36 Ophiuchi is very big because it is very big in real life. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/36_Ophiuchi
36 Ophuichi stupid large
- Thread starter DrDerss
- Start date
They do i most cases now actually..... Their mission payout is higher than those mission with short distances. which is one of the reasons people pick these up, for their higher payout.
So distance do serve a purpose. One of the gold rushes was all about long distance super cruise travel.
You'd get a big issue with internal consistency there though. Currently the justification is that the FSD locks onto the most massive body in a system and uses that for guidance, hence why you can't just jump into the space between star systems.
Where would you draw the line? Red dwarfs? Massive gas giants?
I find it rather unrealistic to have stations sit in wilderness space in the first place. You'd think they'd build them in places that are easy to get to.
I can see the issues being that even if you could choose a star to jump to most people would not choose the right one, so they'd jump in - realise they were at the 'wrong' star, and want to do an intra-system jump to the other star*. Which then begs the question 'why not allow jumps to planets etc' (as you state). In which case you may as well remove SC, and all that gameplay (USS / NHSS / interdiction). It's a lot of change to remove the weekly 'I didn't check where I was going and now I feel sad' thread.
* yes, the game could automagically choose the correct star based on your current missions, but then it's on the road to being an autopilot, and another infinitely scrolling thread opens itself up
They have done this, when they increased the profits to taking mission to these far away stations.
But I do agree that we could need some more incentives to go there, I like the better prices for selling stuff here.
Oh, look, the grandad of ED, who knows nothing of the other person and just assumes it all! How's that armchair? Comfortable? Shall we get off your lawn now? (Unless you were being sarcastic or responding to someone else - in which case... my internet sarcasm detector is clearly needing some fine tuning...)
But, lets see, the fact that the missions display LY distance on the front, but not the system Ls distance as well is already one issue (manually opening each and every mission to check for distance isn't "deep" gameplay). IF the Ls distance was right there on the tin, I'd have less problems with the current mechanics (albeit I'd wager the payouts for these missions should be massively increased as well - if there used to be a gold-rush for these, it's clearly no longer substantial).
And who's saying anything about making the GALAXY unrealistic? A "jump to star" mechanic changes NOTHING about how stars are currently placed around.
Any star, cos why not? All stars are pretty damn massive. Do note that I'm not suggesting breaking up current systems into smaller "star instances" between which you can jump - I'm merely advocating for a fast way to jump between stars in any given system, nothing more, nothing less. You can still trek your way via normal SC if you so desire.
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I still remember those trips from Wolf 562 to Katzenstein Dock!
It was the year 3303, those were the trips that allowed me to access to the Beluga first and to the Anaconda later.
Those were the days!
It was the year 3303, those were the trips that allowed me to access to the Beluga first and to the Anaconda later.
Those were the days!
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+1
You should be an expert on all the Galnet news, by the time you get out there right?
...and know the whole Codex by heart...
There's a problem though, in that you make every station fall within a ~1000Ls of a target star, every single time. Like it or not, the system we have now means Alpha Centauri and 36 Ophuichi are stand out systems (that you can by the way soon recognise on mission boards as you build up local knowledge for yourself) but with your idea, every station in the galaxy would be exactly the same trip, with 99.99% of them being inside your 'acceptable' 1000Ls from arrival. And you think the occasional long haul, because you didn't check station distance is boring??
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Thing is ok yes it takes 15-20 minutes (or 45 if you are going to Hutton) but you know you are still travelling a really vast distance in a relatively short space of time.
Most games have some sort of travelling involved which can sometimes be seen as a bit of a pain in the but it is there to try and make the game more immersive and bring it to life - in this case what it is immersing you in is that at times space trading can be somewhat dull - who knew!
But as other said if you are really against it then just do not pick those missions - although those furtherest from drop out do offer more credits..
Most games have some sort of travelling involved which can sometimes be seen as a bit of a pain in the but it is there to try and make the game more immersive and bring it to life - in this case what it is immersing you in is that at times space trading can be somewhat dull - who knew!
But as other said if you are really against it then just do not pick those missions - although those furtherest from drop out do offer more credits..
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Because the only difference between a star and a planet is its mass. If a planet acquires enough mass, it collapses in on itself and causes nuclear fusion to begin. I haven't been able to find exactly where that limit is, but there is a specific limit.
How do you then justify the FSD being able to lock onto anything that is (for example) three times the mass of Jupiter, but not something that is two times the mass of Jupiter?
~90 minutes if you go straight line & go at 7 (or 6) second 75% throttle, allegedly ~80 minutes if you know how to do it.20 minutes? thats optimistic, i reckon its a 45 minute trek to Hutton.
All mission details* include LY and LS distance so you can check before taking missions - some people don't realise that the mission details are scrollable. Also, you soon realise which destinations not to take - Hutton Orbital anyone? Anyway - caveat emptor
* well, nearly all, but I bet they were there
Though it true the distance to the star is shown, the distance from the star is not. One can get to most any star quickly, and then like going to Hutton, take more than a real time hour or more to get to the station, which in most cases, ironically will be close to a different star.
Easy is a relative term, though.
To get between two stars in a big system takes under 30 minutes in all but the very biggest systems. My commute to work is longer than that, and some of my colleagues have commutes which make Hutton Orbital look close. Solely from an in-universe realism perspective a station which takes 30 minutes to get to is really no big deal ... even without considering that the majority of the station's business may be related to the planet it orbits anyway, so it's much more convenient for it to be near the planet than near the star.
Considered as a game is where the problem is, because most of us don't play Elite Dangerous as a way of replicating the feel of a morning commute.
The station location setup was I think done back before Frontier was talked into using supercruise rather than mini-jumps for in-system travel. You can tell, because if you look at the Pleiades and Colonia, where most of the new systems have been added since, there's a range of distances up to about 4,000 Ls ... a very small number up to about 40,000 Ls (and then only in systems where there isn't a suitable closer location) ... and that's as far as it goes. There's some five-minute supercruises, which is plenty to get a bit of variety and a sense of "this system is big", but no more than that.