Exploring - why isn't large LY jumping a thing?

[Watcher]

I quite like the idea of reintroducing the old concept of a 'galactic hyperdrive'. Unlike the old games where it notionally sends you to another galaxy we could try something different.
Galactic hyperdrive is a module, it is pretty expensive and requires its own ammo/refil thing. Capacity for this would probably be no greater than 3 for even the best modules.
Using it requires you select a destination system (or perhaps a direction and approximate distance). You can't target anything less than 10KLys (maybe more, 20KLy?) with some upper limit also perhaps. On activation you hyper-jump to somewhere within a 2KLy bubble of your selected destination, I'm tempted to say this should even be away from a star but this might completely strand some people if they are unlucky - on the other hand this does add an extra element of risk..
This system would allow explorers to get away from the bubble quickly and roughly in the direction they are interested in but doesn't let them go anywhere directly and it would be pretty useless for inter-bubble travel.

 

[GraXXoR]

I still think the sense of scale would be retained, jumping into an area that no one has been before. There's still 400 billion systems. It wouldn't speed up the rate of system discovery. The sense of scale as in 'it takes ages to get there' would be gone, but still, not a bad thing to lose if the jumping boredom goes along with it?

In fact, I wonder if there are areas of the galaxy that are unique / interesting in some way, made so by stellar forge but still unfound? Maybe commanders could find them and set up a new base there?

The idea that it takes months to do a Circumnavigation is what makes achieving it mean something... An I win button hugely diminishes those achievements...
I do sometimes wish for quicker travel (like when flying back from the Guardian ruins,) but only occasionally. And when I arrive back in the bubble, it is with a palpable feeling of being back home.

 

[zombieapocalypse]

YOU may well get a sense of scale from these things.

I get a sense of boredom. Of WAITING. Of loading.

The same Mechanics for which Bethesda RPG's are denigrated and slammed in reviews are just blithely excused here. Because why should space games try to overcome 30 year old technical limitations?

So what exactly are you suggesting? Instantaneous jumps? Being able to get from one side of the galaxy to the other in a matter seconds or minutes? How would that produce more interesting gameplay or provide any sense of scale or accomplishment? To me, it sounds like exploration isn't really for you.

 

[Shinji Ikari]

I wonder if any explorer has ever requested such thing?

Maybe the OP should think about why.

 

[JudeSaint]

It's also about a sense of scale and a sense of achievement. Otherwise, what's the point of exploration expeditions, if only takes a few minutes to get to any part of the galaxy?

That's not to say that exploration couldn't be made more interesting and engaging, it certainly could. And hopefully some of the changes coming later in the year will address that.

The point of exploration would be to actually explore. This stuff now, jump, honk, if your SUPER bored maybe get close enough to scan some planets to me is not exploring. I wanna find structures. I wanna get close enough to a planet to scan it and find an "unknown ancient energy source" or something of that nature. The new guardian things they added was a really cool feature. The older ones that people had to find were in my opinion WAY to difficult. I think they can really use this ad a way to find a good compromise between what they just did with the new guardian things and what they were doing with the old guardian/thargoid stuff. I enjoy a good challenge but there is a line where it becomes less of a game and more of like a 2nd job. Sure there are a select few out there that find these types of challenges very fun/exciting. I myself and id wager a good portion of the current elite population (i could be wrong here ) do not want to dedicate 99% of our playtime 5km off a planets surface looking for a literal needle in a haystack. Its what ... the year like 3200? (i dont know the exact year but holy crap its 1k years a least in the future) and the advanced sensors of a a ship can tell me the exact percentage of a planets makeup and what materials ill find there but they can not tell me if there is a structure? ... come on. I know there is an exploration overhaul in the works and I REALLY REALLY hope that they blow my mind. I feel like they have so much they could work with here. They have a good solid foundation to really do something very engaging with exploration. More than honk/jump.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

:facepalm:
The Galaxy is ridiculously easy to cross and circumnavigate already.
It all went to the drain right at the game release, when wear and tear mechanic wasn't implemented.
Originally achieving distances bigger than a few hundred light years was envisioned to require support chains and coordination between players.

