So I'd like to add some thoughts on the actual hyperspace jumps since presumably they know a heck of a lot more about the jumps and witchspace itself than we do coupled with the fact that witchspace is obviously a key thing here (especially since they just posted that article...) Originally in ED when you made a jump, you had to align within a few degrees and then it would just jump. It bothered my OCD tendencies a bit and I'd always try to align it as exactly as possible making something of a point of this. Presuming that you can't actually make much adjustment within the jump itself, it just makes sense that it should have to be pretty precise. With that big update a while back that changed a lot of stuff (including a lot of aesthetics) they changed this where the ship will actually intentionally straighten itself to point exactly at the destination. In fact, as I noticed with my experiments with trying to make strange jumps with flight assist off and spinning/etc, it actually automatically turns flight assist back on as the computer takes over (it even makes the flight assist on/off toggle noise, so I think the devs implemented it pretty simply in actually turning it on within the engine itself.) It straightens out and cancels any spins or lateral movements before the actual jump. In fact, as I mentioned before, it wouldn't even let me jump at all if I disabled thrusters even though I had forward momentum with flight assist off. In fact, interestingly enough, moments after the jump is completed -- even though I'm in supercruise when I arrive where flight assist doesn't mean anything -- it makes the toggle noise again as if internally it's once again toggling it back to normal. It does not do this if flight assist is on before the jump. The implication to me being that it's making a special point here that the flight computer is completely taking over the ship.
Now, I can't help but to notice that the aliens have multiple spinning components with normal slow propulsion producing only a very slow spin of the middle component and then the jump producing an extremely fast spin with it and the smaller outside component spinning fast in the opposite direction. Without more details on the history of the whole hyperspace jump thing I can't say for sure, but what if the key to modern safe jumps is the sheer accuracy in which the ship's computer takes over and points exactly at the destination? I was trying to get it to produce spin or something going in, but it just wouldn't let me. What if the key to doing something OTHER than just arriving at normal spacial location (such as all the ships that were lost in witchspace in the early days) is lack of perfect momentum in exactly the right direction? Unfortunately, it seems that there's no way even to trick the systems into doing a jump with any movements that aren't 100% controlled by the computer. I guess there's no way to actually make the computer mess this up because it pretty much just aborts the jump if you try anything like turning off thrusters right before the jump. Perhaps a key to better controlling hyperspace might be in utilizing movements within it but humans just haven't figured out how to do this without being lost forever or destroyed yet so we just focus on going straight forward as perfectly as possible.
Just some thoughts. No real direction as of yet, just thoughts on more specifics into how hyperspace jumps actually function mechanically.
EDIT: By the way, someone has probably done this already, but has anyone analyzed the noises in the galactic map and how they almost seem to come from particular areas sometimes? It feels like tuning an analog radio almost like you're trying to find the exact right frequency to point at to get the actual signal. I keep wondering if finding stars that make just the right sound might have meaning. I'm sure someone has already done this to death though, right?
