Lol, because when quick-jumping you run a risk of being intercepted now.
Why don't you spend your time on being constructive rather than coming up with fake arguments to shoot down any idea of people who are trying to be creative and constructive?
add jump mini-game
- Thread starter Darth Ender
- Start date
Lol, because when quick-jumping you run a risk of being intercepted now.
Why don't you spend your time on being constructive rather than coming up with fake arguments to shoot down any idea of people who are trying to be creative and constructive?On paper, not in practice. Noone is interdicted when jumping numerous time to the target. You're being interdicted in the stretch between the final star and the destination in that system. Its a fake argument that may seem good at first sight, but doesn't exist in the game as it is.
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
Are you suggesting that there is zero risk of interception when jumping at the moment?Lol, because when quick-jumping you run a risk of being intercepted now.
Thargoids!
No!
Please God NO!!!!
Why?
One reason :- Space Rogue
Mind you that was the only thing wrong with it. It even had space legs!!
Please God NO!!!!
Why?
One reason :- Space Rogue
Mind you that was the only thing wrong with it. It even had space legs!!
I never mentioned Frontier...
Boohoo. Take or leave the risks. Don't go crying afterwards that you need to call the Fuel Rats or the Hull Seals or Rebuy.
Regardless, I wasn't necessarily advocating this, merely pointing out that many MANY different approaches have been suggested in the past. This particular one I could almost consider speculating about potentially supporting. However, so far there's been no indication that FDev are interested in changing the current mechanisms.
Damn I loved many aspects of that game! Never completed it though. I can't remember the jump minigame though, memory suggests you had to travel to jumpgates. Could you elaborate on your point?
ED: Ah, reading the rest of the Wikipaedia article elaborates; yes, you first have to travel to jumpgates in your local sector, but then there's a minigame to successfully traverse it.
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Travel, compared with the previous games, is really quick. Jump, scoop, jump, scoop, travel thousands of LY an hour in a fast ship. Cross the bubble in ten minutes in a ship that's still got enough equipment aboard to do stuff too.
In the original Elite, it would have taken several hours to get from one side of the map to the other - 100 LY or so. In FE2/FFE, long range travel was slowed by the need to travel in-system to fuel scoop, carefully brake to avoid fatally ramming the gas giant (or star!), and carry on. Obviously, with an entire galaxy out there, being able to travel more than 100 LY a day is necessary. Even within the bubble, gameplay often requires being able to move around it fairly quickly.
However, this does mean that while in Elite or FE2/FFE you might see the hyperspace loading screen once every fifteen minutes, if that (and it was a shorter screen then, too) ... in Elite Dangerous if you're travelling [1] you see it a lot more frequently, so the fact that it takes a non-trivial amount of time adds up. Not much that can be done about this except optimising the loading screen further (which I'm sure is going on) or making people spend more time in-system so they see it less often (which wouldn't be popular)
The problem is, this mostly consists of being able to take your hands off the controls. Line up for the hyperspace jump, engage drive, you now - assuming you're not actually being shot at, which is rare - have nothing to do for ~30 seconds. Drop out at the destination, brief bit of interaction getting clear of the star, line up to the destination station and set full throttle. No further input needed for 2 minutes. Then at the end deceleration out of supercruise is great - hands on the controls, careful flying and use of gravity wells to optimise the approach, drop, fly in to the destination station, dock, do stuff. But the straight-line bit to get there makes it a very choppy experience.
This isn't about it being quick-fix arcade action. This is about being able to take your hands off the controls entirely because there's literally nothing useful to do.
A couple of other games I've been playing recently: Morrowind, and OpenTTD. Neither of them much like Elite Dangerous, certainly neither of them quick fix arcade action games. Both of them, like ED, are games where you sometimes just take a break, and look around. Neither are games where you spend lots of time where the optimal action is to take your hands off the controls and read the forums.
In Morrowind, if you want to get from A to B, you need to have the game window focused and be pressing the walk forward key, with consideration given to the left and right turn keys. No fast travel, no instant gratification, you want to get there you need to walk ... but you do actually have to do something to get there. And things might happen along the way, or they might not.
In OpenTTD, once your network gets above a certain (small) size, you're always going to have things you can do to improve on it - adding extra goods trains, adjusting passenger routes for better distribution, fixing signalling to make lines more efficient, building extra stations to get more passengers travelling out of growing cities, upgrading your vehicles, etc. Unless you turn the settings up to "really harsh", the economy is relaxed enough you usually don't have to urgently do any of that - you can set follow mode on a long-distance train and just watch it journey across the map, or spend some time admiring the traffic through your major hub station - but there's always something you can be doing as well.
