Well I look at a hour game time in any game feature is an hour.
That comment actually goes a long way to explaining why you and Lestat are unable to understand why the OP (and I) are requesting this feature. You evidently don't place any value on
how you spend your time.
Most people with families, jobs, friends, and responsibilities will look at how they spend their time and ask themselves if it was worthwhile, especially when it comes to video games when free time is a precious commodity. There's nothing wrong with spending an hour playing a game if the player feels it was worthwhile.
For a game like Elite, where a player can spend months in deep space without any means to save his progress, it is heartbreaking to lose all that progress and have
nothing to show for it. I don't mean credits - I mean the exploration data gathered, the time required to get to particular destinations, the first discovered tags, etc...
If a player loses all that after days/weeks/months, then they have literally wasted days/weeks/months of their lives. That's time that will never come back, and players will rightly feel thoroughly demotivated.
All we are asking for is a means to mitigate that loss in some way. You and Lestat wouldn't need to benefit from this new gameplay because you feel it is fine as it is already, so adding it wouldn't negatively affect your current gameplay anyway.
Now Jump slightly? I am looking at players with ships up to 80 ly Jump range which is 2 times what Elite Dangerous started with and I just found this Max
Jump Range. It pretty insane 320Ly.
Space Voyager already explained pretty well why this is far from typical gameplay. Besides, increased jump range does not change the number of star systems visited by a deep space explorer, nor the time spent visiting them (and
time is what this thread is about).
Now the last part of your post. Why don't you do the same. I don't have to agree with the Op suggestion and I can voice my views. But feel free to follow your own words and adventure elsewhere.
The difference is that the OP, myself, and Space Voyager are contributing to the discussion by making constructive comments and suggestions
in the Suggestions forum about how gameplay could be added that will enrich the exploration experience. For example, 'Large Survey Data Caches' and 'Small Survey Data Caches' could have exploration benefits - the player gets data on surrounding systems when collected, and maybe tip offs of POI's. Likewise, rescuing escape pods could provide similar additional benefits.
All you and Lestat are doing is trotting out the same old arguments about how you don't think it's needed because you are either unwilling or unable to understand why this is being asked for in the first place, and using misinformation or deliberately ignoring the points made by other contributors in this thread.
What good would it do me to share my ideas in another thread if you and Lestat are just going to ignore what we're saying and repeat the same old arguments over and over again?