I really want to love this game. It ticks so many of the right boxes for me. I love how the ships look. I love the concept of a simulated universe. I loved Frontier and First Encounters to death.
But this game... is a chore. A real bore.
And the biggest problem?
The travel mechanics. On paper, great. Great solution. In practice; Tedious. Wait to get out of mass lock. Wait to go into hyper jump. Wait for hyper jump. Wait to go out of hyper jump. Point ship at target in super cruise. Wait a while for super cruise to get you where you want to go.
You want to investigate something? Wait to slow down to target speed. Wait to drop out of super cruise. Investigate, find nothing probably. Wait to get back into super cruise, wait for super cruise animation, wait to drop in to super cruise.
God forbid you want to actually explore all those blips around you; I hope that's all you want to do. Those missions that give you a system and no point of interest is basically a massive luck based time sink that can never justify their returns.
The worst thing about super cruise is the meat of the travel. It's a bloody screen saver. Requires just enough mental activity to annoy, but not to challenge - keeping the ship pointed in the right direction for course corrections... keeping the throttle in the right range (max, then half way once speed > distance to target x 0.1). So they added interdiction; and the first couple times were fun, but realized that just made the whole process even more annoying, so lowered the rate significantly (I assume... I didn't play during the interdiction heavy period, and only picked it up again a couple days ago - haven't been interdicted once).
It's actually travelling the longest distances that feel the most snappy. Multiple hyper jumps? Just keep pointing and jumping. Small down time.
It didn't have to be this way. But 2 factors have conspired to make it this way.
1. The pseudo-realism; realistic star systems, realistic distances. Huzzah everyone cheered. Now we get to feel how awesome it is to travel the great expanses of space! (hint; there's a lot of blackness and pointing in one direction with small corrections).
2. The multiplayer focus; a living breathing universe. Fantastic idea. Everyone's efforts will effect everyone else's and make it feel like everyone is in this living breathing universe! One moment will never be the same to another!
Frontier and FFE both had 1. But they got around the problem of slow travel by been single player. There was no transitioning between supercruise and normal space - you just had a time dilator button. It's a huge change - in the order of 45-60 seconds (time it tacks to get out of mass lock, wait for SC count down, load into SC) per transition in and out of super cruise/time dilation. Add on top the whole acceleration/deceleration mechanic for SC (where as in Frontier and FFE; you didn't actually slow down in time dilation; you continued heading in the vector you were heading at the speed you were heading - small changes you made to your vector while in real time doing whatever you were doing in real time). Moreover, those SP games had an autopilot system that removed the tedium of handling minor course corrections and minor acceleration and deceleration changes. Essentially you had an encounter, then hit the fast forward button again to admire space travel. Travelling large distances still took time, but it was easier. Handling multiple encounters too was easy; 0 down time between going in and out of encounters.
You could still design around a lot of the problems with a jump to point of interest function with supercruise - but as many players rightfully point out, that kinda makes super cruise pointless.
The multiplayer focus very simply destroy's travel by making time dilation an impossible mechanic; forcing the use of super cruise. Moreover, players trading in the universe affect others trading in the universe; so having very low barrier between each instance of trade exacerbates the problem of homogenizing supply and demand and thus removing the ability to profit on arbitrage (the whole point of trading).
With all that been said, I have just thought of a reasonable design compromise between needing supercruise and jumping to points of interest. Essentially, allow players to 'save points of interests' into their travel computer/log/whatever. So the first time they visit a system, they'll jump to the star, but once they find various points of interest, they can in future just hyper jump to those points directly. Super cruise mechanics retained. But much of the tedium of commute travel is jumped away.
This isn't a perfect solution of course; it would raise the ire of the pseudo-realistic brigade; they'll cry that you jump to gravity wells! and points of interest keep moving! And it'd exacerbate the trade homogenization I was talking about.
But then if you can't compromise on any of the fluff, what you get is a game that is fundamentally... boring. Wait to super cruise. Wait for super cruise to load. Wait for super cruise to get you there. Wait to exit super cruise. Just keep waiting.