Nooo! You can't mess with Hutton! How would we troll newbies?
Increase Supercruise Acceleration and Top Speed to No More than 20 Seconds AFK
- Thread starter DrGrib
- Start date
Nooo! You can't mess with Hutton! How would we troll newbies?
I don't know, i think there might be a case to be made for smaller ships having faster SC speeds. Make it a trade off between speed vs profit.
I have zero issue with SC travel times, but a big problem with how passive SC travel is. I preferred it when the effect of gravity was stronger and maneuvering in SC more relevant.
Agree that interaction and effects of gravity wells should be made more pronounced in the game as it’s a genuinely interesting component, and very much agree that SC is too passive. The top speed cap might be increased simply to take the edge off the long ‘do nothing’ journeys, but it would be great to have more piloting activity during SC.
And will cause you to face plant into every star at every hyperspace jump, zoom past station at several hundred C because you will have no way to accurately control your speed to a point where you can make a safe approach, crash out every time you attempt to land on a planet or moon. The effects of gravity is actually the only thing that makes manually flying around a solar system possible, reducing or removing it will cause serious problems for most players and destroy a lot of game play, basically SCA will become compulsory in system.
Already exists, the multiple light blue circles you see around bodies are a visual representation of gravity wells.
This has been broached on many occasions, including by me (I think) twice, albeit with different parameters.
I'd like to say that Acceleration being capped to 20 seconds really feels like an arbitrary figure... which we have too many of already in ED.
Though,
: Increasing acceleration variable from ship to ship would be a good thing, where the smaller ships would out accelerate the bigger more cumbersome vessels.
Adding,
: Retro (Deceleration) should also be included, at a 'normally' and nominally reduced rate. This would allow and encourage interdictions by smaller vessels for piracy and such like.
: No time cap on acceleration as long as fuel permits the ship should continue to accelerate. (bear in mind though interstellar travel needs to be loaded via the jump tunnel loading screen)
: When flipping the throttle to 'zero' the ship should continue to travel at set speed as something in space would, slowing would be through retro thrusters or turning the ship 180 and thrusting .
This last point would add the ability for the player to play her/his own little games of 'guess when' 'how fast' and 'can I do it backwards' among others, to keep her/him amused throughout cruisespace journeys without (embarrassingly for ED) watching netflix/youtube
True but it feels like there could be more info presented (or more 'gamified' uses), such as breaking the gravity well into 'bands' etc, making it easier to line up a 'clipping' run, or chose a fuller blown braking contact, depending on circumstances. (See the mock ups in my sig)
Don't know if it's been mentioned but the distance between the circle around the body and the body itself gives an indication of the strength of the gravity well (bigger the distance the weaker the gravity). The audio also gives clues. A big part of Buckyball Racing is gauging the gravity braking effect on station approach and after a while you kinda just get a "feel" for how close you need to cut it and how much braking effect you can expect.
I'll speak a little of space flight concept as scientist currently approach:
The ideal speed for a spaceship to fly is, of course, based on the gravity of earth, where our biological functions work best. It's the 9,8m/s acceleration, and under which human could travel for a long time in optimal conditions. Without any kind of attrition, this 1g acceleration would allow spaceships to reach high speeds until the limit of their engines' power (probably ion engines with energy collected from stars with huge sails)
I won't talk about super-cruise, because it requires technological advancements that are too much far beyond current tech.
Gravity wells can alter the speed and 1G acceleration. When approaching a gravity well, engines don't need so much power to keep 1G, or, if they keep power, acceleration will increase. When leave a gravity well, engines will need to push more to maintain 1G acceleration.
The space navigation basis is using gravity wells to slingshot a spaceship's speed, and reduce as much as possible the energy expended.
This 1G concept, of course, cannot be applied to a game, since flying from Earth to Jupiter would take around 4 days.
BUT, ED could use a similar approach, with a G factor modifier to speed up things, and instead of basing all the ships' super-cruise in the same speed/gravity-well map concept, they could spice things up by giving different performances to each kind of ship in super-cruise, and making engine power/G management a more active thing for player to do.
And so, the approach to higher accelerations with temporary boosts, using planets and stars to slingshot away, and even using in-system nebulas and anomalies to enhance the player's capability of faster super-cruise. Even extra modules for higher super-cruise G would be a welcome addition.
Interceptors could be devilish machines with super-cruise enhancers, lurking in a neraby nebula with modified sensors to detect in.transit ships under static interference that rendered normal sensors numb.
There's A LOT that could still be done to make Super-cruise in ED fun!
The ideal speed for a spaceship to fly is, of course, based on the gravity of earth, where our biological functions work best. It's the 9,8m/s acceleration, and under which human could travel for a long time in optimal conditions. Without any kind of attrition, this 1g acceleration would allow spaceships to reach high speeds until the limit of their engines' power (probably ion engines with energy collected from stars with huge sails)
I won't talk about super-cruise, because it requires technological advancements that are too much far beyond current tech.
