Lore-Friendly Faster Supercruise Is Now Possible?

[SciTrekker]

Invisible structures generated by gravitational interactions in the Solar System have created a "space superhighway" network, astronomers have discovered. ScienceAlert reports:By applying analyses to both observational and simulation data, a team of researchers led by Natasa Todorovic of Belgrade Astronomical Observatory in Serbia observed that these superhighways consist of a series of connected arches inside these invisible structures, called space manifolds -- and each planet generates its own manifolds, together creating what the researchers have called "a true celestial autobahn." This network can transport objects from Jupiter to Neptune in a matter of decades, rather than the much longer timescales, on the order of hundreds of thousands to millions of years, normally found in the Solar System.

Finding hidden structures in space isn't always easy, but looking at the way things move around can provide helpful clues. In particular, comets and asteroids. [...] "More detailed quantitative studies of the discovered phase-space structures ... could provide deeper insight into the transport between the two belts of minor bodies and the terrestrial planet region," the researchers wrote in their paper. "Combining observations, theory, and simulation will improve our current understanding of this short-term mechanism acting on the TNO, Centaur, comet, and asteroid populations and merge this knowledge with the traditional picture of the long-term chaotic diffusion through orbital resonances; a formidable task for the large range of energies considered."The research has been published in Science Advances.

Source: Astronomers Discover Cosmic 'Superhighways' For Fast Travel Through the Solar System

 

[Bryan K]

I love that they’re calling it a “space manifold”. All we need is to convince a Ph.D out there to slip in the sub- prefix and it’s full Star Trek. Then I can be happy.

 

[Zieman]

This network can transport objects from Jupiter to Neptune in a matter of decades

They're called "rockets", and "slingshot manoeuvres".

 

[Arioch]

They're called "rockets", and "slingshot manoeuvres".

That’s what I was thinking while reading the article - “isn’t this what the Voyager probes did during the Grand Tour?”

Modelling the gravity interactions between everything in the Solar System must’ve been a complex task, but knowing that gravity assist trajectories exist isn’t exactly new science.

I’m not sure how it could be handwaved into SuperCruise tech though, the timescales are slightly too long in my view

 

[SciTrekker]

I’m not sure how it could be handwaved into SuperCruise tech though, the timescales are slightly too long in my view

Give it a couple thousand years to be perfected.

 

[Arioch]

Give it a couple thousand years to be perfected.

Ah, but SuperCruise tech is a fairly recent thing in Elite lore (FSD introduced in 3297) - the previous game had sub-light system transits lasting days/weeks.

Could be fun to introduce GoFaster shipping lanes though

 

[pnellesen]

the timescales are slightly too long in my view

Subjectively, it can FEEL like "decades"

 

[WR3ND]

Gravitational acceleration is very much insignificant in comparison to what we do in supercruise. Gravitational wells on the other hand do slow down the speeds and supercruise acceleration rates quite significantly for... reasons. Game-play-wise, it's so we don't overshoot our targets and so we don't go too slow out in the middle of nowhere. Max speed is 2,001c and acceleration is quite fast out in the middle of nowhere too. It's pretty hard to get near a target.

Not sure what game-play would be apt to speed things up in-system to get somewhere, assuming that is desirable in the first place, of course.

They could just tweak the rates a bit overall if they wanted to speed things up. Maybe they leave them lower for interdictions and similar.

 

[Arioch]

Subjectively, it can FEEL like "decades"

SuperCruise or doing a plank are both guaranteed ways to slow down time

 

[WR3ND]

Never mind. Was mostly just being redundant with this post.

Cheers.

 

[Muetdhiver]

I really wish FDev did the following regarding FSD and supercruise :

1) Allow to disable the FSD safeties, so that one may exceed the "local" max speed in exchange of FSD damage
2) Allow the use of the interdictor on planet and moons to perform tight change of directions (the grav tether acting like a rope), with an interface like the surface scanner in exploration.

That would be amazeballs.

Ah, and while we're at it, it would be neat if one could do the FSS and surface scan while moving in SC.

 

[Mizbehave]

Ah, and while we're at it, it would be neat if one could do the FSS and surface scan while moving in SC.

You can definitely do the mapping while moving in SC - Supercruise Assist will hold you in orbit around the planet while you launch probes

It would be nice if they introduced a slingshot mechanism - you could use it for fuel scooping and scooping from gas giants

 

[JesusRocks1988]

Invisible structures generated by gravitational interactions in the Solar System have created a "space superhighway" network, astronomers have discovered. ScienceAlert reports:By applying analyses to both observational and simulation data, a team of researchers led by Natasa Todorovic of Belgrade Astronomical Observatory in Serbia observed that these superhighways consist of a series of connected arches inside these invisible structures, called space manifolds -- and each planet generates its own manifolds, together creating what the researchers have called "a true celestial autobahn." This network can transport objects from Jupiter to Neptune in a matter of decades, rather than the much longer timescales, on the order of hundreds of thousands to millions of years, normally found in the Solar System.

