Supercruise boost

[zarking]

Just a random thought....
Would it be cool to have the ability to do one off boosts in Supercruise?
I'm thinking, it would cost either fuel, material synthesis or a special utility you need to buy "charges" for.

The reason, those 45 straight line cruises where nothing happens... I know that mission rewards relate to distance from main star, but I can't think of any gameplay scenario where asking the player to point in one direction then do nothing but watch the screen for 45 minutes can be considered fun, no matter how much the reward.
I'd say that anything over ten minutes is too much, yes, it can be player choice if they wish to do that but I don't even think it should be encouraged as an in game activity via mission rewards.

Anyway, that's sort of beside the point, the main use would be for exploring, or for simply saving time. I don't even mind if using Supercruise boost is limited to short bursts, and has a spin up/cooldown where interdiction is likely so you can't use it to escape from fights or whatever, I haven't thought it through fully lol.
So, good idea, bad idea?

 

[Red Martian]

I like the idea of having an emergency power button for supercruise, like if I'm being hunted by Elite Anacondas or something. It would give me a such and such boost for so many seconds, but the longer I hold down the emergency button, the more damage it causes to the FSD. In short, remember the scene in Galaxy Quest where Taggart has Tommy hold down the turbo boost button, and everything speeds up, only for the engine to blow because it was held too long? Something like that. To me, that would be FUN.

 

[uliando]

Speed + turn rate for those extra tight flybys!

 

[zarking]

I like the idea of having an emergency power button for supercruise, like if I'm being hunted by Elite Anacondas or something. It would give me a such and such boost for so many seconds, but the longer I hold down the emergency button, the more damage it causes to the FSD. In short, remember the scene in Galaxy Quest where Taggart has Tommy hold down the turbo boost button, and everything speeds up, only for the engine to blow because it was held too long? Something like that. To me, that would be FUN.

Yep, that's cool too, I'm fine with anything like this having a risk/ reward. I guess it could also open up high speed mission ideas, so you have x minutes to deliver something from station to station in one system, but a really short time to do it, so you'd have to use boosts, but they damage your ship/need a lot of fuel/cost a lot of.materials, so it becomes high risk but for big rewards.

/maybe not fuel lol, or the fuel rats would get pretty busy as I guess people would run out a lot

 

[Shiro Akai]

but I can't think of any gameplay scenario where asking the player to point in one direction then do nothing but watch the screen for 45 minutes can be considered fun, no matter how much the reward.

Remember War Games? And final conclusion?

What a strange game. The only winning move is not to play.

This is how I see long range in-system delivery. You just enter the system, point toward your destination and go walk the dog, do shopping, have some snug-snug with your GF/BF to get 30 minutes later to see you're only half way.

Those missions have a threat of being interdicted, hence dangerous? Please... Interdictions happen at star, where you drop SC or when you throttle down to 75% while counter says 0:07 ONLY. The rest of flight? Nap time. Sitting and waiting for more than 10 minutes is exactly opposite to

we don't want to waste your time

~FDEVs

So, ANY means that would shorten that 200k Ls distance is welcome. Be it at the cost of lower payment or requiring extra internal slot. I've been thinking about some additional slots (optional internals) like SC enhancers or boosters. It would lower your cargo capacity as it would occupy a slot but it would provide speed increase, hence shortening the flight time.

But since it's unreal and wishful thinking I'm just skipping on deliveries farther than 5k Ls. On principle. I want to play a game, not sit and watch timers go down. It doesn't differs much from watching someone else is playing. After an hour all you feel is that hour was wasted because you literally didn't do anything.

 

[DelphinusCombaticus]

I agree that supercruise could be made quicker.
I tried a thread a while ago suggesting they add some kind of expert-mode toggle for supercruise that lets you increase acceleration and deceleration, as well as enabling 'drifting' and lateral movement in supercruise. It could also enable using gravity-assists for quick acceleration gain. This would add some skill to supercruising (if you chose to use the 'expert mode').
And I still dream that the future exploration update will touch supercruise in some way.

