TL;DR
Disclaimer: I think Supercruise being a timesink is totally ok and a major part of why ED feels vast and ownership of your vessel so personal. Do I have days I wish I went faster, yes. Would I change the game for it? No.
Idea: Activities that 'kill time' that can be undertaken while in the cockpit on a long supercruise haul. These range from simple, 20 to 30 second tasks or gimmicks to actual activities that could generate credits in small to medium quantities.
Their leading to you missing your destination because you didn't throttle down is totally ok, if not outright funny as well as immersive.
THE IDEAS
1) Ship Optimization: While hurtling through space you can temporarily 'optimize' ship functions for a few hours by tweaking software and settings manually. Making a mistake has consequences, including dropping you out of supercruise, because everyone knows not to cross the red and blue wires but you did it anyways.
"Optimize Modules" would be a menu item under "Functions" that results in a holographic pane opening directly in front of the commander (similar to station services, though not quite as large to allow minor peripheral vision). The pane would feature several categories for each module group: Weapons, Utilities, Shield, Engine, and Reactor.
Each category has a unique mini-game or series of tasks that can be performed in a number of ways to result in varying outcomes. Some could have guaranteed results - such as recoding the engine such that it guaranteed has a minor improvement to boost speed at the cost of the engine distributor charging slower.
Think of them as miniaturized (1 to 2% gains or losses) engineering. They don't really change ship effectiveness by a large margin so much as serve as a timesink with simple outcomes. Messing up is a minor, temporary penalty - the worst being dropping out of supercruise and incurring the minor hull damage from an emergency drop. Buffs/debuffs last for an hour at most.
2) "FSD Chicken": A mini-game in which a commander rigs their FSD exit trigger to a gyro sensitive to rolling the ship. Balance the gyro to prevent the trigger firing - fail and the ship emergency drops. Now with global leaderboards! Safety mode available for losers.
As a ship travels, the gyro inherently tilts with the ship due to gravitational forces experienced by interstellar bodies near and far. The further the FSD travels, the more unstable the gyro becomes as more and more feedback from the stellar bodies and natural functions of the FSD tilt it. To maintain the gyro's balance, roll the ship clockwise or counter-clockwise. Get too far off balance, the trigger hits and the ship drops supercruise. Each ship inherently plays a little different given varying sizes of FSDs.
A mode for 'safety on' is available to prevent actual supercruise drop - but the score will not be uploaded to the leaderboards. The best ten scores are awarded credits on a weekly basis (nothing major, top spot like 100k credits?)
3) Day-Trader Interface: Speculate on commodity prices in your local markets, using your credits to buy low and sell high on the fast-paced Stellar Stock Exchange.
Deposit a few thousand credits and start bidding and selling products on the market. Prices fluctuate constantly - holding too long may cost you for the day, but holding long enough may see you close high too! Basically a mini-game driven by an algorithm for randomly rising and falling prices.
Market runs on a 24-hour cycle with end of cycle cashing out the commander. A commander can enter and leave the market multiple times throughout the day. They could buy goods and sell them in the same supercruise sitting, or sell them later that day. Failure to sell by end of cycle cashes the stock for its closing value. Stock values run from 1 to 500 credits. Maximum buy-in of 20,000 credits each day (so it is feasible to turn that 20k into 10m if you bought all stock of 1 credit and you sold it for 500 that day...chances are this would be a very rare occurrence).
4) Read the News: Coming in 2018! Yay
This already exists, technically, via the navigation panel. Voice-over coming in 2018.
5) Polish the cockpit: Tired of that sun glare highlighting how filthy your cockpit is? No worries! New from That-Company-You've-Never-Heard-Of: FSD-Safe Cleaning Drones!
Steer a cleaning drone across that cockpit glass as you travel hundreds of times the speed of light. Marvel at how what was once a red nebula is now purple, with clear points of stars now visible! The commander deploys a cleaning drone to 'dust-off' the cockpit glass. Entering camera mode allows the drone to be steered onto other portions of the ship, removing detritus and dust from your vessel, leaving pristine nameplates and once-more shiny Pilot's Federation insignias.
Costs nothing to use, makes a pleasant squeaky noise on the glass when viewed from inside. 80's music optional to 'set the mood' for cleaning up your journey.
6) Crazy Feature: Walking in Ship - get up, stretch your legs, and see what lies behind door #1 (because, generally speaking, most ships don't even have a door #2). Ship continues hurtling through space with...uh...nobody watching the controls.
