Hey everyone. I’m a casual player in elite who likes to do a variety of jobs and missions but enjoys (from an rp perspective mostly) transit and luxury passenger jobs especially. My issue though is with the process of traveling great distances in this game. Like it or not, the process of entering a system, waiting for FSD cool down, waiting for FSD charge and waiting for the same cut scene to play over and over again gets repetitive fairly quickly, even with a podcast or whatever, so here’s my idea for a low dev cost way to improve the system:
FSD hyper-charging. This is a separate feature from neutron star charging and would drastically increase the light year range of all FSDs. The trade off would be that the charging time of the FSD would increase significantly (based on the expected time a player would normally take to make the trip). For example, let's say a ship has a 20 LR jump range and the player wants to travel 100 LRs. Let’s say there are 5 systems perfectly spaced at 20 LRs apart, so the player would have to make 5 jumps. Assuming a 5 second cool down, 5 second charge, 5 second jump and 5 second travel cut scene, we have a 20 second time from entering a system to entering the next (the exact times could be measured more exactly). Since the player has to make 5 jumps let’s assume a 100 second travel time not accounting for fuel scooping.
Now in order for the same vessel to make the 100 LR jump in one go, he would have to fully hyper-charge his FSD which could take as long as 100 seconds (or maybe even 120 if we add 20% time for balance), but would allow him to make the trip in one jump.
What would the purpose of this option be? In my opinion it would be far more enjoyable to get to cruise around the system in the ship you spent so much time creating rather than having to sit through the same cut scene repeatedly, while still making close to optimal time to your destination. A player could do some more in-depth scanning while waiting and there is the potential for new super cruise content in the future. I am not suggesting that the hyper-FSD's range be infinite, but a large step up in range over the normal jump distance.
Some drawback ideas I had for this system could be:
Just a shower thought I had. Let me know what you guys think or if there’s some glaring issue I’m missing as a casual player. I just think it would make long haul trucking more enjoyable.
FSD hyper-charging. This is a separate feature from neutron star charging and would drastically increase the light year range of all FSDs. The trade off would be that the charging time of the FSD would increase significantly (based on the expected time a player would normally take to make the trip). For example, let's say a ship has a 20 LR jump range and the player wants to travel 100 LRs. Let’s say there are 5 systems perfectly spaced at 20 LRs apart, so the player would have to make 5 jumps. Assuming a 5 second cool down, 5 second charge, 5 second jump and 5 second travel cut scene, we have a 20 second time from entering a system to entering the next (the exact times could be measured more exactly). Since the player has to make 5 jumps let’s assume a 100 second travel time not accounting for fuel scooping.
Now in order for the same vessel to make the 100 LR jump in one go, he would have to fully hyper-charge his FSD which could take as long as 100 seconds (or maybe even 120 if we add 20% time for balance), but would allow him to make the trip in one jump.
What would the purpose of this option be? In my opinion it would be far more enjoyable to get to cruise around the system in the ship you spent so much time creating rather than having to sit through the same cut scene repeatedly, while still making close to optimal time to your destination. A player could do some more in-depth scanning while waiting and there is the potential for new super cruise content in the future. I am not suggesting that the hyper-FSD's range be infinite, but a large step up in range over the normal jump distance.
Some drawback ideas I had for this system could be:
- Once the FSD is hyper-charged, the player would HAVE to engage in the next new seconds or the FSD would do damage to itself and other systems.
- If a player hyper-charges a damaged FSD, he could possibly end up in a random system within the hyper-charged range (maybe totally in the wrong direction).
- Once the drive is nearing hyper-charge, it could emit a far stronger wake than normal super cruise, alerting others to its presence.
- If a player is interdicted with a high overcharge there could be a damaging energy blast that affects the player and any too close.
- Neutron stars could allow for an even larger jump if the player manages to stay in the field for the full extended time without emergency dropping out of super cruise (and if this happens with a nearly fully hyper-charged FSD there could be strong negative effects).
Just a shower thought I had. Let me know what you guys think or if there’s some glaring issue I’m missing as a casual player. I just think it would make long haul trucking more enjoyable.
I think aRJay has a valid point as well. I don't synthesize the juice for the moose or fuel for the mule often, but ya it works! lol a 70ly mandalay can get some serious legs up to 140ly's.