I hate the way supercruise handles.

[Harley001]

I have 500 hours in the game and I am sure at least half of them were spent in super cruise. And yet I still hate the way super cruise feels. You have almost no control over your overall speed. The ship slows down and speeds up whenever it wants to. I was trying to land on a planet. The ship randomly sped up at one point and than it gave me a "TOO FAST FOR ORBITAL CRUISE" message. It does this a lot. Fly by a random planet or space station? SLOW DOWN and than it forces your ship to lose all its speed even if that is not your destination. The ship has a nasty tendacy to speed up A LOT quicker than it slows down. If you have to go past a planet or station your ship loses all speed, once you clear the planet or station it speeds back up again so quickly you can easily overshoot your target.

Also the "slow down" message is 110% usless. It only exhist to rub it in your face that you are going to overshoot your target. It should say "Lol your over shot" instead of "Slow Down" A easy fix for this would be have it play a audio sound and say slow down when your 11 seconds away from your target.

You spend a lot of time in orbital cruise but I still find it one of the worst parts of travelling. It feels so random and like you have almost no control of the veloicty of your ship. I feel a easy solution would to be give us more control over our speed and make the slow down warning come earlier.

EDIT: I NEARLY FORGOT! Can we please not start off going near full speed when we drop out of frame shift!? I jump to a different system, take a sip or water or have to look away from the screen for two seconds and than "EMERGENCY DROP, TOO CLOSE!" and I smack into a sun.

 

[Kaltern]

I wish I understood why a USS has apparently the same mass as a planet, when it comes to gravitational forces.

 

[Lobstris]

I wish I understood why a USS has apparently the same mass as a planet, when it comes to gravitational forces.

Otherwise it would be impossible (or at least more tricky) to stop for them?

 

[Harley001]

Otherwise it would be impossible (or at least more tricky) to stop for them?

We can aleady slow down and stop at places wtih no gravity pull. Why would it need planet sized gravity for us to stop at them? We can stop at nav beacons, wakes, and signal sources. All of which have no mass or density to them.

 

[Kaltern]

Otherwise it would be impossible (or at least more tricky) to stop for them?

This comment makes no logical sense. And I have a really, REALLY bad cold. Please don't make my head hurt more than necessary!

 

[Dialectic]

Man, I heart OP. Thought I was the only one that thought supercruise sucked bad. And for that matter, when I'm chasing someone in Supercruise, why do I automatically slow down!? I have my throttle above the blue line, I don't want to slow down darnit, I want to overtake them. I can hit the interdiction to slow down. It's dumb.

Repped OP. If I could like quadruple rep you, Like you, and buy you a beer I would.

 

[Lobstris]

We can aleady slow down and stop at places wtih no gravity pull. Why would it need planet sized gravity for us to stop at them? We can stop at nav beacons, wakes, and signal sources. All of which have no mass or density to them.

Yeah. My point is the system makes it slightly easier to stop at in-space target locations, even though they don't have mass. I've always assumed that was for gameplay reasons, rather than 'internal scientific' consistency reasons.

I agree that the 'slow down' message comes a tad too late.

 

[SMcA]

I have 500 hours in the game and I am sure at least half of them were spent in super cruise. And yet I still hate the way super cruise feels. You have almost no control over your overall speed. The ship slows down and speeds up whenever it wants to. I was trying to land on a planet. The ship randomly sped up at one point and than it gave me a "TOO FAST FOR ORBITAL CRUISE" message. It does this a lot. Fly by a random planet or space station? SLOW DOWN and than it forces your ship to lose all its speed even if that is not your destination. The ship has a nasty tendacy to speed up A LOT quicker than it slows down. If you have to go past a planet or station your ship loses all speed, once you clear the planet or station it speeds back up again so quickly you can easily overshoot your target.

True it does. That's where your piloting skill comes in.
The "TOO FAST FOR ORBITAL CRUISE" is new-ish. But that is ED. We constantly have to relearn and update our skills when FD makes changes without telling us.

Also the "slow down" message is 110% usless. It only exhist to rub it in your face that you are going to overshoot your target. It should say "Lol your over shot" instead of "Slow Down" A easy fix for this would be have it play a audio sound and say slow down when your 11 seconds away from your target.

You got that bit wrong. For instance when you are closing in on a station and you speed is < say 700 m/s you can go full speed ahead and the system will say "Slow Down" but you will not overshoot. Unless you miss the Safe to disengage message.

You spend a lot of time in orbital cruise but I still find it one of the worst parts of travelling. It feels so random and like you have almost no control of the veloicty of your ship. I feel a easy solution would to be give us more control over our speed and make the slow down warning come earlier.

