You don't have to use it, just because it's there, at least that's what people keep telling me!
General Extended FSD jumps
- Thread starter RetroPaladin
- Start date
You don't have to use it, just because it's there, at least that's what people keep telling me!
Cant thats now how the FSD jump works. FSD locks onto the greatest mass object in a system, then jumps to it using it as an anchor point. Stars with in its own system are to close to preform a jump, so you would just end up jumping back to the same location.
To give you an example of how the jump works. on a piece of paper. draw a dot, then fairly close to it, draw a bigger dot. Now on the other end of the paper, do the same thing.
Take a quarter, and put it on the paper, that quarter basically represents your exit point from a jump, when you exit in a system, your ship ends up at what ever location has the most mass under that quarter. So if you place it over 2 of the dots, its going to end up putting you next to teh big one.
If you try and jump again at the same location. your exit point is still going to be over that larger dot and end up putting you there again. Thats why when you jump to the system across the paper, you still end up at the largest mass.
To give you an example of how the jump works. on a piece of paper. draw a dot, then fairly close to it, draw a bigger dot. Now on the other end of the paper, do the same thing.
Take a quarter, and put it on the paper, that quarter basically represents your exit point from a jump, when you exit in a system, your ship ends up at what ever location has the most mass under that quarter. So if you place it over 2 of the dots, its going to end up putting you next to teh big one.
If you try and jump again at the same location. your exit point is still going to be over that larger dot and end up putting you there again. Thats why when you jump to the system across the paper, you still end up at the largest mass.
Um, that feature already exists. It costs at the bare minimum 5 billion credits, needs 15 minutes to jump and 5 minutes to be ready for the next jump, and it eats some tritium: the fleet carrier. But you not only get the ability to jump to any star within the system, nope, you get the ability to jump to any natural body in the system, if you have previously explored it. Sadly stations or megaships are excluded as destinations, and you also can't use it for permit locked systems.
Plus there is a limit of 16 of them at any given location, if that limit is reached you arrive somewhere else or can’t jump at all.
Targeted jump perhaps?
I like the idea of being able to bring up the system map and select the body to jump to. If you haven't been to the system previously, it defaults to the main star. Means you have to have at least visited the system and honked/scanned the bodies (not surface scan that is) to be able to select them. Would work well in the bubble right off the bat, which I suspect is the region of greatest use.
I propose a new “Tritium FSD” module that can replace the standard FSD. Provides a fixed, lets say, 75LY jump range regardless of ship mass and has a 1 minute spin up time.
- Allows jump behaviour similar to that of a Fleet Carrier whereby you can choose entry point but requires Tritium fuel instead of normal fuel. Which you have to mine for. And if you run out you are stranded! However, unlike a FC, of course your ship is not put into permanent orbit, you just arrive and then fly as normal.
- Holds enough fuel itself for 2 jumps (there and back) with option to expand capacity via Tritium Fuel Tank modules and/or reloading from Tritium stored in Cargo Racks. Thus the “largest Tritium Fuel Tank you can fit” becomes the new “largest fuel scoop you can fit” ... though a Fuel Scoop would still be useful for topping up the main Thrusters fuel supply now and again it could be a much smaller size.
- Maybe C6 upwards only so only the large ships can use it since it would probably be silly on a small / medium. Would really open up some options for large exploration ships.
- Could introduce a mining SLF variant to allow you to go get Tritium should you run out ... though the main ship engines would continue to use normal fuel so I guess you could still mine in your main ship as well.
- Exact Tritium usage would have to be balanced ... expect it should use less Tritium / LY than a Fleet Carrier since the mass it’s moving is so much less but equally we don’t want a Cutter that can jump across the entire galaxy without refuelling because it can hold 760T of Tritium ...
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There's a reason why our ships use the current FSD and not the witchspace jump engine that carriers and capital ships use....it's well documented and impossible to adapt to use in our ships!
