Hyperspace + Supercruise Rework: Size + Quality FSD Matters

[Snoiperman]

Supercruise acceleration should be dependent on the ratio between optimal mass of the FSD / mass of your ship. (+ External variables like Size, which should be accounted for. Maybe like a 1.3 Multiplier on small ships.)
Improvements: -
Changes: ~

-Interceptor Police vipers would have a place, (fast interceptors that can actually catch any offending ships quickly)

-Small ships would find a home as interceptors and strike vessels that can compete with medium and larger ships.

-Large ships should still be able to move around, but they would be able to be overtaken over a 10 second span by smaller ships in SC. These larger ships would still be able to interdict others.

~Explorers would be able to outrun pretty much everyone in SC, which would be interesting.

~Traders would be slightly more vulnerable depending on their FSD quality, but should still be able to survive

~Some gankers would shift over to smaller vessels to be able to interdict many more players, which should make them less of a threat sometimes. (Or Anacondas with lightweight weapons, but probably not since the conda loses it's ratio of optimal mass to ship mass really quickly if combat fitted with full shields and weapons, making some of the gankers use either stripped down easy to kill anacondas or combat fitted smaller ships which are also easier to kill.)

~Pirating would be more strategic and fun. (Go for the convoy of large ships, with lots of loot but with multiple hostiles or lone medium ship that should be easy to pirate from)

-Trade in larger, more defenseless ships more dangerous as it should be, encourages convoy tactics and wing play, Trade in smaller ships safer as it should be.

-Encourages more than the one choice of Interdictor + Interdictor engineering

All Fdev would have to do is find the ratio and multiply the ratio onto every ship's super cruise acceleration.
They already do this with regular ship mass and ship speed.

Edit: IDK why people think this means ships go slower, all stock and most fully fitted ships with an A rate FSD has a 1.1 Ratio or higher. Even if it was slower than now, then engineering always guarantees the ship is faster in SC.

 

[Para Handy]

Good lord, another one and the year is only 3 days old.

 

[Snoiperman]

Good lord, another one and the year is only 3 days old.

A good suggestion is a good suggestion. If nobody says anything about it for the next year or so Fdev will not listen

 

[Snoiperman]

This one actually looks pretty good to be fair, supercruise speed differences would introduce a bit more nuance to the interdiction metagame

Actually, making the time it takes on the vector to exit the interdiction dependent on speed is actually a good idea.

 

[Misty_Dark]

I like the idea behind this, as this would be another thing to consider when build our ships, depending on the speed difference, this could be a quite vital part in choosing ship and how you outfit it. So if you want to zip around in super cruise stay away from the slow heavy ships for example...

I would also like to see a correlation between what class/size of interdictor and how easy/hard it is to interdict a ship, which could fit well with this suggestion, so there would be a reason to why want to use a bigger interdictor in your ship... and this could also be sort of defence for the larger slower ships, as a viper with size 1 interdictor would need much skill to interdict a heavy Type 9 for example... so using a size 3 interdrictor would make it easier. but I think we need to have even bigger interdictors than size 4... all the way up to size 8.

 

[GoldenSilver484]

Supercruise acceleration should be dependent on the ratio between optimal mass of the FSD / mass of your ship.
Improvements: -
Changes: ~

There's a slight problem with this, small ships don't have a better mass to FSD optimal mass ratio.

As such all this;

-Interceptor Police vipers would have a place, (fast interceptors that can actually catch any offending ships quickly)

-Small ships would find a home as interceptors and strike vessels that can compete with medium and larger ships.

-Large ships should still be able to move around, but they would be able to be overtaken over a 10 second span by smaller ships in SC. These larger ships would still be able to interdict others.

Wouldn't happen with this change.

My combat outfit FGS, Crusader, FAS, Krait MkII and Anaconda all have around 25ly of jumprange (without a GFSDB), meaning their mass to optimal FSD is actually higher than that of my Viper MkIII/IV, Courier and Cobra.

~Explorers would be able to outrun pretty much everyone in SC, which would be interesting.

Explorers already strip out their ships to the point that a slight breeze would cause critical hull failure because they need that extra 0.02ly, now they'd just be able to avoid the wind.

Except they wouldn't because they already can but don't pay attention to their sensors to avoid threats now.

~Traders would be slightly more vulnerable depending on their FSD quality, but should still be able to survive

Nothing would really change for trade ships, they're already outfit for longer jumpranges, but cargo has the most mass in its class sizes, therefore trade ships would nearly always have a worse FSD/mass ratio when compared to a combat ship equipped with a simular FSD.
Especially so for a small trade ship vs a medium or large combat ship.

~Some gankers would shift over to smaller vessels to be able to interdict many more players, which should make them less of a threat sometimes. (Or Anacondas with lightweight weapons, but probably not since the conda loses it's ratio of optimal mass to ship mass really quickly if combat fitted with full shields and weapons, making some of the gankers use either stripped down easy to kill anacondas or combat fitted smaller ships which are also easier to kill.)

Some would, but most gankers would just equip G5 long range mass manager FSDs, while losing their heavy duty bulkheads, A-rated SBs and a few HRPs and easily outrun everyone but the explorers and lightweight multiroles.

I'm all for buffing supercruise speeds (a flat +50% acceleration buff for all ships for example), but this isn't a good way to do it.

 

[varonica]

SC "speed" is dependant on the local gravitational fields, SC "acceleration" is enormous, this suggestion would require changing the fundamental way SC travel works, it would be a major alteration to the flight mechanics that would affect stuff you wouldn't believe, so no that's not going to happen.