The problem with Elite Dangerous is that if you're travelling from A to B, initial alignment and final approach aside, all you can do is admire the vastness of space. And it's great that that's an option. But it doesn't get any more vast or admirable the 100th time. In theory you need to avoid interdictions (at least in inhabited systems) ... in practice, there's no time for anyone to interdict in intermediate systems, and the supercruise speed curve means that you're pretty safe in the middle of your journey anyway.
This wasn't a problem in Elite, FE2 or FFE because generally even when flying in a straight line on autopilot you were still at risk of being attacked. And especially in FE2/FFE the optimal way to fly in for speed didn't use the autopilot much - you'd use manual thrust to control your speed (hands on controls, pay attention to velocity vector and approach distance)
Fixing this up is trickier, I think. I don't like the idea of mini-games, or anything that means you can't just drift along in supercruise admiring the sights if that's what you want to do. But there needs to be some incentive where you get an advantage from being in-game and using the controls.
Maybe just as simple as being able to press the boost button to increase supercruise speed and acceleration. Maybe something fancier where you can open a comms window and do some business remotely like check station mission boards and accept missions or read local news articles, so when you get there you're rewarded by everything being lined up and ready for you. But something to do other than wait a couple of minutes to start the final approach.
[1] I definitely mean travelling here. If I'm exploring, even if it's just "as an aside" exploration of previously unvisited systems while travelling, then opening the FSS, tuning around for a few minutes, then deciding there's nothing I want to investigate further and moving on, is enough of a break that the loading screen is less annoying.
In the original Elite, it would have taken several hours to get from one side of the map to the other - 100 LY or so. In FE2/FFE, long range travel was slowed by the need to travel in-system to fuel scoop, carefully brake to avoid fatally ramming the gas giant (or star!), and carry on. Obviously, with an entire galaxy out there, being able to travel more than 100 LY a day is necessary. Even within the bubble, gameplay often requires being able to move around it fairly quickly.
However, this does mean that while in Elite or FE2/FFE you might see the hyperspace loading screen once every fifteen minutes, if that (and it was a shorter screen then, too) ... in Elite Dangerous if you're travelling [1] you see it a lot more frequently, so the fact that it takes a non-trivial amount of time adds up. Not much that can be done about this except optimising the loading screen further (which I'm sure is going on) or making people spend more time in-system so they see it less often (which wouldn't be popular)
The problem is, this mostly consists of being able to take your hands off the controls. Line up for the hyperspace jump, engage drive, you now - assuming you're not actually being shot at, which is rare - have nothing to do for ~30 seconds. Drop out at the destination, brief bit of interaction getting clear of the star, line up to the destination station and set full throttle. No further input needed for 2 minutes. Then at the end deceleration out of supercruise is great - hands on the controls, careful flying and use of gravity wells to optimise the approach, drop, fly in to the destination station, dock, do stuff. But the straight-line bit to get there makes it a very choppy experience.
This isn't about it being quick-fix arcade action. This is about being able to take your hands off the controls entirely because there's literally nothing useful to do.
A couple of other games I've been playing recently: Morrowind, and OpenTTD. Neither of them much like Elite Dangerous, certainly neither of them quick fix arcade action games. Both of them, like ED, are games where you sometimes just take a break, and look around. Neither are games where you spend lots of time where the optimal action is to take your hands off the controls and read the forums.
In Morrowind, if you want to get from A to B, you need to have the game window focused and be pressing the walk forward key, with consideration given to the left and right turn keys. No fast travel, no instant gratification, you want to get there you need to walk ... but you do actually have to do something to get there. And things might happen along the way, or they might not.
In OpenTTD, once your network gets above a certain (small) size, you're always going to have things you can do to improve on it - adding extra goods trains, adjusting passenger routes for better distribution, fixing signalling to make lines more efficient, building extra stations to get more passengers travelling out of growing cities, upgrading your vehicles, etc. Unless you turn the settings up to "really harsh", the economy is relaxed enough you usually don't have to urgently do any of that - you can set follow mode on a long-distance train and just watch it journey across the map, or spend some time admiring the traffic through your major hub station - but there's always something you can be doing as well.
