Finding USSs

Dave Lave

D
A lot of this game seems involves visiting USSs. I find myself flying around aimlessly for minutes sometimes waiting for one to appear and then once I've set course for one another one will appear.

Are they just completely random or is there some sort of pattern? Is there an ideal speed to be travelling? Near planets/stars/stations or deep space? In the equatorial plane or outside it?

Any tips would be appreciated.
 

Altissimus

A
Dave Lave said:
A lot of this game seems involves visiting USSs. I find myself flying around aimlessly for minutes sometimes waiting for one to appear and then once I've set course for one another one will appear.

Are they just completely random or is there some sort of pattern? Is there an ideal speed to be travelling? Near planets/stars/stations or deep space? In the equatorial plane or outside it?

Any tips would be appreciated.
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I don't think there's a science. Seems pretty random in my experience.

Slower speeds help - also allow you to drop out of cruise faster when you find one.
 

X2Eliah

X2Eliah
I find that they seem to appear more frequently if you are near a planet or a sun (or a station). That's just conjecture, though, no real research.
 

Dortmunder

Dortmunder
Nightstorm said:
So if you're at zero speed the USS's appear within "safe dropping" distance? Wow, that's interesting!
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Yes, you'll be able to enter them immediately when you see them.

Edit: You're never at zero speed in SC though, always 30 km/s I think it is. You can miss them if you wait too long, but they usually spawn 300 km from you at 0 throttle.
 

AV2012

AV2012
Nightstorm said:
So if you're at zero speed the USS's appear within "safe dropping" distance? Wow, that's interesting!
Click to expand...

Just slow down and open the Navigation menu. The USS's spawn at random intervals. There is no way to actively hunt them down by flying. However, this does have an effect of breaking immersion somewhat, as you'll rapidly start seeing patterns in the USS encounters.
 

Frog

Frog
Nightstorm said:
So if you're at zero speed the USS's appear within "safe dropping" distance? Wow, that's interesting!
Click to expand...

Yes, that's true. If you do a pirate hunting missions with the target zone in the same system, your best option is to leave the station, hop into SC and immediatley throttle to zero. You will encounter random USS, spawning about 500 km away from you, and in between them, the encounters with some pirates and police ships. After killing enough you can fly back to the station in seconds.

In my opinion, the game Pirates! on the C64 had a more meaningful system to create random encounters for you while travelling, and that was written in Basic for most parts...
 

technophebe

technophebe
Top tip: Play in borderless windowed mode, look at the left hand nav panel and then tab out to a browser filling the right half of your screen; you can browse the forums etc. while keeping an eye on the list for one to pop (also works great on long super-cruises).
 

Lobstris

Lobstris
What I don't like about USS's is that they are like buses. You wait a while for one, then three pop-up all at once. Actually, what I really don't like about them is their apparent random nature of spawning. It would be better if they were seeded at particular locations (as in the early Alpha), and we had... oooh, I don't know... something like a nice orrery view, to use to scan for them...
 
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