there's a much easier ingame lore-approved solution:
telepresence and 3D-printing!
solved.
telepresence and 3D-printing!
solved.
Suggestion on Optimizing Travel Times Without Breaking Current "Game Rules"
- Thread starter Koben
- Start date
The stuff that's there?
If the stuff that's there isn't different enough, then perhaps there's a different design problem at hand.
If the only thing differentiating systems between each other, is large, gameplay devoid expanses of looking at stardust out of a window for varying amounts of time, that sounds like a separate problem.
What is it you find so engaging during these long super cruise times? Is there actually something, or do you cling to it simply because "Space is big" - not because it is actually a good part of a game?
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+1 any travel time reduction
Because it's unlike so many other games out there that are all about instant gratification. Elite is a very different beast, always has been. It's not about 'winning', it's about the journey, and has been since the 8bit days.
Making a long journey in SuperCruise is different to just bouncing around from point-to-point, I was talking about it with a friend of mine recently, and he describes playing Elite as 'meditative', which I totally agree with.
Do I often choose to fly 5,000+ Ls? No. But I enjoy the chill when I do, and will often just listen to the ambience, check out the sights, and maybe take a few screen-shots.
Elite is an experience as much as a game to me, and I enjoy the experience.
shrugs Your mileage may vary, as they say.
That doesn't work because you're asking people NOT to maximise ship efficiency by running full throttle, which they can do with Hutton runs for example even though Hutton is a long way. Insta-jumps nerf the entire game. If I'm fighting another faction for influence control, if they use insta-jump I have to too or I'm disadvantaged, so there's nothing optional about it.
The optional solution, the OP is after, is simple : (1) read the map (2) don't go.
Pick a station / CZ or whatever nearer the A star because this proposal - still - only - removes B and C stars from the game.
As someone who thinks existing Supercruise is fine and really wants it left as it is, I'd like to suggest (again) the compromise idea of allowing in-system jumps to fixed nav beacons (possibly requiring a new module or similar, but that's less important).
- It can be selectively applied where it makes sense or is relevant, without turning the whole game upside-down.
- In fact, they could even leave Hutton Orbital without a beacon!
- (And deep unexplored space wouldn't have them obviously. But anyone who is way out in the black is probably fine with long journeys, right?)
- Gankers could camp the beacons as natural traffic bottlenecks!
- ...Meaning that there could actually be a gameplay choice there - a long SC flight might well be safer, so now there's a decision between speed and risk!
- Impatient people get their instant gratification.
- It doesn't require re-tuning the SC acceleration curves, which I think are spectacularly under-appreciated right now.
- And maybe we'll finally be rid of these threads!
That's the problem. Travel always gets in the way.
This is a great comparison. Let's compare the options for to for people that don't enjoy combat to the options for those that don't enjoy the horribly boring travel.
A miner drops into a ring. Pirates show up, scan and leave. There's no combat there. He goes to mine for however long he wants (or until the game crashes at random). Go to sell and maybe he gets interdicted. It's easy to win the interdiction game to completely avoid combat. Alternatively, he can engineer and lol @ NPCs. The suicidal limpets are more of a threat. A small sacrifice to avoid combat; but the option is available. He doesn't need to give up any gameplay. Traders are similar.
Explorers would never deal with combat because no one cares about them. Just stay in solo.
Now let's look at travel for combat. I think CZs are the second most fun activity in the game. The most fun is CQC, but it's ruined by the same boring "sit and do nothing" approach to game play as travel. People were crying because solo players were in their systems eating their BGS. Fine. I understand. FDev takes the most awkward approach to fix it. Let's make CZs end.
So now I fight for 10-15 minutes and then I'm sitting in supercruise waiting to get to the next CZ. I cannot avoid it. I don't use ammo (because of travel), so I can fight for hours before worrying about fuel, but now I'm back in supercruise every few minutes doing nothing. I can't engineer it out of the game (like people that don't enjoy combat). I don't have a mini game to skip it. All I can do is stop doing CZs.
Fine. I'll do assassinations. Great; mission signal is 100k Ls away. I do a lot of assassinations. This happens often. Please show up and interdict me first. Please. And please be in this system, because I don't want to deal with the stupid "go find the contact" scenario. I've been in a position with 5 of those missions in my queue (I do a LOT of assassinations).
Fine. I'll do massacre missions. Mission signal 50k Ls away. I need to kill 50 ships. Fine. I get there and kill 8 ships. Jump back to supercruise and the next signal is 100k Ls the other direction. 50k on the other side of the star. I guess only take massacres if there is a RES in the system.
Thargoids? Not sure. They're way the hell out in the pleiades. I'm not going out there and I'm not going to do the guardian stuff because it's all way the hell out there too. I'm trying to avoid travel here.
I fight in a trade ship while doing cargo missions. I WANT the interdictions. They're not going to spawn 100k Ls away. Removing it would impact my game. Having interdictions so easy that anyone can skip combat does not hurt my game. Make it easier for all I care. Have a "no thanks" button. It would have no impact on me. I'm still going to submit and take those fights. People complain about ships in CZs being bullet sponges. I enjoy those fights. Removing them would impact my game. Not having spec ops in low CZs doesn't impact me.