The problem with Elite Dangerous is that if you're travelling from A to B, initial alignment and final approach aside, all you can do is admire the vastness of space. And it's great that that's an option. But it doesn't get any more vast or admirable the 100th time. In theory you need to avoid interdictions (at least in inhabited systems) ... in practice, there's no time for anyone to interdict in intermediate systems, and the supercruise speed curve means that you're pretty safe in the middle of your journey anyway.
This wasn't a problem in Elite, FE2 or FFE because generally even when flying in a straight line on autopilot you were still at risk of being attacked. And especially in FE2/FFE the optimal way to fly in for speed didn't use the autopilot much - you'd use manual thrust to control your speed (hands on controls, pay attention to velocity vector and approach distance)
Fixing this up is trickier, I think. I don't like the idea of mini-games, or anything that means you can't just drift along in supercruise admiring the sights if that's what you want to do. But there needs to be some incentive where you get an advantage from being in-game and using the controls.
Maybe just as simple as being able to press the boost button to increase supercruise speed and acceleration. Maybe something fancier where you can open a comms window and do some business remotely like check station mission boards and accept missions or read local news articles, so when you get there you're rewarded by everything being lined up and ready for you. But something to do other than wait a couple of minutes to start the final approach.
[1] I definitely mean travelling here. If I'm exploring, even if it's just "as an aside" exploration of previously unvisited systems while travelling, then opening the FSS, tuning around for a few minutes, then deciding there's nothing I want to investigate further and moving on, is enough of a break that the loading screen is less annoying.
When you jumped in that game, you had to fly through a snaking wormhole and you lost you're ship if you flew outside of the wormhole. It almost ruined the game for me because it was so tedious. The rest of it was excellent for the time, with Elite Style game play (trade, upgrade, fight etc), Newtonian physics, walking around stations and planets (i.e. in top down 2D), Different factions to negotiate with, etc.
It's still available on GOG!
Just replace 'hyperdiction odds are .x per jump' to 'hyperdiction odds are .y per LY traveled'.
The solution is never “mini game”.
Let's be honest Varonica, almost no one is taking the flight paths recommended in that link because it is an 11-page dissertation of geodesic and differential equations that result in a flight path that is only marginally better than flying in a straight line.Well that may be the way you fly your ship but it's certainly not the way I fly my ship. The longest way to get to your destination is a straight line, and SCA just exacerbates that by running throttle at 75%.
Optimal Supercruise Flight Paths | Canonn Research Group
We are privileged to have been asked to host Cmdr Heisenberg6626's study of the Optimal Supercruise Flight Paths, which examines this key element of space travel in detailcanonn.science
I know people with a degree in Astrophysics who won't take the advice in that dissertation because it is more hassle than simply flying in a straight line.
Also, when talking about a target that is more than 10,000 Ls away, the 'optimal flight path' provides very little actual time savings. You'd be better off flying in a straight line and going to the bathroom.
![[Diplomacy] Carnegie](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/123/123809.jpg?1553527149){kind=avatar}
So people complain about SC being boring because it's passively flying in straight lines, then when presented with information that says it's better to actively fly in curves they complain about it being too much hassle? Where's that 'I Win' button?
Try it for yourself - the time savings are so marginal as to be worthless, especially over long distances (which is the whole point of this thread).
Alternatively, continue to bury your head in the sand about the fact that a huge segment of this game involves just sitting around doing nothing.
What do I win when I push that button?
Well you will have to speak for yourself because I almost never point straight at the target, avoiding local gravity wells often actually makes a huge difference to time taken to get places. Coming at one of many moons of a ringed gas giant from vertical to the orbital plane of the moons rather than trying to cut across makes a massive difference.
Pointing straight at something will often slow you down by passing close to other orbital bodies over that 10kls, even just dropping out of the orbital plane before pointing your nose makes a difference.
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Can't agree more here and just can't understand some positions. When we got the FSS we had a huge backlash argueing about having to play a mini-game just to see the system map, now we get demands for mini-games for every hyperspace jump, something that would, personally, annoy the heck out of me.
I assumed you were speaking for yourself when you suggested the 11-page dissertation, because I can't imagine the majority of the player base does that.
Do you really think I'm in the minority for not wanting to take the time to read that dissertation, where the time taken to read it would far outweigh the time savings I would get from following it's recommendations?
Do you really think those equations make a big time saving travelling to a destination that is over 10,000 Ls away with no bodies in between?
What 'massive difference' in time savings would this make on a trip to, say, Hutton Orbital?
The mini-game aspect of high jumps i'm referring to is not an arcade style interdiction game.
