Quantum Drive in Elite

dreamer1986

D
I've recently played the Star Citizen Alpha, and I have to say that one of the parts I like most, is the ability to travel fast from one station to another, or from planet to moon, and so on, with the Quantum Drive. It makes a system feel bigger actually, since you get better close view of planets, and eliminates the boring travel from one point to another, leaving you with the fun parts.

This kind of system would be great in Elite as well, leaving you more time to actually do the things that interest you, like looking at planets, trading, and so on. Moving for hours and hours in the black space with only Suns to see, gets tiresome after a while.

For those of you who don't know, Quantum Drive is like the Frame Shift Drive, but instead of allowing only jumps between systems, it allows small jumps between stations, planets, moons, mission locations of which you know the coordinates of, and so on.
 

Shadowdancer

Shadowdancer
The official answer has been "no" for a long time, and I don't think that will change in the foreseeable future. Most of the game is within 5 minutes of a system's arrival point anyway.
 

Hydrino

Hydrino
Micro-jumps were the original design but the community felt that would make it POI rooms only and not allow the scale and beauty that free-form flight would.

FD thought deep and ended up agreeing.

To my knowledge, this is the only real design decision the Design Discussion Forum members got changed, at least in any sort of major way.

There has been discussion of allowing micro-jumps to stars in multi-star systems, aka Hutton Orbital run... Sandro I think likes the idea, Michael opposes. In any event it is probably low on the list to revisit as FD have so many things they want to do and have to prioritize.

And, FD don't code in a vacuum.

My observation is opposite yours. I don't see how quantum drive makes the system feel bigger. SC is not 1:1 scale anyway, and doesn't have orbits and rotation modelled, and basically instant travel makes distances seem even less. In ED one gets proper 1:1 scale and distance, and can free-form fly around planets, stars and all the way down to the surface of huge worlds. To me ED seems much more vast- plus already the entire galaxy is open for exploration.

But, don't let that deter you from posting ideas and comments. FD do listen to players and take the really common feedback themes into their development plans. For example, a good portion of 2.1 update seems aimed at the billions of posts around missions and the background sim.
 

dreamer1986

D
Well, it gives the feeling of being bigger, to me at least, mostly because you see a distant dot, you aim, enable quantum drive, you stay a few seconds in that mode, and then finally you arrive at the point, which is a either a massive moon, or a big station. Its an illusion, clearly, but it works, and I think it would work the same for Elite. And honestly, I'm really tired of mostly looking at distant dots in Elite, and as a trader that's what you do 90% of the time, and maybe that's why I enjoyed the Quantum Drive so much, and appreciate it.
 

CTCParadox

CTCParadox
While I don't think we need an insystem drive like the Quantum Drive I would however really like the Quantum Drive interface for use in Hyperspace jumping.
Bring up all the stars on the HUD and let us select and jump without heading to the galaxy map.
Have to work out a way to handle tightly bunched stars though.

CMDR CTCParadox
 

Shadowdancer

Shadowdancer
CTCParadox said:
I would however really like the Quantum Drive interface for use in Hyperspace jumping.
Bring up all the stars on the HUD and let us select and jump without heading to the galaxy map.
Click to expand...
That would be massive fun near the core :D Tricky to get the UI right for such corner cases, but I'd like it.
 

dreamer1986

D
CTCParadox said:
While I don't think we need an insystem drive like the Quantum Drive I would however really like the Quantum Drive interface for use in Hyperspace jumping.
Bring up all the stars on the HUD and let us select and jump without heading to the galaxy map.
Have to work out a way to handle tightly bunched stars though.

CMDR CTCParadox
Click to expand...

Yes, at least this would be nice, at least a start. Improves immersion.
 

Psycho Romeo

Psycho Romeo
I've been on both sides of the intra-system jump and what not argument. I think it would be best if you could jump to a system's capital station from the nav beacon.

I don't think we need to jump to specific stars. One of the things I love about ED is the realization of distance. You don't want to go somewhere, because it will take time to get there. This is great, and should never go away. This inconvenience gives meaning to the travel time. What's missing is the appropriate reward.

However, also realize that not everything needs to have a point. Some systems and stations will just be crappy because of travel time. This shouldn't go away either.
 

Lianachan

Lianachan
The time spent travelling (days for a jump in a Panther) and the time acceleration function were great aspects of FE2 and FFE. The new hyperspace jumps and SC are immersion breaking nonsense, and only forced upon us due to the game being multiplayer.
 

Shadowdancer

Shadowdancer
Psycho Romeo said:
I fail to understand how travel time is immersion breaking, and the lack of travel time is not.
Click to expand...
Most people use "immersion" as a battlecry to demand things they want, or in cases where they don't really know what they want, but don't like the current situation. You can mostly skip over posts invoking it.
 

CMDR Cosmic Spacehead

CMDR Cosmic Spacehead
I found the time compression in FE2 immersion breaking.

In ED the only thing that bugs me are the transitions. I know why they're there, but I don't like them. Lol

Most rewarding space travel mechanic in an open world space game for me, is the LDS drive from I-War 1&2, and the Capsule Drive was quite unique too.
Belting along the entire length of the system, and dropping without transition to regular speed was pretty amazing.
Also beig able to see your wingman while in FTL speeds looked cool, even if it wasn't accurate or to scale.
Of course, that was an offline game so it's no applicable here.
 

Lianachan

Lianachan
Psycho Romeo said:
I fail to understand how travel time is immersion breaking, and the lack of travel time is not.
Click to expand...
Because it takes time to travel!

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Shadowdancer said:
Most people use "immersion" as a battlecry to demand things they want, or in cases where they don't really know what they want, but don't like the current situation. You can mostly skip over posts invoking it.
Click to expand...

It's not a battlecry, just my opinion. Other opinions may vary.
 
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