Cut out all the time wasting

[Dangerous_Dave]

I've seen many people complaining that they seem to spend half their time slowly cruising across a solar system to reach a port, and then clumsily trying to land their ship on a landing pad like they've done a hundred times before. The usual response to this is "well it's a space trading sim - space is big and empty so you should expect to spend a lot of your time not doing very much".

I'd like to put it to the community that this is a completely bogus response. This game is not remotely realistic either on the issues of space travel or of trading. It completely laughs in the face of physics, the myriad risks and challenges involved in space travel, is frequently inconsistent with its own skewed physics concepts, not to mention the extremely superficial treatment of trading, which more or less entirely glosses over the bureaucracy and other red tape that is actually involved with trading.

But that's ok. It's ok because what Elite Dangerous is, no matter how much anyone would like to pretend about it, is a game. Considering this, it seems very unjustifiable to insert gameplay mechanics that have players spending half their time doing nothing. It is just a waste of the player's valuable playing time.

With that said, I'd like to propose a couple of simple fixes: The frame shift drive is clearly a very accurate piece of equipment, since is it reliably able to deliver the player to a position just a short distance from the system star (something that could result in catastrophe if slightly miscalculated). So why not let us select a location within the solar system to frame shift to (a planet or a space station). When you frame shift, you pop out 500-1000 light seconds from the place you're trying to go, and then have half a minute to a minute of cruising to get there, instead of the usual 3-10 minutes we currently have. 30-60s is plenty of time to be interdicted by pirates and get all those gameplay mechanics going. If you don't select anywhere within the system, you will just frame shift to the star as before.

Then for that repetitive docking [and this may be something that already exists in the game or a mod for all I know], it would be nice if you could buy an automatic pilot system that just lands your ship in about 30 seconds without you having to do it for the umpteenth time.

I don't think you would lose anything from the game with these adjustments, but you would stop wasting huge amounts of player's time and make the game much more accessible.

You may think that this post is an unfounded rant of epic proportions, but please reflect that I wrote all of this, proofread it and reconsidered my arguments, checked my spelling and so on, all while my ship was slowly cruising into a space port.

 

[EWanderer]

So I could just say no and be done with it, but since you asked for a reason answes, have a few pointers why I and judging from the respone on similar thread probably a lot of others have to say about this.

Sense of Scale
Space is big. One of Elite greatest strengths is reflect that scale. Invisible dots in the distance, slowly growing until they suddenly envelop your entire vision. And now imagine a world, where everytime you went from point A to B, your target would most the time just have a regular size. I would find the galaxy becoming boring very quickly.

UI/Controls
How do you suggest FDev should go about designing the menu for this new local jump? A dropdown menu once you select the star, would you first need to jump into a system, select the body and then make a jump again? So either way we had to fumble around in some new menue or have the good old: jump, stop to make your selection without a star crash, speed up again for FSD. Trust me, after fiddeling around a lot with the new FSS, I always catch myself thinking: "Man this is slow" before realizing the alternative. I guess the same would happen with this new mechanic as it would soon lose its novelty and satisfaction.

Effects on the Gameplay

30-60s is plenty of time to be interdicted by pirates and get all those gameplay mechanics going. If you don't select anywhere within the system, you will just frame shift to the star as before.

Yeah Interdiction has this funny little thing, that you need to get behind the target to actually be able to catch them. One of the most common tactics to avoid Players is to cruise in a huge loop and come in from an different angle, but it costs time. Now I just have to look at the new Map figure out which planet allows me to take a different approach angle and then just get it done. And seeing how many different angles players might choose to approach something such as a CG it might become near impossible for Pirates to catch them. It also doesn't help, that before Players might keep track of attackers by watching the main star for entries and now would have to have guards stationed at every Starport and Outpost hampering defenses.

NPCs
No think about NPC's. It would make sense for them to use this mechanic to get around, otherwise immersion breaking much? And now it is your job to find some NPC-Group for a Massacer Mission. Good Luck with that as they all skip the jump to the mainstar or pop right away as you try to interdict them at the main star if they had to make a quick stop there.

Spirit of the Game

The usual response to this is "well it's a space trading sim - space is big and empty so you should expect to spend a lot of your time not doing very much".

Although you don't to hear it, that is part of the game. Many people treat this game as a truck simulator, where most of the time you just drive along the road. And there are a lot of activities, where you usually spend much more time outside of SC, than you travel around. In fact aside from Moving Stuff or People, Salvage Missions and Pirating, this is the case for everything: Mining, Bounty Hunting in Res-Sites, Thargoid Hunting...
So yeah while every profession could certainly profit from this, focusing on SC-Travel, just because there is nothing to do (it is space duh, sorry there isn't a picturesque landscape to admire) doesn't mean it hampers your overall enjoyment of Elite to a maddening degree.