Initiating a jump (high or low) puts you in hyperspace. This is a fog of war blocked view of space that acts very differently from normal space and requires constant fuel and energy to remain in as well as odd ways to navigate in it. Distance is not 1:1 but it also is not linear. environmental hazards are plenty and it would become apparent when you should drop out as destination position becomes less certain the more you travel in it. This would happen without any loading screen similar to a low jump.
depending on if you high jumped, you would be set upon a path that acts much like a race track...with high jumps moving very fast and no other players being involved in your instance ...and low jumps being much slower (normal flying speed) and more free-roaming and all players in a system sharing the same instance - similar to SC currently.
In a high jump, you are moving extremely fast and must navigate by hazards that are roughly determined by the nearby star systems and the distance you are jumping. The longer the jump or extreme the systems near you are, the harder the hazards are to navigate. Failing to navigate to the destination will drop you at one of a number of systems within the range of your jump and potentially far away from the center of mass of such a system. Shorter jumps would be far more reliable and easier than longer jumps. Jumps to black hole or pulsars / etc would be more difficult than main sequence. Even jumping around systems with black holes / pulsars etc could be more hazardous.
All the while this is going on, the game is loading multiple systems in preparation to drop you in one of them. Minimizing the actual loading screen to maybe a few seconds to just initiate the network connection to the other potential players that would be sharing your instance. Unloading the extra systems in the background once the jump is complete.
You could also risk intentionally going off course within this hyperspace travel as jumping near black holes could load a much more distant system than your jump would normally allow if you force drop out at the right place instead of navigating to your destination or colliding with a hazard. That would operate much like how supercharging your fsd currently works but with your destination being unknown. Alien stations could also be based in hyperspace that you may be able to discover - see off in the distance - yet probably not really interact with. etc.
Exiting a high jump drops you into normal space - not hyperspace / sc.
Following a jump signature leads to the intended target system, not necessarily the actual system the player made it to.
Low wake would behave in much the same way except it occurs at normal space flight speed instead of like a bobsled out of hell. Distances are not linear and you dictate your control over the time it takes to reach a destination by how long you stay in SC. The more you travel in SC, the harder it gets to continue traveling without being knocked out of it by some hazard but you can reduce the time it takes to reach distant places down from dozens of minutes to single minutes. Additionally, other players can see you while you're in SC if they are in it but only if they are in close proximity to you. Though, by it's nature, hyperspace within systems will be a consolidated area much like the area of a conflict zone ...everything you could navigate to would be within a few km's of travel. However, traveling a few km's in hyperspace would become exceedingly difficult without dropping out. So traveling to distant places within a system would require multiple hops. These hops would be fairly standardized as based on a standard starting position (star) the place they would get hard to travel would be where most pilots would drop out for their first hop and this would repeat unless they wanted to go the entire way and managed to avoid all the hazards in order to get there non-stop much more quickly. Either way the time it takes would range between current and much faster.
By requiring hops, you can create way stations and pirate ambushes and all. Plus, the only way to see the sights and look at a system is by being in normal space. Hyperspace is completely different and looks fairly the same in every system. However hyperspace will have it's own hidden secrets and would look pretty amazing and trippy by itself. It's most certainly not a hands-off experience though. If you want long uneventful space flights, you'll have to do it in normal space and at normal speeds.
You can have combat in hyperspace for low jumps however weapons would behave much different from in normal space as energy weapons interact with hyperspace differently and physical objects travel at non-linear speeds and paths. You could discover alien tech floating about and collect certain elements that collect in hyperspace.
That's the general idea i'd have for improving travel in the game. With the idea that dropping out to keep travel easy is capitalized in the game by creating way stations and other game features so you're never spending dozens of minutes doing nothing while trying to get somewhere unless you really want to. The above changes would be combined with that and rolling back jump distances and jump boost tech and engineer fiddling. 30 ly would be around the max and 15-20 would be the average. There would be significant effort to reduce the need to travel great distances to do anything interesting in the game. More varied content and more procedural - user controlled gameplay would be added within the bubble and across the galaxy so that nobody needs to travel more than half a dozen jumps to fill an entire day of gameplay activity across a wide range of roles. Ensuring that spending the time to go far out into the boonies is left only for the crazy or those truly seeking to see something nobody else has while simultaneously being pretty certain that they'll never find anything and they'll be wasting their time. Rebuilding the sense of scale to the galaxy that we've lost and continue to demand to lose due to lack of game content.
