Kick starter newbie here. How does this SCO thing work?
- Thread starter Chrizaim
- Start date
Did you try... playng the game... ?
For short distances - under, say, 500ls - I divide the distance by 7 to get a rough idea of when to disengage. That is to say that if the distance is 350ls, I divide that by 7 to get 50c and disengage the SCO when the ship reaches that speed. For short distances, I keep the throttle at 0 and let the SCO do the acceleration.
For longer trips, you can usually just disengage SCO when you get to about 3-4s and the deceleration will push that number over 7s, allowing you to catch the curve as you normally would with 75% throttle at 6s.
It's fuzzy, as the acceleration curve means that even a small variation in timing when disengaging the SCO can have large effects on your speed and time to destination.
For longer trips, you can usually just disengage SCO when you get to about 3-4s and the deceleration will push that number over 7s, allowing you to catch the curve as you normally would with 75% throttle at 6s.
It's fuzzy, as the acceleration curve means that even a small variation in timing when disengaging the SCO can have large effects on your speed and time to destination.
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My approach is much the same - to simplify the mental arithmetic you can also just divide by 10 and then add around half again to the result. (So 350 would be 35 plus 15or20 = 50ish
)I have also developed the habit of pointing a little away from my destination (like up to a full screen's worth) on the short trips to make it easier to recover from a slight overshoot on speed - so if I disengage and it's saying 5 seconds, by the time I pull the nose around it'll have settled at 7ish...
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Depends on the ship. Smaller ships have faster SCO speeds. Also if its, say, a Cutter I'd recommend erring on the side of caution over something like a Mandalay which can basically flip on its axis in supercruise if you overshoot.
Plus you slow faster if you hotkey 75% thrust immediately after disabling SCO, which might help - or leave you way short. A bit of throttle control is needed too.
Plus you slow faster if you hotkey 75% thrust immediately after disabling SCO, which might help - or leave you way short. A bit of throttle control is needed too.
Yeah I tend to hit 50% for a few seconds if I think I've overdone it, though I can't say I'm sure that this makes any difference at all
Yeah, that's a much smarter approach than having to juggle remainders in your head while making sure you're pointing the right way and keeping an eye on the speed and ETA markers.My approach is much the same - to simplify the mental arithmetic you can also just divide by 10 and then add around half again to the result. (So 350 would be 35 plus 15or20 = 50ish
Why didn't I think of that? FML.
Maybe I'm just hitting the sweet spot every time where I should be hitting the blue zone on exiting SCO since full throttle overshoots.Yeah I tend to hit 50% for a few seconds if I think I've overdone it, though I can't say I'm sure that this makes any difference at all
The only rule of thumb I have is to use gravity wells to my advantage. You'll want to stop boosting when approaching the body. When exactly to stop boosting is based on feel as others have said. But if you're about to overshoot make sure you pass as close to the body as possible. Gravity will slow you down significantly faster so that when you turn around you'll already be really close. If it's a very large body (like a Gas Giant) then you can even prevent an overshoot entirely.
One thing that can help, if you've already screwed up...
If you're heading for something that has something else near it, head for the something else instead of your intended destination, and then turn to face your intended destination.
Once you're not heading toward your target you start to slow down and the gravity well of the something else will slow you down, as you turn away from it, too.
Takes a bit of practice but it works very well, and it means that any pursuing ship won't be directly behind you when you're moving slowly so they can't target you with an FSI.
Practice by, when docking at a station, setting your speed so the ETA timer reads about 5 seconds, head for the planet and then turn to face the station.
As you get more comfortable, you can try the same manoeuvre at higher and higher speeds.
If you're heading for something that has something else near it, head for the something else instead of your intended destination, and then turn to face your intended destination.
Once you're not heading toward your target you start to slow down and the gravity well of the something else will slow you down, as you turn away from it, too.
Takes a bit of practice but it works very well, and it means that any pursuing ship won't be directly behind you when you're moving slowly so they can't target you with an FSI.
Practice by, when docking at a station, setting your speed so the ETA timer reads about 5 seconds, head for the planet and then turn to face the station.
As you get more comfortable, you can try the same manoeuvre at higher and higher speeds.
I do the following:
Supercruise assist on but turn away slightly from the target
Throttle speed down to zero
Turn on SCO
When you're 50% on the way there, turn off SCO but accelerate to 100% supercruise speed (adjust as necessary). You'll probably still be going very fast at this point.
(This is the tricky part) When you're nearly there point your ship at the target. The supercruise assist will brake your speed so you don't overshoot.
Sit back but watch carefully since it happens sometimes that your target gets obscured. Just align manually so the supercruise assist kicks in again.
That's it
There's no fixed rule because it depends how big an object's gravity well you're departing from and how big an object's gravity well you're approaching, as well as how much time you have to build up speed in-between.
It also depends on whether you intend to use the SCO speed to transition into a fast spiral/gravity-brake approach to the target (which will save another 1-2 minutes of flight time), or whether you plan to brake sharply into a slow straight-line approach to give the pirates you left behind a chance to catch up and interdict.
But as a general set of guidelines:
- for long-distance runs between two distant binary stars, you can probably drop the initial SCO as the timer hits 0:02 or even 0:01, and might well have time to reactivate it for a medium-distance run after that if you stop too soon
- for medium-distance runs out from star to planet or between planets around the same star, dropping SCO at 0:04 should let you transition into a fast non-SCO approach effectively (if you're approaching a light rocky planet in a ship which can't turn corners, maybe 0:05)
- for short-distance where you're just using SCO to clear the initial gravity well, "sooner than you think"
(Then figure out where those guidelines don't quite work to get more precise practice in. It really depends heavily on exactly what ship you're flying, what route you're flying, and how comfortable you are at shaving a planet's exclusion zone to drop excess speed later)
It also depends on whether you intend to use the SCO speed to transition into a fast spiral/gravity-brake approach to the target (which will save another 1-2 minutes of flight time), or whether you plan to brake sharply into a slow straight-line approach to give the pirates you left behind a chance to catch up and interdict.
But as a general set of guidelines:
- for long-distance runs between two distant binary stars, you can probably drop the initial SCO as the timer hits 0:02 or even 0:01, and might well have time to reactivate it for a medium-distance run after that if you stop too soon
- for medium-distance runs out from star to planet or between planets around the same star, dropping SCO at 0:04 should let you transition into a fast non-SCO approach effectively (if you're approaching a light rocky planet in a ship which can't turn corners, maybe 0:05)
- for short-distance where you're just using SCO to clear the initial gravity well, "sooner than you think"
(Then figure out where those guidelines don't quite work to get more precise practice in. It really depends heavily on exactly what ship you're flying, what route you're flying, and how comfortable you are at shaving a planet's exclusion zone to drop excess speed later)
This is something I've long meant to properly try out. If you or anyone can recommend a tutorial post/video, I'd be grateful