Another Cujo being dumb moment from the logs, this time on the subject of everyone’s favorite source of time-wasting boredom: Hyperspace travel times!
Now, hyperspace travel times, according to Cujo, were put in place for two reasons: To prevent people from abusing the trading system, and to prevent twinks from showing up in scenes they had no reason to be in, especially at certain times. Three players weigh in on both reasons. This was not long after the last economy was pulled out, and it was quite a while before another was coded up and put into action.
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Message: 9/43 (No System Timeout) Posted Author
Transit times Sep 18 2017 Aurra SingSo with the Market system disabled, Trade or Smuggling runs are regulated by scene Events and RP. Is there any constructive reason to keep the hyperspace transit times the way they are? Even with a fast ship it still takes an hour of RL time to get to some systems. When people log in for RP, they don’t want to sit in a room watching the clock run down.
Yes, keep some distinction between hyperspace routes. After all, there has to be a reason to pay for that X1 hyperdrive upgrade, right? But maybe it would add to RP if the base jump times were simply cut in half?
Less time in the cockpit means more time in RP.
--------------------< Comment 1 - Added Sep 18 12:05PM EDT >--------------------
Navi Kryze Commented:
I agree wholeheartedly that the transit times as they presently exist are too long, contribute absolutely nothing to RP, and are generally pointless without a trade system. On the other hand, shorter or absent transit times would actually aid RP, partly by providing more time in which to do it and partly by removing a habitual aversion to leaving Nar Shaddaa just to avoid the annoying transit times (whether by ship or shuttle). Frankly, they’re redundant at best. Why not just get rid of them, or at least shorten them by half or more?
And while I’m sure someone will point to the ‘simulation value’ of transit times for the space system, let’s be honest here… not once in any Star Wars film or novel do you ever see anyone flying a ship by typing alphanumeric commands on a keyboard and staring at a static screen full of text and the occasional prompt. Instead, you see starfields full of planets and ships, a few targeting screens, and control yokes or joysticks. Things you definitely won’t find here, and nobody’s imagination really needs keyboard prompts to conjure up images of a souped-up Corellian freighter or heavily-armed Resistance cruiser hurtling across the stars. If you really, truly want to fly a Star Wars spaceship, there are far, far better (and more fun!) simulations out there.
And for those of you thinking these things contribute to twink control, I very much doubt that. I’m sure there are far simpler and more effective means of eliminating twink run-ins during scenes than transit times, and they likely don’t need the upkeep necessitated by a space system. And given how long the vast majority of combat scenes take, the transit times are all but meaningless anyway; with or without them, you’re most likely going to be calling for a staffer to deal with Tommy Twinksalot and his Twinkie-Toting Trio. Why deal with a frequent hassle aimed at solving an occasional problem that it doesn’t even solve?
--------------------< Comment 2 - Added Sep 18 03:44PM EDT >--------------------
Triz Dermout Commented:
I also agree with the above. With the removal of the Trading function there is no real reason to have such long times for travel. As it is folks will go to the RP rooms and RP they are on a planet rather than actually travel to go there. If you do travel then you can spend, in some cases, an hour doing absolutely nothing other than chatting on an @channel or pages or going away from the screen all together. When you add in the time to go through all the steps: prep the ship, set a heading, set a speed, wait till you leave atmo, then set the speed again, wait till you leave the gravity well, then the hyperspace travel time, set an intercept course, set your speed, then enter the orbit, set your speed, intercept course to where ever it is you are going, land, shut down…well it provides no RP what so ever and is overly taxing on the player.
With today’s population of RP’ers in today’s MU* worlds the chances for folks twinking to get somewhere when they shouldn’t be are slim to none due to their experience and should it happen that can be easily handled with a one to one basis. No need to punish everyone that may not even be a problem.
Anything more than 15 minutes is just wasting the players time and chance to RP, in my opinion.
--------------------< Comment 3 - Added Sep 18 03:50PM EDT >--------------------
Cujo Commented:
We’re not going to drop hyperspace times, because we intend to have a new Market System someday. We just don’t have it right now.
RP Rooms over travel?
We’re fine with that. IF you want to go to an RP Room to say that you’re on Corellia, rather than fly your ship TO Corellia… go for it. No real harm in that at all.
Someday we hope to get a new Mission System up that will inspire people to actually travel the hyperspace lanes again.
Its just not right this moment.
- Cujo
The players raise some good points: There’s no trading to regulate. And combat scenes are, in fact, so long that transit times really wouldn’t make any difference to twinks. They’d be there by the second round, even with the one-hour transit times. And transit times on AoA were excessive by most standards, which meant that wasting time in hyperspace was wasting a lot of time in hyperspace.
Cujo’s Reasoning: We’re supposed to get a new market system someday, if I can get a coder worth having, and changing transit times now means I’d have to change them back once we get that system, and I don’t want to do actual work once, let alone twice. No, I don’t care that transit times waste huge amounts of potential RP time for people who don’t trade. Who cares about players, anyway?
It’s not hard to tell that this guy doesn’t RP. If he’d really wanted to address trade abuse, he could’ve upped the loading lockdown times. Long hyperspace times punish anyone who travels, regardless of whether they trade or not.
Using RP Rooms instead of traveling?
Cujo’s Reasoning: Despite the fact that I really want players to jump through the hoops of using the enormous grid that only exists for the sake of the bragging rights of having the largest grid out there, I realize that there’s really nothing I can do to stop you, other than badmouth you to staff and my Chosen Ones.
Transit times were actually so long and wasted so much time that people regularly used the RP Rooms to avoid travel, particularly for pick-up scenes. And this was before ship wear and fuel made flying a ship anywhere a serious pain in the wallet. And pointless waiting when it came to travel didn’t confine itself to hyperspace: There was a tram system on Coruscant that made you pay for the privelege of pointlessly waiting 3 minutes per trip to go anywhere on the planet. The First Order’s flagship, supposedly the first starship on the grid and which was too sacred to be changed, ever, had over 30 rooms, complete with decks connected by turbolifts that also took three minutes to use. This flying maze was so confusing that FO players, who early on were stuck on the ship, would RP in the same few rooms for weeks on end to avoid getting lost in it, which would mean wasting even more time trying to find everyone again.
Speaking of huge wastes of space? Yeah, Cujo really did try to put nearly every world that appeared anywhere on this grid, especially if he could dragoon someone else into descing it for him. Many of those off-the-beaten-path worlds consisted of a grand total of one room. Less than 5 percent of this overblown grid was used on a regular basis. I suspect there’s some of it that’s never been used at all to this day.
And staff definitely was not okay with players using the RP Rooms to avoid travel, particularly to locations that actually existed on the grid. It was something that caught plenty of bitching on Public. This was despite the fact that almost nobody would log on early (or the day before) to fly to wherever the next event was going to be, which meant holding up the event by 30-60 minutes almost every time for players to fly to the location.
But Cujo doesn’t RP, so nobody important was being inconvenienced. Who cares about players, anyway?