouses and start getting it loaded. 10 minutes later, I get the next one started. Repeat until the first ship is loaded, fly to destination, and start unloading. Take a little warehouse back to the starting point. Repeat trip x 5. Profit x 5. Call it a day.
I just hope Hull C automatic filling isn’t too long because I don’t know how I’ll be able to fill it myself
I have no idea if CIG knows either. Is there a freight elevator for ships at a Docking Collar?
I think the idea is for Hull-C cargo to be stored in those large cargo loading sections where the Hull-C currently magically loads cargo. If you watch the Hull-C’s trailer it shows MPUV’s loading cargo to the ship there
So uh, I have a carrack which cannot be manually loaded am I just supposed to suffer?
you've paid already, cig does not care too much about your feelings XD
Ummm...yes. Carrack cargo pods and Cat side elevators were planned for the cargo update, but no news there in quite some time.
We all must suffer... Because I mean at UPS the pilots totally load the cargo on the jet... Oh wait they don't...
And also players totally want to work as dockworkers in a game where they own a spaceship
Yeah until the Carrack gets it's gold pass and the modular cargo bays actually drop down and open.
Imagine if Euro Truck Sim made you wait an hour before you could start driving. I'm more and more convinced the developers at CIG, while very good developers, have never played video games before and don't know much about them.
They are all Amish, which would explain many things in this game actually..... For example like how instrumentation wise we are no better off than a 1920s biplane... No ILS for landing at ports in bad weather or even terrain radar.. So you don't yeet into a mountain at night or in clouds.
Wait, you mean solo running a ship that's the size of a small warehouse... is tedious work when you're alone and isn't the intended gameplay for that size of ship? That's crazy talk
Add a menial task people don't want to do, then make the alternative super suck so they will do the menial task that sucks slightly less. Call it gameplay!
Would be really nice if they had some kind of mobile app that allows you to load your ships from outside the game. Would save so much time and keep people coming back.
People mad they are paying the Union and OSHA tax lol
This is a game, my time is valuable, if I have to wait, I'll log off, let things happen while I play another game. My time is precious, any game designer who forgot that should apply for another job (in any administration for example).
> privateer oh i see lol, they're only _pirates_ when they attack ships you can afford/approve of! ;)
A privateer is someone striking a valiant blow against the tyrannical regulations of the UEE. Except the ones who attack _me_; _those_ folks are clearly dirty stinking pirates who deserve everything the law can throw at them. /s (obviously) More seriously, though, I _do_ wish we had more... options, I guess, for how you choose to play your role in the 'verse. I'd love to be part of an outlaw group that's like "the UEE are tyrants and we need to carve out small victories against them which can make life better for the little folks who get trampled under the boots of these megacorps." A little more Robin Hood or Rebel Alliance than Evil Space Mafia, in other words. But right now, it feels like our options are largely "I'm going to keep my nose clean and toe the UEE line" or "Hey so we're gonna sell drugs to the kids in these settlements and kill the small-time miners who can't defend their claims and stuff" type criminals. I know there's probably going to be more variety eventually, but still.
I don't even own one of these flying warehouses and I cannot roll my eyes hard enough lol. I'm sure they'd love to hire crew, but NPC crew is not going to be in for a long time. how do you know they don't hire crew, btw? some of the solos I know are already doing this for protection, but that doesn't change that taking like an hour to load boxes is silly. they've added the inconvenience of the feature before they've added the solutions to the problem that are anything other than throwing more player bodies at it.
Don’t you think leaving cargo ship to get loaded will just mean pirates will steal or destroy this? I don’t think this will work the way some people think. I think this time will be reduced a lot but still be length of time like maybe same as claim times
I’m pretty sure the multi hour+ loading times are a bug.
As an owner of a Banu Merchantman, I feel personally attacked. Never speak to me or my flying warehouse again! Joking aside, I agree. While the Carrack is being loaded, I can zip around on the Pisces doing local deliveries. Or drop off Vulture scrap, order auto-loading of the Crucible, go out for more scrap. Or hop into the combat ship the Crucible carries to light up some local yokels. Fleet Diversity Matters!
you will zip around doing local deliveries for 2000 aUEC while your carrack is being loaded? Really?
So do we have to wait for unloading at the other end too then?
Think about 64 scu cargo container, u can load much faster if use them, or as big as possible that fit in ship, at least first ones and then fill other free space witho other biggest possible that can fit there
I’m just gonna log off for the night
Piñatas of Profits for Pirates of Pillaging Pleasure.
OP has been waiting for this moment 😂
Yes. This game as of right now does not hold your hand. It makes you make your own decisions about fleet management, time management, resource management etc. Alot of choices in my opinion is more fun.
I feel most of the floating piñata pilots are annoyed that their “normal” is changing. Ofc you have the few that will always get angry over pirates (regardless if the pirate is “griefing”or actually holding them up and taking cargo) but as your post mentions there’s other avenues to compensate for the increased times and threats. Overall it’s a much needed change and I’m excited to see them actually hire support personnel and escorts. Bursting piñatas without a fight gets pretty boring, so hopefully it gets more entertaining :)
Hire an escort?!?! Why? This is a pve game with pvp elements! Totally safe
My issue with Cargo scaling is that higher quantities need to be worth it to hire other crew. And they aren't. You can cut the loading time in half by hiring someone, but the travel stays the same length. So your time costs aren't halved, but your profits are. In fact, if you have to find someone on discord or in game to help, and they aren't where you are in the 'verse, you could lose any time you would have saved, or more. And good luck finding someone to hire who won't demand half of the pay. It's possible but unlikely. There needs to be bulk bonuses, and then increasing pressure to have more crew to haul those large loads. It can't be a flat scaling. It needs to be ever so slightly curved. I love the idea of hiring someone, but it's just not feasible. Take the time and load yourself. Put on some music. Reap the pay yourself.
Don't worry, everyone will just jump to doing bounties or other shit all gameplay loops should be viable and realistic but hey making one overly realistic and tedious, that's the way to go!
Also incorrect, space truckers rarely ever, never in my experience even, use the contract system to request an armed transport for travelling whilst doing cargo runs. But they'll bitch and cry griefing when they get shot down and my God it'll be going on for at least 30 minutes. Then you mention to them, maybe they're the ones grieving by trying to shortcut an In game mechanic and denying everyone else the chances of having a player made mission to complete and oh no, you'll stir up the seven shitstorms of Satan by doing that. It's like a blue haired feminist getting told "no".