Finding hidden structures in space isn't always easy, but looking at the way things move around can provide helpful clues. In particular, comets and asteroids. [...] "More detailed quantitative studies of the discovered phase-space structures ... could provide deeper insight into the transport between the two belts of minor bodies and the terrestrial planet region," the researchers wrote in their paper. "Combining observations, theory, and simulation will improve our current understanding of this short-term mechanism acting on the TNO, Centaur, comet, and asteroid populations and merge this knowledge with the traditional picture of the long-term chaotic diffusion through orbital resonances; a formidable task for the large range of energies considered."The research has been published in Science Advances.

Source: Astronomers Discover Cosmic 'Superhighways' For Fast Travel Through the Solar System

"Decades"?

So, just slightly less time than supercruise then

 

[Slowfiddler]

This has been around for years. Numerical solutions to multibody gravitational problems. I think they are sometimes called "pork chop plots".

 

[DaveB]

What I'm going to say here will be old-hat to experienced buckyballers and frameshift jockeys, but I'm going to say it anyway because we've had a few folks recently join our happy band of nutcases and they may not have "got it" yet....

Remember that in Supercruise, you are not directly affected by the "pull" of gravity, so normal-space gravitational mechanics do not apply. The only significant factor is the strength of the local gravitational field, which impacts not just the speed you can attain, but your maximum acceleration/deceleration rate in reaching it or stopping from it. When you get the "Slow down" alert on your HUD it is already too late to avoid an overshoot because you are traveling too "fast" for your maximum deceleration rate (zero throttle) in the local gravity field to slow you down enough. You can still save it if you're good and have planned the right maneuvers, diverting from a straight approach that changes the gravity gradient you're crossing, stuff I''m not going to go into here, there's plenty of tutorials on it out there but none are any substitute for learning it hands-on and doing a few "loops of shame". "Slow Down" means your engines alone "can't get you there from here" - you have to help them out by knowing the mechanics and maneuvering with some skill to take advantage of them.

The "SC superhighways" already exist. The fastest SC route from origin to destination leaves the origins gravity well by the fastest route available, avoids anything but the fringes of other gravity wells along the way and drops into the destinations gravity well as efficiently as possible to arrive at "destination lock" on the upper edge of safe-drop speeds, from a direction that will minimise your normal-space maneuvering from drop to arrival. It's almost never a straight line except from when you're transiting between bodies orbiting different stars in a multi-star system. Do it absolutely perfectly, like you want that last fraction of a second shaved off your time to advance on the race board, and you'll have maybe a quarter-second of "blue" to hit the drop button before you overshoot. Any more than that and you could have flown the SC leg faster, if you were good enough.

These SC superhighways are almost the polar opposite of gravity-assist trajectories. Unless you are frantically trying to dump speed and escape a screwup, gravity in SC is almost never your friend in terms of an efficient and fast transit.

 

[VR Jay Le Chardon]

What I'm going to say here will be old-hat to experienced buckyballers and frameshift jockeys, but I'm going to say it anyway because we've had a few folks recently join our happy band of nutcases and they may not have "got it" yet....

Remember that in Supercruise, you are not directly affected by the "pull" of gravity, so normal-space gravitational mechanics do not apply. The only significant factor is the strength of the local gravitational field, which impacts not just the speed you can attain, but your maximum acceleration/deceleration rate in reaching it or stopping from it. When you get the "Slow down" alert on your HUD it is already too late to avoid an overshoot because you are traveling too "fast" for your maximum deceleration rate (zero throttle) in the local gravity field to slow you down enough. You can still save it if you're good and have planned the right maneuvers, diverting from a straight approach that changes the gravity gradient you're crossing, stuff I''m not going to go into here, there's plenty of tutorials on it out there but none are any substitute for learning it hands-on and doing a few "loops of shame". "Slow Down" means your engines alone "can't get you there from here" - you have to help them out by knowing the mechanics and maneuvering with some skill to take advantage of them.

