So... Whatever happened to traffic control?

[Aashenfox]

Yes actually. Your problem will less be the station and more the swarm of fighters patrolling outside, but if even npc pirates can make a getaway about 80% of the time, im sure a player could come out unscathed.

I don't grief, but that sounds like an epic grief...line up a lightweight cutter at the back of the statoin, wait for an unsuspecting sidewinder to nonchalently bowl through the slot, boost through them, blowing them up as if they weren't even there and just keep going at full speed!!

That's two things to try tonight (the latter will be tested ona squadron member victim, but I won't tell them what I'm doing, I'll just tell them I want to meet them at X station, hilarity will ensue. "Oh, sorry my bad!"

 

[IndigoWyrd]

With the government in shut down and none of them getting paid, they’re just playing cards these days!

 

[Vasco Sapien]

My fav traffic control chatter is... " the road ahead is clear commander...."

i lift off and several fat beluga are squeezing through the door....

 

[Sentenza]

I noticed there is a traffic pattern - look at multiple NPCs taking off, they are queuing. ATC just don't like us humans.

 

[IndigoWyrd]

“Make way for larger vessels.” As I’m pulling out with a Belgua, wondering what idiot is going to try to jam a Farragut or Interdictor through the mail slot.

 

[DeathFish]

Horns in space

One of these days I'm going to do a video of only crazy takeoffs and landings, each one punctuated with teh song you see on all the GTA fail videos.

Move, BI***! GET OUT THE WAY! Get out the way bi***, GET OUT THE WAY!

P.S. we need horns. Really loud ones. Or we should be able to use the honk.

My vote is for twin klaxons. So what if they make no noise in space? Elite tramples all ovr physics as it is - after even a short faster than light hop, you would come back in the old age of the people who gave you a contract as youngsters, so since Frontier have fixed that, they can easily fix us hearing noise. Come to think of it, isn’t there a sound when security buzz you at close range, or have I drunk too much Lavian brandy again?

 

[Rat Catcher]

If the horns were electromagnetic spectrum 'handwavium' it wouldn't be sound waves travelling but the hulls of nearby ships resonating to the signal Thus making an audible 'horn' inside the ships.

 

[insanephoton]

"Continue on this vector" - just as I'm about to make a very necessary course change

 

[aRJay]

1. I will watch those videos.
2. Probably, depends on the ship and how much you've engineered it for speed (or just defence it the hell up).
3. Horns? In space?

They would work inside the slot, there is air inside station docks.

 

[Deleted member 38366]

Traffic Control? Real ATC?

Hehe, no we can't have that. The ability and knowledge how to coordinate Traffic around a busy place got lost somewhere in the 21st Century.
All those perfectly working Traffic Deconfliction procedures, approach & departure procedures... All gone.

Welcome to the world of unregulated aviation from the year 1912. In Space. In 3305. See & Avoid like 2400 years ago, before the first VFR procedures were even invented.

ATC: "You're on course CMDR, continue on current Vector"
Me : "Wilco, maintaining" ... 15 sec later ... "ATC, there's a Station Wall on my nose, 50, all Engines stop. Requesting new Vector...... ATC?..... ATC, do you read?? Radio Check ???"

ATC: "Attention CMDR, reckless flying will not be tolerated! Fly safely!"
Me : "Roger ATC - tell that to the oblivious NPC behind me that just tried to fly straight through my stationary Ship."

ATC: "Attention, heavy traffic in this Sector"
Me : "*ehm* roger ATC.... I'm clean & NoJoy, no traffic in sight. Confirm position of mentioned traffic? .... ATC ???"

Station Announcer : "Make way for larger traffic"
Me : Well this ought to be good , I'm the largest Traffic around. But why are those two Sideys and that Cobra NPC not adhering to that rule?

 

[Spacecat]

Haha, when can I play as an ATC?

 

[CMDR Eryn Liamson]

One of these days I'm going to do a video of only crazy takeoffs and landings, each one punctuated with teh song you see on all the GTA fail videos.

Move, BI***! GET OUT THE WAY! Get out the way bi***, GET OUT THE WAY!

Enjoy

 

[V'larr]

There is certainly much space for improvement with Elite's traffic control. Literally speaking, in many cases.

 

[Feros-da-Grundig]

The fact they chose to have a single slot instead of two makes the idea of effective traffic control in ED seem outlandish. Ideally large stations would have entry & exit on opposite sides aligned along the center rotational axis for single direction traffic (like a car wash). At the least they could have a pair of separate entry and exit slots on the same side (like many parking garages or drive-thru). Having just one slot was a poor design choice.

What would be more useful than additional NPC comms traffic control chatter would be allowing you to check your scanner for hollows from the pad before launch. While I know the conventional wisdom is "safe below 100" the only time I've come close to being station griefed was in my courier rammed by one of a pair of condas. Luckily it was a tanky courier at "only" 780m/s, so I just lost a ring or two and boosted out of the slot. If I had tried to keep it below 100 I might well have been rammed to death. It's quite possible (albeit risky) for a big 3 ship to ram-kill a small or damaged ship and escape alive from an aggro station (probably super easy if a pair of healies).

Being able to check the scanner for nearby hollows in motion would alert one to the possibility and vector of this sort of attack, as well as the variant that suicides against your ship to aggro the station into killing you.

The fact that on launch you are initially presented the pad alignment view in HUD, instead of scanner, exacerbates the problem.

