Suggestion on Optimizing Travel Times Without Breaking Current "Game Rules"

[Drelthar]

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.

If you truly just want to be able to chill, then you'd always be able to.

I'm unsure why in system jumps would remove that for you - I mean, I do understand the basics of, if it is forced, then it is more powerful - but it sounds like your own experience wouldn't be harmed by it, but your general feelings about the game. I get that, I'm not sure it's a reason to leave an objectively flawed part of the game as it is with no improvements though. (nothing to do, which is being admitted by multiple defenders of long travel times, is objectively a flawed part of a game)

 

[Drelthar]

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.

I disagree with a few parts there but nevermind that.

I 100% agree that dropping into signal sources is a great way to add some quality to this part of the game.
The problem is it takes so long to slow down to drop in, and so long to get back up to the speed you were at after jumping back into cruise. This makes dropping into the sources drastically increase the travel time (the time spent inside the sources doesn't matter, there's direct interaction with the game mechanics throughout) - if those two things were resolved, it would go a long way to making the issue less of an issue. (Though, not for Apex...)

 

[VR Lucian Arkright]

If you truly just want to be able to chill, then you'd always be able to.

I'm unsure why in system jumps would remove that for you - I mean, I do understand the basics of, if it is forced, then it is more powerful - but it sounds like your own experience wouldn't be harmed by it, but your general feelings about the game. I get that, I'm not sure it's a reason to leave an objectively flawed part of the game as it is with no improvements though. (nothing to do, which is being admitted by multiple defenders of long travel times, is objectively a flawed part of a game)

I'm not sure how else I can put it across to you?

This is a fundamental part of the experience that separates Elite from pretty much every other game on the market (or permanently not quite on the market in some cases ).

From the Torus Jump Drive in 8bit Elite, to the 'Star Dreamer' of Frontier and First Encounters, travel within the systems has always been as much a part of the experience of Elite as the Jumping between systems.

Even if "there's nothing to do", I, personally, still don't mind that. It makes me think about what I want to do in a given play session - Drift through space admiring the 1:1 simulation, or drop into a scrap and do some bounty hunting, for example. Do I chose a mission that's 100,000 Ls away from the primary, or stick to <1,000 LS missions? It's my choice, and adding micro-jumps makes that choice pretty much meaningless.

Not everything has to happen now, and involve joystick twitching to make it fun.

 

[Drelthar]

I'm not sure how else I can put it across to you?

This is a fundamental part of the experience that separates Elite from pretty much every other game on the market (or permanently not quite on the market in some cases ).

From the Torus Jump Drive in 8bit Elite, to the 'Star Dreamer' of Frontier and First Encounters, travel within the systems has always been as much a part of the experience of Elite as the Jumping between systems.

Even if "there's nothing to do", I, personally, still don't mind that. It makes me think about what I want to do in a given play session - Drift through space admiring the 1:1 simulation, or drop into a scrap and do some bounty hunting, for example. Do I chose a mission that's 100,000 Ls away from the primary, or stick to <1,000 LS missions? It's my choice, and adding micro-jumps makes that choice pretty much meaningless.

Not everything has to happen now, and involve joystick twitching to make it fun.

I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.

I played Frontier Elite 2 - the Stardreamer was great, because of the time skip - not viable in a multiplayer game. It never took the insane amounts of time that are in Elite: Dangerous to get somewhere though- well, maybe I just never went to a system where it did, but due to the huge speed up you could do, it was decent enough.

 

[Koben]

Currently the only use I have for the aimless and excessive SC travel times is to go to the kitchen to grab a bite or feed the fish (take a dump)... I come back just to see my ship still idle flying to a "so-far-off" distant star that it should be already another star system (but this is another discussion)

 

[Northpin]

So now I fight for 10-15 minutes and then I'm sitting in supercruise waiting to get to the next CZ.

Erm? what?
CZ do not disappear. You get in, clear it, get out, turn 180, get in, clear, get out etc. OR get out before clearing it if you dont want rep loses/gains
I use to chain CZ for hours spending time in supercruise only to reset the instance.

IF you dont want to do this, pick a powerplay figure and fight for it. The PP CZ do not end. Which makes them perfect for you
And also perfect for healing beam afk turret bots.