Chat with your poorly rendered passengers, visit the toilet you can't use thanks to your spacesuit, admire your dirty SRV (or clean it), give the SLF a once-over, or re-arrange those biowaste containers for the tenth time that day.
Being interdicted results in automatic failure to evade (because you weren't there to evade, duh), entering atmosphere prevents glide and results in hull damage, ship in normal space will continue at last set speed in a straight line...and will run into something potentially. Commander is automatically returned to cockpit if any of these occur.
7) Fill Out Paperwork to Reduce Fines: Why pay fines when you can call 1-800-DBT-RELF and get your debts reduced or even forgiven! This proven program has worked for millions of commanders and could work for you too! Just fill out this 12 page form in triplicate.
Commander can 'do paperwork' to remove fines or get credit vouchers against future fines. Paperwork is literally an interface that allows the signing of the name, answering of a series of questions, and could even utilize survey formats for the benefit of ED development of story or features. Typical form takes 5 minutes or more to complete.
8) Survey Planets at Distance: using an advanced surface scanner module, enter into turret deployed from the cargo bay that allows a full 180 degree view of the system while in super-cruise or normal space. Utilizing a simplistic navigation pane, target and then zoom-in on stellar bodies to scan them.
This allows for the efficient scanning of multiple bodies as the ship moves towards a single body. Control of the ship is completely lost, and stellar bodies at significant zoom could be difficult to manually track given the massive speeds involved. Unlike other super-cruise activities, interruption of super-cruise or normal flight does not result in automatic return to cockpit as this is an active module in use.
9) Deploy Targeting Camera: The commander's chair houses a targeting camera with enhanced zoom and rapid recognition software compared to standard cockpit interface.
For marveling at distant constellations and stellar bodies, or rapidly identifying distant supercruise signatures without manually turning the ship - limited to field of view of cockpit. Also handy for busting womprats in death gully...or large super-lasers in the wrong hands. Just a nifty 'headset' overlay.
What are YOUR timesink ideas? Keep in mind that they can be short-term (1 minute) as much as long-term. I personally wouldn't recommend anything that exceeds 5 minutes of dedicated time for both ship risk as well as use-case reasons.
Disclaimer: I think Supercruise being a timesink is totally ok and a major part of why ED feels vast and ownership of your vessel so personal. Do I have days I wish I went faster, yes. Would I change the game for it? No.
Idea: Activities that 'kill time' that can be undertaken while in the cockpit on a long supercruise haul. These range from simple, 20 to 30 second tasks or gimmicks to actual activities that could generate credits in small to medium quantities.
Their leading to you missing your destination because you didn't throttle down is totally ok, if not outright funny as well as immersive.
THE IDEAS
1) Ship Optimization: While hurtling through space you can temporarily 'optimize' ship functions for a few hours by tweaking software and settings manually. Making a mistake has consequences, including dropping you out of supercruise, because everyone knows not to cross the red and blue wires but you did it anyways.
"Optimize Modules" would be a menu item under "Functions" that results in a holographic pane opening directly in front of the commander (similar to station services, though not quite as large to allow minor peripheral vision). The pane would feature several categories for each module group: Weapons, Utilities, Shield, Engine, and Reactor.
Each category has a unique mini-game or series of tasks that can be performed in a number of ways to result in varying outcomes. Some could have guaranteed results - such as recoding the engine such that it guaranteed has a minor improvement to boost speed at the cost of the engine distributor charging slower.
Think of them as miniaturized (1 to 2% gains or losses) engineering. They don't really change ship effectiveness by a large margin so much as serve as a timesink with simple outcomes. Messing up is a minor, temporary penalty - the worst being dropping out of supercruise and incurring the minor hull damage from an emergency drop. Buffs/debuffs last for an hour at most.
2) "FSD Chicken": A mini-game in which a commander rigs their FSD exit trigger to a gyro sensitive to rolling the ship. Balance the gyro to prevent the trigger firing - fail and the ship emergency drops. Now with global leaderboards! Safety mode available for losers.
As a ship travels, the gyro inherently tilts with the ship due to gravitational forces experienced by interstellar bodies near and far. The further the FSD travels, the more unstable the gyro becomes as more and more feedback from the stellar bodies and natural functions of the FSD tilt it. To maintain the gyro's balance, roll the ship clockwise or counter-clockwise. Get too far off balance, the trigger hits and the ship drops supercruise. Each ship inherently plays a little different given varying sizes of FSDs.
