Mail System - suggestions

Project Terran PT Suggestions
1

Hi,

I played recnetly a little, and I think I don’t like Mail system. Because:

  1. I see no “Outbox”. I miss it, esp. when we have to wait 1h for item (and I want to know when item arrive).

  2. I can send mail to me, I mean from toon “A” to toon “A”. Annoying when I want to send resources to my other toon and I send it by accident to self-self, and I have to wait an hour for mail from me-me.

  3. I guess 90% of items/res trade is between same player toons. Can we have some short-cut button to send item to my toon? for example, in Ship store (ship_store.php) when I click on item I have three options, “PSF”, “EMAIL”,“Garbage”. I’d like to have few buttons, one for each alt toons, (or combo box with captains names and button “send”). so with one (or two) clicks email to toon will be send, with (more or less) generic text and title.

  4. Similar for resources transfer.

2
  1. If I send resources from Ship Cargo Bay, I often send more than one item. Like all resources for given schemes (or for mission line). I wish game brings me back to Cargo Bay after sending resources:)
3
  1. After I pick up item/credits from message I cannot say what was in message, if anything. I’d like to see small footnote below real message, like “Mining Laser was attached to that message”, or “Anvil Bank cheque (100.000 cr) was attached to this message”. Current system could be confusing when you have a lot of traffic on account :slight_smile:
4
  1. No
  2. I will fix that, though you could just be more careful ?
  3. No
  4. No
  5. No
  6. No

This is a simple message system, akin to what you use on your phone (SMS) and not google mail or outlook.

It will remain simple, so barring any “bugs” I would save your breath :wink:

5

I put that in suggestion, not bug, lol :slight_smile:
Anyway, if you introduce guilds (or like), better mailing system will be crucial. And no needs for minor tweaks (Ad 2) if you have plans for better mail system, later on. If not, well, my phone have outbox for SMSes :stuck_out_tongue:

EOT for me :slight_smile:

6

Not necessarily. The messaging system is there so that you can send short messages and items to other players. If you want to have discussions with other players, there are far better mediums available for that.

A lesson we have learnt from over 10 years with CE, is that players never get rid of anything, you will have seen that discussed many times in the past on the forums (the recent ROLF discussion springs to mind)

This is no different with mail. We have database tables crammed with 100’s of thousands of emails… we have had to introduce increasingly strict pruning rules to clear them down, but players now just mark mails to keep them longer.

If there is no system in place for this incessant hoarding, then it cannot breed into the monster that it surely will become.

I was not trying to put you or your suggestion down, which having read back I think it does come across that way. We appreciate feedback, and bug reports but I wanted to be be direct and to the point. The system is as it is, and there are no plans to change the way it works for the reasons I have laid out above.

7

I read thread again.
I think I understand your efficiency/server resources issues (as far as noob can understand coder :wink: ). But I suspect you missed my point, which was not about discussions, or e-mails, but TRADE. In particular 3) Easier Inter-Account Trade, and 6) TRADE LOGS. About 3) I said all, but about 6) (and a little bit about outbox):

Situation: Imagine: Someone asks Guild Crafter for crafting Huge Item, like CE Settlement Hubs (I mean amount of resources), more or less 40 resources (Here is limit 40 items per scheme, right? ). So Sender wants to see which items he sent, because it is easy to forget one name of 40. Receiver wants to see if he get all 400 required resources, in right quantities. As sending such amount can take an hour or so, Receiver could easily get batch of resources from other player. So he want to see sendings only from Player B , then only from our Someone. And then he has to collect payment for schematic share.

Problem: With current mail it could be nightmare. Sender have to copy/paste Storage before and after, and compare them, to be sure he sent all required resources. Receiver have to enter each message, mark by hand which resource he get, collect, and if he make mistake he is unable to verify (or collect all and make similar copy/paste before/after trick). With outbox it would be easier for Sender, and with outbox and 6) they could double check some issues (eg. Someone forget to attach credits - happens all the time, right now there is problem to verify/solve issues).

Solution? (I assume you prefer one bigger message than 40 small)
Can we have Trade (and some other activities) organized more like CE logs? Sender, instead of 40 messages in Outbox will see log with 40 lines: “123 units of XYZ were sent to Guild Crafter”, and so on. Similarly, Receiver will see 40 appropiate messages “123 units of XYZ were sent by Someone”. Those logs should be visible by 48-72 hours. But every day player should get one e-mail summary about last day activities, which will last as any other mail.
How to send stuff? - directly from Galctic storage to Galactic storage. Click on item name, then write down Captains name and amount, click “Direct transfer” and thats it :slight_smile:
How to Pick up Stuff? - from Galactis Storage one click to page, which would have “transfer all” button and “transfer” for each resource.

Possible Extensions:

  • Filters for Logs: by player, “Exclude my own Toons”, “Only my toons”, “My guild only”
  • Cash transfers included in logs too.
  • Items Transfer visible in logs too. Similar system for Promenade storage would be overkill, but trace in logs would be useful
  • If Receiver don’t log-in (this particular toon?) for few days (Week?) Items sent goes back to Sender
  • Log of not picked up items (Receiver didn’t log in to particular toon)

As I wrote this, I seen my mailbox here and in CE. similar system (Log + 1 message daily) could be introduced for all generic messages - Skill training, Harvest session, Crafting, Emporium sales, and so on. If I play everyday - log is beter way to see what happened than 20 messages. if once per week - 7 messages are easier to read than 100. and easier to delete (important with poor connection!!!).

However I have no idea how would it works with real people (I like Excell, lol)
Did I write EOT before? lol, I hope I didn’t annoy you (nor made other bad feelings :slight_smile: )

If you introduce similar system to CE, for Malls, Trade, Emporiums, settlemnent, Ship crew, some Extractors messages, settlement Staff messages - 100’s of messages would disappear from my mail box (90% ?) :slight_smile:

Do you mean external forums, and other such services? (asking because I really have no idea)