Fly to close to a star it should kill you fly to close to a black hole it should kill you. plus black holes should look like the one from interstella.
apart from that i like these massive objects
Yes, The original elite was a lot less forgiving re. Stars.
Michael Brooks talked about more geographical dangers.
I hope it's like, you're scooping fuel, a warning detection starts flashing "SOLAR FLARE DETECTED". And then the fun starts.
There's also been talk of volcanoes and ice geysers, which might make planetary exploration more dangerous.
Oh boy. that would be ripping! "Warning, shield levels critical. Shields going down in 20... 19... 18..."
Don"t forget the ubiquitous yet outrageously retro rotating red light of impending doom! EPIC Sci fi right there.
The solar corona is about 2 million degrees hotter than the surface, so it's not even possible to do the sort of things elite does, shields or not. I guess we can just handwave some game mechanics about elite.
That is true, however temperature does not mean the same thing in a near vacuum and on Earth (at sea level pressures). Plasmas can easily reach millions of degrees but their density precludes them from imparting as much "heat" as you would expect to anything they come in contact with. Knowing that heat is really just oscillating or jostling particles (and particles excited into motion by photons). A plasma can be at an incredibly low density meaning that there are very few particles within to impart momentum on the impinging body... Thus they would feel (on average) much cooler than their temperature would suggest. If that makes sense.
Weren't fuel scoops supposed to be dangerous? It seems a bit strange considering we all almost all fit one (I think
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Maybe they should make them dangerous again, as long as i don't arrive in systems and instantly explode lol
Fuel scoops themselves weren't dangerous, it was the act of scooping that was perilous.
Lol
FD can never please everyone.
While I hate to admit it, FD should try to please neither the Hardcore Henry's, or the Handwavium crowd, and just go right down the middle.
Not too arcade, not too sim. Exactly how it is now. It's quite a good balance.
Obviously some things are just missing that would make the game more challenging, but the game is still in development.
PvE is currently too easy. So I'm excited about 2.1s changes to AI.
But we desperately need more environmental dangers other heat from stars, or heat from gravity.
Yes, can't please all the folk all the time etc etc... But I agree with you. Need more variety in all the environments.
Personally I think you are all barking.
Your fuel scoop actually scoops at a fraction of the advertised rate, unless you are happy to overheat long before the tank fills. In my Anaconda, as the jump system seems to think it's a good idea to exit at full throttle (can't jump if set less than 100%, remember) pointed at the star - so if it's a white dwarf, for one example, I have to chop throttle and pull hard to avoid getting too close and dropping.
Now I will happily conceed that the damage caused when you get too close is little more than nuisance value, the odd percent of hull damage and a faff about to jump away, a faff that is more annoying the less agile your ship....the most I'd go for would be a modest increase in damage when you DO fall foul in a botched scoop.
This is a game, and no, I don't want a hard core simulation - you can't have a game which let's you explore the entire galaxy if it's trying hard to kill you every 10ly you jump....you'll end up seriously wondering whether you dare leave the landing pad - in short, turn the stars into killers and you'll have increased the simulation aspect and gone a long way towards killing the game.
For the chap pondering the stellar corona temperature I suggest you check the density of all those free protons, and consider what that might mean for the energy density of the hazard.
Dave
My OP stated that suns are not nearly hot enough. With larger shields, one might even be able to get closer than one usually does now, but what I was stating was that it should be the shields that allow you to do that and survive. Should the shields go down, the hull of the ship should start to take the full brunt of the stellar radiation (at whatever ridiculous distance you're at) and start to deteriorate and heat up RAPIDLY. Now if your canopy blows... Well...
So you see, the typical explorer exploring with light shields should be largely unaffected.
BTW, you don't need 100% speed to engage FSD and you can and should throttle down once in hyperspace. You'll immediately slow to a stop when you come out of your jump. Then you are free to turn away from the star.
I have used my cutter to jump more than 1000 times and have not once been dropped out of super cruise. I"s really not even challenging, let alone dangerous.
I'm also not sure what you mean about killing you every 10 ly.
The stars were definitely hotter in previous builds you had to really focus on heat levels as well as scooping, now it's possible to get stuck inside one and still supercruise out of harms way.
Bring back the hot stars several builds ago I'll be a happy camper.
And yes black holes should be terrifying if you get too close to the event horizon which could be set at variable distances.
I'd like to see some kind of cool warping effect in the cockpit followed by spaghettification as your cockpit stretches out and then black nothingness followed with the words "You Died."
Maybe the warping effect could be a visual clue to turn tail and get out fast.
I remember the trepidation I felt as a got closer and closer to my first black hole.... And then just flew past it at 7.5km distance. That was is. 58% heat, wobbly bobbly star field and then "out the other side"
Now, had I popped out of another black hole 2000 ly away I would have been like, "Whoopee!" but as it was I was like, "Meh!"
As far as I know, fuel-scooping is a planned feature for gas giants. As soon as this happens, suns might get a nice buff in danger.
An interesting trade-off, isn't it?
- Sun: close to the arrival point -> fast traveling, but risky.
- Gas giant: safe scooping (and awesome cloud-riding!), but slower to reach.
I'm hoping for something along those lines.
They'll be epic! I wonder how awkward they will be though - gas giants have gravity up to ~40G. Is that taken into consideration in the gravity well modelling? If so they'll be painfully slow to reach. And what happens if you were to disengage from FSD over one of those planets? 40G acceleration would be nearly instantly fatal, no?
The sun has a little shy of 250G gravity at its "surface" so the fact that you can shut off your flight assist and not be sucked in is rather bizarre.
Remember, you're in the year 3300 in Elite. Just picture that technology has advanced since current-day.
One would assume to refuel near a star, one's ship would also have extensive heat dissipation functionality to combat against said heat build up.
Yes, but that "heat dissipation" even works when your shield is gone, power plant destroyed and your canopy is blown out.
I usually just dip into the corona, reaching maximum scoopage for a brief moment than pull out while charging my friendship drive. With Class 6A, that goes really quick.
But for the general discussion:
When you look at where you die, it happens almost exclusively in spacedock. Docking/undocking is by far the most dangerous activity in the game currently. It seems the player base is happy with it, as they welcomed the speeding mechanic changes last year that made it even more dangerous.
Interdictions, exploring etc. is rather harmless if you pay attention.
So far I have been killed only once in combat, that was in a Cobra when I was rather unexperienced and the NPC decided for a suicide run.
That in itself would be believable. But on the other hand, heat builds up quite rapidly when firing lasers, railguns and plasma accelerators, even though there is only a fraction of the energy involved. That just makes no sense.
Especially given the fact that the shields can hold off laser fire, but are completely useless against the sun's radiation?
I would say that rather than the shields being completely useless against the sun's radiation, they are completely unnecessary with current game mechanics. That's the disappointing thing. They should be MANDATORY for scooping and living to tell the tale.
