Why does Super Cruise travel take so long?

5AnaHalfHatsize

5AnaHalfHatsize
Well here's my epiphany:

It's because we can't SC between star systems.

Otherwise there is no reason why FD couldn't tweak the SC speed algorithms to allow much higher speeds as you leave the local gravity well, why we couldn't creep up to, say, 5000c instead of 500c when travelling between bodies in the same system. In fact, no real game play reason why you couldn't increase the speed at a geometric rate as you move away from a planet, moon or star.

OK, the hutton truckers might choke on their egg and chips but I think even they might (albeit secretly) enjoy being able to both cruise to any place in a star system and do so without their head hitting the keyboard from chronic sleep deprivation and/or boredom.

So why can't we? Well because if we could do that we would be then able to cruise on to the next star (which just happens to be in the next system along) in a reasonably short time, and currently if you do that you end up effectively in witch space, sitting at the position where there should be a star right in front of you but in fact you see nothing but space dust.

Now I'm not suggesting that we have to change the speed of travel between bodies orbiting the same star (much), but come on, once your more than 10Kls from the nearest astronomical object there is basically N.O.T.H.I.N.G to see, so at that point you could ramp up the speed as high as you need to make the next 30kls or 90kls or .22Lyrs a more reasonable gaming experience.

But to do that without the need for glass walls between the star systems, you'd need to be able to seamlessly SC from one system to the other.

Now I'm not saying that would be easy for FD to achieve, but I think if they could do it then it would greatly improve the exploration side of the game and also increase the CMDR traffic to a lot of systems in the bubble. And not to mention giving people the option of taking the scenic route to the next star along instead of always having to H-Jump.
 

5AnaHalfHatsize

5AnaHalfHatsize
Flavourless said:
SC doesn't take "so long".
It is a mechanism enabling players to cover unimaginably long distances in a few minutes (or seconds), enabling a useable 1:1 model of the entire galaxy to be implemented, which is the games best feature by light years.
Click to expand...

Yeah, except you realise of course that you aren't actually, you know, flying a space ship? if you want realism play KSP at time x1, I'm sure you'll find that a spectacular gaming experience.

Don't give me the "space is big" nonsense, as soon as you go over (or even near) C, you are in fairy-land and it is a simple choice between different game play mechanics.
 

babelfisch

babelfisch
If you consider the distances involved SC is actually super fast. I do agree that it could be faster though, but I think the biggest problem is acceleration and deceleration and not top speed.

It quite some time since I did the Hutton Run, but how much time do you fly at max speed? 5 minutes? 10? The rest is the awfully slow acceleration/deceleration. All system travels would benefit from it.
 
Last edited:

PhanttoM

PhanttoM
It used to matter because of interdiction mechanics. Traveling the lanes for extended periods could result in multiple pirate interdictions.

But a lot people didn't like it when the game reacts to their presense, so now interdictions are trivial and of no consequence. (Anyway remember the waves of "I got interdicted and killed" threads?)

On top of that, a lot of people also completely ignore the gravity well mechanics - and will fly in a straight line close to planets even though it slows them to a crawl.

---

I stopped caring about being for or against supercruise thanks to the community whining and Frontier overcompensating. The subject is a hopeless cause.
 

Frenotx

Frenotx
PhanttoM said:
It used to matter because of interdiction mechanics. Traveling the lanes for extended periods could result in multiple pirate interdictions.

But a lot people didn't like it when the game reacts to their presense, so now interdictions are trivial and of no consequence. (Anyway remember the waves of "I got interdicted and killed" threads?)

On top of that, a lot of people also completely ignore the gravity well mechanics - and will fly in a straight line close to planets even though it slows them to a crawl.

---

I stopped caring about being for or against supercruise thanks to the community whining and Frontier overcompensating. The subject is a hopeless cause.
Click to expand...
That's the thing, though- unless an NPC spawns somewhere in the middle of nowhere, the supercruise mechanics mean interdictions tend to only happen at the start or end of a supercruise journey. If you fail to get in range to initiate the tether at the start of the journey, you wont ever be able to get in range until the target starts to slow down at the end of the journey. Because of this, those long supercrusie trips don't even really add that much more opportunity to be interdicted- just more wait time in between the two opportunities that already exist on the shorter trips. The ship could just skip that big wait time between the initial acceleration and the final deceleration, and very little would actually be lost from a gameplay perspective. The blunt-force ham-fisted immersion-via-waiting would be reduced, but that could be compensate for by having a dramatic distance-dependent visual effect for that "skipping the boring part" jump.

Initial accleration -> cool space-stretching audio-visual delight that's longer (as in a few seconds for short distances, and 10-20 seconds for long ones) and more dramatic the longer the distance its covering -> final deceleration. Equal amount of practical opportunity for interdiction, still conveys scale, makes good use of FDev's awesome audio-visual design capabilities, and cuts out a ton of needless waiting. You could even make it option if you wanted to. For instance, once you've completely the initial acceleration, a prompt could come up saying, "Press boost to initiate hypercruise mode (or whatever you want to call it)" You could do it if you wanted to get to your destination quickly, or you could continue to putter along if you wanted to take the scenic route.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom