Ship showdown predictions?

Vavrik

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Or it's the cost talking.
This might be a huge part of it. I personally don't have a use for a ship like the Argo Cargo, I have a C8X that is faster, carries more cargo and can quantum, for a whopping $10 more than the Argo. But I wouldn't have voted for it either. It's just isn't something the dev's put any effort in.
 

Ayeteeone

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This might be a huge part of it. I personally don't have a use for a ship like the Argo Cargo, I have a C8X that is faster, carries more cargo and can quantum, for a whopping $10 more than the Argo. But I wouldn't have voted for it either. It's just isn't something the dev's put any effort in.
I completely agree with you except on one part of your statement. Having spoken to Sarah McCulloch after the release of the C8X, I know she put a SILLY amount of effort into it. It wasn't an open concept; the list of constraints and goals she had to work with was huge. Not the least of which was fitting it all into the Carrack's hangar, which had already been finalized. It is arguably, one of the most deliberate designs in the game.

 

Talonsbane

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I completely agree with you except on one part of your statement. Having spoken to Sarah McCulloch after the release of the C8X, I know she put a SILLY amount of effort into it. It wasn't an open concept; the list of constraints and goals she had to work with was huge. Not the least of which was fitting it all into the Carrack's hangar, which had already been finalized. It is arguably, one of the most deliberate designs in the game.

I'm inclined to agree that a LOT of thought was put into the Pisces, how else can you explain why the view of it from the rear looks like a mechanized Grogu (baby Yoda) head? (from a certain point of view)

 

Vavrik

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I completely agree with you except on one part of your statement. Having spoken to Sarah McCulloch after the release of the C8X, I know she put a SILLY amount of effort into it. It wasn't an open concept; the list of constraints and goals she had to work with was huge. Not the least of which was fitting it all into the Carrack's hangar, which had already been finalized. It is arguably, one of the most deliberate designs in the game.

Then it is good to know that one of my favorite ships was the product of effort. I stand corrected!!!
 

Sirus7264

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This might be a huge part of it. I personally don't have a use for a ship like the Argo Cargo, I have a C8X that is faster, carries more cargo and can quantum, for a whopping $10 more than the Argo. But I wouldn't have voted for it either. It's just isn't something the dev's put any effort in.
all we can pray is they make the argo cargo worth something such as throw a quantum drive in the damn thing. If they did that then maybe mayyyyyybe i would consider it useful in some manner. as it stands currently i wont touch the thing BIS or not this competition had alot of potential and it was wasted Rip another skin for my carrack beaten by a troll ship. I can pray this never happens again i will defiantely be more active when a competition like this goes live again cause this was some BS. Anyhow time to try to find some credits to unmelt my 600I
 

Shadow Reaper

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The ARGO is useful, if you need to move cargo or prisoners from one cap ship to another, it's probably the cheapest vehicle for that, and can fit in tiny space aboard your cap ship. It's in SC vids years before it was released. Thing is, we don't even have the cap ships yet, and why would you need that kind of utility when all you need to do is set your Idris down on a planet to load it?
 

Lorddarthvik

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No one wants to be a wet blanket smothering other people's fun. It's not as if I hadn't considered whether I'm too sensitive to this issue. Let me explain a moment why I think I'm not.

During the late 80's and early 90's I was both an undergrad and graduate student in philosophy of technology. That's basically what many call a "futurist" , who looks at developments in technology and assesses their long term impact, primarily on society. Anyone who grew up in the Cold War can recount the seeming hysteria about possible thermonuclear war, based upon what seemed the obvious possible outcome of inventing nuclear weapons. Oddly enough, people are much less concerned now than they were then about nukes despite the world is far less stable and more likely to so indulge in catastrophic stupidity.

One of my specializations was the growth of the internet, and one of my chief findings and the thesis of several papers was that online anonymity would breed trolls, despite no one had yet coined the term "trolls".

My answer to the problem was and remains that the only remedy for troll behavior was that the public at large would not stomach it by turning a blind eye, and call it "harmless". If you collude with troll behavior by calling it "harmless", you damn well better have thought through your position. Refusing to sanction evil behavior leads directly down the path of more evil behavior.