A mode for 'safety on' is available to prevent actual supercruise drop - but the score will not be uploaded to the leaderboards. The best ten scores are awarded credits on a weekly basis (nothing major, top spot like 100k credits?)
3) Day-Trader Interface: Speculate on commodity prices in your local markets, using your credits to buy low and sell high on the fast-paced Stellar Stock Exchange.
Deposit a few thousand credits and start bidding and selling products on the market. Prices fluctuate constantly - holding too long may cost you for the day, but holding long enough may see you close high too! Basically a mini-game driven by an algorithm for randomly rising and falling prices.
Market runs on a 24-hour cycle with end of cycle cashing out the commander. A commander can enter and leave the market multiple times throughout the day. They could buy goods and sell them in the same supercruise sitting, or sell them later that day. Failure to sell by end of cycle cashes the stock for its closing value. Stock values run from 1 to 500 credits. Maximum buy-in of 20,000 credits each day (so it is feasible to turn that 20k into 10m if you bought all stock of 1 credit and you sold it for 500 that day...chances are this would be a very rare occurrence).
4) Read the News: Coming in 2018! Yay
This already exists, technically, via the navigation panel. Voice-over coming in 2018.
5) Polish the cockpit: Tired of that sun glare highlighting how filthy your cockpit is? No worries! New from That-Company-You've-Never-Heard-Of: FSD-Safe Cleaning Drones!
Steer a cleaning drone across that cockpit glass as you travel hundreds of times the speed of light. Marvel at how what was once a red nebula is now purple, with clear points of stars now visible! The commander deploys a cleaning drone to 'dust-off' the cockpit glass. Entering camera mode allows the drone to be steered onto other portions of the ship, removing detritus and dust from your vessel, leaving pristine nameplates and once-more shiny Pilot's Federation insignias.
Costs nothing to use, makes a pleasant squeaky noise on the glass when viewed from inside. 80's music optional to 'set the mood' for cleaning up your journey.
6) Crazy Feature: Walking in Ship - get up, stretch your legs, and see what lies behind door #1 (because, generally speaking, most ships don't even have a door #2). Ship continues hurtling through space with...uh...nobody watching the controls.
Chat with your poorly rendered passengers, visit the toilet you can't use thanks to your spacesuit, admire your dirty SRV (or clean it), give the SLF a once-over, or re-arrange those biowaste containers for the tenth time that day.
Being interdicted results in automatic failure to evade (because you weren't there to evade, duh), entering atmosphere prevents glide and results in hull damage, ship in normal space will continue at last set speed in a straight line...and will run into something potentially. Commander is automatically returned to cockpit if any of these occur.
7) Fill Out Paperwork to Reduce Fines: Why pay fines when you can call 1-800-DBT-RELF and get your debts reduced or even forgiven! This proven program has worked for millions of commanders and could work for you too! Just fill out this 12 page form in triplicate.
Commander can 'do paperwork' to remove fines or get credit vouchers against future fines. Paperwork is literally an interface that allows the signing of the name, answering of a series of questions, and could even utilize survey formats for the benefit of ED development of story or features. Typical form takes 5 minutes or more to complete.
8) Survey Planets at Distance: using an advanced surface scanner module, enter into turret deployed from the cargo bay that allows a full 180 degree view of the system while in super-cruise or normal space. Utilizing a simplistic navigation pane, target and then zoom-in on stellar bodies to scan them.
This allows for the efficient scanning of multiple bodies as the ship moves towards a single body. Control of the ship is completely lost, and stellar bodies at significant zoom could be difficult to manually track given the massive speeds involved. Unlike other super-cruise activities, interruption of super-cruise or normal flight does not result in automatic return to cockpit as this is an active module in use.
9) Deploy Targeting Camera: The commander's chair houses a targeting camera with enhanced zoom and rapid recognition software compared to standard cockpit interface.
For marveling at distant constellations and stellar bodies, or rapidly identifying distant supercruise signatures without manually turning the ship - limited to field of view of cockpit. Also handy for busting womprats in death gully...or large super-lasers in the wrong hands. Just a nifty 'headset' overlay.
What are YOUR timesink ideas? Keep in mind that they can be short-term (1 minute) as much as long-term. I personally wouldn't recommend anything that exceeds 5 minutes of dedicated time for both ship risk as well as use-case reasons.
