How can we turn off automatic speed control in supercruise? I'd like to try and control it myself.
How to control supercruise speed manually
- Thread starter Mikkel Toxwenius
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I believe the constant acceleration/deceleration is due to the gravity wells of celestial bodies, not any part of the ships programming. The only way to keep a constant speed would be to get super remote in open space, and feather the throttle to hold it at speed X.
You can't, the ship speeds change depending on proximity to massive bodies. If you could, it would make some things much easier and faster; I could manually get to a planet much more quickly by adjusting absolute speeds than waiting for pos/neg acceleration.
Part of the reason why it changes is because the entire gauge rescales depending on where you are. The max speed is constantly changing.
Part of the reason why it changes is because the entire gauge rescales depending on where you are. The max speed is constantly changing.
Then there is something I don't understand. When I am nearing my target, and even if I have throttle set to 100% the ship still slows down speed. How do you explain that if not for some automatic speed brake/slow down?
Because your maximum speed is dictated by your proximity to a large body. As you approach your target (a large body) your maximum potential speed decreases, so you slow down.
Why is that? Surely nearing a large body would not decrease my speed?? Or do you mean that this is just some feature of the Supercruise, like it's "how supercruise technology works"?
your supercruise speed is limited by the strength of gravity in a local area. The deeper into a gravity well you are, the slower you go. Having said that, there is some auto-throttling when you have a destination selected. I believe if you have no destination targeted you will have full control, gravity permitting, of your speed. I believe. Maybe.
Gravity kinda does work that way. The nearer you are the more it pulls, so if you are trying to escape you need more power and speed to get away. No power or speed means you slow down until you move further away from the strength of the gravitational hold it has on you. Or you go faster in the direction of the pull.
Read this for what my understanding of the "physics" found in the game's supercruise.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive
Because the drive's function distorts space and space distortion due to gravity is mass-based (which is why you can't activate it too close to a mass, and a nearby ship mass may inhibit charging), it explains why your drive has a limit on its ability to distort space in areas already distorted by gravity.
Having the speed change as a function of mass is a good way to find orbiting bodies sometimes in unmapped systems...
Mass negatively affects the Frame Shift Drive, which is why you get mass locked, and why you accelerate slowly near massive bodies.
Try this some time: Drop out of Super Cruise far away from any planets, just cut your throttle to 0, slow down to safe speed, and drop out. When you re-enter SC, you'll accelerate like a bat out of hell, because there's no mass nearby to slow you down.
I personally feel they could increase acceleration and deceleration near massive bodies, but that is just not how the design works at present.
Try this some time: Drop out of Super Cruise far away from any planets, just cut your throttle to 0, slow down to safe speed, and drop out. When you re-enter SC, you'll accelerate like a bat out of hell, because there's no mass nearby to slow you down.
I personally feel they could increase acceleration and deceleration near massive bodies, but that is just not how the design works at present.
Exactly, it's how SuperCruise works in ED.
Awesome, thank you for the explanations, I think I understand the logic behind it now 
I already did.
Why do you ask the question to which I've already provided an answer?
Essentially the latter. Because speeds in supercruise can get to several hundred times the speed of light, in order to make sure you don't crash into things, your max speed gets limited by the tech the closer you are to something massive. If it didn't work that way, navigating towards a specific destination would be a nightmare.
Emphasis on kinda. In real life, the closer you are to something with mass, the more you accelerate towards that object, meaning the closer you are the faster you move towards it and the more difficult it is to move away from it. In this game, the closer you are to something massive, the slower you go, regardless of your direction at that specific point in space.
There's a side effect to this not often mentioned that benefits explorers and anyone else who wants to make a few extra credits. If you're cruising around an unexplored/partially explored system at a fairly constant speed and hear the FSD start to work harder and your speed drops for no apparent reason, it means you've entered an unmapped gravity well. Hit your discovery scanner and you should find a planet (or more). Stop and give it a quick scan, then turn in the data for free money.
This is possibly a related question. Flying LHS 3447 from Dalton to Worlidge - a journey I've done several times in SC with no problem, I now find that the distance rapidly drops until about the 2 hour mark and then decreases in real time (a second at my desk = a second in ED). I've tried going to Yaping instead, but the same thing happens. I still seem to be travelling at bout 2000c. Any suggestions: I don't want to wait 2 hours for this journey to finish!
I guess you haven't discovered the 7 second rule (or 6 if you want to be on the edge)? As long as you throttle back to the blue zone when the time to target reaches 7 seconds, you never overshoot. No need to fuss about distances nor speeds
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The only time I go slower is if I am trolling for pirates--I submit to interdictions.
i think you mean trawling...
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