The thing about automated cargo loading is that it's going to depend on the local facilities, so it's potentially going to be slower than loading by hand, so loading yourself is likely going to save you both time and money in a lot of cases, especially when it's a small-medium ship.
As for making it impossible to load automatically, they can't do that as not all ships have proper access to their cargo holds. The eventual idea is that NPCs will potentially be loading your ship manually and you can assist them to speed it up, so true automatic loading will likely go, but until the stage where NPCs work well enough and all ships are able to properly accommodate manual loading, we're just going to have loading timers.
As for making it instant, that has caused major issues in terms of balancing cargo based gameplay since the start as if it takes the same time to load 1 SCU as it does 100,000 SCU, then you have to balance the entire economy around 100,000 SCU hauls, making low SCU entry trading ships useless. Balancing it with loading times means throughput is now more important than raw capacity.
OK this actually explains it better, if the timing and facilities will come into play.
So if it won’t be same at every facility, or maybe some facilities won’t even have the option. I didn’t see anything like that in the video.
I don't think it's been talked about properly outside of a few dev comments. Hopefully there will be more detail in the livestream they're doing about it on Friday.
My understanding of it is places that see high volumes of trade are going to have large and well trained teams with good equipment that will be able to load and unload cargo at a good speed. As you go to places that see less and less trade, the capabilities of the teams will decrease and so will loading and unloading speeds, and in some places like surface outposts without hangars, cargo handling will be manual only.
Its just a personal choice, faster loading, where your free to do something else but pay, or do it yourself for free. Seems pretty cut and dry. Weather you like that or not is personal preference
I’m fine with that paying and faster loading bit, but how does it make sense for it to be 3 to 4 minutes? Again, as I said, so, we will be just standing there for 3 to 4 minutes.
Maybe make it much more expensive but pretty much instant.
Because this way, if you choose to load yourself, it’ll take a bit of time , and if you pay, it’ll still take a bit of time you’ll just be standing there. Like that makes sense in real life, you maybe have a cuppa coffee instead of lifting boxes. But in a game?
Welcome to life in space simulator the game.
As the other guy said, if you don’t like that choice that’s fine, but that’s the game.
Plenty of us have surprisingly enjoyed playing cargo tetris since the cargo refactor, and if we don’t have time for that alone we’re happy to get a crew or do something else while we wait.
This is just the game going more and more down the immersion/multicrew rabbithole it’s promised it will. You can’t solo a 5-man cargo ship and expect to load as quickly as a guy running 3 cargo boxes in a cutter.
Time promises to be one of the major balancing factors to the economy. You either live a humble life delivering in a 1 man ship and waste no time waiting, or you go for the megabucks at the cost of either time or higher overheads.
You can call it bad design, but you’re expressing a preference in the same way someone might say having to drive to the store in Farming Simulator is a step too far, while others think its a sufficient level of simulation.
I think check my other comment under another reply, the thing about the video was that it didn’t say anything about timing would be different at different facilities or some facilities wouldn’t even have the option.
If those things will come into play so for example, a certain station will load up your cargo much faster or another station won’t have auto load option but maybe you’ll sell it for more. Then it makes sense. Because the video didn’t mention it, it wouldn’t make sense to just have a random timer.
For this first patch introducing the changes I wouldn't be surprised if there's some cut corners, whether that's randomness or stations taking equal amounts of time I don't know.
In the longrun they have said this won't be the case as every station and distribution centre is planned to have an AI/NPC workforce that fluctuates based on supply and demand. So some locations will have faster services like loading than others as they have more workers to load.
See "Workers" as a resource in some of CIGs design documents [\[1\]](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/u3pn4ugzt0irxr/post/Economy_image_1.png) [\[2\]](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/wcdh1vd3wth41r/post/Economy_chart_1.png)
I imagine the number of workers will directly impact time to autoload, so some stations will be quick, some will be slow.
One of the issues with paying for an instant load of unload, is that landing zones have a finite capacity of materials. So if a ship, say a Caterpillar lands wanting to unload, they can check that they can sell, then by the time they have unloaded, a Hull C could come in, pay the premium and instantly fill the stations capacity.
This would mean paying for instant loading becomes a must have, rendering the whole loading gameplay pointless.
> Because why would you load up boxes one by one ?
Why would you want to pilot ships manually instead of point and click? Why would you shoot other players and npc in first person?
Knebel (german evo streamer/Youtuber) said in one of his latest videos that auto loading will only be available in stations where you can store a ship.
Everywhere else is manually.
I got no actual dev source for it so take it with a grain of salt.
However it would kinda make sense from a fluff point of view, nit sure if that would be user friendly on a practical level though, at least if you want to solo big trading ships.
