Boost Overdrive - hold it like you mean it

[ChaosCloud]

Frontier: could you please say your opinion on this?

"Dun care."

I'd also love an afterburner instead of the boost spamming.
The very least after going surface exploring for extended periods of time spamming the boost every 4 seconds you start to feel like whoever came up with this system never wanted it to be liked.
Outside of combat where you only need it occasionally unless you're escaping, where you likely have 4 ENG anyways, is the current boost system just stupid.

My ASPX goes to 383 with boost and with 4 ENG I can boost again when it's down to 370 infinitely. And that's roughly every 4 seconds.
I just wanna turn the thing on and keep going at 370 without having to spam the boost -_-

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

Necro!

I suggested Something similar ages ago.

A push and hold boost that has slower overall acceleration, but higher top speed, it also only effects the main drives, not the directional thrusters, so it's just for sppppeeeeeeeeddddd!

 

[Corbin Moran]

"Dun care."

I'd also love an afterburner instead of the boost spamming.
The very least after going surface exploring for extended periods of time spamming the boost every 4 seconds you start to feel like whoever came up with this system never wanted it to be liked.
Outside of combat where you only need it occasionally unless you're escaping, where you likely have 4 ENG anyways, is the current boost system just stupid.

My ASPX goes to 383 with boost and with 4 ENG I can boost again when it's down to 370 infinitely. And that's roughly every 4 seconds.
I just wanna turn the thing on and keep going at 370 without having to spam the boost -_-

This! Please just enable a button for "boost until capacitor depleted". For builds and power settings that allow continuous boosting without ever depleting the capacitor this basically becomes an "afterburner" setting. No additional negatives would be needed since this is basically just using the mechanics allready in the game - just removing the need to push a button every 4 seconds.

 

[ChaosCloud]

but higher top speed

Great, so the pew pew crowd can go "whine whine whine" because they can't kill their prey anymore because it escapes.

This! Please just enable a button for "boost until capacitor depleted".

That'd be pretty useless, given that the current boost uses up 50% each time.

As far as balancing goes would I suggest that it should go for 95% of the speed you can get by spamming infinitely, in my case that'd be 370 * 0.95 = 351.
While it's running it should deplete the ENG completely and keep it empty so you can't turn it off and instantly boost again with the current one, for balancing reasons since this is more for out of combat like surface exploration (is there actually ANY other need for tihs?).
Maybe also make it require your weapons to be stowed though if it's slower than spamming that shouldn't be neccessary as someone with a 0-4-2 or 1-4-1 wouldn't be able to cause much damage in the first place and someone with 0-2-4 wouldn't be that fast since it should of course reduce the top speed with a lowered ENG setting.

To use my ASPX as example again, 4 ENG gives me the next boost at 370, with 3 ENG it's at 350~355, with 2 ENG it's down to 320 or so before I can boost again (and recharge in time for the next etc).
So afterburner with 4 should be 350, 3 would 332 and 2 would be 304.

I was also thinking about a way to toggle it without adding even more keybinds (though adding additional keybinds is still optional): just hold the boost button for a second to switch to afterburner.
Not sure if only the ASPX has a slow triggering boost but it takes easily half a second and probably more between pressing it and the boost actually firing, so that could be used as a kick to get started.

Or just go for only a seperate keybind if giving it a bump to get started is too much.

 

[Corbin Moran]

That'd be pretty useless, given that the current boost uses up 50% each time.

Depends on how you interpret what I wrote . My point was that with current mechanics not all builds and power settings are able to boost continually (every 4 seconds) thus maintaining something very close to top speed. But builds that ARE already able to do this should not suffer additional negative effects for an afterburner setting.

That being said I like your take on how to model an afterburner speed increase based on how fast the capacitor refills.

Basically I would just love anything that enables top speed and removes the 4 second boost spamming.

 

[ChaosCloud]

Basically I would just love anything that enables top speed and removes the 4 second boost spamming.

That's exactly what I meant with my idea about it. No advantage over spamming, for all I could care I'll even take a small decrease (hence the 95%), JUST no more spamming and instead the speed where infinite spamming equalizes, which works for all distributions.
The 4 sec was simply my 4 ENG delay, with less it gets longer obviously.

One thing I forgot to add was that the afterburner should turn off when you change your throttle below 100%.
Or probably <95% for the people playing with analog throttles, I just use 5 direct steps and rarely the actual throttle +- buttons xD

Perfect would be if that thing would even work in SC to get out of the damn gravity wells faster and delay excessive deceleration of bigger ones upon approach more, like going for one of these 100k Ls stars, these decelerate you already before your ETA reached 2min at 100%...

Maybe it could even get it's own engineering stuff so you could especially go for afterburner. Currently you can't really go for boost spamming past going for max speed on the thrusters?
Dunno, I have yet to do thrusters, last time I lacked materials, now I'm far from the bubble, and I probably still lack the materials, and Palin the old *&%$#@...


I'm almost willing to take a bet: the moment where I unlock G5 with Palin is the moment FD decides to add another G5 Thruster engineer who's much easier to unlock...

 

[Victor Dragunov]

This suggestion I posted a while back is still valid and I still would like an answer from FD.

 

[Magic Man]

[...] I still would like an answer from FD.

This is a community forum for posting suggestions, you don't really get to expect an answer.

 

[Victor Dragunov]

This is a community forum for posting suggestions, you don't really get to expect an answer.

If no one from FD is gonna read it, what is the point of any suggestions posted here?

 

[Magic Man]

Didn't say not reading it, just not expecting (almost demanding) an answer...

 

[ChaosCloud]

If no one from FD is gonna read it, what is the point of any suggestions posted here?