EDIT: I NEARLY FORGOT! Can we please not start off going near full speed when we drop out of frame shift!? I jump to a different system, take a sip or water or have to look away from the screen for two seconds and than "EMERGENCY DROP, TOO CLOSE!" and I smack into a sun.

Again it is a learning curve. Nowadays I don't need to look at the screen. The audio cues tell me when the ship is about to emerge into SC from Hyper jump. But if you throttle down when you enter the jump that will not happen.

I hope that does not sound too harsh. I have been playing since Beta and the learning is slow.

 

[Elpapo]

The way game handles the speed is SC is because If there would be nothing like this, It would be extremly easy to overshot as FSD speed limit is 2001c. Moving thottle by 1mm would push you out easly over 100c.

Just look in key options for "75% speed", and use it each time U plan to land. Speed will stop at sweet zone at 0.06s wich is absolute fastest approach.

I wish I understood why a USS has apparently the same mass as a planet, when it comes to gravitational forces.

USS aint have anything like grav field. Just deselect it, and you SC speed will be not affected by it.

 

[Dialectic]

Also, I swear, sometimes I throttle down while in supercruise and approaching my target going 60c's and I stop nearly instantly, but then when I'm close to my target I throttle down completely to zero and it takes 35 years to slow down from 29mm/s to something reasonable. Whyyyyyyyyyyyyy

 

[777Driver]

I have 500 hours in the game and I am sure at least half of them were spent in super cruise. And yet I still hate the way super cruise feels. You have almost no control over your overall speed. The ship slows down and speeds up whenever it wants to. I was trying to land on a planet. The ship randomly sped up at one point and than it gave me a "TOO FAST FOR ORBITAL CRUISE" message. It does this a lot. Fly by a random planet or space station? SLOW DOWN and than it forces your ship to lose all its speed even if that is not your destination. The ship has a nasty tendacy to speed up A LOT quicker than it slows down. If you have to go past a planet or station your ship loses all speed, once you clear the planet or station it speeds back up again so quickly you can easily overshoot your target.

Also the "slow down" message is 110% usless. It only exhist to rub it in your face that you are going to overshoot your target. It should say "Lol your over shot" instead of "Slow Down" A easy fix for this would be have it play a audio sound and say slow down when your 11 seconds away from your target.

You spend a lot of time in orbital cruise but I still find it one of the worst parts of travelling. It feels so random and like you have almost no control of the veloicty of your ship. I feel a easy solution would to be give us more control over our speed and make the slow down warning come earlier.

EDIT: I NEARLY FORGOT! Can we please not start off going near full speed when we drop out of frame shift!? I jump to a different system, take a sip or water or have to look away from the screen for two seconds and than "EMERGENCY DROP, TOO CLOSE!" and I smack into a sun.

Kinda surprised you are having these issues after 500 hours, everything you mention is down to user error or not understanding how SC works. Plenty of topics on the discussion. The Slow down message can be an advisory or a command, understandable that some can find it a little confusing if new to the game.

You can throttle back at any time after the FSD has started the countdown, you will exit at minimum SC speed.

 

[Cmdr Esteban]

OP - set your hotkeys to override analogue throttle at 75% / 50% / 25%. On approach set to 75% and then 50% reduction. Smooth approach - let the autothrottle take you in.

 

[The New Number Two]

You're not speeding up, you're approaching a massive object at a percentage of light speed. The speed indicator's width increases rapidly as it changes scales, but the number is stil descending. Visually it's an optical illusion similar to a skydiver's ground rush. At 10,000 feet you feel like you're floating on air. Thirty seconds later the pavement is hurtling towards you, but your speed was actually constant- only your perspective changed due to distance.

When the SLOW DOWN message starts, you have entered the direct gravitational influence of the body you're approaching. Slow down to the blue zone and dip your nose away from the target until the speed indicator shortens, then point back at the target.

 

[777Driver]

Also, I swear, sometimes I throttle down while in supercruise and approaching my target going 60c's and I stop nearly instantly, but then when I'm close to my target I throttle down completely to zero and it takes 35 years to slow down from 29mm/s to something reasonable. Whyyyyyyyyyyyyy

Because deceleration and acceleration is influenced by the mass in the system and your proximity to each body. If you are in deep space or far from a massive body the ship can accelerate and decelerate extremely quickly (I'm talking 0 to 1000c and back again in a few seconds)

 

[Villainous Ruffian]

SLOW DOWN isn't telling you to slow down, you're experiencing 'slowdown'.

slowdown
ˈsləʊdəʊn/Submit
noun
an act of slowing down.
"a traffic slowdown in the passing lane"
a decline in economic activity.
"the drop in earnings was due to an extreme economic slowdown"

 

[777Driver]

You're not speeding up, you're approaching a massive object at a percentage of light speed. The speed indicator's width increases rapidly as it changes scales, but the number is stil descending. Visually it's an optical illusion similar to a skydiver's ground rush. At 10,000 feet you feel like you're floating on air. Thirty seconds later the pavement is hurtling towards you, but your speed was actually constant- only your perspective changed.

