Yeah, not sure about it. Mining/repair/salvage I see, I know the playstyle. What will medical gameplay be like? What is the role? What kind of missions will we see?
I park my Endeavor off to the side of a battle, you die, you arrive on my hospital ship and…what? You don’t have a ship, so unless I’m towing a bunch of empty ones, you’re out of the fight, so you’re likely better off not rezzing at my ship and rezzing at your hangar, where your ships are. Unless this new ship is so super sexy that my wallet leaps out and buys it, I’m reticent about this one.
I 'm not here to sell ships for CIG. Heck, at this point the money that I have spent is pretty much all that I am spending for ships and any changes to my fleet comes out of my present expenditure for the game.
I don’t honestly know how the medical game play will be. Your comment about the Endeavor off to the side of battle made me think a bit about the ship hanger that comes with the Endeavor. If I died because I am a crappy fighter pilot and arrived at your Endeavor, isn’t it possible that I could summon a replacement fighter at your Endeavor hanger and jump back into the foray for round 2?
Obviously the Cutlass Red lacks the functionality of the Endeavor so yeah I see your point as well.
Just a thought .
I’m not trying to talk anyone out of it either. I’m buying tools, and until I have a better understanding of Medical play, I’m not sure I want a ship I may not have a use for. For example, I don’t own racers, because I’ve zero intention of racing, no matter how cool they may look.
I play Cyberpunk 2020, and in that game the MedTech profession is very rich, as fulfilling as any other class. I just can’t say the same about SC right now.
Here is a link to some forum discussion on healing gameplay. Take it with a grain of salt as this information is dated.
I can certainly see pirates wanting to have a med ship in waiting while they hijack peoples’ ships. It would be useful if you wanted to do a lot of PvE against the Vanduul.
The reason the HOPE class Endeavor comes with the pair of hangar bays is to allow players to spawn their ships in battle. So you revive on the Hope and pay a fee to the owner for that service, then you call up your ship, also paying a fee for that service. In theory you would see these fees listed before you chose which revive location you would use after death. So it would be almost like a death kiosk if you will, where you see a list of locations, available services, and prices.
At least that was how it was described a long time ago. We have not heard anything about the medical profession in some time. It is my favorite in most games, and I already have a Cutlass Black to Red CCU waiting for the Red to go flight ready. I have my Hope class package waiting in buy back only because it seems so far away and if I can buy it in game before it is flyable I am better of using that cash elsewhere.
And I will likely buy the ship this week, not just because I buy them all, but because the med profession is interesting to me. In Star Wars Galaxies, before the dark times, before the NGE, I had a master combat medic master carbineer that I loved and enjoyed. I can totally see my character as a heavy fighter pilot or support ship pilot, a medic and a smuggler all rolled into one.
That is vastly different than I remember it being explained. The way I remember it, the hangars are for ambulance ships like the Cut’Red. I’ve never read anything about “spawning” ships out in space. Ships are in hangars, not floating nebulously out there to be spawned anywhere we want. If I can randomly pull an Idris out of my backside anywhere I want, that does seem a bit OP.
Here is the actual description from the site:
LANDING BAY (2Ă—1)
The Landing Bay Pod slings a single, large hangar underneath the spacecraft and attaches it directly to other laboratory pods. Intended to support hospital operations, the landing bay has room to support multiple Cutlass Red ambulances and features complete decontamination facilities. Note that while the landing bay was designed to support ambulance operations, it also functions alongside standard science modules and can support the upkeep any sufficiently small spacecraft.
I remember them saying something similar to what Simdor said. Unrealistic, sure, but… realism has to give way to fun game play and it isn’t fun to be 5 systems away when you respawn, nor would that be realistic either if the hospital ship didn’t provide that service for both healing and acting as a respawnable hanger.
Now it is probably the case that you can’t just respawn your Idris, since the bigger the ship the longer you have to wait to get it back. Also, I would think there would be a mechanic that only ships that could fit in the Endeavor’s hanger would be spawnable. Also, depending on your ship, you might not be able to respawn it anyway, insurance and all, but if you had say another Hornet or 3 in your hanger ready, then you could respawn that.
The counter to that is find the enemy’s med ship and blow it up. 
So that totally won’t be exploited, ever.