Having a fast travel option similar to the interdiction game wouldn't impact you. You can keep doing what you do. It would open a lot more of the game for people like me. Make it difficult. Jump to Alpha Centauri. Locate Hutton. You get a 15 second charge up (where you can be interdicted). 30 seconds of a mini game similar to interdiction. Fail and you die. Make it difficult. Succeed and you drop back to supercruise and have ~10 seconds (real seconds, not the 2 minute long 7 second approach) to line up and drop at your target. Make it use a lot of fuel. Require a special class 1 module or a utility that we can engineer to further increase performance. Maybe fast charge, maybe an easier mini game, maybe a faster mini game. It wouldn't hurt anyone.
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Well, surely in that case, you'd just not do an inter system jump if you felt like chilling and travelling?
Yeah but, at the moment, I have to "play" a long travel scenario if I'm fighting for influence control.
There is nothing to do in the travel time. This should really be the end of the argument when talking about a game's design, having long periods of literally nothing to do is hard to justify as gameplay. Because it's objectively not gameplay.
(Yes, I want to fly spaceships in my spaceship game. No, I don't want to watch space dust go past for half an hour while I do actually nothing concerning flying a space ship. Putting thottle to 100% and leaving it isn't flying a space ship)
So you find other ways to defend your station.
Rent a Fleet Carrier from someone, blockade the outpost, neither of these require repeated travel. Interdicting trade ships might but only demonstrates that there is 'something to do' in supercruise after all.
In the same way you could use the inter system jumps?
(You can't interdict stuff during those long travel times by the way, because of the way acceleration/deceleration and the FSD Interdictor works, you'll "catch up" with them towards the end of the journey.)
Yeah, that argument isn't really a solution. Temptation is a real thing, and an externally imposed restriction frames a challenge much better than merely self-imposed codes of conduct - that's why some games have dedicated 'Ironman' modes instead of 'well, you could always delete the save if you lose once'. The outside enforcement makes it worth more.
And yes, even I will concede that spending time in Supercruise doesn't always feel good. There has been the odd time when I might have liked to get somewhere faster, and if a 'jump instantly to destination' thingy had been available I guess I might have done it. And then felt bad about it, felt the game was diminished, become depressed...
Other people have already covered this, so I'm not going to rehash the same arguments.
I only used the argument because it was trying to be used against my point.
I agree, it's a poor one.
The point really is there is no gameplay in those time periods.
I struggle to understand people's reasoning about wanting there to be no gameplay for a long period of time in a game.
I was asking what was engaging about it. The answers mostly amount to "I like there being long periods of no gameplay" Which doesn't help me understand why people want that. The other argument is something like "You want to remove flying a space ship in a space ship game?" - which is silly, because setting the throttle then doing nothing isn't flying a space ship. (also removing super cruise assist and docking computer should be requested, because it's for people who don't want to fly their space ship isn't it?)
Because there will be more ways to avoid it?
Sure, but doesn't that mean there's something a bit up with it, if people want to avoid it?
Thats a perfectly reasonable position to take, but Odyssey doesn't change anything about the design decisions and viability of existing SC mechanics in the game. Again, the only reason its a hot topic now is becuase of the setup of the current Alpha phase.
You still need a convincing argument to get frontier to change something which has been a core mechanic in the game for 6 years. Like, overwhelming.
If you think you can persuade Frontier, crack on.
I'm more saying that it would be better if Frontier were convinced. I have no illusions my posts here will make them do anything.
Perhaps if enough of the player base did tell them though.
For the record, I feel that an element of the game (core... apparently?) wanting to be avoided, is a convincing argument enough to look into it (which, they have said they are doing, and asking for suggestions about)
I tried to put across my reasons for it - Elite is Elite. There's something zen about Super Cruise, Elite can be a very sedate game when I want it to be, or I can drop into a Res or CZ for some dog-fighting. Maybe I want to go jumping around on missions, or (like last night), take to Asp out to investigate the tip off I received about something 350 LYs away. Or I can Space Truck(tm), disappear off into the black and get my name on some planets, drive around a moon and look at the stars, or drive around an outpost dodging skimmers.
Elite is a game like no other, as I said earlier, it's an experience as much as it's a game really, and I do think that being able to jump from point-to-point would lessen that experience for me.
Maybe it's just a different experience for different people, and there's nothing wrong with that. When I play a game, and it has a mechanic I don't like, but other people do, I don't try and re-make the game for me, I understand that the game wasn't made for me. If I enjoy enough other aspects of the game, I will still play it, if not, I'll let it gather digital dust and play something else.
Except that's not really true. Even if you fold your arms you're still using fuel, running down ship integirty.
If you don't interact in supercruise even you can be plotting forward routes, reading Galnet, talking tactics with wing/squad members, strategic planning routes around engineers for special effects, reading indepth Codex or looking again at log recordings to see if there's any follow up there. If you DO interact in supercruise then you can drop into signal sources, taking the grind out of materials hunting, be collecting scan data, playing cat and mouse with ships looking to intercept you, detouring around system security ships.
It may not be hardpoints deployed at all times but that's still gameplay just as much as mining, exploration or anything else is, it's just a low intensity phase. So either you really are looking for a 'click button to trade' game .. or CQC, that's hardpoints deployed, 24/7.