Gravity wells can alter the speed and 1G acceleration. When approaching a gravity well, engines don't need so much power to keep 1G, or, if they keep power, acceleration will increase. When leave a gravity well, engines will need to push more to maintain 1G acceleration.
The space navigation basis is using gravity wells to slingshot a spaceship's speed, and reduce as much as possible the energy expended.
This 1G concept, of course, cannot be applied to a game, since flying from Earth to Jupiter would take around 4 days.
BUT, ED could use a similar approach, with a G factor modifier to speed up things, and instead of basing all the ships' super-cruise in the same speed/gravity-well map concept, they could spice things up by giving different performances to each kind of ship in super-cruise, and making engine power/G management a more active thing for player to do.
And so, the approach to higher accelerations with temporary boosts, using planets and stars to slingshot away, and even using in-system nebulas and anomalies to enhance the player's capability of faster super-cruise. Even extra modules for higher super-cruise G would be a welcome addition.
Interceptors could be devilish machines with super-cruise enhancers, lurking in a neraby nebula with modified sensors to detect in.transit ships under static interference that rendered normal sensors numb.
There's A LOT that could still be done to make Super-cruise in ED fun!
Check the link in my signature, where I'd recently sugested gravity slingshots in supercruise, it'd be great to hear your thoughts on my suggested implementation of slingshots.
That's what Supercruise Assist is for.
At least there will be a use for it. Not like now.... completely useless.
Win-win
No. The circles around planet denote the boundaries for Orbital cruise, and the point where you engage glide for re-entry.
They do not show the boundary where the planet's gravity actually affects your FSD.
I'm going to guess varonica meant the representation of planets on the scanner, with their depiction of a gravity well being marked with concentric but vertically descending blue circles around the planet, rather than the "perimeter" markings on the hud, whcih are typically blue and yellow.
Whilst I don't agree (mostly) about shortening distances/time spent in-system, since it's a game, I think there could be some things dones to mix it up, or just give the gamer a little variety.
Perhaps:
As others have said; choose the star to jump to (primary is fine, but it wouldn't be game breaking to do otherwise)
Have other transport methods such as wormholes, different drive technologies (as are discussed in game lore and prior Elite games like Military drives)
Other methods of acceleration; like the difference Neutrons and White Dwarfs give us in terms of jump distance, maybe sling-shotting around stars or gas giants could do the same in mass-locked/gravity well areas
Experimental systems; gates or other sci-fi systems that are completely fictional (jump gates, drives that can cause real miss-jumps - gone mostly in ED, but certainly there in prior lore and games)
and so on. As I said at the start, it's a game, so there'd be ways of doing a lot of the above with lots of risk/reward-style gameplay without breaking anything AND giving everyone a chance of using them (wormholes for example) and just reinforcing the "never fly without a rebuy" mantra.
I'd love to be on a mission and then suddenly hit a (mapped as I hit it) phenomena that causes lights to go out (as we have in lagrange clouds, mining explosions, thargoids etc), light damage and an unexpected jump to parts unknown. Oooh yeah! (and loads would hate it, I know!)
Perhaps:
As others have said; choose the star to jump to (primary is fine, but it wouldn't be game breaking to do otherwise)
Have other transport methods such as wormholes, different drive technologies (as are discussed in game lore and prior Elite games like Military drives)
Other methods of acceleration; like the difference Neutrons and White Dwarfs give us in terms of jump distance, maybe sling-shotting around stars or gas giants could do the same in mass-locked/gravity well areas
Experimental systems; gates or other sci-fi systems that are completely fictional (jump gates, drives that can cause real miss-jumps - gone mostly in ED, but certainly there in prior lore and games)
and so on. As I said at the start, it's a game, so there'd be ways of doing a lot of the above with lots of risk/reward-style gameplay without breaking anything AND giving everyone a chance of using them (wormholes for example) and just reinforcing the "never fly without a rebuy" mantra.
I'd love to be on a mission and then suddenly hit a (mapped as I hit it) phenomena that causes lights to go out (as we have in lagrange clouds, mining explosions, thargoids etc), light damage and an unexpected jump to parts unknown. Oooh yeah! (and loads would hate it, I know!)
You getting your head handed to you can be fixed. Get better at combat. Engineer your ship. Buy another ship. Stop taking those missions if you suck at combat. Having a massacre mission show up 300,000 Ls away cannot be fixed. Blackbox mission: 20,000 Ls. Recover artwork: 100,000 Ls. The one I hate the most: you decide to go ahead and go to Hutton. You get there and the mission board is full of assassination missions you want to do, but that means you'd have to come back.
