People like to use the word "immersion" a lot these days. And while its nice to able to lose yourself in a world, that is always secondary to gameplay concerns. Like accomplishing a thing quickly for the sake of not interrupting the flow of the game.
This is what is referred to as an acceptable break from reality. This is also why all docking is instant, instead you sat there waiting for a virtual queue to run down in real-time.
It doesn't matter how "immersive" a game is if its tedious to play.
Not at all saying that you don't have good points because you do, but the sarcastic response to "immersion" that a lot of people tend to bring out when they disagree is not a valid argument by any means and I
really wish it would stop. I've seen it many times now. It's just your opinion of what's "an acceptable break from reality" and what's not. That opinion can vary greatly from individual to individual. And that's perfectly ok.
Read what you wrote again and try and put yourself in another's mindset. There are some people who would actually enjoy having docking take time and maybe even have a video clip of it each time (not me but I can guarantee they are out there)- just as there are some people who literally autoresolve all combat for the exact same reasons you bring up. Does this mean we should get rid of combat completely and just have better autoresolve? It would certainly save everyone time that's for sure... What if people think the combat layer is tedious? If you want some "gameplay concerns" for active combat, how about kiting AI that requires you to chase them down? Plenty find this to be annoying and it emphasizes the fastest ships and speed skills as the "better" choice in many sitautions. What about CR? Autoresolve rarely costs as much as a player letting their CR degrade too much. Yes, it's their fault for letting that happen, but it sure does make the idea of a better autoresolve instead of a combat layer all the more appealing in that sense... (No I don't actually want to get rid of combat I'm just giving an example of my point using "everyone's favorite mechanic".)
You can make the argument that combat brings something valuable to the table such as "fun" or "tactics" but at the end of the day this is
all subjective. A salvage timer or derelict-stealing salvagers could
also bring such things to the table if done in a responsible way. In general, however, I agree that because of how often you salvage things a timer would slow things down, but lots of things intentionally slow things down (Com relays, credit limitations, player level, rep grinding) for various reasons. If it slows it down
but brings value to the game without making salvaging tedious (because the value counteracts the tedium) then the mechanic is fine. (I'm not necessarily for nor against the idea.) And still, some people will complain about it just as some people still complain about just about everything currently in the game because it's not their idea of fun.
Also, things like "interrupting the flow of the game" don't make a lot of sense because there is no cut and dry definition of what that flow actually is. The "flow" quite literally changes each and every update. My brother quit this game once he couldn't deploy his whole fleet cost effectively because that was his idea of how the game should flow.
Now things like "It's hard enough playing full industry/salvage" are much better. It's more specific and something clearly defined as a gameplay element or playstyle.
If I'm coming across as harsh, that is not the intention and I apologize. I'm trying to point out that sometimes people jump to conclusions about how a suggestion will look or feel and respond with generalizations and blanket statements of "This is so bad!" instead of approaching the situation with: "Hmm, could work, but how would we solve X?"
One isn't helpful and one is. The more we discuss things in a
positive way, the more likely we as a community can flesh out the potential problems and, far more importantly, attempt to
solve them so that a cool new feature or mechanic can be added to the game. You can find *something* wrong with any suggestion if you look hard enough.