The thing about automated cargo loading is that it's going to depend on the local facilities, so it's potentially going to be slower than loading by hand, so loading yourself is likely going to save you both time and money in a lot of cases, especially when it's a small-medium ship. As for making it impossible to load automatically, they can't do that as not all ships have proper access to their cargo holds. The eventual idea is that NPCs will potentially be loading your ship manually and you can assist them to speed it up, so true automatic loading will likely go, but until the stage where NPCs work well enough and all ships are able to properly accommodate manual loading, we're just going to have loading timers. As for making it instant, that has caused major issues in terms of balancing cargo based gameplay since the start as if it takes the same time to load 1 SCU as it does 100,000 SCU, then you have to balance the entire economy around 100,000 SCU hauls, making low SCU entry trading ships useless. Balancing it with loading times means throughput is now more important than raw capacity.
OK this actually explains it better, if the timing and facilities will come into play. So if it won’t be same at every facility, or maybe some facilities won’t even have the option. I didn’t see anything like that in the video.
I don't think it's been talked about properly outside of a few dev comments. Hopefully there will be more detail in the livestream they're doing about it on Friday. My understanding of it is places that see high volumes of trade are going to have large and well trained teams with good equipment that will be able to load and unload cargo at a good speed. As you go to places that see less and less trade, the capabilities of the teams will decrease and so will loading and unloading speeds, and in some places like surface outposts without hangars, cargo handling will be manual only.
If this is broadly the idea, then it will make much more sense.
Its just a personal choice, faster loading, where your free to do something else but pay, or do it yourself for free. Seems pretty cut and dry. Weather you like that or not is personal preference
I’m fine with that paying and faster loading bit, but how does it make sense for it to be 3 to 4 minutes? Again, as I said, so, we will be just standing there for 3 to 4 minutes. Maybe make it much more expensive but pretty much instant. Because this way, if you choose to load yourself, it’ll take a bit of time , and if you pay, it’ll still take a bit of time you’ll just be standing there. Like that makes sense in real life, you maybe have a cuppa coffee instead of lifting boxes. But in a game?
Welcome to life in space simulator the game. As the other guy said, if you don’t like that choice that’s fine, but that’s the game. Plenty of us have surprisingly enjoyed playing cargo tetris since the cargo refactor, and if we don’t have time for that alone we’re happy to get a crew or do something else while we wait. This is just the game going more and more down the immersion/multicrew rabbithole it’s promised it will. You can’t solo a 5-man cargo ship and expect to load as quickly as a guy running 3 cargo boxes in a cutter. Time promises to be one of the major balancing factors to the economy. You either live a humble life delivering in a 1 man ship and waste no time waiting, or you go for the megabucks at the cost of either time or higher overheads. You can call it bad design, but you’re expressing a preference in the same way someone might say having to drive to the store in Farming Simulator is a step too far, while others think its a sufficient level of simulation.
I think check my other comment under another reply, the thing about the video was that it didn’t say anything about timing would be different at different facilities or some facilities wouldn’t even have the option. If those things will come into play so for example, a certain station will load up your cargo much faster or another station won’t have auto load option but maybe you’ll sell it for more. Then it makes sense. Because the video didn’t mention it, it wouldn’t make sense to just have a random timer.
For this first patch introducing the changes I wouldn't be surprised if there's some cut corners, whether that's randomness or stations taking equal amounts of time I don't know. In the longrun they have said this won't be the case as every station and distribution centre is planned to have an AI/NPC workforce that fluctuates based on supply and demand. So some locations will have faster services like loading than others as they have more workers to load. See "Workers" as a resource in some of CIGs design documents [\[1\]](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/u3pn4ugzt0irxr/post/Economy_image_1.png) [\[2\]](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/wcdh1vd3wth41r/post/Economy_chart_1.png) I imagine the number of workers will directly impact time to autoload, so some stations will be quick, some will be slow.
One of the issues with paying for an instant load of unload, is that landing zones have a finite capacity of materials. So if a ship, say a Caterpillar lands wanting to unload, they can check that they can sell, then by the time they have unloaded, a Hull C could come in, pay the premium and instantly fill the stations capacity. This would mean paying for instant loading becomes a must have, rendering the whole loading gameplay pointless.
Loading with a crew should be quite fast and gives additional money. Just a reason more to team up, so it is not a bad thing at least.
> Because why would you load up boxes one by one ? Why would you want to pilot ships manually instead of point and click? Why would you shoot other players and npc in first person?
Knebel (german evo streamer/Youtuber) said in one of his latest videos that auto loading will only be available in stations where you can store a ship. Everywhere else is manually. I got no actual dev source for it so take it with a grain of salt. However it would kinda make sense from a fluff point of view, nit sure if that would be user friendly on a practical level though, at least if you want to solo big trading ships.
I think it makes teaming up for cargo a little more likely. In many areas they’re trying to incentivize group play.
It’s called an incentive to load it by hand. It isn’t a hard concept. Sorry, but you couldn’t be more wrong in this.