Final Point
So as pointed out, this new Mechanic doesn't robs the game of the experience, would probably only be a temporary high and could cause massive issues for certain activities, that rely on SC gameplay. In comparison to other time-wasting activites, such as Guardian Grind, Material Farming, Wait Times for Ship Transfers, the Wait Time for resolving POI's in FSS and so much more, this isn't something, that should be changed. I am actually disappointed I even spend so much time on this, as I thought after reading the title, you would address the aforementioned time eaters, all of which have much easier fixes. Well as long as FDev doesn't decide to make a sticky of one of this suggestion, along with stuff like Teleporters around the Galaxy, this threads will pop up and we to repeat ourselves as people think they reinvented the wheel.

 

[PauloG01]

No, as it would make hutton Orbital just another station.

 

[Burke]

I totally agree with op. This isnt an game about flying spaceships anymore, FSS proves that. FSD should drop the player at 5km from station.

 

[Whitehair]

This game is not remotely realistic either on the issues of space travel or of trading. It completely laughs in the face of physics, the myriad risks and challenges involved in space travel,

Game based on FTL travel laughs in the face of physics. So, please add more "laughing in the face of physics" so that I don't have to experience the vastness of space. Should have made ED about teleporting from one location to another then there wouldn't be any need for space ships that no-one wants to fly.

 

[deleteduser]

Cut out all the time wasting...

I can't think of any part of this or any other game that isn't a waste of time, from one perspective or another.

Since we'll all end up as 'Elite' eventually, why not just cut-out the time-wasting in the middle and rank straight from Harmless/Penniless/Aimless/Helpless, to Elite?

Missions? Why bother, I'll complete them anyway, so just give me the rewards now.

I didn't think this an unfounded rant of epic proportions, just another in the long list of 'make it easier' demands from people who insist on participating in activities they obviously detest.

The number of masochists in this forum is truly astonishing.

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

I made a suggestion that basically means systems have multiple nav beacons, and you can jump from one beacon to another, but only from normal space within a few km of a beacon.
Basically a "medium wake", charge time is moderate (faster than high wake, slower than low), low wake mass lock applies, uses more fuel than supercruising the same distance.

Nav beacons can be mostly placed procedurally, but FD can make it so Hutton Orbital and whatnot are safe.
(Using the lore that Hutton truckers kept stealing the nav beacon, so governments have given up placing them. Lol)

Then you have a choice of
Jump in -> supercruise* (for however long) -> destination
-Or-
Jump in -> short SC to Nav* -> drop in -> charge for medium wake* -> jump -> charge for supercruise* -> supercruise* -> destination.

* = Risk of attack.

So supercruise only has a risk of attack during the beginning and end as you slow down. So it's safer, but takes longer.
My suggestion has way more risks, but does cut your trip down significantly.

 

[Geist]

For me ED is a space trading sim game. The time it takes to get from the sun to the station is time I am telling the story of my cmdr in my head. Those repetitive landings are always just a little bit dangerous (even with my only autodock ship, my cutter) and I like that. I sympathise that the op may find it boring but that is part of the problem here (and with all the please change this threads), what is one persons boring is another persons enjoyable game play.

 

[777Driver]

Just wasted time reading the OP..

 

[Dangerous_Dave]

Ok so the main issue is the interdiction mechanic. The UI is a non-issue - how difficult would it be to have an FSD button in addition to a supercruise button? So if you don't have the system data prior to jumping there (if you do you can just select the destination in the system map), and you find your destination is a long way off when you jump in, you have an option to FSD rather than supercruise most of the remaining distance. The 'spirit of the game' and 'sense of scale' just seems to be the "Space is big so you should expect not to be doing very much" argument again, which comes to the issue of whether this is a simulation or a game.

So the question is, is it worth having players spend half their time doing nothing in order to preserve the current interdiction mechanic? Is that a good gameplay decision? Or would it be better to have a different mechanic that didn't require players to spend several minutes crawling into port on the off-chance that someone might want to intercept them?

I'm trying to think of a comparison. Imagine if Need for Speed wanted to introduce a 'steal your car' mechanic, so after every race, they made you drive your car slowly back to your garage to give people the opportunity to steal it. So now for every 10 minutes you spend racing, you have to spend 5 minutes slowly driving your car home to give latitude for the mechanic to work. Would that be considered a good game mechanic by the community?

 

[CMDR Hagglebeard]

Auto-pilot to supercruise destinations please

 

[Para Handy]

All these continual requests for faster, quicker, gimmie, gimmie, gimmie - a bit of searching and they would see the reasons why things are as they are and why their wheedling will be in vain.

 

[xzanfr]

you may enjoy this
It's elite without having to waste your time with all the flying about business.