yep dropping that was the biggest faux pas from FD so far, because that is one part of the game that can never come back now... too long has passed.... i remember looking forward to a concerted co-op mission accross the entire playerbase to build some sort of highway to sag A with repair points (platforms) along the way which may have took years. Imagine my dissapointment when i learned players made it there 24 hrs into gamma

it would have been a simple fix.

make jumping to any system without a nav beacon cause some damage..... once you return full scan data from a system without a nav beacon and hand into UC, then at some point later missions with appear on the mission board to drop off parts of a nav beacon... a set amount of time after that the nav beacon comes online and then that system can be jumped too damage free

for it to function any nav beacon has to be able to able to establish a link to at least 1 other nav beacon within X LY (meaning that some systems will never get one and those will always mean having to do a manual jump with some damage).

at some point even further down the line if any systems had been missed within the "expanding" bubble... the missionboard would generate missions for "Get full scan data from system X to allow construction of a nav beacon".

that way players could actually be not just explorers but actively involved in the building of the bubble.

 

[Eshackleton]

Although I agree jump honking is boring, I don't think increasing jump range is the solution. Jump range has basically been doubled since release of Horizons and jump honking is still boring.
Also Distant Worlds would be pointless if you could reach the other side of the galaxy in 3 jumps.
I think the solution is giving explorers more to do than jump honk. If we only had a reason to actually stop and explore systems and planet surfaces it wouldn't be as boring.
I'm still hoping for a new exploration SRV that takes core samples of planets that can be sold at resource extraction companies for good money. If there was maybe 3-5 points spread out across a planet to gather core samples it would encourage driving across the planets and actually exploring. Some samples should be worth more than others so that there is always a chance for the "Jackpot".
The alien structures are nice but explorers need more than this.
I have always imagined that when we sell exploration data, it is mining companies that are buying it to look for potentially new planets to mine. Give us something of credit value on each planet to make it worth landing.

 

[mmm]

I completely agree with the OP. It would also be the only way for me to unlock Palin.

 

[JudeSaint]

YOU may well get a sense of scale from these things.

I get a sense of boredom. Of WAITING. Of loading.

The same Mechanics for which Bethesda RPG's are denigrated and slammed in reviews are just blithely excused here. Because why should space games try to overcome 30 year old technical limitations?

I agree with the boredom part.

So what exactly are you suggesting? Instantaneous jumps? Being able to get from one side of the galaxy to the other in a matter seconds or minutes? How would that produce more interesting gameplay or provide any sense of scale or accomplishment? To me, it sounds like exploration isn't really for you.

I agree here too.... with the last part (tentatively) until they fix exploration. Because right now i feel like exploration is only for a very very niche bit of people who enjoy the very tedious/relaxing feeling of the jump honk. (or the jump honk and scanning planets for credits .. because who scans planets for anything else other than credits. Unless you are a completionist lol.)

Id like to add (i might just be repeating myself here as i just posted something similar in response to someone else) that if there was more engaging gameplay WHILE jumping that the jumps would be less tedious.
Netflix is releasing a remake of "Lost in space"... Imagine if you were pushing your FSD to the max (like you had a 60-65 ly jump range conda or something) and you were constantly doing nearly max range jumps. What if there was a chance that your FSD just took a huge dump and you were too close to a star/black hole/ Neutron star/ radiation cloud etc and you got spat out randomly across the galaxy .. and your nav computer was down except for like short range jumps from the contacts menu for a set amount of time (similar to a FSD recharge when you leave supercruise at unsafe speeds or lose an interdiction. THAT would be cool ... as long as there was something more to do than honk/surface scan for % of materials make up.
I feel like this is very much so in the realm of whats doable by Fdev and that it would really bring a huge influx of people into the exploration scene. And possibly really add to the population of elite. The possibilities of this type of mechanic added to the endless things they could do with deep space exploration would really be a huge reason i would say "hey you, friend A you should really check this out"

 

[Arindor]

Exploring should be about the journey. IMO, traveling 10,000LY in an instant is the antithesis of exploration. Besides, I like to think I will, eventually, stumble upon something no one else has. I may be deluding myself, but that itch needs to be scratched.

