I am getting annoyed with the threads, and even obsidian flipping ant, whinging about "oh distances are too great, travel is soooo boring...."; the latter even posted two videos bemoaning it and presenting his opinion as if hes the messiah of game design.
Increase Supercruise Acceleration and Top Speed to No More than 20 Seconds AFK
- Thread starter DrGrib
- Start date
All of Sandro's discussions on potential changes were framed as 'we'. They were team discussions etc. Notice these older quotes, like this enthusiastic take back in 2015:
But since then we've learned there's 'internal resistance'. The 2017 quotes suggested an ongoing internal debate.
Which is good, coz there's stuff needs tweaking
The term "We" does not automatically mean a balanced team discussion, I have known enough team leaders who fail to consider the opinions of team members and enough team members who go rogue. Ultimately, this is moot to the matter at hand though.
As for stuff needing tweaking? IMO not in the areas relating directly to the FSD.
That would be great. If it were true. In my experience destinations can be sprung and options limited without decent pre-interrogable info. IE:
Suggesting players avoid every single system with a secondary sun, and indeed all the surrounding systems that might send them there, to avoid the missions leaning towards tiresome distances is a dull filtering experience.
Checking your environs for danger or opportunity? Sure. Checking whether you're going to be bored to death? Less gripping...
Nah, it's because DBOBE is/was a fan of 2001 A Space Odyssey... Hence 2001C max speed, and rotating stations with "Blue Danube" docking music.
Funnily enough, in terms of m/s it is also near enough 39 bits of representation as a mantissa/integer. The limit of IEEE double floats is 48 bits which only allows for a multiplier of ~200 before precision starts to be lost and order of calculations start to become significant.
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I'll take your word on that, too hot and relaxed to worry about accuracy. Not that it matters. I can't see it changing. It's very fast... Warp 9.mumble in Star trek terms, I read somewhere...
Stigbob is that you?
Lestat
Banned
Yawn. DrGrib why don't you use some of the current mechanics of the game to determine if something is too far or not. A mission you can easily research them or at least get to the destination and go Oh hell no the Station too far and discard that mission. Easy fix. I do it with combat mission if I feel they are too hard. Or if you really think about it. When you do actually do research on a mission. Buy the system data to help determine if it too far for you or not.
Also, point out we have 65,000 systems. 90% of them caters to players who love short distance. Only 10% cater to players who love the long travel time.
Also, point out we have 65,000 systems. 90% of them caters to players who love short distance. Only 10% cater to players who love the long travel time.
Depending on which Star Trek Warp scale is used then you are technically right: https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Warp_factor
Ultimately though, it is pretty moot... 2000 times the speed of light is plenty fast enough as a top speed.
Well, you have a wealth of other options for planning your jumps, checking material levels, and other menu driven activities
1) set your throttle to zero
2) check them before you leave the station
3) check them when you arrive at your destination
Basically all the safe options one would take when driving a car without autopilot.
I have not had a single play session in which I was not at some point blankly staring at the screen while doing in-system travel and looking around me for some podcast or video to occupy my time so I did not feel it is wasting it. This has reached a critical point for me personally and I have literally stopped playing the game until this changes, which is what inspired me to write my post.
Again, let me clarify this and anchor this in reality: do you prefer the in-system travel mechanics to be structured in a way that you can literally take your hands off of your keyboard or controller, completely divert your attention away from the game for more than 20 seconds to watch a movie, and still arrive safely at your destination?
I don't hate the idea of raising the speed caps in general, and I certainly agree that many-minute travel times aren't strictly necessary to convey a sense of scale, but I have to disagree with OP's approach. It's not just the scale of space, but the range of scales that is problematic. When you have a setting where some destinations are a million times farther away than others, only an instant "fast travel" system is going to make all travel times reasonable. In particular, if you set the acceleration to cap the travel time to the most remote destinations, the far more common close destinations are going to feel too close and some will be actively harder to reach because they flash past right after system entry.
That said, long AFK times are poor UX design.
I think back to playing Witcher 3 recently. Not uncommonly, if going somewhere I haven't been yet, it's 10+ minutes of game time navigating my way there, and that's galloping on horseback. But there's abundant scenery to look at, various dangers lurking in the forest, and I did have to do some active navigation. That was fun design. The challenge with Elite is that space is both large and empty, so you can't simply implement the same thing. But for instance: instead of scenery, we have instruments. Let us use the FSS while in motion, handing over guidance to a crewmate or the SC assist, and give us more elements like that to interact with.
Least energy orbits don't apply to supercruise, because our motion isn't remotely Newtonian. But I would love to have a skill-based component that would let you get places faster through skillful piloting, and something thematically similar to "slingshot" maneuvers would be a good way to do it. Another idea would be to have the fuel scooping zone do double duty as a SC boost zone, where by making a few passes around the star or other massive body you increase the acceleration achieved after breaking free.
That said, long AFK times are poor UX design.
I think back to playing Witcher 3 recently. Not uncommonly, if going somewhere I haven't been yet, it's 10+ minutes of game time navigating my way there, and that's galloping on horseback. But there's abundant scenery to look at, various dangers lurking in the forest, and I did have to do some active navigation. That was fun design. The challenge with Elite is that space is both large and empty, so you can't simply implement the same thing. But for instance: instead of scenery, we have instruments. Let us use the FSS while in motion, handing over guidance to a crewmate or the SC assist, and give us more elements like that to interact with.
Least energy orbits don't apply to supercruise, because our motion isn't remotely Newtonian. But I would love to have a skill-based component that would let you get places faster through skillful piloting, and something thematically similar to "slingshot" maneuvers would be a good way to do it. Another idea would be to have the fuel scooping zone do double duty as a SC boost zone, where by making a few passes around the star or other massive body you increase the acceleration achieved after breaking free.
Then i have to ask you, why do you fly to systems with long travel times? Its entirely optional. Choose your destinations with more care.
As for diverting my attention, i run VLC in on top mode, so i don't have to. I can keep my eyes on my screen at the same time to watch out for enemies. As i said, its a few minutes, and i'm fine with that.
I actually prefer that than some sort of system where i have to constantly be touching my controls, i enjoy the down time between travel points to give my hands a rest. I prefer there to be some travel time rather than what some people seem to be wanting, and as its only a few minutes most of the time, in many cases, no more than a minute, then its absoloutely fine with me.
Lestat
Banned
So you are admitting you are accepting any and all missions and ignoring features of the game like Galaxy map and buying system data. So you can see how far a station is out from the main star. Out of 65,000 Station on the game. I can go to 90% of them and be in a location in under 5 minutes and If I wanted to use more of my Galaxy Map and System map skill at locating closer locations. I can make trips less than a Minute. The Fault lies with you.
Face this fact. Doing your research will help you when you accept a mission. Ignoring features of the game is what hurting you.
Destinations can be sprung? How exactly? Mission diversions are always optional. I can't recall a single time i was forced to travel a long distance.
Why not suggest people avoid those systems if they don't like the travel time? There are always other options. No need to avoid surrounding systems, that would be near impossible since within 20LY range there is usually at least one or more systems where you might get missions with long travel times. Just don't take those.
Not all secondary stars are 100s of kls away. Some are just a few thousand as well, its a 5 minute flight.
If you work out of an area you soon learn which systems to avoid if you don't want to travel. I'll do the long trips if i think the reward is worth it. I know that if I see a mission to Ratri its going to be a 100k LS flight and will take about 10 mins. I have to decide if its worth it.
It's a no from me too. Perfectly fine with travel times in Elite (both in hyperspace jumping and in supercruise) thank you very much (and no. I've never once watched a movie while playing the game).