“Hey, some ships just jumped in! Oh, nm, it’s just 3 Endeavors, likely out surveying.” 15 sec later “Holy shit, where did those 300 ships come from?!” Why bother flying your entire fleet anywhere? Just load everyone on the endeavor, have them log out, have the Endeavors fly the entire fleet plus all pilots there in a much smaller, much more fuel efficient manner, then “unload” them all with each of the 300 pilots “spawning” their ship from across the galaxy. 15 Javelins suddenly appear 
Yes, gameplay needs to be included, but something like this defies all logic. All 80 of my ships are “magically” out here in space with me, anywhere I go? SC is designed to be huge, 40 min to cross a system, etc. Why would they short cut that by making it possible to “shuttle” invisible ships? Why would the Hull E be able to carry ships? Why would you carry ships at all in that manner, that’s risky, just carry 1,000s of them in an Endeavor, “invisibly”. If my Endeavor is popped, I just lose it, but if I make it, I then “spawn” all 1000 ships and sell them, risk free. For that matter, can I load my ships with cargo, “dock” them in my hangar, fly my endeavor to the destination and “spawn” them with the cargo?
This is just off the top of my head, with no real thought. CIG has never implied we would be “spawning” ships. Ships are in hangars, that is the base of SC’s play. If you are without your ships, then you need to hitch a ride with someone else…also a base part of SC’s play.
I will hold my judgement of their design until it is actually designed. What we got was a very early write up of how they pictured it working. A lot has changed since then.
To address some of the concerns you mention, though, they did say that ships would have to be small enough to launch from the Hope’s hangar (ie fighters and support ships of smaller size) and that there would be a time delay AND a fee to both the player spawning the ship and the Endeavor owner for providing the service. So as an owner of the Endeavor you get to mark up the fee for your own profit, basically.
It was something akin to an insurance claim and delivery to the Endeavor as a mobile launch point, not just a magic spawning location for any ship you felt like spawning up.
So I would not get too worked up about it just yet. They are not likely to let it become game breaking - that would be silly and counter productive.
Think of it this way,
If you are out in the far reaches, far from any stations that have the ability to claim and replace a ship, then you need a way to have a temporary base of operations where you can respawn your player and your ship.
For fighters and the like the Endeavor is a practical solution because it works for both players and ships and can be restricted to a smaller size based on the designed hangar. Anything larger would require you to go back to a civilized region to pick up a ship.
Also, you could have a few “spares” that people drive out and park next to the Endeavor, larger ships that are only manned with a single player to hold them there. If one of your bigger ships gets destroyed you spawn at the Endeavor and Eva or shuttle over to the spare.
But you don’t really think CIG is going to let you insta-spawn 15 Javs now do you?
I hope none of this mechanic exists, otherwise space isn’t big at all, it’s just Eve cloning…hell, it’s worse than Eve cloning because, with Eve cloning you have to “stage” ships there or your pilot is stuck. What you’re describing means I can have my ships anywhere and I just need to park alts.
Early on CR and TZ described having to fly to where your ships are, pilots being stranded, etc, having to “shuttle” with other players, creating business for Genesis owners. I am still hoping that is the case because having the ability to “summon” a ship to me is completely unrealistic and sort of defeats the purpose of ships being physical assets. They become virtual assets that I can summon at will. You say there will be a cost, but unless that cost is prohibitively expensive (10x the cost of actually doing it yourself) then it’s worth it to instantly move all of your ships to wherever you want.
I fill my caterpillar with gold and park it in my hangar. I then grab my cheapest, garbage fighter and fly through the worst possible space, at the greatest risk, but with the best chance of survival because I’m fast and have nothing worth pirating. Arrive at my destination and “summon” my caterpillar, unload it and sell the gold. Even if it costs me the price of the ship, it’s still less than the risk of flying through dangerous space.
We’re going to do a fleet op on the other side of pirate space. Fly your crappiest ships, don’t bring anything expensive, we’ll summon it when we get there and save risk and fuel costs. I’ll make a fortune parking Endeavours around and charging fees to let people summon ships there.
I genuinely hope none of this mechanic, in any form, is in the game. I get that this is 100% conjecture, on both our parts, but I can not see any way that this mechanic can not be horribly exploited and make the game seem tiny.
I think the caveat will be, you had to lose your ship/be injured in order to spawn on the Endeavor and then spawn a ship, most likely a spare that would fit in the hanger.
I think making those conditions of using that mechanic will prevent any wackiness. Now I could see if you pack say 10 people in a Cutlass and then get blown out of the sky, maybe then they could all spawn a ship at the Endeavor, maybe. Depends on how they implement it.