 

[GraXXoR]

yep dropping that was the biggest faux pas from FD so far, because that is one part of the game that can never come back now... too long has passed.... i remember looking forward to a concerted co-op mission accross the entire playerbase to build some sort of highway to sag A with repair points (platforms) along the way which may have took years. Imagine my dissapointment when i learned players made it there 24 hrs into gamma

it would have been a simple fix.

make jumping to any system without a nav beacon cause some damage..... once you return scan data from a system without a nav beacon and hand into UC, then at some point later missions with appear on the mission board to drop off parts of a nav beacon... a set amount of time after that the nav beacon comes online and then that system can be jumped too damage free

for it to function any nav beacon has to be able to able to establish a link to at least 1 other nav beacon within X LY (meaning that some systems will never get one and those will always mean having to do a manual jump with some damage).

at some point even further down the line if any systems had been missed within the "expanding" bubble... the missionboard would generate missions for "Get full scan data from system X to allow construction of a nav beacon".

that way players could actually be not just explorers but actively involved in the building of the bubble.

This was how I expected it to go... I was so surprised when I found out we could just jump anywhere willy-nilly without there even being a chance of crashing into a star or a black hole.

 

[Andovar]

make jumping to any system without a nav beacon cause some damage..... once you return scan data from a system without a nav beacon and hand into UC, then at some point later missions with appear on the mission board to drop off parts of a nav beacon... a set amount of time after that the nav beacon comes online and then that system can be jumped too damage free

for it to function any nav beacon has to be able to able to establish a link to at least 1 other nav beacon within X LY (meaning that some systems will never get one and those will always mean having to do a manual jump with some damage).

at some point even further down the line if any systems had been missed within the "expanding" bubble... the missionboard would generate missions for "Get full scan data from system X to allow construction of a nav beacon".

that way players could actually be not just explorers but actively involved in the building of the bubble.

That sounds really, really cool. Actual player driven expansion.... *sigh* ...oh well.

 

[JudeSaint]

I think the solution is giving explorers more to do than jump honk. If we only had a reason to actually stop and explore systems and planet surfaces it wouldn't be as boring.

This ... 1000% this. I just mentioned this (twice i think) in replies ... This all day. Seems like it would be such an easy thing to implement (i could be wrong ... probably am) and then they could endlessly add to it once the framework is in ... which ... isnt it in? .. i mean dont we already have POI's that spawn randomly on planets? ... Dont we already have Signal sources that spawn randomly in space? ... Just work on adding in something other than a 1 structure POI and something other than the same old cutter/corvette wreck with materials.

I said this in another post a while back but ... Add in a ship thats afloat ... with the computer still intact and we get to scan it. It can be something like a log "CMDR yada yada here used an escape pod in **Insert system here**" Maybe he escape podded on an inhabitable planet and we could find him? ... Or maybe the computer has information on some very important data from a system some jumps away and the ship for whatever reason was unable to make it and now that data is corrupt but the system is intact enough to lead us (in some way shape or form ... it doesnt have to lead us RIGHT to it) to the planet with the important data... a rare artifact .... an old structure ... A PRE FSD CIVILIZATION!!!! (i mean ... that would be kinda cool right?)

Point is that the framework seem to be there for these things to happen. And oh man ... i think they could be good.

 

[Blackcompany]

The tunnel time depends on your connection although there is a limit of how little time you spend in it for good reasons.

The tunnel time is at least 10 seconds (too) long. Even in SOLO is 10-12 seconds, with 100MB download speed (tested). That's is far too long, especially on the heels of TWO countdown timers (which is frankly absurd).

 

[Blackcompany]

So what exactly are you suggesting? Instantaneous jumps? Being able to get from one side of the galaxy to the other in a matter seconds or minutes? How would that produce more interesting gameplay or provide any sense of scale or accomplishment? To me, it sounds like exploration isn't really for you.

Nothing of the sort.

I am suggesting travel. Not loading screens. That's all.

No instant, 100k LY jumps. No Win Button.

Maybe greatly accelerated, but manually controlled, flight between systems. Complete with optimal speed and course, as well as course corrections to maintain the tunnel.

I am fine with travel taking time...as long as it's travel, not loading screens. This isn't 1984.

