Yeah, I actually find it more fun than driving around a planet shooting rocks, or clicking buttons to see a dial turn just to get my ship once again to the same level as everybody elses.
Well I guess to each his own.
Supercruise-placeholder? Or is this it?
- Thread starter EUS
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Yeah, I actually find it more fun than driving around a planet shooting rocks, or clicking buttons to see a dial turn just to get my ship once again to the same level as everybody elses.
Well I guess to each his own.
I guess one aspect that could possibly be affected is the interdiction game-play now that I think about it. It would be a lot harder to catch someone if they are zipping around at ludicrous speed. Changes to super-cruise could open up a whole new world of problems unfortunately. You could theoretically never catch your target which could affect missions and what not. I guess there are always consequences with any changes which has been evident with ED for a while I think.
Given the qty of placeholders four years on, it's a fair question, not me being trite.
No, that is the easy way. The fun way is to not reduce speed at 6 seconds, and instead use the planet to brake you. This does take skill, but when mastered reduces quite significantly the time taken for the last stage of the approach.
Tried this a number of times, fun, but I can never seem to get the distance from the planet correct, either I hit the exclusion, or I am too far so that the gravity does little to nothing.
i'm also screaming in at 100% throttle so that the planet seems to whiz right by (lucky to get between the rings and planetary body the approach is so fast).
i'm also screaming in at 100% throttle so that the planet seems to whiz right by (lucky to get between the rings and planetary body the approach is so fast).
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I think it's here to stay, like so many else of "place holder" mini-games...
Note: I suggested a long time ago offering a means to at least spice it up with by allowing a sort of sling shot mechanic to exit a gravity well via a specific (escape) path to at least increase your SC speed quicker... (see sig)
In systems I am familiar with, I can manage to planet brake successfully around 60% of the time, I think. I don't always even try, though - sometimes I just take the easy option. Planetary braking is far more difficult in systems you don't know, especially when you discover that the space station isn't actually orbiting a planet at all!
Well done, you have discovered the slow, unsafe, boring, skill-free and grindy way to supercruise.
Now try something more interesting:
- cut speed to 95% at 4 seconds remaining
- dive to about 45 degrees off-target and maintain that trajectory as a spiral path (the timer will drop to 3 seconds as you do this ... if it drops to 2, loosen the spiral, if it rises to 5 or 6, tighten it)
- twist the curve so that your spiral is in a plane normal to the sun-planet line to shake off interdiction
- haul your final approach close to the planet drop-out line to rapidly bleed off speed (be ready to go back to 100% throttle if it looks like you're bleeding off too much)
- be ready to hit the drop-out as soon as all the indicators go blue because you'll have about half a second before you overshoot
... and reach the station about a minute quicker than the person doing 75%/6seconds (with practice, anyway)
(This is obviously easier and faster in a ship with decent supercruise agility, but you can still save a fair bit of time even in an Anaconda)
Advantages of this:
- you have to actually pay attention to the controls, so it's more exciting (bonus points if there's a ring system to dodge or you can do a 'slingshot brake' off a nearby moon)
- you spend at least a minute less per system in supercruise, often better than that, so it's less boring (mid-gravity planetary approaches, if done right, can save 2-3 minutes)
- it makes it virtually impossible for most NPCs to even attach an interdiction tether (and makes it harder for players, though they can compensate)
- the other person has to wait for you to clear the medium pad on the outpost
Right. Supercruise is the one aspect of the game that makes every ship even as well as appropriately reacting to gravity wells etc. Interdictions, fuel usage, even maneuvering are all effected. Still bringing back 'Witch Space' could get interesting. It was a Thargoid interdiction. After defeating them one would not return to the same normal space they left sometimes far away in another system. Not having a Fuel Scoop could be a bad idea. Now that Thargoids are a lot tougher and the interdiction game as designed we probably won't see it.
Material hunting is pretty bad too, could do with some life injection and a bit of agency. There needs to be something other than random luck for finding the rares.
