Which is what ED is in Supercruise. A long empty stretch of road in the middle of nowhere where you basically do nothing but go flat out.
Cue the Hutton Run.
Unproductive.
proposal for alternative SC mechanic
- Thread starter Turd Ferguson
- Start date
Which is what ED is in Supercruise. A long empty stretch of road in the middle of nowhere where you basically do nothing but go flat out.
Cue the Hutton Run.
Unproductive.
I agree completely. IMO FD agrees, too, this is partly why FSS was introduced and we don't need to fly to secondary stars as explorers any more.
I'd still love to see the travel time reduced, I'd definitely visit more stuff.
And as has been pointed out numerous times, long SC times on the whole are avoidable.
The extreme long SC journeys such as the Hutton Run are exceptional edge cases, and far from being the norm.
It seems to me that the problem with threads like this complaining about SC times is equivalent to people deliberately and purposefully banging their head against a wall with no reason and an option to stop then complaining that their head hurts.
Except to do what I would consider proper exploring - or to engage in that stupid and pathetic space-golf mini-game FD decided to introduce.
What I would call the FSS is NSFW.
Not really. It's just people trying to question why certain mechanics make no sense. Or why FD wants to put up artificial barriers in the name of timesink or tedium.
Forget SC for a moment. Let's talk about Hutton. We leave supercruise as is.
Now let's propose allowing direct jumps to secondary stars instead, but only from outside the system, not within.
I think that sounds pretty plausible and realistic, right?
I can target Star A from where I am. Surely I could target Star B too?
Not necessarily, a system in general has 1 single stationary point and that is the primary star - therefore there is only one point that can be logically targeted.
As stated before - a system with multiple stars is not multiple solar systems, it is one solar system with nested orbital path ways.
It is not illogical nor artificial in essence - it is based on an accepted scientific model and makes perfect sense.
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All objects in space are in motion. That stationary point you mentioned is simply relative to the primary star.
The secondary star could also be a reference point.
If you are at Sol looking at Sirius, you could target Sirius B the same way you target Sirius A. You could jump to either star if you had a working jump drive like the one in this game. Both stars have mass, more so than the planets and minor bodies within the system. They're also separate and distinct objects in space. Both are targetable.
It is an artificial restriction. There are many systems that has both the primary and secondary star more massive than Sirius.
So if I can target Sirius, it should logically mean I can target the other secondary star.
No need to try to argue via coming up with science or pseudo science to justify why jumping to a secondary star cannot be done.
I can understand your motivation to defend this. You just want space to feel big via long travel times, that's the only way you know.
This is an artificial gameplay mechanic designed to make players use up more time to travel in SC.
It is also why you cannot Supercruise to another system that is close enough, like the example of two systems less than a LY apart.
Let's just call a spade a spade. Artificial mechanics.
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It’s an in-game limitation that Fdev can change if they wanted.
We already know all the secondary stars in a system before we jump into it - the info is available on the Galaxy Map, even for unexplored systems.
So, if you try to limit a game that is set 1000 years in the future with present-day scientific observational limitations, you are only showing your limited thinking.
Also, super cruise is boring. It is - you pretty much said so yourself when you made the analogy with the long boring road journey. Why do we want a game to be boring? Why not make super cruise more engaging somehow?
I seriously just do not understand why a small group people prefer a boring game. And you, @rlsg have been so focused on trying to rationalise a fictional game’s mechanics with current scientific theories and limitations that you have failed to explain why you want to super cruise to continue to be a boring game mechanic.
Why are you so opposed to making it more engaging? No scientific rationalisations, no scientific theories - just a straight explanation as to why you enjoy staring at your screen doing nothing on long super cruise journeys.
Not entirely true...
I believe this has been already covered... Personally, it is quite rare that I find myself doing absolutely nothing in-game while in Super-Cruise. Most of the time I am monitoring speed/ETA, and managing throttle. The only true exceptions to this are rare and infrequent - the Hutton Run for example which I would still keep attentive during the journey but might have music on in the background.
Regardless, the point is that super cruise journeys in the main are anything but do nothing activities and the exceptions are quite rare.
Monitoring Speed and ETA and managing throttle? Come on....
You just keep it maxxed out till 7 secs. That's virtually doing nothing until the end.
If it's a long journey, you basically do nothing until the last minute or so.
But you still have to waste time by keeping an eye on the timer. So basically the game doesn't need your attention... and at the same time demands that you monitor it and can't really do anything else.
Unproductive time sink
Complete disrespect for a player's time.
That's why the options are either.
- Increase SC accel/decel regardless of gravity well effects
- Allow direct jumps to secondary stars
- Or just implement a full on autopilot that completely does the jumping, maneuvering, accel / decel, and drop from SC, including auto docking.
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Entirely true, actually.
It’s only your own personal obsession with attempting to maintain some internal consistency with the game’s mechanics by attempting to equate them to some patchy science that makes you believe that some things in the game can’t be changed.
In the real world, FDev can change any aspect of the game if they wanted.
So you’re idea of engaging gameplay is staring at a countdown until it gets to 7 seconds and then reducing throttle to the blue zone.
And that’s it?
It sounds riveting! I can’t wait to play it!
Wow! So to stave off boredom from those long super cruise journeys, you sometimes turn on some music?
