How I wasted 24 hours flying 5 lightyears in supercruise to see something that wasnt actually there, a cautionary tale

Hunter12396

Hunter12396
How I wasted 24 hours flying 5 lightyears in supercruise to see something that wasnt actually there, a cautionary tale

Long ago I had made a list of interesting things that I wanted to visit within elite. Most of them turned out to be unremarkable in the game, but I worked through them anyway. Recently I was in the vicinity of the Helix nebula; unfortunately you cannot jump to the nebula, and the nearest system is about 5 lightyears away. I had scouted it out with my ExplOrca Poseidon, but after quickly realizing I wouldn't have enough fuel I retuned to Shinrarta Dezhra and got my Anaconda. I fitted her out with extra fuel and retuned to CSI-21-22270, the system nearest the Helix nebula. I pointed the nose toward the nebula, and alt-tabbed. Occasionally I would check to make sure everything was going okay. At 2000c it would take a full day to get to the nebula, so I left the game run overnight. Unfortunately, at 4.3 lightyears from CSI-21', the nebula appears no closer, even though I should be right on top of it.
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I guess the lesson is, nebulae are painted on; don't bother with those you can't jump to.
 

Aura Lorell

Aura Lorell
You can't supercruise from system to system. You need to hyperspace because it needs to build an instance of the system. That nebula is part of the skybox when you are in a different system so it won't come any closer.
 

Hunter12396

Hunter12396
I knew that but because the nebula isn't a system of its own I would have thought it would be part of the nearest system. Other websites about elite seem to suggest that the helix nebula is part of CSI-21 as well.
 

baqar79

baqar79
While I discovered this earlier, one aspect of this that could of made exploration a little more interesting is the idea of being able to cover distance towards a jump target in supercruise flight in order to cover the shortfall of a target beyond your current FSD jump range (whether Neutron/Jumponium boosted or not).

I thought this could of been a pretty cool group exploration mechanic whereby you create chains of fuel tankers spaced light years apart (but within the same system instance) so that you could get close enough to a system beyond the reach of our current drives and engineering. I guess though it would though take huge amounts of time though, and would get pretty boring being a fuel tanker just hanging about in life support mode waiting for someone to arrive for a refuel...

Even if this wasn't to happen, being able to use the in-system target jump range instead of the galactic map one, would allow you to cover a few extra lightyears on your own.

Hmmm...I don't know if I explained that very well, maybe an example:

-FSD MAX JUMP RANGE: 50LY, TARGET: 100.8LY-

So even with a Premium boost, we can only get 100LY, so in order to cover this shortfall, we select the target we wish to jump to and supercruise towards it for several hours (working out hourly fuel usage in supercruise, and reserves is critical here). Once we have covered 0.8LY in supercruise towards that target, we dump any excess fuel and can now make the jump.
 

Kenneth McGrew

Kenneth McGrew
baqar79 said:
While I discovered this earlier, one aspect of this that could of made exploration a little more interesting is the idea of being able to cover distance towards a jump target in supercruise flight in order to cover the shortfall of a target beyond your current FSD jump range (whether Neutron/Jumponium boosted or not).

I thought this could of been a pretty cool group exploration mechanic whereby you create chains of fuel tankers spaced light years apart (but within the same system instance) so that you could get close enough to a system beyond the reach of our current drives and engineering. I guess though it would though take huge amounts of time though, and would get pretty boring being a fuel tanker just hanging about in life support mode waiting for someone to arrive for a refuel...

Even if this wasn't to happen, being able to use the in-system target jump range instead of the galactic map one, would allow you to cover a few extra lightyears on your own.

Hmmm...I don't know if I explained that very well, maybe an example:

-FSD MAX JUMP RANGE: 50LY, TARGET: 100.8LY-

So even with a Premium boost, we can only get 100LY, so in order to cover this shortfall, we select the target we wish to jump to and supercruise towards it for several hours (working out hourly fuel usage in supercruise, and reserves is critical here). Once we have covered 0.8LY in supercruise towards that target, we dump any excess fuel and can now make the jump.
Click to expand...

that would turn SC into an even larger yawn fest than it already is, like flying to Australia on MS flight sim in real time while on auto pilot


there's that sketch from the fast show where Colin "takes" his wife to the Seychelles on a flight simulator... if only i could find the video.
 

Hunter12396

Hunter12396
That does work, I don't know if its worth doing though.
I noted that when I left CSI-21 I was 4 light years from the star, I jumped to a system that was on the map 20ly away, but it was only a 16ly jump in game.
 

Traveller_GG

Traveller_GG
Kenneth Mcgrew said:
that would turn SC into an even larger yawn fest than it already is, like flying to Australia on MS flight sim in real time while on auto pilot


there's that sketch from the fast show where Colin "takes" his wife to the Seychelles on a flight simulator... if only i could find the video.
Click to expand...

There was a story once of a guy playing "Silent Hunter" in real time because he didn't know you could set the clock to advance in multiples....
 

Sapyx

Sapyx
Hunter12396 said:
I knew that but because the nebula isn't a system of its own I would have thought it would be part of the nearest system. Other websites about elite seem to suggest that the helix nebula is part of CSI-21 as well.
Click to expand...

From the point of view of the stellar forge, nebulae are stars, just big, blurry, funny-coloured ones. It is generated as a separate star system to the star that is nominally at the centre of it. So, just like any other star, they are positioned on the skybox during the hyperspace loading screen and are not re-positioned until the next hyperspace loading screen.

Having a dynamically reloading skybox that changes slowly as you travel through interstellar space would be cool, but incredibly processor-intensive, and entirely unnoticeable for 99.9% of players 99.9% of the time.
 
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