I fully suspect that this idea would only be marginally beneficial without other changes to help fill the gaps. We'd need those way stations and pirate ambush / ship wreck mechanics ... We'd need much more gameplay change reflected in the aspects of the BGS that we currently have so that changes in faction control is far more visible to the players. Faction control should dictate if players lose docking privs depending on relationships the player has with the faction in control or if they're allied with enemy factions ...faction control should dictate which ships are available more and which goods are available more to trade... as well as significantly impact the piracy and policing of systems more. We need that so there is incentive for the player to do things in the game and care about what they do and where they do it. Only then can additional player directed/procedural features be added like power collapse and a more finite resource scarce economy be added to make factions behave more realistic and meaningfully.
all that stuff is needed to remove the need to jump great distances to do things... To make going 12-20+ systems in a single sitting basically unheard of. There should be enough things and enough investment needed to really succeed that a player spends most of their time in maybe 3-6 systems anytime they go in to play. This has the added benefit of keeping small numbers of players from impacting a large number of systems all over the map. This leads to organizations of player groups needing to work together to accomplish big goals or have big impacts. Also, by increasing player investment in their chosen area of the galaxy, you improve the immersion and lore of the game and sections of the bubble can begin to have their own identity instead of everything looking the same no matter where you go in the bubble. The current way things work homogenizes and averages everything out too much. My ideas would create localized identities by re-introducing galaxy wide scale and instead of punishing players to do it, we'd add gameplay and functionality and fun so that players dont even feel the need to leave their "home" area.
Initiating a jump (high or low) puts you in hyperspace. This is a fog of war blocked view of space that acts very differently from normal space and requires constant fuel and energy to remain in as well as odd ways to navigate in it. Distance is not 1:1 but it also is not linear. environmental hazards are plenty and it would become apparent when you should drop out as destination position becomes less certain the more you travel in it. This would happen without any loading screen similar to a low jump.
depending on if you high jumped, you would be set upon a path that acts much like a race track...with high jumps moving very fast and no other players being involved in your instance ...and low jumps being much slower (normal flying speed) and more free-roaming and all players in a system sharing the same instance - similar to SC currently.
In a high jump, you are moving extremely fast and must navigate by hazards that are roughly determined by the nearby star systems and the distance you are jumping. The longer the jump or extreme the systems near you are, the harder the hazards are to navigate. Failing to navigate to the destination will drop you at one of a number of systems within the range of your jump and potentially far away from the center of mass of such a system. Shorter jumps would be far more reliable and easier than longer jumps. Jumps to black hole or pulsars / etc would be more difficult than main sequence. Even jumping around systems with black holes / pulsars etc could be more hazardous.
All the while this is going on, the game is loading multiple systems in preparation to drop you in one of them. Minimizing the actual loading screen to maybe a few seconds to just initiate the network connection to the other potential players that would be sharing your instance. Unloading the extra systems in the background once the jump is complete.
You could also risk intentionally going off course within this hyperspace travel as jumping near black holes could load a much more distant system than your jump would normally allow if you force drop out at the right place instead of navigating to your destination or colliding with a hazard. That would operate much like how supercharging your fsd currently works but with your destination being unknown. Alien stations could also be based in hyperspace that you may be able to discover - see off in the distance - yet probably not really interact with. etc.
Exiting a high jump drops you into normal space - not hyperspace / sc.
Following a jump signature leads to the intended target system, not necessarily the actual system the player made it to.
Low wake would behave in much the same way except it occurs at normal space flight speed instead of like a bobsled out of hell. Distances are not linear and you dictate your control over the time it takes to reach a destination by how long you stay in SC. The more you travel in SC, the harder it gets to continue traveling without being knocked out of it by some hazard but you can reduce the time it takes to reach distant places down from dozens of minutes to single minutes. Additionally, other players can see you while you're in SC if they are in it but only if they are in close proximity to you. Though, by it's nature, hyperspace within systems will be a consolidated area much like the area of a conflict zone ...everything you could navigate to would be within a few km's of travel. However, traveling a few km's in hyperspace would become exceedingly difficult without dropping out. So traveling to distant places within a system would require multiple hops. These hops would be fairly standardized as based on a standard starting position (star) the place they would get hard to travel would be where most pilots would drop out for their first hop and this would repeat unless they wanted to go the entire way and managed to avoid all the hazards in order to get there non-stop much more quickly. Either way the time it takes would range between current and much faster.