I'm not sure if the "20 second max AFK" is too extreme or not, but I do wish it were more like combat. I didn't enjoy fighting in a sidewinder. I did enjoy fighting in a Cobra. The more fighting I did, the more fun I had. I felt I was getting better and there was an obvious progression when upgrading the ship. That's not an "easy button" or "short cut".
I don't enjoy flying 5,000 Ls in a sidewinder, Asp, Krait or any other ship. Let me buy a module to fix that. Add a game mechanic so as I improve, I can shrink that wasted 10 minute screensaver to 60 seconds.
Whenever this topic comes up, someone wants to talk about how much faster it is if you don't take a straight line. It's similar to someone saying how it only takes an hour to get to Colonia. You're just taking unacceptably slow and changing it to unbearably slow.
Every system caters to people who "love the long travel time". Throttle down to your heart's content.
I have a corvette that can melt any NPC. There's not much effort required. I don't have terribly strong shields, but they're not getting through my shields before I can kill them. I do a ton of assassination missions in a python built for trading instead of the corvette. I lose shields all the time. I often have to boost away and stall while hoping the cops come help. It's much more difficult, but I enjoy fighting in the python more than fighting in the corvette.
If you truly enjoy the "long travel time", throttle down to 30km/s and go to hutton. Think about how big space would feel then.
No, when approaching a group of large bodies from a long distance away, sometimes even from system entry point, you will see large light blue blue circles around them, nothing to do with the scanner. As you approach the body these circles will pass you by and more will appear. Very small bodies don't have these circles at all, they don't have enough gravity to affect a ship even a small distance away, but large bodies will have a number of them indicating increasing gravitational effect. To get the best gravity braking you need to be inside the closest light blue circle but outside the dark blue orbital cruise circle, it's a fine line sometimes and it's easy to cross, practice helps.
I understand exactly what the circles represent, having landed on thousands of planets since horizons dropped.
And why this is not possible has already been explained. A slingshot is used to increase speed by accelerating your ship using gravity as an assist, but gravity wells in SC cause the max top speed to drop, thus slowing you down, so the best way to maintain top speed is to avoid dropping into gravity wells.
No the OC line is dark blue and that denotes the Orbital Cruise Boundary, the point where you engage glide is a yellow circle. As explained above the gravity indicators are light blue circles of consecutively smaller sizes you will pass by when approaching larger bodies, large gas giants can have more than half a dozen of them. I have landed on thousands of planets large and small so I certainly know what the lines mean, but if you have only ever landed or approached smaller bodies the significance of the light blue lines may have escaped you. You use these lines to help avoid gravity wells when traveling around in systems.
Here is a handy image depicting them, as you can see they are much further from the bodies than the dark blue OC line. To be honest I am surprised that this needed explaining, however I must admit to still being occasionally surprised by things in ED I either never knew to start with or had forgotten about altogether.
Source: https://imgur.com/BIilrXI
Do not confuse these with orbit lines of moons, orbit lines of moons are yellow, these are light blue.
Ah yes, I've noticed this when approaching a planet. But what is the point of that if you're already going to enter the gravity well?
What I'm suggesting is having an option to toggle more onscreen information. Grav wells of planets can be depicted as translucent spherical nebulae around any planet or even star, ending exactly where its gravity does not affect SC anymore.
A player navigating in SC can then use this to steer completely clear of the grav sphere of influence.
This in addition to either greatly reduced effects of grav on SC, or, higher top speeds when outside the pull of grav, would greatly reduce SC travelling time in the boringverse.
Sorry, I have already posted both these things on this thread but I will repeat them for your benefit. To decrease travel time in systems you plan your route to avoid entering gravity wells, this can make a huge difference in travel times. To reduce approach time to stations and bodies you use gravity as a method of breaking, this can cut your final approach time, that is the time when you are sitting at 75% throttle and the counter sits at 6 seconds, by up to 20 seconds.
Apart from all that, someone a few posts ago asked for a visual indicator for gravity wells to be shown on the HUD and I was just explaining it was already there but most people just didn't realise what they were them;
So what the point is, someone asked, I replied, is that a problem?
Gravity is universal, there is no system or body you can fly to or between where gravity doesn't still have an effect, even the Hutton Orbital the run doesn't allow you to get far enough away from either star to achieve top speed of 2001c. To reach 2001c you essentially have to point towards emptiness and sit there for the better part of half an hour. I believe halfway between the two stars in the way to Hutton Orbital you will reach slowly around 1895c, I am not sure of the exact number, at that point it start decreasing as you have passed the roughly halfway mark and are now flying into a gravity well rather than away from one.
It's interesting in this regard that the game matches as close as possible to reality, the gravity field of every particle in the universe extends to the far side of the universe, in ED as with the real universe there is no gravitational sphere around bodies and stars where gravity suddenly stops affecting ships in SC.
You may consider it boring, others consider it modeling the real galaxy as closely as possible. You can never steer completely clear of the gravitational sphere of influence of any body in the system you are in.
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