James Bond 007 Super Cruise

SgtLennin

S
I decided to make this topic since i see the same complaints over and over again. The "super cruise is too slow" meme. I replied in several topics, hopefully this topic is found by future commanders struggling.

I disliked SC until I understood it. Now I fly in with max speed to any target and have fun with it, even if it's 1000's of LS away. Sure, you may want to fly to another universe within a nanosecond, but then ED is not the game for you. Find something with teleport or go play Star Trek online. I mean that, ED is a fairly realistic space simulator. Elite has always been despite lack of features 20, 30 years ago.

Here are some simple things to consider.
- The ED universe is built on realism, not arcade. The space model is simple and very SF but pretty accurate.
- Space, or better: spacetime is more dense around mass. More mass/speed=more energy needed to accelerate (==decelerate), less universal time passes. General relativity.
- ED simulates the influence of masses. the influence of each body apart as well as the whole system as well as YOUR mass. Speed+ = mass+.
- When you arrive at a star, dodge mass. Head up or down from the planetary plane. This gives max acceleration.
- Steer in the direction of your target, keep an eye on time of arrival.
- Keep your time of arrival at 0:07 or above to stay safe, 0:06 if you know what you are doing
- 0:05 and below will overshoot, you may want to try bleed off velocity with spiraling.
- blue/green lines indicate gravity wells (in my opinion). Places where spacetime is more dense, where there is more friction. You can use this to slow down as well, but you may drop out of SC with damage.

Generaly:
- avoid systems with vast distance space stations if you don't like it
- check out target stations before accepting missions
- if you want to hunt for USS, stay at minimum SC speed 30km/s. USS will spawn at the same rate/type immediately in vicinity to disengage.

Have fun.
 

SgtLennin

S
Feldspar said:
I regularly visit a system with three stationed planets within 50 ls of the star, any solutions to supercruise being too quick? :p
Click to expand...

Yes, fly the opposite way. Or maybe better: fly in from a neighboring star in SC. Or regular speed if you want to experience true realism. :D
 

Sandmann

Sandmann
Good topic, and a great explanation too. Have some rep. :)

One of the repeat complaints regarding SC speeds is when folks take a mission and jump to a system only to find the station is hundreds of thousands of LS away and it's going to take ages to get to it. One of the most common examples of this is at Alpha Centauri, but there's heaps of other examples. This can be easily by simply looking at the system map for your proposed destination before accepting the mission. If the map shows that your station is not orbitting the primary star (the top one in the map, which has the nav beacon) you're guaranteed a long flight between stars. Even if it IS on the primary star it can still be a long flight. To find out, find the planet that is orbitting the star, around which your station is orbitting (ie: if your station is orbitting a moon which is orbitting a planet, click the planet not the moon). The map will should you the orbital period in days - this is how long it takes for the planet to circle the star (the planet's year) and is an indication of how far the planet is from its star. If the period is around 365 it's the same as Earth which takes about 5 minutes to fly from Sol. If the period is something like 50000 days, you should consider taking a packed lunch and a good book coz it's a long flight.
 

Teefur

T
Sandmann said:
Good topic, and a great explanation too. Have some rep. :)

One of the repeat complaints regarding SC speeds is when folks take a mission and jump to a system only to find the station is hundreds of thousands of LS away and it's going to take ages to get to it. One of the most common examples of this is at Alpha Centauri, but there's heaps of other examples. This can be easily by simply looking at the system map for your proposed destination before accepting the mission. If the map shows that your station is not orbitting the primary star (the top one in the map, which has the nav beacon) you're guaranteed a long flight between stars. Even if it IS on the primary star it can still be a long flight. To find out, find the planet that is orbitting the star, around which your station is orbitting (ie: if your station is orbitting a moon which is orbitting a planet, click the planet not the moon). The map will should you the orbital period in days - this is how long it takes for the planet to circle the star (the planet's year) and is an indication of how far the planet is from its star. If the period is around 365 it's the same as Earth which takes about 5 minutes to fly from Sol. If the period is something like 50000 days, you should consider taking a packed lunch and a good book coz it's a long flight.
Click to expand...