By requiring hops, you can create way stations and pirate ambushes and all. Plus, the only way to see the sights and look at a system is by being in normal space. Hyperspace is completely different and looks fairly the same in every system. However hyperspace will have it's own hidden secrets and would look pretty amazing and trippy by itself. It's most certainly not a hands-off experience though. If you want long uneventful space flights, you'll have to do it in normal space and at normal speeds.
You can have combat in hyperspace for low jumps however weapons would behave much different from in normal space as energy weapons interact with hyperspace differently and physical objects travel at non-linear speeds and paths. You could discover alien tech floating about and collect certain elements that collect in hyperspace.
That's the general idea i'd have for improving travel in the game. With the idea that dropping out to keep travel easy is capitalized in the game by creating way stations and other game features so you're never spending dozens of minutes doing nothing while trying to get somewhere unless you really want to. The above changes would be combined with that and rolling back jump distances and jump boost tech and engineer fiddling. 30 ly would be around the max and 15-20 would be the average. There would be significant effort to reduce the need to travel great distances to do anything interesting in the game. More varied content and more procedural - user controlled gameplay would be added within the bubble and across the galaxy so that nobody needs to travel more than half a dozen jumps to fill an entire day of gameplay activity across a wide range of roles. Ensuring that spending the time to go far out into the boonies is left only for the crazy or those truly seeking to see something nobody else has while simultaneously being pretty certain that they'll never find anything and they'll be wasting their time. Rebuilding the sense of scale to the galaxy that we've lost and continue to demand to lose due to lack of game content.
I fully suspect that this idea would only be marginally beneficial without other changes to help fill the gaps. We'd need those way stations and pirate ambush / ship wreck mechanics ... We'd need much more gameplay change reflected in the aspects of the BGS that we currently have so that changes in faction control is far more visible to the players. Faction control should dictate if players lose docking privs depending on relationships the player has with the faction in control or if they're allied with enemy factions ...faction control should dictate which ships are available more and which goods are available more to trade... as well as significantly impact the piracy and policing of systems more. We need that so there is incentive for the player to do things in the game and care about what they do and where they do it. Only then can additional player directed/procedural features be added like power collapse and a more finite resource scarce economy be added to make factions behave more realistic and meaningfully.
all that stuff is needed to remove the need to jump great distances to do things... To make going 12-20+ systems in a single sitting basically unheard of. There should be enough things and enough investment needed to really succeed that a player spends most of their time in maybe 3-6 systems anytime they go in to play. This has the added benefit of keeping small numbers of players from impacting a large number of systems all over the map. This leads to organizations of player groups needing to work together to accomplish big goals or have big impacts. Also, by increasing player investment in their chosen area of the galaxy, you improve the immersion and lore of the game and sections of the bubble can begin to have their own identity instead of everything looking the same no matter where you go in the bubble. The current way things work homogenizes and averages everything out too much. My ideas would create localized identities by re-introducing galaxy wide scale and instead of punishing players to do it, we'd add gameplay and functionality and fun so that players dont even feel the need to leave their "home" area.
Make it optional please.
Frame shift drive charging...
4
3
2
1
Would you like to play mini game ? [Yes/No and never ask again]
10,000Ls would be about 4 minutes supercruise time for the big empty bit in the middle, so taking a minute or two off the slow deceleration at the end is absolutely worthwhile, and then possibly another minute or two if the destination is a surface base. It adds up if you're doing a lot of travelling - I reckon I can get at least one more round-trip per hour in at say a trade CG, maybe more, compared to someone who's doing it the boring way.
The key for me isn't the time saved - I'd still do if it saved 10 seconds rather than two minutes - it's the fact that it gives you something to actually do with steering, assessing gravity wells (the sound they make is really important), mixing instrument and by-eye flying. It's a really great bit of the game, and the introduction of "supercruise assist" makes me think it may have been an accident...
And yeah, it would be great if it was significant for the rest of the trip as well. I've written this reply on the boring bit of a 30,000Ls journey.
(Forget the equations. They're a nice mathematical treatment of why it works, but you don't have time to solve them in flight, and they don't cover in that document, except by implication, the most useful part of the phenomenon. A curved high-speed approach saves plenty of time on final approach even done badly [1]. Everyone who actually does it does it entirely by instinct and practice and most of them have been since long before that document was published.)
Nothing worth mentioning, but that's not most trips.
[1] I have once messed it up so badly that I smashed into a planetary ring, and still got to the station ahead of the person who was already in-system when I arrived...
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