Pfff ... it’s all made up - anything could be explained in the lore if needed. Personally not bothered either way, just thought it was a possible option to provide what the OP suggested which (let’s face it) would be useful for some circumstances.
That'd be pretty funny. Jumps straight to the desired body then has to take several hours to days to slowly fly in real space.
Yes it's all made up, and if you have a made up history and technology base for your game you stick to it otherwise whats the point of anything at all, just have magic move you around anywhere you want, Beagle Point? Sure one magical jump away, magically appear in a station, magically destroy a thargoid, magically move cargo instantly between stations, but we don't do that because the rules are for how things work are laid down in the lore. The current FSD are a new development that allows small ships to travel between stars because the witch space drives previously didn't allow that, that's the ED history, you can't just magically ignore that.
I’m not suggesting we ignore that ... I’m suggesting we could build on that. Don’t have to - but we could.
Tritium FSD drives didn’t exist until Fleet Carriers. They do now. And they can jump to any “gravity point” in a system. Extending that in some way to allow smaller ships than Fleet Carriers to do the same doesn’t break anything with respect to lore - it’s just a new set of advancements that have been made within this imaginary universe - like Guardian FSD Boosters or Advanced MultiCannon.
I’m not saying we have to or even should do that. I’m just saying it’s an option.
The drives in Fleet Carriers are a variation on the old witch space drives used in capital ships, you are not building on what's there. For a sci-fi universe to work it must remain consistent with its internal rules, start ignoring those and in the end it becomes just fantasy.
But you are, because the capital vessels jump drive was the redicovery of the old jump drive systems that were lost, and they are FAR to big to be used on smaller ships, which is the reason we ended up with the current FSD system. Which has down sides and up sides.
The larger Gen 2c which are the tritium drives were basically reverse engineered from the old 2b drives. they are massive in size which is why they only work on capital vessles, the type of drive it is allows for far more flexabiliy on where they can land, the current gen systems type 3, do not have that ability due to their size and fast spin up.
Think of it like lining up your shot when you are throwing darts at a board, if you calm yourself, take your time, you have a lot more accuracy, thats the type 2c. The type 3, the ones in all the other ships, is like just looking at the board and quickly hurling your dart at it, your gonna hit the board, but your not going to be accurate.
This video helps clear that up.
Note this video is made by one of the co-writers for elite dangerous.
Because no technology in the history of mankind has ever been made smaller ....
Because the tritium drives were only recently rediscoved, and the adavancment on them was not side, but the ability to travel near instantaneous.
Well, near instantaneous after a 15 minute wait ... which was an hour very shortly before that ...
Look, I don’t really care whether Tritium or whatever drives are miniaturised to allow smaller ships to travel directly to stars other than the largest one in each system. Personally not bothered. But I don’t rule out the possibility of the game changing and I find it hilarious that people quote “lore” as a reason a game can’t change. “Lore“ is just a fancy word to try and make made-up-stuff seem more important than it actually is.
Then why on Earth are you playing computer games, space games particularly. Seriously trolling now.
I’m playing computer games because I enjoy them.
And yes, you are seriously trolling now ...
No, if you knew anything about fiction and creating make believe worlds you would know that one of the most important things in the entire creation is a solid and reliable set of rules by which the make believe world works, that's what the lore is, it's the background for the Elite Dangerous universe. You may not be familiar with the expression retconned, but it is a bad thing to do in a sci-fi setting, just ask any star wars fan, "who shot first?"
This is what you are trying to do to the the Elite Dangerous universe, don't go there, it will end badly, the Elite Dangerous universe is older than many of its players. You are trying to retcon a fantasy drive that couldn't possibly exist into the Elite Dangerous universe. It's taken a thousand years to develop the FSD we use now, don't you think, if the ED universe was real, they spent at least a little bit of that time trying to make the old drives smaller, more efficient?
This i wish more people got this. The point of lore, is to create the rules by which the game, or setting are limited by. When you begin to break the lore and rewrite the lore, it means the rules to the game or setting mean nothing, meaning the story itself and or the game itself mean nothing.