They silently ignore or take ideas, that's it.

Just like the camera suite.
Well, not exactly, that one was very highly demanded to the point where they explicitly voiced their "NO", and here we are having it now anyways.
Meaning if you really want it you need to make half the community want it : /

But yeah, you're not gonna find out what they think about it until you get either that, or it one day pops up in the patch notes / betas.

 

[Marc_Hicks]

I have this thing in my head for a long time and I decided it's time to actually publish it. I'm curious what do you guys think about it:

So, we all know Boost engine in Elite; you simply press a boost button, release immediately and after a short charging, your ship launches itself with additional power for a few seconds. That is nice and I think we all appreciate of having this option in the game.
However, in some scenarios (well, kinda in lot of them) you just spam the boost button all the time, which is not that great.

I was thinking, there could be an additional function for boost button, which I'd call Overdrive.

If you held the boostbutton down instead of just pressing it, drives would come into overdrive mode, meaning it would boost like normally, BUT instead of a two (or so) second boost like we have now, it would keep boosting for as long as you hold it, but with consequences.
The longer you hold it, naturally, the more heated your ship would become, eventually leading to malfunctions and possible destruction of your ship (like what heat does already in the game). Let's say after about 5 seconds of holding the button, your ship would go over 100% heat and it would increase exponentially after that. Also, your engines would need to have full pips to be actually able to go into boost overdrive - that might work nicely against overusing/abusing the overdrive.

Now, I do not necessarily mean, that the mentioned boost - overdrive function would increase your top/boost speed (maybe a little after holding it for two seconds, or so), it would primarily let you keep at the max (boost) speed available as long as you hold the button. Additionaly, there could be engineering blueprints for this, which could add some top speed, or let the speed slightly increase overtime as you hold the button, or lower the heat at a cost of effectivity, etc.

I firmly believe this would be very interesting and exciting addition to the game, where you could boost out of trouble, or after enemies more effectively, but at the cost of overtime - increasing chance that something could go wrong (heat buildup - possible malfunctions, damaged modules). As Frontier are masters of sounds in the game, I can already imagine the heart - pumping situations, where you run from a wing of elite vipers in your tradecobra, holding the boost and praying that your cooldown on FSD will be gone soon and your ship will not malfunction from heat before you'll be able to charge FSD.

Let me say, that I really like the boost in the current game (especially the sound effects), but I think there's something missing, the "oomph" and excitement, if you get me. Repeatedly pressing the button is...just not really exciting after some time, especially when it does the same thing all the time. I'm sure, this would be the perfect addition for boost and very interesting (not that hard to do, also?) game element.

Thank you for reading and your opinions.

P.S. Please, if you like the idea, share it with your friends and other CMDRs.

I am all for ultra speed boosts, both in N-space & Super-cruise. My idea was a form of "jury-rigging" process, somewhere between synthesis & engineer upgrades. You perform a diagnostic on your thrusters or FSD, then get a suggestion for what materials/data you can use to "jury rig" the module for a temporary extra boost.

There would be potential downsides though, heat build up & potential module damage from over-use.

 

[Bad Move]

Hi guys, i left some rep points to few of u i agree with.
Breaking speed after boosting has got to go.
I too have an idea about the thing, but, somehow, i don't think is going to happen.
Three modes of n space movement, regardless of flight assist. Thruttle mode, the same speed for forward, backward latteral and vertical movement, with different acceleretion rates for lateral and vertical, depending on the ship's shape controled by throttle and lateral/vertical controls.
A dedicated engine key for gradual acceleretion, forwards only, with some added manueverability, but, less than what we get today with engine boost, using power from the capacitor, untill the ship reaches it's top speed, or, run out of power, and maintatining that speed, untill u throttle down.(allthough i guess there sould b some sort of deadzone for gamepad users, i use a hotas, so, i wouln't know)
and a new engine boost, activated when double tabing the engine key, using any power u may have in the capacitor for rapid forward acceleretion, untill the ship reaches top speed, or, run out of power. And maintaing that speed, with the same boost to manueverabiltty we get with the engine boost we have now.
And some lost of momentum, everytime u roll-pitch-yawn, thrust, down , left or, right.

No draw backs required.

i'm about to start a new thread with copy-paste what i described above. I really think this engine boost thing must change soon, before sc is releashed, or, i fear there will b a massive migration of players, form ed to sc...

There r a lot of things that need improvement with ed, but, removing spamming boost to go anywhere is the most essensial to ceep the game alive.

 

[Victor Dragunov]

Well, if not anything else suggested here is going to be implemented in any way, at least the "click to boost every few seconds" has to go imho, as it's not fun and engaging at all after you've spent some time playing.

 

[NW3]

It's been a while since my last post in this thread. I've thought of a new, improved implementation:

Press and hold the boost button. While the button is depressed, after the boost is finished Flight Assist will not use the forward thrusters to slow your speed and whenever the power capacitor has recharged, another boost will be automatically triggered.

Not only does this avoid any "negatives" (since you are not exceeding normal operation limits), but your ship should cool down slightly faster, since the retro-thrusters are not firing.

 

[Ionico]

+1 to the original idea. It was a VERY well thought-out idea, and the compromises are perfect.

 

[Hydrino]

+1, lots of ways to implement and tweak.
Like several of the other poster's suggestions as well.

Leaving planet surfaces and starports to escape mass lock is certainly a boost-spam party.

There is so much time spent in travel through empty space in this game as it is. Would be a nice QoL feature to have a more steady 'afterburner' or 'steady boost' whatever it is called.

Should still require pip management, use fuel faster and generate heat and maintenance issues. But yes.