It sounds riveting! I can’t wait to play it!
Super cruise journeys in the main are anything but engaging, especially once you’re out of the bubble, and the exceptions are quite rare.
I'm probably going to repeat essentially what I've written in every other SC thread I've replied to but, here goes...
First off - I do like Supercruise. I like the idea of it. I like the way it's realised in game, and it works nicely in game ... to a point. It's fine for shorter journeys, but as a game mechanic it breaks on long journeys, and it breaks really horribly.
Yeah, it's awesome having the full scale galaxy and it's cool that ED has so much consideration for real science among the sci-fi, but it is still a game and from the day I started playing it I've never understood why a games developer would create and retain a mechanic which is that broken for so long. It staggers me that any game dev is happy to have players sitting in front of the screen doing absolutely nothing (except watch a timer) for what can be literally an hour or more in some circumstances. That warps my tiny little mind!
I'd like to see FDev introduce some sort of improvements to SC especially for those long journeys, maybe a module or upgrade that calculates the most efficient gravitational route to your destination and superimposes HUD graphics to guide you, that would at least give pilots something to do. I think it would have to allow a significant saving on travel time for people to bother using it though, and I don't know how you fix those really long journeys because once you get outside planetary orbits and you're flying through space between distant stars there are no intervening gravity wells to avoid. I suspect the obvious solution for crossing those vast empty bits between distant stars (or annoyingly remote truck-stops) is some sort of mini-jump, or booster 'gates' of some sort, but I'm sure that's 'can-opened-worms-everywhere' territory.
How do I get round the Supercruise problem currently? I just avoid long journeys, simple as that - but I wish I didn't have to.
First off - I do like Supercruise. I like the idea of it. I like the way it's realised in game, and it works nicely in game ... to a point. It's fine for shorter journeys, but as a game mechanic it breaks on long journeys, and it breaks really horribly.
Yeah, it's awesome having the full scale galaxy and it's cool that ED has so much consideration for real science among the sci-fi, but it is still a game and from the day I started playing it I've never understood why a games developer would create and retain a mechanic which is that broken for so long. It staggers me that any game dev is happy to have players sitting in front of the screen doing absolutely nothing (except watch a timer) for what can be literally an hour or more in some circumstances. That warps my tiny little mind!
I'd like to see FDev introduce some sort of improvements to SC especially for those long journeys, maybe a module or upgrade that calculates the most efficient gravitational route to your destination and superimposes HUD graphics to guide you, that would at least give pilots something to do. I think it would have to allow a significant saving on travel time for people to bother using it though, and I don't know how you fix those really long journeys because once you get outside planetary orbits and you're flying through space between distant stars there are no intervening gravity wells to avoid. I suspect the obvious solution for crossing those vast empty bits between distant stars (or annoyingly remote truck-stops) is some sort of mini-jump, or booster 'gates' of some sort, but I'm sure that's 'can-opened-worms-everywhere' territory.
How do I get round the Supercruise problem currently? I just avoid long journeys, simple as that - but I wish I didn't have to.
That's not really a satisfactory answer when you're discussing a Community Goal that features them, especially one that's a competition between major factions. Alliance Cmdrs could indeed avoid the CG. But they'd be perfectly justified in being annoyed at not being able to take part.
Hello good sir, I opened a can of worms on that subject that tries to tackle some of those issues. (Click my sig image to have a look).
The idea would be:
- To contract the empty middle space, but still have a degree of duration to that section (+ flight skill & damage risk in the process).
- Outliers such as Hutton would still take a degree of time to traverse, and risk & skill challenges due to that duration.
- It would be a 'big box to big box' system, meaning SC would still be a valid mechanic at both ends of the journey.
- (It would ideally add a new piracy / tracking / interception meta on top of the existing interdiction one)
Then the fault is with FD setting the CG/II up like that in the first place - there have been cases where CGs have been done in one location for the benefit of another location and that could be (or have been) done in such cases too.
You can dispute it as much as you like, but it does not change the truth of the matter. As for maxxing out till X seconds, that is a choice you could make but not necessarily the most optimal one.
Not quite, they are not targetable/visible from the Galaxy map, only from the relevant system map. That is because they are not stationary points in galactic core reference terms.
The way FD have modelled the galaxy the system positioning seems to be static relative to the galactic core, while objects with-in any given system are in motion relative to the single galactic core relative static point - the primary star(s) notionally which are used as the entry point for that system.
Indeed, but it's suggestive of the underlying issue, and telling that the only stop-gap solution they could find was lowering the tier requirements for the Alliance.
The game throws up these issues. If even the devs struggle to find satisfactory work-arounds then the issue needs addressing at a more fundamental level...
Well if the problem was picked up after the CG was created, then the stop-gap of reducing the requirements for the Alliance is the most obvious path of least resistance and probably required the least amount of effort.
The only underlying issue this kind of situation is suggestive of is that FD as a team fail to properly consider the implications of changes before they implement them. Normally, such a failure on their part would not be a "big thing" but as was illustrated with the 3.3 exploration changes there are cases which do go beyond reasonable acceptance.
The fundamental problem in cases like CGs is that FD need to properly assess the situation before implementation/release. Changing related mechanics would not fix the underlying issue.