The "SC superhighways" already exist. The fastest SC route from origin to destination leaves the origins gravity well by the fastest route available, avoids anything but the fringes of other gravity wells along the way and drops into the destinations gravity well as efficiently as possible to arrive at "destination lock" on the upper edge of safe-drop speeds, from a direction that will minimise your normal-space maneuvering from drop to arrival. It's almost never a straight line except from when you're transiting between bodies orbiting different stars in a multi-star system. Do it absolutely perfectly, like you want that last fraction of a second shaved off your time to advance on the race board, and you'll have maybe a quarter-second of "blue" to hit the drop button before you overshoot. Any more than that and you could have flown the SC leg faster, if you were good enough.

These SC superhighways are almost the polar opposite of gravity-assist trajectories. Unless you are frantically trying to dump speed and escape a screwup, gravity in SC is almost never your friend in terms of an efficient and fast transit.

For longer SuperCruise transits, I usually beeline above the orbital plane, then I'm clear of gravitywells until I dive towards a planet. However I do think there is room for supercruise and gravity assist / slingshot to coexist, I went into quite a bit of detail on how this could work in this post:

(I spoilered the quotes to keep this post short)

Spoiler: Description of proposed supercruise slingshot

Supercruise travel times are a vital part of the overall game structure, if ships jumped to star, then intrasystem jumped to station, then flew 10km to the station, other than the 2.5km from drop point to station no fire zone, when would you get to pirate / assassinate / gank someone? Intrasystem jumps would turn Elite into a cookie clicker kind of almost real-time-strategy. However, having said that, I do believe there is room for improvement in supercruise mechanics...

I would like to see a gravity slingshot mechanic added to supercruise, if you look at the path of the voyager probes...
View attachment 192175
Image from: https://astronomy.com/news/2020/04/voyager-whats-next-for-nasas-interstellar-probes

Voyager 1, which launched in 1977, did the earth to Jupiter leg of its journey in 856 days which might sound a long time, but given that three and a half decades later, with much more advanced technology available to it, the Juno probe that launched in 2011 took 1795 days to get to Jupiter suddenly Voyager 1 seems rapid. Why was Voyager 1 with 1970's technologies over twice as fast as Juno, which had 34 years of technological advancement to its advantage? The answer is simple, gravity assists... With each planet it passed, a voyager probe picked up more speed by doing a gravity assisted "slingshot" manoeuvre. (There was also favourable planetary alignment)

If we could incorporate slingshots in to supercruise as a sort of skilled manoeuvre in supercrusie in elite, it would give us a skilful way to increase velocity & reduce travel times in supercruise, taking some of the tedium out of longer transits, while still giving the player the agency to enjoy flying a starship, and doing so in such a way that leaves the door open for interdictions & other shenanigans.

But what of gravity breaking?

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUtya7P_EPQ


Distance my friend - distance...

I'd have the slingshot work in such a was that if you skimmed the edge of a planets gravity well you could get a slingshot from it, making it possible to sling shot around it, during the sling shot the ships supercruise acceleration would increase, giving the pilot the option of using the planet for acceleration. However, if they got too close to the planet, either intentionally or inadvertently, they would fall deeper into its gravity well and slow down as per normal, and would encounter supercruise decelleration.

Tactically this opens up some interesting manoeuvres for in system transits - take a CG, like the current one with a 46,000LS transit from star to starport, it's a 46,000, lets call it ~10 minutes. And it is flying straight and level at full throttle, its going to be a yawn fest, unless you get interdicted. Under the slingshot proposal you could a minutewinding up your speed orbiting the the edge of the star's gravity well to slingshot to the station, zip there at for example 4x speed, say a two minute transit time, on approach you could either plan on slowing down on the linear approach, or intentionally do a loop of shame as a gravity brake. Doing this would leave you less exposed to interdiciton / ganking / pirating, but require more input and skill from you as a pilot / player. Or you could take the slow, boring and easy route.

So normal supercruise = ~10 minutes
Slingshot approach and linear braking = 1min "spin up" + 2 mins travel + 2 mins decellerating = 5 minutes
Slingshot approach with gravity braking = 1min "spin up" + 2 mins travel + 0.5 mins bravity braking = 3.5 minutes

It decimates tranist times, but requires player input, and keeps people in the realm of supercruise for the shenanigans.

Spoiler: Follow up post with some graphics illustrating the gravity well zones

View attachment 192208
Orange bitty fall int the gravity well and get slowed down as normal, green bitty is where you could slingshot accelerate.
View attachment 192209
In setion view this time...
View attachment 192210
View attachment 192211

referring to this picture:

In essence, my idea was that you could slingshot around the green zone for a gravity assisted slingshot and a healthy gain in speed, but if you got too close to the planet you'd all into the orange sector of the gravity well and slowing the heck down as we currently do in SuperCruise.

 

[DaveB]

For longer SuperCruise transits, I usually beeline above the orbital plane, then I'm clear of gravitywells until I dive towards a planet...