ANYWAY, I think your idea is a lot easier to implement than mine, so I'm for it as a next-best-thing.

 

[stocko1111]

I think I’d prefer being able to slingshot around planets rather than have them slowing us down.

 

[Prorokpl]

I think I’d prefer being able to slingshot around planets rather than have them slowing us down.

+1

And OP idea will never make it couse of how does FSD works.

Rather than accelerating a ship through space, the frame shift drive moves space around a ship to allow it to travel faster than light without using extreme amounts of energy or experiencing time distortion.

Frame shift drives use a modified Alcubierre Drive design to compress space in front of ships in supercruise.

So you can't "boost" in SC couse you are not have thrust, it's just space bending so you are not moving faster than light, space is and you are not breaking law of physics.

 

[zombieapocalypse]

I'm pretty sure FDev said they were looking into mini-jumps for a future update. Can't remember where I saw that though.

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

Ignoring all science, because it's a video game, not real life. Yes please!

But nothing like the current normal boost.

I want to press it, and hold it down, for ever increasing acceleration, heat and drift, and decreasing manoeuvrability, making it harder and harder to keep the damn thing in the straight line while whizzing across the system at ludicrous speed.

Hitting something while boosting should be catastrophic.
You can always let go, but if you don't, and don't happen to see that planet, and hit it while boosting, it should have a similar effect to boosting in to a cliff at normal speeds.

I'd also like some kind of visual effect to show how zoomy zoom zoom you're going.
Supercruise currently feels slow, if you can't see anything.

 

[zombieapocalypse]

Ignoring all science, because it's a video game, not real life. Yes please!

But nothing like the current normal boost.

I want to press it, and hold it down, for ever increasing acceleration, heat and drift, and decreasing manoeuvrability, making it harder and harder to keep the damn thing in the straight line while whizzing across the system at ludicrous speed.

Hitting something while boosting should be catastrophic.
You can always let go, but if you don't, and don't happen to see that planet, and hit it while boosting, it should have a similar effect to boosting in to a cliff at normal speeds.

I'd also like some kind of visual effect to show how zoomy zoom zoom you're going.
Supercruise currently feels slow, if you can't see anything.

That would be cool and would add a gameplay element and risk to it. A bit like what could happen in FE2 if you accelerated too fast near a planetary body

 

[M00ka]

Ignoring all science, because it's a video game, not real life. Yes please!

But nothing like the current normal boost.

I want to press it, and hold it down, for ever increasing acceleration, heat and drift, and decreasing manoeuvrability, making it harder and harder to keep the damn thing in the straight line while whizzing across the system at ludicrous speed.

Hitting something while boosting should be catastrophic.
You can always let go, but if you don't, and don't happen to see that planet, and hit it while boosting, it should have a similar effect to boosting in to a cliff at normal speeds.

I'd also like some kind of visual effect to show how zoomy zoom zoom you're going.
Supercruise currently feels slow, if you can't see anything.

I like it Sir, rep given. Just think of the number of 'loops of shame' would occur, it would be hilarious lol

 

[DelphinusCombaticus]

So you can't "boost" in SC couse you are not have thrust, it's just space bending so you are not moving faster than light, space is and you are not breaking law of physics.

You realise that is just handwavium to begin with? Since no such things exist in reality it could work however the devs say it works, with a modicum of scientific realism to make it sound not-completely-dumb.

We know that FSD 'speed' increases over time and distance, there's nothing saying they can't implement some mechanism that applies this increase over a shorter span of time than normal. They can add whatever handwavium they want to that to make it 'work'.

 

[the source 0179]

Just a random thought....
Would it be cool to have the ability to do one off boosts in Supercruise?
I'm thinking, it would cost either fuel, material synthesis or a special utility you need to buy "charges" for.

