Newcomer / Intro FSD Question....little confuzed...

[War Kitten]

Greetings All,
Getting better with my Sidey, ran for a couple hours yesterday doing courier missions to get used to how things work, missions get/turn in, docking (I even managed to park backwards on a dock! yay me!), upgraded FSD/power plant/power dist. to 2C so far and having fun doing stuff.

So...say I want to go to system B, station B from system A, station A, I undock, plot the course to system B and hit the button and ZOOM....no prob, then I drop out of warp in front of the target star (fuel scoop of course), and plot to station B...and hit FSD to jump to station B.....but it tells me that I need to hit the FSD button twice to do an emergency stop. Am I still in FSD even tho I stopped in front of the star? I found that I can't deploy hard points there, but can when I come out next to the station. I thought, watching all the vids, that you entered hyper from the station, got to the star, exited it and then entered it again to get to the next area you plotted....boy am I confused....too much catnip....

Just trying to understand how things work around here...thank you for any help!

War Kitten

 

[Codger]

When you arrive at the star, you are then in what's called Supercruise, which is the mode of travel you use inside a system, to travel to the various bodies and/or stations. You don't need to re-enter it, just fly to wherever you're going.

Your FSD allows you to jump between systems, and it also powers Supercruise within a system. It's used for both those things.

 

[Speedcuffs]

When you jump and arrive at another star, you are in supercruise.

Bah ninja Codger.

 

[aRJay]

Also when you arrive at the star and shut down your throttle you aren't stopped as that is impossible in super cruise, you are creeping forward at about 30m/s IIRC which is enough to get you in trouble if you go away from the keyboard.

 

[Para Handy]

^^^^^^^^ WOT THEY SAID ^^^^^^^^^^

Summary - 3 modes of travel in your ship:

Normal space - thruster-powered flight for short-distance travel in space

Supercruise - a faster-than light capable mode of travel - used for transiting within a system - thrusters within a field generated by the FSD - leaves a low-energy wake

Hyper-Jump - a high-energy mode of travel from one star system to another - only way to move from one system to another system - uses FSD & leaves high-energy wake behind

 

[Soron Silin]

I found it very useful to change the key bindings so that Supercruise and Hyperspace were different.

In the default mode it can get confusing. You press J to go to hyperspace, you emerge in supercruise and go to the station where you press J for a second time to exit supercruise. If you're in supercruise and have a valid hyperspace course plotted then J goes to hyperspace, otherwise it drops out of supercruise. If you're in normal space and have a course plotted then J goes to hyperspace, if you don't then it goes to supercruise.

I re-bound J to supercruise and H to hyperspace. It keeps the two things entirely separate. Yoiu still come out of hyperspace in supercruise but J goes into and out of supercruise independently of whether you have a course ploted.

For game purposes, normal space is for combat and docking. It has a minimum speed of zero and a maximum speed of 100-300 metres per second, depending on your thrusters. That's 200-700 mph. It's fast but it's tiny in space. Supercruise is for moving around in a solar system. It's lowest speed is 30 km/s (70,000 mph) and it goes up to beyond 1,000 times the speed of light. Even at 1000c, it would still take 30,000 seconds (8 hours) to travel a lightyear. So hyperspace is used to make jumps between stars.

If the game didn't have three different movement scales and wait-timers between them, then combat would be either frustrating or boring; you'd either be able to escape at the flick of the throttle or you'd fight at such huge distances that your opponent was invisible and all targeting was by computer. Dog-fighting requires slow(ish) speeds. Similarly traveling between planets would be so near instantaneous that it would be impossible to control if your top speed was a million times the speed of light. The throttle would be twitchy as hell.

Elite Dangerous manages to make dog-fighting, inter-planetary and inter-stallar travel reasonably immersive. But to create that immersion it needs to have three different movement scales, and that involves some necessary complexity.

 

[Habu2u]

[QUOTE
So...say I want to go to system B, station B from system A, station A, I undock, plot the course to system B and hit the button and ZOOM....no prob, then I drop out of warp in front of the target star (fuel scoop of course), and plot to station B...and hit FSD to jump to station B.....
QUOTE

Just a quick comment to make sure you know you can plot a course from system A to station B in system B. You’ll still pop out in front of the star in system B, but your route to station B will already be set up for you, and after scooping, you can use the small circle and dot on the upper left of the big round screen to line up with the station and just keep cruising to it without having to plot an additional route once you’re in system B. Many new commanders don’t realize that for a while after they get started.
Regards
[/QUOTE]

 

[Soron Silin]

you can plot a course from system A to station B in system B.

It's very useful, especially if you think there might be pirates waiting for you. But you have to have a map of system B. As a new comander the map is often not available, even to buy from a neighbouring system.

 

[Codger]

It's very useful, especially if you think there might be pirates waiting for you. But you have to have a map of system B. As a new comander the map is often not available, even to buy from a neighbouring system.

Yeah, I'm not sure why they removed the ability to buy system data from nearby systems. You used to be able to do it as long as you were within 20 LY. But now it doesn't work (mostly, every now and then it lets me do it -- maybe it's bugged).