So just saying, the trolls who voted a ship with no Q drive as the best ship, knew exactly what they were doing. They KNOW that such a ship could not be "best" by any reasonable definition. It's not an accident, and it's not "harmless". If you think this is harmless, lets take up the issue a year from now when we see whether there are any future such competitions. IMHO, that's over with, because we refused to sanction the trolls for their behavior.

BTW, I don't have a dog in this fight. I didn't vote. I posted here what I thought would be the top three most popular ships, and seems I was right except I didn't include the troll vote.

I think it's a perfectly healthy distraction for ship owners to advocate that their choice is the best choice. That's fun. Having those efforts shit all over by trolls is not fun, IMHO.
(while not being old enough to remember the first cold war, this new one scares the shit out of me sometimes with how many nukes are poking out of the ground at the moment. I would have been on the receiving end of your nukes anyways so what does my viewpoint matter, right? hehehe )

I think you do have a very valid and reasonable point of ppl getting more and more shitty overall, cos that's how it seems to me as well, I'm just trying to show you a less dark alternative viewpoint maybe. Consider the following before judging us ARGOnians as a whole as chatoic evil. (if you want to go really deep you might consider why we see that the majority is getting more shitty, maybe because it's what we are shown more?)

-This was a popularity contest, best in SHOW, not "you must select Objectively Best Ship exam". There is No Correct Answer! The correct answer is whatever you want it to be, for you personally!
If there would have been a similarly cheap, objectively low-end/"bad" ship on the list instead of the Argo, I would have voted for that. For me the correct answer is anything cheaper than 60 bucks, preferably civilian in use and good looking. For a 600i owner, it was obviously the 600i, even though it's too big and slow, has barely any armament for how big of a target it is, and doesn't have a hangar big enough for anything useful. But having a new skin is always nice (even though you will be able to paint it whatever colors you want, if CIG comes through with what they said a few weeks ago. but most ppl don't seem to know that or just ignore it)

-Non of the above you posted explains why voting for the objectively less superior ship is an EVIL choice by definition. I have already listed several reasons why it might not be in my previous post.

-Your response still does not answer why choosing a ship someone likes because whatever reason, is considered trolling. Just because you personally see no value in that particular choice, doesn't mean others don't. That value might just be the shock value, the value in subverting the norm, because they can WithOut consequence.
This "competition" is the exact same as looking at a car/gun/bikini/whatever forum poll and choosing the one you prefer. Is that necessarily evil?

- You are trying to objectify a choice that most people consider as a subjective choice. You need to consider that a lot of players are not as involved/close to the game as we are.
It's a Game. Not everyone want's or likes to play Spreadsheet Citizen. (there's already EVE for those that do). As @NaffNaffBobFace said, even by removing the non-backer votes, the Argo still wins. I for one am not willing to believe that it is all the doing of inherently evil trolls who just want the wrold to burn. While you and others you know may have experienced a lot of griefing in game, I have rarely, basically never, just like my friends haven't either. I guess that's the server difference or sumthin.

-Remember, if everything's fine you won't go posting about it on SC forums/facebook/whatever, it's always the other side, usually the minority by a huge margin that is the loudest. Looking at facebook groups/forums to judge the player base as a whole is a fallacy.

I honestly think most voters don't take this seriously at all, because there is nothing to take seriously about it. It's just clicking on pretty jpegs on the internet without consequence, good or bad. That's why we got the outcome we got.

@Sirus7264 that might have been the point for some of the voters (me included), to bring attention to this ship so they make it useful. Even temporarily adding Qdrive would be really cool.

