How to stop your ship despawning

[Raven_King]

I wanted to check if a 2½ year old description of in-game despawning mechanic is still accurate - anyone know?

I had my ship despawn at a mining station while I was looking for masks a couple of days ago, and went looking for solutions. This Spectrum post from a couple of years ago has what sounds like a fairly well-researched answer: PSA: Ship Despawn Prevention - General - Star Citizen - Spectrum v5.13.2 (robertsspaceindustries.com). But it's obviously from several patches ago, and maybe CIG fixed/changed some of this since?

TL;DR: That article says a 1 hour timer starts when you get your ships out, and before that hour is up, to avoid a despawn, you should take your ship(s) and/or vehicle(s) to a station or landing zone and either:
1. obstruct the landing area and making your ship impounded. Works best with R&R and stations above the planets. Impounding saves the ship state - the vehicles inside the ship, cargo, boxes, the amount of fuel and so on will be saved. You can pay the 500 aUEC fine or wait 10 minutes to get the ship back for free - it doesn't matter. The despawn timer starts again when you press the Retrieve button at the terminal. This is the only way to reset the despawn timer aside from claiming your ship.
2. Apparently, landing normally and waiting to let the ship get stored automatically (when you exceed the alloted time limit) also resets the timer

Storing the ship manually (landing ship at the proper pad and calling another ship to make the original get stored) is NOT the same thing and it does NOT reset the despawn timer.

Apparently, at least back then, little else you do with, near or in your ship has much effect on when it despawns, though being near a ship which has been 'marked for despawn' may delay the despawn until you leave its immediate vicinity, or (possibly) use quantum travel. When you do (when you're not looking?), it will despawn. The OP Tyrtaeus says logging out pauses the timer until you log in again, but that's not much of a solution.

There's lots more detail in the post - worth a read assuming it's still accurate, which I think it could well be.

I have not independently tested this theory in 3.17. I thought it was useful enough to share, to see if anyone here can confirm/contradict.

 

[Ayeteeone]

An interesting question.. I know the mechanic has been touched several times over the years based on IC Council reports, but not what the specifics are now. I'll get on after work and test the timer, see if it still exists as he describes it.

Persistent Entity Streaming is the tech they are waiting on to have more than two ships spawned at the same time, and will obsolete this code if it hasn't been chopped already. At some point after PES is operating well enough, it will become possible to call up an Aquila with it's P-52 and rover. How soon that will be enabled tho I have no idea.

There will be a separate 'janatorial' function as part of PES, to conserve server resources by removing low value objects. Several of the devs have mentioned this include CR himself when using his coffee cup illustration. Ships should not ever be part of that.. wrecks will likely be included but with a relatively long timer.

 

[Bambooza]

It was my understanding that the despawn timer was tied to the pilot seat and not the storage unstoring of a ship. So as long as someone is in the pilot seat the timer is reset and only starts to count down when vacant. I do know that ships landed inside ships seem to be counted as long as they are correctly landed and not just in the vacinity of they parent ship.

The other part is ships that despawn still technically have all the same objects they are simply in unable to be spawned as there is no game logic added for itand that issue will still be present in 3.18. So ships you log out in a bed from or land in a hanger are fetchable while the others are not. As for the despawn timer I have not heard if it's going away yet or will still be around going forward for the time being.

 

[Ayeteeone]

Did not experience a ship despawn tonight after well over an hour of play. This was in the pilot seat of a Titan; did a lot of SCM flying, a bounty mission, some atmosphere flying, but no interaction with any station, outpost or landing zone.

Might be worth testing on the ground; i.e. land, get out, put out a lawn chair and enjoy a few beers while waiting for an hour to pass.

 

[Lorddarthvik]

I only had a ship despawn from right under me once back when.. Otherwise, with landed ships it's a toss up. Could be anything from 5 seconds to 5 hours.
It's all broken still, regardless of location.
I was still coming down the ramp of some ship when it depawned right in the hangar, other times I had a cutty landed randomly on daymar as I was ROC mining, didn't despawn for at least 2 hours.