Now say you are in a Connie or some other multiplayer ship that is too big to fit in the Endeavor’s hanger, well you could spawn in the med bay and then spawn say a Hornet, but you ain’t getting into your spare Connie or anything bigger than a fighter. I would say that the others in the Connie running turrets or stations should be able to spawn in their fighters just to make good game play.
It isn’t reasonable from a modern day FPS game to have people just sit out in a persistent world. Sure in MWO, if your mech is destroyed then you aren’t playing in that match anymore, however you can quit out and start another match. PU isn’t that type of game.
People aren’t going to be one and done, and then have to fly 40 minutes to play with their friends. I am not going to do that for sure. With “Smithing” out of the game, you have to have some mechanic to keep groups of players together. Now maybe you have to have certain elements in play like said Endeavor with med bay pods to do that, or maybe this new ship. So as long as you have an element that is destructible, then it isn’t necessarily OP.
Sure without any restrictions on spawning, maybe. I think there are hard counters to the fighter zerg like say a couple of Hammerheads in your flotilla or even an Idris or two possibly modified with more anti fighter equipment in their turrets, which would limit their capital ship destructive capability. So there are counters and decisions and things to protect. I actually see this as a fun time and game making not game breaking. It is after all a game, and they have said where realism breaks fun, fun wins. Paraphrased of course.
I think overall, this makes it even more pertinent to travel in groups.
If I recall correctly CIG mentioned something along the line that a maximum of 4 ships the size of a cutlass could be housed within the Hope’s hanger bay. Therefore there should be no concern about insta-spawning Javelins and Idris’s enmass.
I’m just going with what CR and TZ said, multiple times…SC is going to provide a visceral, realistic experience, and not having a ship at all is still a viable gameplay mode to them. So, you got shot and woke up without a ship…you’re not “sitting out”, you can man a turret, you can hitch a ride, you can crew someone’s ship, until you’re back planetside and can get your own. All of this is stuff CR talked about, how realistic it was going to be. If you had a big ship and it was your only ship and you lost it, well, you’re without a ship while your insurance claim is filed and processed. You’re not going to get a “loaner”, you just walk, crew, man positions, or hang out.
I’ve not seen anything to contradict any of this, certainly nothing that indicates we can “spawn” ships anywhere but where they are hangared. Ships are real assets, with physical positions in the game, not virtual floating assets that can be summoned like throwing a Pokeball. “Constellation, I choose you!”
Edit: You put out a service beacon that you need a ride back to your ships, that was mentioned recently, in fact.
It really is not the big deal you are making it out to be.
We can CLAIM ships that have been destroyed in combat and have them DELIVERED to the Endeavor for a fee with a time delay for the delivery. This is no different than what is going to happen if you claim your ship anywhere else in the game. No different from how you will respawn after death anywhere else in the game.
You are taking this completely out of context Mac.
Incidentally I agree with you in that I would not want unrestricted respawn and reclaim of ships anywhere in space for any ship owned. What was described by CIG in this instance was something totally different from that.
And to top it all off, this was only mentioned as an idea of how they thought it should work from 3 years ago. Things change, as we know. Now, there has to be some advantage to owning an Endeavor Hope class, and I am sure they will balance that to fit within the game world they have been building for the last almost 6 years. Like I said above, they are not going to break their own game over something like this, that would be silly.
Space will stay big, consequences will exist for death.
Again to be very clear, there was never any intention of randomly spawning any ship you like, nor was anyone here suggesting that was the case. Based on the very old information we were given, an Endeavor would be a mobile insurance claim center with all of the same restrictions and penalties of any other claim center, and there would be a significant fee which the Endeavor owner could charge on top of to make money.
As mentioned by others here, there has to be a certain level of fun factor applied here. I know you are not one for combat, but a large portion of the SC community wants to engage in large scale battles. This mechanic was put in place to assist in making those battles possible. There would certainly be safety protocols in place to prevent it from being abused if it were to actually become a feature of the game.
You’re not the only person who has suggested the spawning idea, so it’s not just you that’s mentioned it to me.
And I never say I’m not for combat, I’m not for PvP, there is a difference. I don’t like combat against someone who is trying, personally, to destroy me, using every means at their disposal. I like fighting NPCs, I do it in every game I play and love it.
It’s RSI, called the Apollo, and looks like a fat Connie.
(RSI) Apollo Medivac - got one!
When modules come out, I plan on going one Tier 1 bed on one side and two Tier 2 beds on the other.
[Played the game and upgraded the Triage to a Medivac.]
Same. I also passed the game and could get the other one, but I’d bought it before seeing it. I hope they offer a CCU, I don’t want to jack around with warbond stuff.