Aaaanyways:
I think the competition will be back next year with some fresh ships to vote for. CIG might mess with the list of ships/votes to enter the comp for marketing reasons and to avoid this years repeat with a popular vote winning instead of something prestigious the whales can grab onto. Remember, this competition is NOT just made for you to have fun. It's made for them to raise community engagement and make more money While you have fun, because that's how their business model works. By selling ships. And there is nothing wrong with that.
Maybe then you will be able to get that 5usd new skin or backpack or whatever for your 400usd ship you wanted so much this year lol
 

Shadow Reaper

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We will have to respectfully disagree. I get what you're saying. I have been thinking like this though, for 35 years. Anonymity brings out the best, and more often the worst in people. Think about it. If a IRL friend of yours was a pad crasher, you'd smack him on the head and tell him to stop being a dick. It's because we can't do that online that we have the problems with trolls that we do.
 

Talonsbane

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I openly admit that I've accidentally been a pad crasher before. It was quite a while before 3.0 but after we were able to exit PO, get into our ships, take off & fly around a little. After I put my Omega in flight ready status & let the shields power up, I lightly pressed the space bar to lift off & all hell broke loose. The best way to describe it was like being in an out of control gyroscope from all the twists, flips & turns it took while not responding to anything I did until it blew up. I tried it 3 times in a row & got the same results each time. So I figured that either I was that horrible of a pilot that I'd cause that from simply lifting off or there was a bug that just didn't like me. I'm hoping that I didn't blow anybody else up with me, but at that point I couldn't tell what all I was seeing through the glass. Either way, I walked away from trying that again until 3.0 when I saw that things were working better for people.
 
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Aramsolari

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The more I think about it, the more I'm glad the Argo won.

I'm initially slightly annoyed since I don't own an Argo but do own favorites like the Carrack and the MSR. After some deliberation, I've learned to admire the David v Goliath narrative of this year's ship showdown and the publicity it brings to the game. Annoying over the top memes aside, I do appreciate the fact that this is a ship that more people can afford. It's definitely more accessible than well....a Carrack. For all we know it may very well end up being critical to basic operations.

Ultimately I'm all for bringing more people into the game. I couldn't care less about appeasing the whales (Having spent enough on this game to buy a decent second hand car I guess I'm one too lol).

Fair play CIG and Argo Bros.
 

NaffNaffBobFace

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We will have to respectfully disagree. I get what you're saying. I have been thinking like this though, for 35 years. Anonymity brings out the best, and more often the worst in people. Think about it. If a IRL friend of yours was a pad crasher, you'd smack him on the head and tell him to stop being a dick. It's because we can't do that online that we have the problems with trolls that we do.
Thank you for your years of experience in Tech Philosophy. Would you be accepting that your analysis of this situation, that voting for the Argo being either troll or collusion with troll activity and needs to be called out on that, is over-generalising?

Three points from my perspective:

- If someone loathed a ship, say for example the Starfarer because of its internal layout, anything that was up against it would get their vote regardless of its capability. That is a protest vote against whatever they do not want to win, not a vote in favour of what you indicate would be Anarchy. In a system where there are only two options, that is democracy in action, not trolling.
Which leads to:

- With a option of A or B there will be always be more people either with a negative or neutral opinion of both of the options than a positive for one or the other, and they would need little convincing to choose one over the other. Left without any external influence they might use their own criteria such as affordability or capability but if they don't care a damn about either option and a friendly face says 'sir/ma'am, please lend me your vote' there is a chance they will because if they don't care either way and there is no consequence, why not help someone out who does care?
Which leads to:

- Last year the Carrak had the Meme Train support behind it. "Carrak is life, Carrak is love". Its supporters even strong armed the host of SC weekly videos in to accepting it as their favourite ship in a vote on social media which got it a running joke in the weekly videos. That was an advantage no other ship could enjoy during that years event. When people criticise the community effort of the core Argo support, they ignore that was what at least one previous winner had - the ability to coax the undecideds/don't cares.

Malicious intent/No malicious intent is a binary opposition, and a persons subjective reasoning for joining in the VoteArgo is not a simple I/O set of criteria.

It is more than possible a small core of supportive persons for the Argo got some traction using memes and streamers etc and got more support on board not because the ship is technically superior or inferior but because they were the only ones putting in the effort to give players a reason to choose bland option A they don't care about over bland option B they don't care about.

