A thread for the "fast travel" folks....

Lol.

"We don't need horses and cars and airplanes, people will always complain their commute took too long. Let's just walk and stop talking about improvements."

I think you're missing the point ... the entire next update is focussed on WALKING ... slow is the new fast and all that. ;)

Wonder what you get for walking to Hutton ...
 
Ehm, mate, you do realise we can jump to stars 50LY away in this game? Proposing to also be able to jump to stars <.1LY away is not that shocking or 'unrealistic'.

Not to mention that the current supercruise travel times / speeds aren't grounded on any kind of physics or reality either, they're just some arbitrary values someone at FD came up with, which pretty much invalidates any kind of arguments based on "realism / plausability".
 
A fairly minor tweak that would make a big difference.
Have the gravity wells only affect the rate of acceleration, not the current speed.

It’d take the same time to get to the halfway point, but you’d be able to carry the top speed from there all the way to the target, significantly reducing the total time for the longer trips.
 
Now I may be wrong, but i dont believe FD accounts for time dilation/ length contraction. Now in modern physics you cannot go faster than the speed of light, but in ED we regularily blow by this speed limit. It doesn't have to be accurate, but maybe simulate past the speed of light distance contracts and the actual distance you need to travel gets shorter aka length contraction. You are going 600 c , so instead of 200, 000 Ls you only need to travel 40,000 Ls once you get to that speed if you know what I mean

Edit : That feel when 2 pages go by and no one responds to your idea. :(

It is a real thing you know, Length Contraction.
 
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Let's open up by stating the cavaet that I'm vehemently opposed to the "decimate travel times / bring in intrasystem jumps because supercsruise is boring", mainly because I believe in maintaining the sense of scale and sensation fo flying a spaceship rather than spamming the jump button. However, I'm also an ardent supporter of that which is scientifically plausible - and here we have science supporting interplanetary highways:
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrXHw9Y_VQg


So armed with some science from the video above, can you create some enticing yet plausible alternatives to supercruise as the primary means of interplanetary travel?

I always watch at least the first few seconds of his videos just to have someone call me a wonderful person.
 
You know that getting from the sun to earth would take around eight minutes if we stuck to the scientifically plausible?

Supercruise isn’t remotely scientific, so you can’t really invoke science to defend it.

Seriously just point the ship in one direction and activate “ultracruise”. Ship only goes straight, it guzzles fuel like crazy and you can’t evade interdictions. But for that straight line it goes 3 times faster.
 
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OK fair enough, lets take the Hutton trip for example, how long do you think it should take?

Roughly ten seconds on a jump plus some local SCing. SCing to distant binaries is pointless and should go. Reducing it from 60 minutes to 6 is missing the point: either make it fun or get rid of it via an alternative.

The "but space is big!" crowd is welcome to do it the old way while the rest moves on to the actual fun parts of the game.
 
I believe in maintaining the sense of scale and sensation fo flying a spaceship rather than spamming the jump button.
So then remove hyperspace altogether and make players supercruise between solar systems. 🤷

Or better yet, just use good 'ol Newtonian travel like The Expanse if you're looking for realistic. Meanwhile I'll continue to enjoy my intrasystem jump drive in Space Engineers without any worry of losing an arbitrary sense of scale.
 
If the OP wants realism and we accept the current nonsense travel, then at least include known physics ;)
Citing realism (ha) to support your prejudice/preference is err... unrealistic.
 
The solution isn't to get to the planet but to bring the planet (faction) to you. If you have a carrier, why can't factions visit you and conduct business on your own carrier? Why can't an envoy be sent to your carrier from each faction that wants to do business with you, you can meet in a ready room and hash out the details. Basically a mission menu on your carrier. That doesn't address travel times to actually do the missions, but it's a start.

I vote for upping the SC cruise max speed, SC acceleration and SC deceleration by a factor of 2x-4x. It would still take time, but less time to get somewhere...
I'd accept max speed dropouts with some sustained damage if it was an option.


Whatever gets added it needs to fit into the history of the game, basically not a hand of god move but a module or some effect that has a storyline attached to it. I don't see it happening though.
 
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Well no it doesn't, because nav beacons have no bearing on where you enter systems, so putting nav beacons everywhere won't change the fact that you enter a system at the star with the most mass.
I'm sure that could be explained away with a software update, " A new FSD tech update has been made available to all pilots. The new update increases the FSDs mass sensitivity calibrators, allowing all FSDs to detect, lock onto and navigate to multiple stellar objects within a single system. Although the calibration sensitivity has increased the object's mass still needs to be significant and is likely to include most secondary/tertiary stars within a system above a certain mass threshold."...done
 
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Roughly ten seconds on a jump plus some local SCing. SCing to distant binaries is pointless and should go. Reducing it from 60 minutes to 6 is missing the point: either make it fun or get rid of it via an alternative.

The "but space is big!" crowd is welcome to do it the old way while the rest moves on to the actual fun parts of the game.

Essentially we're saying just split binaries into separate systems?

There are plenty of those already, so in the end you just remove the charm of a long travel, there'll be no free mug and no free Anaconda.

If you do provide an alternative no one will do it, not even those that do enjoy the travel.

Also, once upon a time there was a gold rush on long range passenger missions, Katzenstein dock at 36 Opiuchi was way longer than Hutton! Of course FD got rid of it but if you ask me it was great gameplay for those with time on their hands and still could be.
 
Essentially we're saying just split binaries into separate systems?

There are plenty of those already, so in the end you just remove the charm of a long travel, there'll be no free mug and no free Anaconda.

If you do provide an alternative no one will do it, not even those that do enjoy the travel.

Also, once upon a time there was a gold rush on long range passenger missions, Katzenstein dock at 36 Opiuchi was way longer than Hutton! Of course FD got rid of it but if you ask me it was great gameplay for those with time on their hands and still could be.
I don't see the charm or gameplay in a travel time of over 1hr...watching numbers tick down.

It would actually open up a large number of systems that players tend to avoid due to travel times.

Honestly if jumping to secondary stars had been in game from the start would anyone be arguing to remove it? ED is meant to be a game, having large swathes of time dedicated to doing nothing is not really gameplay, I can't think of another title that promotes 'doing nothing for over an hour' as gameplay....maybe MS Flight Simulator but that is a simulator.
 
I don't see the charm or gameplay in a travel time of over 1hr...watching numbers tick down.

It would actually open up a large number of systems that players tend to avoid due to travel times.

Honestly if jumping to secondary stars had been in game from the start would anyone be arguing to remove it? ED is meant to be a game, having large swathes of time dedicated to doing nothing is not really gameplay, I can't think of another title that promotes 'doing nothing for over an hour' as gameplay....maybe MS Flight Simulator but that is a simulator.

What's the maximum distance in LS you think we should be allowed to travel?
 
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