 

[Para Handy]

A good suggestion is a good suggestion. If nobody says anything about it for the next year or so Fdev will not listen

I would indeed quite like to see a good suggestion. This one however does not qualify. It is just another "lets change FSD acceleration" post by someone that doesn't understand the "handwavium" mechanics of supercruise travel coded into the game. Altering the current system would require a complete rework of the travel mechanics and with FD's past record would undoubtedly break the game with an avalanche of patches.

So if you would like to analyse the fields that an Alcubierre Drive requires to warp space and then determine if you can vary the warped space by different features of a FSD (the game does not do this, AFAIK it assumes that all ships produce the same warp in which to travel), by how much, in what fashion and produce a code that the developers could use then do go ahead. Personally, if you have that ability you should be working for NASA or Jeff Bezos.

 

[Ytterium]

So here is the thing. It doesn't make much of a difference for interdictions, as opposed to the distance/arrival time thing. As long as a combat ship gets at least 1-2 seconds when the target is in their interdictor arc, and within range (easily achievable if the target is decelerating or accelerating), you can establish the interdiction tether which effectively ends the target's ability to get away.

 

[Starshot_Jigawatts]

A long time ago there was a guy playing another space game - we'll call him Starsnot Terawatt - and he really enjoyed that game. But people who wanted "moar PVP" constantly made stupid suggestions that negatively affected his gameplay even though he didn't PVP himself. Then slowly over time that game - we'll call it Steve Online - turned into a heaping smoking dumpster juice fire.

So he quit his subscription and played Elite Dangerous instead. The End.

Oh and yeah, I vote no to this suggestion. What you call "fun" to you, sounds like travel will be made even more painful and slower to me for absolutely no reason or no benefit. So nope, nada, nuh uh, no thanks.

 

[LeoBartlet]

A good suggestion is a good suggestion. If nobody says anything about it for the next year or so Fdev will not listen

The suggestion board exists so as not to clog up the main board, They don't take any of the suggestions seriously.

 

[GoldenSilver484]

The suggestion board exists so as not to clog up the main board, They don't take any of the suggestions seriously.

Sure they do, at least 2.8% of the time. They then seriously consider 2.8% of those, before implementing the 2.8% they half baked of that.

2.8%

 

[Taifu]

... Starsnot ...

Ah Starsnot, nice guy as I recall.

Although, could be a bit of a terror, what.

 

[metatheurgist]

Would anyone ever fly a T9 ever again?

 

[Morbad]

There's a slight problem with this, small ships don't have a better mass to FSD optimal mass ratio.

This may be a problem as far as the stated intent of the OP's proposal is concerned, but I don't see anything fundamentally wrong with ships that have relatively stronger FSDs being faster in supercruise.

Altering the current system would require a complete rework of the travel mechanics

Probably.

 

[Snoiperman]

Would anyone ever fly a T9 ever again?

Yeah, if they wanted to haul some cargo

 

[Snoiperman]

A long time ago there was a guy playing another space game - we'll call him Starsnot Terawatt - and he really enjoyed that game. But people who wanted "moar PVP" constantly made stupid suggestions that negatively affected his gameplay even though he didn't PVP himself. Then slowly over time that game - we'll call it Steve Online - turned into a heaping smoking dumpster juice fire.

So he quit his subscription and played Elite Dangerous instead. The End.

Oh and yeah, I vote no to this suggestion. What you call "fun" to you, sounds like travel will be made even more painful and slower to me for absolutely no reason or no benefit. So nope, nada, nuh uh, no thanks.

This would make travel faster for all ships, literally no (stock) ship has a 1> optimal mass to mass ratio in the game (Assuming full size FSD)
Edit: Clarifications

 

[Snoiperman]

SC "speed" is dependant on the local gravitational fields, SC "acceleration" is enormous, this suggestion would require changing the fundamental way SC travel works, it would be a major alteration to the flight mechanics that would affect stuff you wouldn't believe, so no that's not going to happen.

Which is exactly what I want: Supercruise Rework. SC acceleration is it's own thing. It is dependent on gravity fields, but you can easily multiply the base SC acceleration by the ratio to implement this. Just one thing, if Fdev knows how to code. SC gravity wells would still exist, and because they exist would not break this addition. There is no reason for this to not be added.

 

[Morbad]

This would make travel faster for all ships, literally no ship has a negative optimal mass to mass ratio in the game

A negative ratio is impossible, but a ratio below one is not particularly rare. Several of my CMDR's combat loadouts run undersized D rated fast-boot FSDs to save mass, power, and make them faster to repair with an AFMU. He has other vessels that use shielded double-braced B-rated FSDs where the optimal mass can be less than half of the mass of the ship.

 

[Snoiperman]

A long time ago there was a guy playing another space game - we'll call him Starsnot Terawatt - and he really enjoyed that game. But people who wanted "moar PVP" constantly made stupid suggestions that negatively affected his gameplay even though he didn't PVP himself. Then slowly over time that game - we'll call it Steve Online - turned into a heaping smoking dumpster juice fire.

So he quit his subscription and played Elite Dangerous instead. The End.

Oh and yeah, I vote no to this suggestion. What you call "fun" to you, sounds like travel will be made even more painful and slower to me for absolutely no reason or no benefit. So nope, nada, nuh uh, no thanks.

This type of comment makes me think everything wrong with the game. Old timers don't like any change in the game at all: they find all the reasons to dislike a change. First of all: No ship with an A rate FSD has a slower Optimal mass to Ship mass ratio, meaning travel time is significantly increased. This change also only would require 1 thing which already happens in the game: Find a ratio between optimal mass and ship mass, multiply that with ship size variable, then multiply that variable onto the super cruise acceleration rate. This would make Open more survivable for Explorers, Trading more balanced in small and large ships, and gives combat reasons to use small ships.