Just a couple of observations:
You don't always jump in at the top star, always the star with the largest mass. Check the masses of multi-star systems to see where you'll enter the system.
I find it easier to multiply the relevant body's semi-major axis by 500 to get an approximation of distance in light seconds from its parent. Nothing wrong with using Sandmann's method if that works better for you though :)

In a two star system, if your target is orbiting the other star, you need to calculate distance to that star plus/minus the distance from that star to the target body. Best case the target is directly between you and the star, so distance to star - distance to target. Worst case the star is directly between you and your target, so distance to star + distance to target. Usually it will be somewhere between these limits.

I haven't noticed any particularly eccentric orbits, so that simplifies the calculations somewhat :)
 
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Unpleasant

U
SgtLennin said:
I decided to make this topic since i see the same complaints over and over again. The "super cruise is too slow" meme. I replied in several topics, hopefully this topic is found by future commanders struggling.

I disliked SC until I understood it. Now I fly in with max speed to any target and have fun with it, even if it's 1000's of LS away. Sure, you may want to fly to another universe within a nanosecond, but then ED is not the game for you. Find something with teleport or go play Star Trek online. I mean that, ED is a fairly realistic space simulator. Elite has always been despite lack of features 20, 30 years ago.

Here are some simple things to consider.
- The ED universe is built on realism, not arcade. The space model is simple and very SF but pretty accurate.
- Space, or better: spacetime is more dense around mass. More mass/speed=more energy needed to accelerate (==decelerate), less universal time passes. General relativity.
- ED simulates the influence of masses. the influence of each body apart as well as the whole system as well as YOUR mass. Speed+ = mass+.
- When you arrive at a star, dodge mass. Head up or down from the planetary plane. This gives max acceleration.
- Steer in the direction of your target, keep an eye on time of arrival.
- Keep your time of arrival at 0:07 or above to stay safe, 0:06 if you know what you are doing
- 0:05 and below will overshoot, you may want to try bleed off velocity with spiraling.
- blue/green lines indicate gravity wells (in my opinion). Places where spacetime is more dense, where there is more friction. You can use this to slow down as well, but you may drop out of SC with damage.

Generaly:
- avoid systems with vast distance space stations if you don't like it
- check out target stations before accepting missions
- if you want to hunt for USS, stay at minimum SC speed 30km/s. USS will spawn at the same rate/type immediately in vicinity to disengage.

Have fun.
Click to expand...

I'd like to debate this line...
- Space, or better: spacetime is more dense around mass. More mass/speed=more energy needed to accelerate (==decelerate), less universal time passes. General relativity.

Einstein got many things wrong in his theory of general relativity many of which are demonstrably wrong. His field equations, for example, violate the conservation of energy and momentum so they're wrong. Einstein just invented a brand new tensor to cover the fact he was wrong up.
Also, Einstein’s field equations do not predict black holes.
 
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SgtLennin

S
Unpleasant said:
Einstein got many things wrong in his theory of general relativity many of which are demonstrably wrong. His field equations, for example, violate the conservation of energy and momentum so they're wrong. Einstein just invented a brand new tensor to cover that fact he was wrong up.
Also, Einstein’s field equations do not predict black holes.
Click to expand...

Thanks, Einstein was obviously wrong. I just filed a ticket. But not really. ;)
 
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Unpleasant

U
SgtLennin said:
Thanks, Einstein was obviously wrong. I just filed a ticket. But not really.
Click to expand...

