FSD manual guidance?

[Fox White]

Talking with a friend last night sparked an idea we really liked and think it would add a little to exploring. When jumping into a system with no discovered bodies by anyone auto Fsd is disabled and you enter a screen like the interdiction feature while the new instance is being loaded. 100% success is dropping out like normal and 0% is dropping a significant amount away from the main star out of supercruise with some ~1% damage. Distance could even play a role in difficulty like a 40 ly jump (in a big ole conda) would be as difficult as fighting a 7a interdictor and a 4 LY jump more like a 1D. Nothing to terribly complicated because that has no benefits but just a simple mini game.

I like it because
It punishes those who don't pay attention while in the black
The punishment is not so significant that it guarantees eventually an explorer will be destroyed any more than now with close binary stars.
"Blazing a Trail" actually makes sense, you go out 5000 ly scanning each star on your way there. When you head back you can take the "safe trail" and not have to do it again.
FSD range would have a counter and require some skill during exploration that wouldn't likely affect other professions since inhabited space has for the most part all been discovered by someone.


Are we crazy or do you think this could add something else to exploration?

 

[Kirov099]

This sounds like a really good idea to me. I love exploring for the beautiful sights and thrill of being the first discoverer, but sometimes I feel like it could use a little more interaction and skill as opposed to just jumping in and waiting to fly close enough to scan the bodies. I've also seen a thread which asked for more interactive means of scanning bodies, and I think both of these combined would be really good for explorers.

 

[Ziljan]

This sounds like a good idea, but the interdiction damage should be optional. If you "submit" (throttle down) then you end up in a random location in the system and suffer no hull damage. Due to the large number of systems required to travel just to go 1000 LY, if you were terrible at the interdiction game suffered and suffered 1% hull damage per jump, then you'd take forever to very far or take a lot of damage, so the interdiction game should be a fairly easy version of the normal ship-to-ship one. It should also look very different than the normal interdiction mini-game, with the tunnel being through witch space rather than through super cruise.

Addendum to this idea. Explorers could actually drop nav beacons so that future explorers could jump to the system without worries. If you are the first person to drop a nav beacon, then you get an extra 20% reward for each item scanned in the system. Nav beacons would be like ammo and you could slot possibly thousands of them. Not sure if they should weigh anything or not, or require cargo slots. Stars with no nav beacons would have a certain icon by them in the Nav Panel, so you would know that you were jumping into a wild system. The targeting reticle on the console would have a different icon for wild systems as well.

 

[Fox White]

I did mean a really easy game, low grade interdictions are easy to escape from what I've played. I only meant more effort if you are doing vast jumps over 30 LY. Also nav beacons are a cool idea to drop but not needed since this would only happen when jumping into a star with no discovered by scan. Once you have the data for that system there is no need to do the thing again because it has already been "mapped" in your system once. If you put the discovery tag on it every one can use it because Universal Cartographers have the info up for everyone which also keeps traders and combat players who dont want the hassle to not have to worry about it in habitable space. I wont bicker with making an extra 20% though ;-)

 

[Alex Brentnall]

I did mean a really easy game, low grade interdictions are easy to escape from what I've played. I only meant more effort if you are doing vast jumps over 30 LY. Also nav beacons are a cool idea to drop but not needed since this would only happen when jumping into a star with no discovered by scan. Once you have the data for that system there is no need to do the thing again because it has already been "mapped" in your system once. If you put the discovery tag on it every one can use it because Universal Cartographers have the info up for everyone which also keeps traders and combat players who dont want the hassle to not have to worry about it in habitable space. I wont bicker with making an extra 20% though ;-)

Try escaping a sidewinder in an Anaconda and you will think the interdiction mini-game is impossible. I fully support Ziljan's last comment about optional damage & nav beacon drops sounds like a fun extra way to add to exploring...

 

[Allitnil]

I really wish there was some sort of mechanism that promoted finding safe routes through the galaxy which could then be used by future explorers. This would bring in a form of cooperation / building on others accomplishments akin to how most real life exploring occurred. But I'm not really a fan of the mini-game approach. In the example given you would always submit so end up in a random location in the system which I would be OK with, but that's not the direction the devs want to take us, eg once 1.3 lands you could just jump straight to the star anyway once in the system.

I think I would rather have it something like only being able to scoop from gas giants rather than stars. That way you have to create routes rather than blithely jumping along a pre-calculated route. Of course, once systems with suitable gas giants have been discovered & sold then other CMDRs can buy the data and they can then automatically calculate a route that takes into account refuelling. A possible added advantage of this approach would be that you would in effect create space lanes, thereby increasing the chances of player interaction (and NPC-interaction as there should be NPC explorers out there too!).

Of course, it's basically too late for any of these ideas without a complete reboot of the galaxy. Whilst there are 399 billion stars yet to be visited, there are no significant areas of the galaxy we've not yet been to.

 

[Zulu Romeo]

I'd like a Misjump facility to be implemented, one based on the precise alignment of your ship to your destination.

Just as you cannot jump to a new system without facing your target, so it could be possible to just miss your target and end up somewhere else, including a destination that does not contain a star. When entering hyperspace, the target reticule could change to a graded crosshairs, and as long as you keep the target system's circle within the crosshairs, you will be safely at your next destination. Any deviation outside the crosshairs increases the chance of a misjump: the greater the deviation, the bigger the misjump chance.

With wear and tear, this crosshairs does get smaller over time, eventually becoming the same size or even smaller than the destination target circle, meaning you will have to be more and more precise about your alignment whenever you make your next jump.

 

[Glyphon]

and misjump into a nebula/asteroid field/volatile gas field, Freelancer style.

 

[Allitnil]

but that's not the direction the devs want to take us, eg once 1.3 lands you could just jump straight to the star anyway once in the system.

I feel honour bound to correct myself here. I was labouring under the misapprehension that in 1.3 you could select any body from the system map and jump straight to it. I now understand that is not the case. You can *select* any body from the system map as a target but you still have to fly to it in super cruise. Apologies if I confused anyone.