And this is where knowing the SC mechanics from the seat of your pants in the cockpit and the changing sounds of your engines as the local gravitational strength changes helps. From the vicinity of a major body like, for example, the arrival zone near a system primary, ALL directions directly away from it will depart its gravitational influence at equal speed. you don't want to be going straight "up" or "down" towards system zenith or nadir, though, because while that will get you out of the gravity well of the primary with supreme efficiency you will be making no progress towards your destination. Similarly you don't want to depart in the plane of the system ecliptic because while you will be making most progress towards your destination as the primary's influence wanes you (are likely to) have other bodies in your way to worry about. Neither will get you to your destination as speedily as a transit route that is a shallow arc above the system's orbital plane, departing the primary at an angle just steep enough to be far enough above it to not be slowed down by the influence of the first body you pass and curving back down at an angle that is again barely steep enough to avoid the influence of the last body you pass. Then, of course, you need to worry about being in the right position to set up your approach path to your drop point through deep gravity at max speed, but that's a whole other can of worms SC assist cannot fly that most-efficient parabolic path. A pilot can, but not the kind of pilot who thinks SC is "netflix time" because no part of it is a straight line. About half the player pirates I've encountered since launch couldn't fly it either, so they never got their interdictors in range of me. For the good (skilled, not nice) ones I have to give up the transit speed and maneuver a little more radically

I like your gravity ideas too, by the way - If FD could be persuaded to implement something like that it could put a whole new dimension into buckyballing and pirate avoidance

 

[Qualityoflife]

That’s what I was thinking while reading the article - “isn’t this what the Voyager probes did during the Grand Tour?”

Modelling the gravity interactions between everything in the Solar System must’ve been a complex task, but knowing that gravity assist trajectories exist isn’t exactly new science.

I’m not sure how it could be handwaved into SuperCruise tech though, the timescales are slightly too long in my view

Handwavium and time dialation young padawan have solved the greatest mysteries known to man!

 

[VR Jay Le Chardon]

And this is where knowing the SC mechanics from the seat of your pants in the cockpit and the changing sounds of your engines as the local gravitational strength changes helps. From the vicinity of a major body like, for example, the arrival zone near a system primary, ALL directions directly away from it will depart its gravitational influence at equal speed. you don't want to be going straight "up" or "down" towards system zenith or nadir, though, because while that will get you out of the gravity well of the primary with supreme efficiency you will be making no progress towards your destination. Similarly you don't want to depart in the plane of the system ecliptic because while you will be making most progress towards your destination as the primary's influence wanes you (are likely to) have other bodies in your way to worry about. Neither will get you to your destination as speedily as a transit route that is a shallow arc above the system's orbital plane, departing the primary at an angle just steep enough to be far enough above it to not be slowed down by the influence of the first body you pass and curving back down at an angle that is again barely steep enough to avoid the influence of the last body you pass. Then, of course, you need to worry about being in the right position to set up your approach path to your drop point through deep gravity at max speed, but that's a whole other can of worms SC assist cannot fly that most-efficient parabolic path. A pilot can, but not the kind of pilot who thinks SC is "netflix time" because no part of it is a straight line. About half the player pirates I've encountered since launch couldn't fly it either, so they never got their interdictors in range of me. For the good (skilled, not nice) ones I have to give up the transit speed and maneuver a little more radically

I like your gravity ideas too, by the way - If FD could be persuaded to implement something like that it could put a whole new dimension into buckyballing and pirate avoidance

That's more or less what I do, but I wasn't going to go into that much detail on it as I knew that by quoting my slingshot mechanics post that I'd already have a healthy wordcount, and I didn't want to enter into "wall of text" territory. Not saying your post was a wall of text, but that if I had elaborate on supercruise slingshot + parabolic trajectory description, I might have crossed that threshold. I was recently involved in an argument on here with someone who couldn't accept there was a "skilled way" to supercruise faster and that it was just a sucky boring game loop that should be removed and by definition if I found it engaging in any way meant I must have the intellect and piloting skills of an amoeba and they felt entitled to say that because that had done PvP and AX.

 

[Muetdhiver]

You are right that there is a bit of skill in SC. But it's a small one and it does not take long to get the hang of it.

I think that SC mechanics should allow players to take risks to cut corners if they can pull it off skill-wise. Something optional, but that one may enjoy getting into instead of watching the ETA timer go down before setting the throttle to 75%.

I find SC and hyperspace to rate as "mostly boring". Don't get me wrong, SC near planets is cool and does not get old. But the rest of it is bland as a Graham cracker.