Instead of fixing the underlying issue of not having any gameplay mechanic associated with traveling (which you're doing most of the time in the game) they have given us engineers to boost jump range + boosters to synth + stars to get boost scoops from to eliminate traveling from the equation.
This is tremendously shortsighted. Mysterious far away things are now 10 minutes away and with that kind of travel ability it makes no sense at all why the game is organized the way it is in the bubble currently or why powerplay overheads are calculated the way they are based on distance (distance that no longer matters). By boosting jump range they've undermined making space expansive and mysterious ...which much of the story and lore of Elite requires for any of it to make sense, especially going forward with aliens and what not.
You can do a loop through barnard's loop and be back in the bubble in a lunch break. With that kind of ability, why would anything in the bubble (most dealing with distances of at most 200 ly apart) matter at all in regards to distance? The ability to cross 100 ly in 2 jumps is game breaking. Even if we pretend like this is a brand new development, then we should see massive expansion, a massive collapse of any sort of profit in trading, a collapse in crime as there are less opportunities to intercept traders and a massive increase in war and upheaval as factions suddenly have a huge instantaneous reach. The superpowers would either already be at an epic war due to ships now being able to jump 50+ ly behind borders in a single jump or be completely intermixed so that they are no longer able to be independent superpowers.
This is tremendously shortsighted. Mysterious far away things are now 10 minutes away and with that kind of travel ability it makes no sense at all why the game is organized the way it is in the bubble currently or why powerplay overheads are calculated the way they are based on distance (distance that no longer matters). By boosting jump range they've undermined making space expansive and mysterious ...which much of the story and lore of Elite requires for any of it to make sense, especially going forward with aliens and what not.
You can do a loop through barnard's loop and be back in the bubble in a lunch break. With that kind of ability, why would anything in the bubble (most dealing with distances of at most 200 ly apart) matter at all in regards to distance? The ability to cross 100 ly in 2 jumps is game breaking. Even if we pretend like this is a brand new development, then we should see massive expansion, a massive collapse of any sort of profit in trading, a collapse in crime as there are less opportunities to intercept traders and a massive increase in war and upheaval as factions suddenly have a huge instantaneous reach. The superpowers would either already be at an epic war due to ships now being able to jump 50+ ly behind borders in a single jump or be completely intermixed so that they are no longer able to be independent superpowers.