 

[Dangerous_Dave]

You can dismiss it if you like, but it is highly likely that a great many people have been put off this game because of this one issue alone. That may not be a problem to you, but it should be a problem to Frontier, since their game has been less successful/profitable as a result. As per the above, I don't see a good reason to keep it this way. It is an arbitrary gameplay mechanic that has a very negative effect on the gameplay.

 

[Brian of Ardagh]

Better yet, the OP should try EV Nova, the single player Elite homage. I wasted many hours playing that game.

 

[dm06]

I made a suggestion that basically means systems have multiple nav beacons, and you can jump from one beacon to another, but only from normal space within a few km of a beacon.

I found a lot of crashed nav beacons on planets... That makes me think that long time ago we already had multiple nav beacons, but they all fallen now.

 

[Captain Jack Sparrow]

More complaining about how inconvenient or time consuming flying a spaceship is in a spaceship game.

 

[Auronio]

Simple, concise and plain - no.

The best thing about this game is flying.
And this entails long(er) supercruise distances as well.

10k, 40k, 320k ls supercruise distance? Give it to me.
Docking with or without a computer? Great.
Planetary stations? Orbital cruise and gliding? I LOVE IT!

Exaggerating on the idea - and yes, I know that wasn't meant - we could also jump (teleport) from station to station, just buying goods at A, selling at B, then C etc. rinse and repeat.
Could equally well play a stock exchange simulation.

Imho the supercruise distances/time efforts are already pretty low.
In most cases I need to slow down in order to be caught by all the pirates...

 

[Lestat]

I've seen many people complaining that they seem to spend half their time slowly cruising across a solar system to reach a port, and then clumsily trying to land their ship on a landing pad like they've done a hundred times before. The usual response to this is "well it's a space trading sim - space is big and empty so you should expect to spend a lot of your time not doing very much".

Well space is big.

I'd like to put it to the community that this is a completely bogus response. This game is not remotely realistic either on the issues of space travel or of trading. It completely laughs in the face of physics, the myriad risks and challenges involved in space travel, is frequently inconsistent with its own skewed physics concepts, not to mention the extremely superficial treatment of trading, which more or less entirely glosses over the bureaucracy and other red tape that is actually involved with trading.

No what completely bogus is players like you not using features to help you then whine when you find out it too far.

But that's ok. It's ok because what Elite Dangerous is, no matter how much anyone would like to pretend about it, is a game. Considering this, it seems very unjustifiable to insert gameplay mechanics that have players spending half their time doing nothing. It is just a waste of the player's valuable playing time.

Here a trick. When you dock at a station and instead of Click and accept all mission suited for your needs. Maybe start using Open Galaxy map and system map to find out if the station too far. If it is too far DON'T accept that mission. If you see a mission on your ship while flying. Dock at the nearest station and do more research. Note some will not tell you. So it a gamble.

With that said, I'd like to propose a couple of simple fixes: The frame shift drive is clearly a very accurate piece of equipment, since is it reliably able to deliver the player to a position just a short distance from the system star (something that could result in catastrophe if slightly miscalculated). So why not let us select a location within the solar system to frame shift to (a planet or a space station). When you frame shift, you pop out 500-1000 light seconds from the place you're trying to go, and then have half a minute to a minute of cruising to get there, instead of the usual 3-10 minutes we currently have. 30-60s is plenty of time to be interdicted by pirates and get all those gameplay mechanics going. If you don't select anywhere within the system, you will just frame shift to the star as before.

Another idea. start using features that help you not take long trips. Blaming the game due to lack of research is your own fault.

Then for that repetitive docking [and this may be something that already exists in the game or a mod for all I know], it would be nice if you could buy an automatic pilot system that just lands your ship in about 30 seconds without you having to do it for the umpteenth time.

Than buy a docking computer.

I don't think you would lose anything from the game with these adjustments, but you would stop wasting huge amounts of player's time and make the game much more accessible.

Well you can adjust your own gameplay and help your self. That what the Open Galaxy Map and system map is used for. To buy data before Accepting a set mission.

You may think that this post is an unfounded rant of epic proportions, but please reflect that I wrote all of this, proofread it and reconsidered my arguments, checked my spelling and so on, all while my ship was slowly cruising into a space port.

Yawn.

 

[Old Duck]

Just a couple of tips for the OP:

1) You can find systems where a station is literally 12 LS away from the main star. I'm betting with a little research, you can even find a collection of systems in close proximity that would allow you to run missions and cargo back and forth with minimal time in supercruise. It is very rare that I run routes where I need to be in SC for 15 minutes these days.

2) "It would be nice if you could buy an automatic pilot system that just lands your ship in about 30 seconds without you having to do it for the umpteenth time." - You can! It's called a Docking Computer