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).

You can abandon those and dont pick missions in that system anymore.
From time to time i do abandon missions and yes, i also do a lot of assassination stacked with massacre missions.
They are still more funnier and lucrative than mining...

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.

same as above

So, to conclude, All you have to do to avoid those is to settle in a small system and minimize the travel time a lot.
Or settle in a system that is converging the massacre missions in a small system
Or get a Carrier and park it near the things you like to be around.

A miner that crashes in a ring will either have to bail out or fight (if his ship is apt) the pirates - wasting time in the process to do something that he might not like
A trader, especially if he stacks missions, has to overcome lots of interdictions or submit and fight or flee - again wasting time with something that might not his cup of tea.
And that happens in small systems too. Being interdicted 4-6 times in 100ls gets tedious after a while, but i would not change that nor i would be asking to remove interdictions and npc pirates altogether.


But i get it, you are the combat type. The problem is, ED is the complete package.
You cant remove or alter SuperCruise to make it insignificant since it will bother a percentage of the commanders, you cant alter or remove combat cause it will bother a different percentage and so on. As i said, the game is many things for many people.
So either get used to it, or work around it to make it enjoyable or pick a different game where you can combat 100%

I for one, like ED for the full package and any change, even tiny, will have repercussions in the entire package.
It may not have the best combat ever, nor the best trading system ever, but as it is, it works for me.
And for many others apparently. Last reports were indicating 500k monthly players

 

[Armour]

I posted this in another thread but this also seems appropriate here:

Jump beacons could be situated near stations or other points of interest. These could link to a ship and provide an anchor point for some form of accelerated supercruise or in-system hyperspace jump. The idea is that a pilot would jump to the main star, and then select the desired beacon and jump to that (or fast supercruise).

There would be a beacon limit per ship (better ships = more active links), and pilots would have to travel to the beacon via normal methods to register the initial link, but travel times to that location for future visits would drastically reduce.

Non-piloted transport from Apex and Frontline would be pre-registered to their chosen locations, since they probably do those routes repeatedly - travel times would be trivial for those services. This would get rid of the log wait doing nothing for on-foot players.

Pirates might be a problem if they camp at the jump beacons, but security patrols could take care of that problem if the system security level was sufficiently high. Also, a clean record could be required to register your ship at a beacon.

If EVA ever becomes a thing, then jump beacons could be damaged by player activity, and repair missions could be a thing - probably requiring a wing or a strong ship to take out the saboteurs and stand guard whilst the repair was carried out.

 

[Koben]

The thing you are asking is for us to left aside a big portion of the game beacuse we are unable to complete missions and arrive at our destinations in under a full hour of doing just nothing.

We are not asking to be teleported to the final station/settlement/POI or signal source... but to be able to receive a firmware upgrade on our ship's FDS so it can lock on a secondary star once you are already in-system in order to hyper-jump there. There will still be SC time... and a big bunch of it.

 

[VR Lucian Arkright]

The thing you are asking is for us to left aside a big portion of the game beacuse we are unable to complete missions and arrive at our destinations in under a full hour of doing just nothing.

We are not asking to be teleported to the final station/settlement/POI or signal source... but to be able to receive a firmware upgrade on our ship's FDS so it can lock on a secondary star once you are already in-system in order to hyper-jump there. There will still be SC time... and a big bunch of it.

You know you don't have to choose those long distance missions, right?

And how many are "a full hour" away anyway?

Barring deliberately going on a long trip because I wanted to, I think the longest I've spent for a mission in Super Cruise was 20 minutes, and that was by choice for BGS reasons.

 

[Koben]

Frontier granted us with the FSS so we don't need to fly that far off to scan a planet/body/star.

The very same concept is applicable here... you can still fly deep in a system via SC if you are so inclined (same applies to FSS) but you also allow a bit faster way to get where you need to go without need to "teleport" a player there.

So, allowing us to micro-jump to a secondary star once you're already in-system won't break the game rules and would be benneficial to a lot of CMDRs.

 

[Scoob101]

Frontier granted us with the FSS so we don't need to fly that far off to scan a planet/body/star.