(Nearby lurking hollows could also indicate pirates floating around to manifest scan docked ships. But ignore those guys, they're definitely not going to follow your wake and jack your CG cargo one system over. No-sir-ee-bob.)

 

[Tarman]

The fact they chose to have a single slot instead of two makes the idea of effective traffic control in ED seem outlandish. Ideally large stations would have entry & exit on opposite sides aligned along the center rotational axis for single direction traffic (like a car wash). At the least they could have a pair of separate entry and exit slots on the same side (like many parking garages or drive-thru). Having just one slot was a poor design choice.

What would be more useful than additional NPC comms traffic control chatter would be allowing you to check your scanner for hollows from the pad before launch. While I know the conventional wisdom is "safe below 100" the only time I've come close to being station griefed was in my courier rammed by one of a pair of condas. Luckily it was a tanky courier at "only" 780m/s, so I just lost a ring or two and boosted out of the slot. If I had tried to keep it below 100 I might well have been rammed to death. It's quite possible (albeit risky) for a big 3 ship to ram-kill a small or damaged ship and escape alive from an aggro station (probably super easy if a pair of healies).

Being able to check the scanner for nearby hollows in motion would alert one to the possibility and vector of this sort of attack, as well as the variant that suicides against your ship to aggro the station into killing you.

The fact that on launch you are initially presented the pad alignment view in HUD, instead of scanner, exacerbates the problem.

(Nearby lurking hollows could also indicate pirates floating around to manifest scan docked ships. But ignore those guys, they're definitely not going to follow your wake and jack your CG cargo one system over. No-sir-ee-bob.)

If there was a thru-slot, people would just boomtube it all the time. Bombing runs with mines also seems like it'd be a thing, for example. We'd have a different traffic paradigm, but it wouldn't be improved per se.

 

[Feros-da-Grundig]

If there was a thru-slot, people would just boomtube it all the time. Bombing runs with mines also seems like it'd be a thing, for example. We'd have a different traffic paradigm, but it wouldn't be improved per se.

What's stopping any of that now?

Request dock, boost directly towards slot with perfect alignment, fa-off 180, enter backwards, about 1/2 (varies by drift of ship) of the way into station boost again to rapidly exit. Laying mines on the way out optional but not required ("solved" via PDT behavior for station). Or some variant of this.

Of course someone would figure out a way to grief it but that's going to happen regardless in this game, and an efficient station design would not be inherently more vulnerable (probably the opposite).

It would absolutely 100% be a more efficient traffic flow, and reduce the stupid jam ups when large NPC are going the opposite way as you through the slot (still could get stuck behind a slow one though).

Ships flying "properly" would have less chance of fender benders and confusion, and clueless/malicious pilots would be immediately obvious if pointed the wrong way.

The current slot choice is just an inefficient and error prone design. Any reasonably sized current day parking lot/garage has separate entrance/exit for pretty much the exact same reasons. I'm not well versed in avation but suspect takeoff/landing runways are one way only as well.

 

[S3B4ST13N]

If there was a thru-slot, people would just boomtube it all the time. Bombing runs with mines also seems like it'd be a thing, for example. We'd have a different traffic paradigm, but it wouldn't be improved per se.

"Attention HTV-01, you have entered a speed restriction zone. For your own safety, and ours, your COVAS unit will adjust your maximum speed and disable boosting. Thank you for your visit and please, enjoy your stay."

We know it would happen in a real world scenario because humans can't be trusted to be adults. We would "boomtube" all the time; so governments would make it illegal to not have COVAS (as it is now), and would then install an override in COVAS to prevent us from speeding/boosting.

Whilst I personally don't mind that, as it would feel more realistic to me, I know it would infuriate a lot of players who are very time-sensitive and like to be able to decide how fast they're going - it would, however, make for a much better traffic flow I believe.

A thru-slot would also make more sense from an design perspective; not only for traffic flow, but for safety purposes as well. A single entrance/exit is just ... mind-blowingly daft when it comes to safety. Unfortunately Frontier didn't want to deviate too much from the original (which is a pity since a lot can change in over a century.. just not in the Elite universe it seems), so they had to stay with the one-slot design.

 

[Jimmox72]

we need horns. Really loud ones.

And obnoxious, too!

New in the Frontier Store - 70's-style polyphonic car horns up to 15 notes long! Hot picks include:

• Blood upon the Risers
• Rule Britannia
• Hitler has only got one...
• Entry of the Gladiators

Get yours now!

 

[sorcer3r]

it is just a game.

If in real life Airbus and Boeing had shields and were indestructible, pilots would ignore atc most of the time

 

[umbabrahattasil]

But you're cool with noisy weapons fire, engines, etc?

Actually, if I really wanted to be pedantic I'd point out that there is atmosphere inside the stations, so as long as your nose was in the mailslot, it should work fine. I'm definitely going to try honking inside a station tonight. lol

EDIT: OH NO!!! You need to be in supercruise to honk nao! Why FD, WHY!?!? Won't someone think of the <insert your vulnerable group of choice here>!!!

Actually, JManis recently explained how to honk outside of Supercruise/FSS to someone who was wondering how they're supposed to trigger a Thargoid Probe these days. Only problem is I'm having trouble finding the post.

It was in keybindings, though. I believe it was something along the lines of assigning the ADS to a fire group and assigning it to a fire button - this is separate from Enter/Exit FSS. If only I could remember the exact instructions - but I bet if you PM him he'll let you know.