My opinion that that is what happened, is because it's what I saw happening in front of me from the early efforts to get people on board many months ago. I saw no trolls and I see no one gleefully taunting any of the losers that their choice beat theirs. As far as I can see the supporters have remained dignified in their victory. There may have been some from some malicious actors, but for the most part it was a core of Argo Enthusiasts canvassing for their choice and successfully pulling in the undecided, like the Carrak did last year.

There is philosophy, there is sociology and there is psychology. None are accepted scientific fields and really none of them are that mature, especially in the field of technology and the Internet.

I'm not saying there wasn't an element of trolling by some private individuals who want to watch the world burn, but the driving force behind it all? And the motive for the majority? I think not.
 
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Talonsbane

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I've actually seen a lot of argo voters throwing their victory in people's faces that know that it was an inferior ship to each of the ships it faced this year. Which was 1 reason I was so on edge about it earlier today right after the vote ended. Now, those that are like that, I hope that their choices will ALL lose next year at the gain of ships that actually deserve the praise for being good for something other than being a stupid meme. I'd be fine if they banned all of the overall winning ships as well as all final 4 that placed in the final 4 more than once. However the voting should definitely be offset with various merits such as ship capabilities & functions. I know that would piss off a lot of people, but it would give more ships a chance to shine. All of which would still deserve it more than the AC.
 
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NaffNaffBobFace

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I've actually seen a lot of argo voters throwing their victory in people's faces that know that it was an inferior ship to each of the ships it faced this year. Which was 1 reason I was so on edge about it earlier today right after the vote ended. Now, those that are like that, I hope that their choices will ALL lose next year at the gain of ships that actually deserve the praise for being good for something other than being a stupid meme. I'd be fine if they banned all of the overall winning ships as well as all final 4 that placed in the final 4 more than once. However the voting should definitely be offset with various merits such as ship capabilities & functions. I know that would piss off a lot of people, but it would give more ships a chance to shine. All of which would still deserve it more than the AC.
The same ship would win every year: The largest player ownable ship in the game, the Javelin.

Perhaps what the IAE needs is a "Popular Vote" and a seperate "Judges Choice" category? Then they can make the Connie Taurus the best in show like it should be 🙂
 

Lorddarthvik

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We will have to respectfully disagree. I get what you're saying. I have been thinking like this though, for 35 years. Anonymity brings out the best, and more often the worst in people. Think about it. If a IRL friend of yours was a pad crasher, you'd smack him on the head and tell him to stop being a dick. It's because we can't do that online that we have the problems with trolls that we do.
Fair enough. :o7:



So far we have seen some big and useful and a funny useless ship win, what do you all think next years focus will be?
My bet is on a bunch of alien ships, I think the BMM will be out by then, and the meme hype train will carry that to victory.
 

Talonsbane

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Perhaps they should have the main 4 brackets broken down into price ranges, that way each of the final 4 would be spread out price wise. Since a lot of this is to generate hype & ship sales. 1st tier $0 - $150, 2nd tier $155 - $300, 3rd tier $305 - $450 & top tier $455 - up. Then let them battle it out for the overall champion style.
 

maynard

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i see people say, "But the Argo can't jump between systems."

and then I think about how much time it takes to travel anywhere

if inter-system travel is rare the Argo can be popular without jump capability

want to be in 2 places quickly?

spend the $40 for a second character, not a more capable ship
 

Talonsbane

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i see people say, "But the Argo can't jump between systems."

and then I think about how much time it takes to travel anywhere

if inter-system travel is rare the Argo can be popular without jump capability

want to be in 2 places quickly?

spend the $40 for a second character, not a more capable ship
It also can't quantum between anything long distance like between a planet & its moons or between planets. I do agree with your point on having additional characters being a wise investment though.
 

Talonsbane

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So, CIG just posted the ship battle totals of the final 4 ships battles in the tournament. It turns out, that while the AC might have edged past the MSR in the end, the MSR received 3,218 more votes combined during the tournament. So as far as I'm concerned, the MSR is the real champ by the numbers, not just the slight loss in the final fight.
 
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