The very same concept is applicable here... you can still fly deep in a system via SC if you are so inclined (same applies to FSS) but you also allow a bit faster way to get where you need to go without need to "teleport" a player there.

So, allowing us to micro-jump to a secondary star once you're already in-system won't break the game rules and would be benneficial to a lot of CMDRs.

I think its a nice suggestion, I simply doubt that Frontier belive that anything has changed in the last 6 years that means now is the time to implement it.

 

[Koben]

This is what an Alpha phase is for, to test things... so, let the people taste what would possible to accomplish in-game if we're allowed to jump to a secondary star once already in system.

 

[Sensei Jacksama]

Just my two cents but I think micro jumping should apply 1 only to stars/ black holes and 2 there should be a minimum jump distance of 100,000 Ls. Players can follow with a wake scanner as well.

 

[Brrokk]

Just my two cents but I think micro jumping should apply 1 only to stars/ black holes and 2 there should be a minimum jump distance of 100,000 Ls. Players can follow with a wake scanner as well.

It would make sense to be able to jump between stars in a system. Stars are already recognised as hyperspace nodes and there's no reason why "close" stars shouldn't have this property. I think other micro jumps would spoil things though.

 

[Ytterium]

It would make sense to be able to jump between stars in a system. Stars are already recognised as hyperspace nodes and there's no reason why "close" stars shouldn't have this property. I think other micro jumps would spoil things though.

Could handwavium it with "acceleration/drop" or something.

 

[Sensei Jacksama]

It would make sense to be able to jump between stars in a system. Stars are already recognised as hyperspace nodes and there's no reason why "close" stars shouldn't have this property. I think other micro jumps would spoil things though.

Yeah but see here's the thing. Technology like that needs a minimum amount of distance to work. Let's say I'm super rich and own my own jet. I can't fly my jet to a store that's 2 miles up the road because the distance required to take off and land is almost that of the entire journey. It would be completely impractical; but maybe something that's 10 or 15 miles away could be feasible.

 

[Koben]

We are not asking you to fly your jet

Yeah but see here's the thing. Technology like that needs a minimum amount of distance to work. Let's say I'm super rich and own my own jet. I can't fly my jet to a store that's 2 miles up the road because the distance required to take off and land is almost that of the entire journey. It would be completely impractical; but maybe something that's 10 or 15 miles away could be feasible.

We are not asking you to fly your jet straight to a store front (POI/Settlement/Station) but to be able to land on a smaller airport (secondary star) which is way closer to the final destination than to drive 1200Mi

 

[SentineI]

It would be nice to know why FDev don't want to implement inter-system jumps to other stars. The cynic in me thinks it's just to pad people's play time.

What would be cool is if you could choose whether you wanted inter-system jumps when you start the game (during mode selection), and it would keep the two types of players in separate instances. Seems to me this would please just about everybody. But as FDev never even implemented Ironman Mode (which would be amazing), they probably won't do this either.

 

[VR Lucian Arkright]

It would be nice to know why FDev don't want to implement inter-system jumps to other stars. The cynic in me thinks it's just to pad people's play time (never mind that it probably drives away rather more players than it attracts).

What would be cool is if you could choose whether you wanted inter-system jumps when you start the game (during mode selection), and it would keep the two types of players in separate instances. Seems to me this would please just about everybody. But as FDev never even implemented Ironman Mode (which would be amazing), they probably won't do this either.

Because during the initial development stages of the game, the player led DDF asked them not to implement micro jumps.

This is all well known information, and covered in any number of the amazingly similar threads.

 

[Sensei Jacksama]

We are not asking you to fly your jet
We are not asking you to fly your jet straight to a store front (POI/Settlement/Station) but to be able to land on a smaller airport (secondary star) which is way closer to the final destination than to drive 1200Mi

You may have missed my previous post when I stated I believe the minimum jump distance for a microjump should be 100K Ls. That's just a spitball number I believe seems fair. They could decide to move the number to 40 or 70K for all I care. The point is when your ship jumps it opens up a wormhole to travel through. There is a minimum distance the wormhole has to be in order to maintain it's stability. Supercruise requires a minimum speed of 30,000 so presumably if you wanted to attempt to use SC to travel at 2,000 it won't work. There's no reason a hyperspace jump won't have similar limitations.