Why does Super Cruise travel take so long?
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 in sc 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, but there must be places like Hutton in the game. I think that is cool.
Even though I do not wish to travel those long distances in sc... someday this might change. Perhaps FDev could make it worth my while to travel those long distances.
There could be unique ships for sale, or some ships and modules could be extra cheap, or there could be a unique station design, or there could be an easy way to get difficult materials or data.
All these would be sufficient reason for me to do a long trip to, for example, a station like Hutton.
I would like, and have proposed, some changes to supercruise though (I posted this before but I think it is important).
CHANGE 1 PLAYER AGENCY.
I would love 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 HUD CHANGES.
I also would like 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 MINI(MICRO) JUMPS.
I would like to be able to do in-system mini jumps 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. Minijumps might not be possible to certain star types.
7. 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.