 

[Avaddon]

Back at original release I took a trip in a T6 to the other side of the Orion Nebula. It had a jump range of 27.54ly. I plotted 100ly routes- which took forever as every jump permutation had to be computed. Xmas eve 2014 I was at KY Monocerotis looking back at what felt like a huge distance. The journey felt epic....... 6 months later I went to Sag A*- a monumental trip for me in my 34ly Asp. I met 2 Cmdrs there, discovered 2 planetary nebulae on the way and though had taken 4 weeks to get there using 1kly routing- took 4 days to get back due to a cracked canopy. That journey felt epic- just not quite as much so.
Last month on my 2nd account I travelled to Beagle Point- went 65,590ly from start, traced my route on EDSM and marvelled at the 1000s of Cmdrs spread around the galaxy. I jumped atleast 52ly- but often 200ly with jet cones. Had repair limpets, AFMUs, plasma slug fuel dumping and 20kly routing. That journey didn't feel epic at all........

The thing about exploration (other than the lack of content) is the feeling of remoteness, hardship, isolation and challenge- something which has been lost over the years. Whereas we were once Vasco de Gama and Magellan- we are now the Griswolds on vacation.
So making travel even easier/ quicker/ safer is NOT the kind of content I am looking for- yes exploration needs more love- but not more of the easy mode it has received so far- new things to see and new ways to see them but bring back the epicness of the journeys!

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

.as long as it's travel, not loading screens. This isn't 1984.

not only is that a tiresome meme... it isnt even true... Elite 1984 (actually 1986 for me personally) didnt have any loading screens. from memory neither did 1st encounters or frontier. any loading times are not added in for laughs and giggles because of some nod to the original game.

but you can ask for it all you want but the simple fact is, FD dont put in loading screens for fun!. one way or another the game has to connect to the servers and get the info needed to build each system as you jump as wekk as sync to other games if in any mode other than solo (solo is noticably faster)...... it is why sometimes it takes longer than others to jump, and just because your connection is all singing all dancing, does not mean that the servers connection to you is so good.

i am pretty sure FD do it all as quick as they can.

(random thought, has anyone tested the network data when jumping? i am guessing the "loading" of the next system starts at the start of the countdown but honestly i have no idea.

according to FD (and they should know better than I) it would take many terrabytes of data to be able to generate the seed and to store the entire galmap on our machines.......

 

[MadDogMurdock]

Anyway - direct reply the the OP.

60LY is a really long way.
Boosting that with Jumponium and Neutron Stars makes it a really really long way.

 

[Allitnil]

If you're solely considering "how quickly can I get from A to B" and not worrying about things like "intact" or "within the spirit of the rules", use of the "respawn at nearest detention centre to pay off bounty" rule can cut a fair bit off the travel distance from Sol to Colonia. Sol - Sag A* it would barely help with, if at all.

(They added a couple of extra detention centres since Beta, according to the live changelog, but it should still be possible to use them)

I guess I've not got an inventive enough mind to think of this sort of thing! (or just don't care enough about C&P to bother looking into the ramifications....). But how on earth did they manage to introduce such a blatant exploit?

 

[Ian Doncaster]

I guess I've not got an inventive enough mind to think of this sort of thing! (or just don't care enough about C&P to bother looking into the ramifications....). But how on earth did they manage to introduce such a blatant exploit?

I'm not sure they could easily have avoided it.

If you die with a bounty you end up at the nearest (aligned) detention centre.
Therefore they have to add a detention centre to the Colonia region or dying with a bounty out there suddenly becomes really unpleasant!
Therefore, since there are deep-space stations in between where you can incur a bounty, you can use them for fast travel to the nearest endpoint of the route.
... so they added some (probably two, but not yet tested) detention centres to the route between Beta and Live, but that only makes it more expensive (3 rebuys rather than 1) and slightly less efficient.

The only way to completely "fix" it would be to add a detention centre to basically every deep-space station ... which they may well do at some point, who knows. Since the suicidewinder route to get back from Colonia to Sol (expensively, if you want your ship back too, of course) has basically worked since there's been a Colonia, I'm not sure they necessarily mind there being a money-for-speed tradeoff available.