There's no gameplay involved in the Engineer upgrades. That's your typical upgrade/crafting system you'll find in a hundred other games. Not really meant to have game play behind it, since the gameplay is supposed to be in the acquiring of the resources you're using to craft.
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There is no meaning to the Hutton Orbital Run. It just means you are wealthy enough in real life to let your computer run for 90 minutes while you took care of other stuff.
Great idea mini jumps to nav beacons and secondary stars. So long as those who like to dress up as captain Kirk/Salome or whoever when they play can still SC the long way round, it would be a choice if you use the mini jump feature or not.
I would.
No mini jumps.
What SC needs is a method of flight that rewards following the most efficient paths with an SC acceleration boost.
That path is not a straight line.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Transport_Network
What SC needs is a method of flight that rewards following the most efficient paths with an SC acceleration boost.
That path is not a straight line.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Transport_Network
Using thrusters in Sc, at those speeds, would not make sense.
There are a few things I would like:
I love supercruise. It is a magnificent addition to this spacesim.
It is the perfect balance between extremely fast spacetravel and still being awed by the enormity of the universe.
Soaring past a beautiful star or planet is still a thrill and I must have done it thousands of times by now.
As far as far away locations in a system are concerned... I simply don't travel where I do not want to go.
I won't go to Hutton because it is too far away and has nothing to offer for my troubles.
I would like changes to supercruise.
CHANGE 1.
I want more player agency. I want to have more influence on flying in supercruise, more piloty things to do.
This could be done via pip management for example.
We might perhaps use pips to control certain aspects of sc travel. Pips in sc travel might influence different things compared to normal space travel.
CHANGE 2.
I also want the HUD to change its layout in supercruise with new HUD elements, just like it changes when you approach a planet.
I am sure FD could make something up to make it look cool and different and appropriate for Supercruise.
The HUD might give you an ideal travel solution by showing you a flight path to fly around a planet to accelerate and speed up travel.
I think these changes would serve to underline the differences between the different flight modes and would make us feel like real ace space pilots .
CHANGE 3.
I would like to be able to do in-system minijumps to other stars in the same system.
There could be rules for this to be possible:
0. Minijumps might only be possible when you are in supercruise (for fluffy technical reasons)
1. A second star has to be at least 50.000 ls (just an arbitrary number) removed from the main star for example.
2. You might need to fly 1000 ls away from the main star to be able to do a minijump
3. Minijumps might cause light damage to the FSD
4. Minijumps might consume a lot of fuel, because... reasons.
5. We might have to buy an expensive modification for the FSD to make minijumps possible.
6. Another tool FD might use to regulate in system mini-jumps could be some kind of jump inhibitor installation that prevents ships from doing a mini-jump in certain systems. For example a far away military installation, orbiting a second star in the system might have such a device to prevent enemy ships from jumping to it directly.
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ADDITIONAL GAMEPLAY
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SC boost (proposed by Conch)
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when triggered a mini game pops up like interdiction, if you fail you are not far from where you started and have damaged your ship.
Stealth Supercruise speeds (proposed by Levianova).
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Any speed in supercruise under 50km/s should render a ship invisible to scanners. with only a dim visual spec shown to others. This gives ambush mechanics more room and will allow players to have the opertunity to hide and scan for thier assasination targets.
My thoughts about stealthy supercruise:
I would absolutely love those kind of mechanics to be in the game.
I am not sure about the details, but in principle I think this is an extremely cool idea.
Perhaps this might be combined with some kind of signal dampening suite / stealth suite that one has to install to make this fully effective.
The necessary size of this stealth suite module might depend upon the size of the ship. For example a large ship needs to use a size 5 to be effective, a medium ship needs to use a size 3 and a small ship needs to use a size 1 or 2.
It might be cool to have an exception. For example the Clipper could count as a medium ship for this purpose. Perhaps the Imps designed it from the ground up for the purpose of stealth (it's just an idea, I don't fly the clipper myself).