The reason, those 45 straight line cruises where nothing happens... I know that mission rewards relate to distance from main star, but I can't think of any gameplay scenario where asking the player to point in one direction then do nothing but watch the screen for 45 minutes can be considered fun, no matter how much the reward.
I'd say that anything over ten minutes is too much, yes, it can be player choice if they wish to do that but I don't even think it should be encouraged as an in game activity via mission rewards.

Anyway, that's sort of beside the point, the main use would be for exploring, or for simply saving time. I don't even mind if using Supercruise boost is limited to short bursts, and has a spin up/cooldown where interdiction is likely so you can't use it to escape from fights or whatever, I haven't thought it through fully lol.
So, good idea, bad idea?

Actually it would be better if you could just choose which star you enter in at.
And before anyone says thats not possible because you enter in the greatest gravity well.
Well that isn't always the case. I've entered many systems when exploring and it drops you at a star when theres a blackhole in system. Even small blackholes have greater gravity than a star and its planets.

 

[the source 0179]

I'm pretty sure FDev said they were looking into mini-jumps for a future update. Can't remember where I saw that though.

It was in one of their streams.

 

[the source 0179]

I think I’d prefer being able to slingshot around planets rather than have them slowing us down.

Technically the ship should speed up when coming close to planets and stars. Only when your moving away from them it should slow you down. And yes a slingshot would work if implemented correctly.
You know Physics lol.

 

[MadDogMurdock]

Technically the ship should speed up when coming close to planets and stars. Only when your moving away from them it should slow you down. And yes a slingshot would work if implemented correctly.
You know Physics lol.

Technically, the ship can do whatever FD decides it should do because SC is not real.

The slowest speed in SC is 30km/s.
Let's take Earth's surface gravity of ~10m/s², which obviously drops off quickly as you get further away.

If gravity were to apply without any ship influence, a minute later you still wouldn't be going 31km/s.

That additional acceleration or deceleration is entirely negligible compared to the rates available to the FSD.

So the idea of a slingshot is fine - but only at the far slower speeds available in normal flight of up to 1000m/s - it's completely irrelevant to SC flight.

 

[DelphinusCombaticus]

Technically the ship should speed up when coming close to planets and stars. Only when your moving away from them it should slow you down. And yes a slingshot would work if implemented correctly.
You know Physics lol.

The way I understand it, the FSD automatically limits speed depending on your proximity to gravity sources. It's either a built-in safety feature to prevent catastrophic collisions, or because of the gravity; if the movie Interstellar taught me anything it's that gravity is constant independent of time. So when the FSD warps space (aka space-time, aka 'gravity') actual sources of gravity present in space interfere with that warping, resulting in a weaker warping effect from your FSD.

Either way, I think FD can give us some kind of boost mechanic that uses extra power/fuel to counteract the effects of gravity on the FSD without breaking the believeability of FSD travel.

 

[the source 0179]

Technically, the ship can do whatever FD decides it should do because SC is not real.

The slowest speed in SC is 30km/s.
Let's take Earth's surface gravity of ~10m/s², which obviously drops off quickly as you get further away.

If gravity were to apply without any ship influence, a minute later you still wouldn't be going 31km/s.

That additional acceleration or deceleration is entirely negligible compared to the rates available to the FSD.

So the idea of a slingshot is fine - but only at the far slower speeds available in normal flight of up to 1000m/s - it's completely irrelevant to SC flight.

Doesn't explain why FD chose to make the ship slow down when getting close to planets or stars gravity well though.

 

[MadDogMurdock]

Doesn't explain why FD chose to make the ship slow down when getting close to planets or stars gravity well though.

Because game.

Pick any explanation you like - it's all pseudoscience.
- Spacetime is 'denser' deeper in a gravity well.
- The FSD has to work harder in a gravity well.
- Spacetime is warped in the presence of mass.
- Things with mass are more interesting than empty space - we slow you down to enjoy the view.