Energy inside a vacuum is infinitely dense, everywhere. It can't be more infinitely dense nearer the sun and less infinitely dense further away. Because space is infinitely dense everywhere it must mean our universe is a black hole. That's why space is black. ;)
 

DaveB

DaveB
Sandmann said:
Good topic, and a great explanation too. Have some rep. :)

One of the repeat complaints regarding SC speeds is when folks take a mission and jump to a system only to find the station is hundreds of thousands of LS away and it's going to take ages to get to it. One of the most common examples of this is at Alpha Centauri, but there's heaps of other examples. This can be easily by simply looking at the system map for your proposed destination before accepting the mission. If the map shows that your station is not orbitting the primary star (the top one in the map, which has the nav beacon) you're guaranteed a long flight between stars. Even if it IS on the primary star it can still be a long flight. To find out, find the planet that is orbitting the star, around which your station is orbitting (ie: if your station is orbitting a moon which is orbitting a planet, click the planet not the moon). The map will should you the orbital period in days - this is how long it takes for the planet to circle the star (the planet's year) and is an indication of how far the planet is from its star. If the period is around 365 it's the same as Earth which takes about 5 minutes to fly from Sol. If the period is something like 50000 days, you should consider taking a packed lunch and a good book coz it's a long flight.
Click to expand...

You don't even need to guess based on the orbital period. Check out the semi-major axis of the orbit - it will be given in AU and just multiply by 500 to get the distance in ls. (thats an approximation - an AU is 499 and a lot of decimal places ls) You can do this with the distance to a secondary star too.
 

Sandmann

Sandmann
DaveB said:
You don't even need to guess based on the orbital period. Check out the semi-major axis of the orbit - it will be given in AU and just multiply by 500 to get the distance in ls. (thats an approximation - an AU is 499 and a lot of decimal places ls) You can do this with the distance to a secondary star too.
Click to expand...

Yeah I did look at that... broke my brain trying to understand kepler's laws. It's not as simple as the semi major axis though due too eccentric orbits and that REALLY gets thrown out in complex systems with several large masses. I'm not sure just how in depth ed's galactic modelling gets - I suspect that it just uses simple, roughly circular orbits for the most part in which case it doesnt matter.

If you really want to be accurwte-ish about it you can use Kepler's 3rd law and take the square of the orbital period and find the cube root of the result to find the average orbital diameter... Or just go here to find a calculator that'll do it for you.
 

Balsbigbrother

B
Sandmann said:
Yeah I did look at that... broke my brain trying to understand kepler's laws. It's not as simple as the semi major axis though due too eccentric orbits and that REALLY gets thrown out in complex systems with several large masses. I'm not sure just how in depth ed's galactic modelling gets - I suspect that it just uses simple, roughly circular orbits for the most part in which case it doesnt matter.

If you really want to be accurwte-ish about it you can use Kepler's 3rd law and take the square of the orbital period and find the cube root of the result to find the average orbital diameter... Or just go here to find a calculator that'll do it for you.
Click to expand...

:S
Um ... I fly space ships and shoot stuff with space ships :p

Cool that you guys are into this stuff but way way over my own head. Well at least we all find something fun in the game in our own ways. :)
 

Sandmann

Sandmann
Balsbigbrother said:
:S
Um ... I fly space ships and shoot stuff with space ships :p

Cool that you guys are into this stuff but way way over my own head. Well at least we all find something fun in the game in our own ways. :)
Click to expand...

It's all good. This is just a response to the people complaining that the planets are too far away from the stars and fd should move them. :)
 

SgtLennin

S
Thanks for all the replies everybody. I hated SC and now I love it.

Flying in at 0:06 is possible, 0:05 becomes tricky. 0:04 will overshoot with hardly any room to slow down.

I also (with big stations) fly in from the planet side so I am more or less facing the entrance of the SS instead of the back.
 

SgtLennin

S
Balsbigbrother said:
Cool that you guys are into this stuff but way way over my own head. Well at least we all find something fun in the game in our own ways. :)
Click to expand...

It's not complicated. Think about mass as magnets. The further you go out the less influence you feel, the better your SC engine works. Stars and planets have mass, but so does the whole of things. For fast travel you want to 'take off' from the planetary plane so you can fly high over. If you fly within the planetary plane you'll have max effects of other planets but you also may run into asteroid fields that can really slow you down.
 
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