Of course the stealth suite would be very expensive. Even the smallest size will cost several millions.
Also ships might be completely invisible in SC for ships that are outside of a certain range, lets say 500 ls, when a ship is inside that range it can be seen as erratically an flickering unresolved signal. The enemy is unable to identify what kind of ship it is.
Also when authority ships detect those type of scrambled signals they will always investigate and intercept.
Of course stealth suites might be illegal in certain jurisdictions.
Perhaps there could be a size restriction too: Perhaps large ships can't use this mechanic.
Supercruise "Overspeed" (proposed by Cosmic Spacehead )
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Supercruise Overspeed
Overspeed is essentially allowing your ship to throttle past 100% in supercruise.
Not a turbo, or boost, just pushing your FSD harder for increased acceleration only.
With the downsides of heat generation, and increasing fuel consumption(if that's possible).
I have no exact figures to go by, or a huge understanding of supercruise itself, so this may all be a load of tripe. Lol
Anyhoo, to engage Overspeed, you simply accelerate beyond 100%, and a warning will flash saying "Overspeed".
For Throttle/Hotas users, 100% throttle is around half way up the physical throttle, and Overspeed is from then on.
For gamepad/keyboard users, the throttle will stop incremental increases at 100%, until you press throttle up again.
Overspeed automatically disengages on deceleration phases of supercruise, but ideally, you would not want to be Overspeeding towards your target that late.
To disengage Overspeed, simply pull the throttle back to the middle, or throttle down using the gamepad/key.
As soon as you hit Overspeed, your heat generation begins to increase, faster the more you push it. Same with fuel.
At the very top end of the Overspeed throttle is a 10% Danger Zone, this means your FSD is working way beyond its limits, and will start taking damage. Handy for getting out of a pickle, but will require repairs afterwards.
Now, why all this?
Mainly, to increase the interactivity in early stages of supercruise, not so much middle stage.
Also, it works very well with the Dirty and Clean Drives Modification.
Dirty drives will be far less effective in supercruise, due to heat, but much faster in normal space. And clean drives are much more effective in supercruise, but not as good in normal space.
This would add an additional choice between Dirty and Clean Drives, as well as overall heat efficiency of your ship.
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At least with driving around a planet looking for and shooting rocks you're actually doing something, as opposed to doing literally nothing while you passively wait for a timer to run out
There's reason why it it same as in hundred other games - because power creep. Those are serious upgrades giving you massive advantage over your opponents. Calls for making it more 'agency' like or skill like...problem is that is very hard to do (sans we don't have Engineer missions) and minute someone figures out how to 'maximize' a ..... out of specific mission run....it will be never ending battle devs can't really win because lot of players don't want to really play their games neither...they just want to full around with powerful stuff.
There are small things that can be improved and 3.0 is step in right direction but expecting getting Engineered weapons being 'agency based' rail road...not really gonna happen.
Also obviously it is gameplay. Not maybe something you enjoy but still gameplay.
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It wasn't intended that way, it was just a glorious bug.
As for supercruise being boring...I see supercruise as environment where stuff happens, where I can discover strange signal sources and get help to people, or get blasted off by massively OP NPC pirate. Devs give you a choice to engage...or not.
Calling supercruise as it is a placeholder is just pointless jab. Can SS improved? Yes and I am certain they will be as they have been in the past (random in time vs. spatial, threat levels, etc.). FD can also add POIs, etc...all such things engine allow them to do.
This!
I'm glad you find it amusing.
Well not everyone can afford the time to fly to the Mun in realtime like a true hardcore gamer like you, so we hit time acceleration in KSP. I guess we're missing out on the best part, right?
bounder nailed it. When I first fired up ED in 2014, and went into SC, it was the first thing I went "uh?", and thought sincerely the first few months it WAS a placeholder. A huge step back from previous Elites.