Another thing that often confuses newcomers, the SC sounds can give the sense that the ship is accelerating even though the speed is decreasing. Absolutely love the sound design in this game, am not a fan of the SC London underground effect

 

[Stinja]

"Slow down" really means "Mass warning" or "Gravity effect", or better for them to use "Mass effect", but that might get them sued

 

[Deleted member 38366]

Players still often mistake "Frameshift affected by Gravity" with the "Autothrottle Limiter" in SuperCruise.

Situation 1 : Ship near a big Gravity well
- Ship will accelerate very slowly even at max. Throttle
- any overshoot condition only solvable within tight limits, as deceleration is also limited by Gravity

Situation 2 : Ship near a USS in Deep Space, clear of any nearby Gravity well
- with the USS locked up, the Autothrottle limiter will ensure a slow and gradual approach
- without the USS locked up, the lack of Autothrottle limiter will make the Ship practically impossible to approach the USS in close vicinty. Ship will stop or accelerate in a heartbeat.

How to benefit ?
- carefully approach a distant USS (or i.e. a Low Wake) in Deep Space without it being locked, using only manual Throttle. Much quicker approach, Distance is still visible with the nose pointed at it.
- only when the manual Throttle/Speeds become too high to handle, go idle, lock up the USS (or Wake) and continue final portion via the classic Autothrottle limiter for smooth Disengage

Overshooting a Station/Outpost just somewhat? Disable Autothrottle Limiter.
- momentarily unlock Station while in idle... Ship should almost instantly slow down to 30km/sec
-> lock up Station/Outpost again and continue normal approach

Overshooting a Gravity well somewhat? This isn't an Autothrottle limitation but a fundamental FSD limitation.
-> use Gravity Braking (idle while passing near the Gravity well) to minimize the overshoot
(works to some extent only - but when done right, permits for faster approach to Stations/Outposts orbiting big Gravity wells)
-> alternatively, permit overshoot by placing Target 45deg above the nose and resume course after it passes 90deg above or overshoot condition ceases, whichever occurs first

 

[Harley001]

Kinda surprised you are having these issues, everything you mention is down to user error or not understanding how SC works. Plenty of topics on the discussion. The Slow down message can be an advisory or a command, understandable that some can find it a little confusing if new to the game.

You can throttle back at any time after the FSD has started the countdown, you will exit at minimum SC speed.

You can control the throttle but not the actual speed. If I am at max speed, and want to go as fast as I can in supercruise to get to a very far away target. If I pass by any stations or planets it will assume I want to land at them and say 'slow down" and start slowing my ship down for pretty much no reason. It will also randomly speed you at times.

If I am at half throttle, depending on where I am, half throttle could be 50 LS or 100 LS or it could be 500 KM. It depends on your distance from the nearest orbital body. But its not consistant at all. You speed up A LOT faster than your slow down. If you are heading to a station near a planet, you get slowed down as you get near the planet. But once you pass the planet it will often quickly speed you back up and you will go too fast and overshoot.

The main complaint I have is that it takes way too long for the ship to slow down (or speed up in some cases) and you have almost no control over how fast your ship speeds up or slows down. And the slow down message is NEVER helpful. IT either forces you to slow down when you don't need to (like when I pass a random station or a signal source) or it appears too late to be helpful.

As the throttling back in FSD. I just don't like it starts us FACING A STAR. Makes us waste a lot of time running around the star so we can jump again. WOuld be preferred if we started above the star a bit. So we can fuel scoop or just jump staight to the next destination.


There are sorts of odd exploits you can do in SC. Like if you UNLOCK your target the ship will suddenly speed up or slow down a lot faster. Which makes no sense... Shouldn't it be the other way around? WHy is it easier to overshoot a target I am locked onto instead of one I am not locked onto?

 

[The New Number Two]

Another thing that often confuses newcomers, the SC sounds can give the sense that the ship is accelerating even though the speed is decreasing. Absolutely love the sound design in this game, am not a fan of the SC London underground effect

Yep. I know I was. But it's just another artificial scale provided to give reference, like the speed scale jumping up. A Doppler effect for a Doppler-less situation. Once your brain wraps around the strangeness of it, you start to master it.