Hi all, some updates:
- De-throttled (speed at 0-50%) F/H + speeds have been recorded and updated on the sheet.
- Fuel efficiency improved for all ships in this speed state.
- Moving from 0% to 100% speed saw fuel consumption increase by 40-42% and speed increase by 16-31%, depending on the ship's FSD class.
- Ships with smaller FSD classes saw a bigger increase to speed from 0% to 100% throttle, meaning in the lower speed state, ships with larger FSDs enjoyed more of an increase to fuel efficiency than those with smaller FSDs.
- Fixed the time calculation on the Working Distance tab that was displaying seconds as a percentage of a minute, not real seconds themselves.
- Ships took massive damage when abruptly exiting from supercruise while under the effect of SCO compared to exiting abruptly from regular supercruise. If your control interference is directing you into a planet/star, turn off the SCO before impact to avoid taking extra damage.
- It appeared that ships with a high level of SC agility felt the effects of control interference much more profoundly than ships with poor agility. This meant that the higher the ship's FSD class (control interference) and agility were, the more difficulty in controlling the ship under SCO in SC there was. For example, the Asp Ex was difficult to control and took longer to reach full speed with compared to low-agility ships that share the same FSD class, such as the FDS and Orca.
- Tested another speed state that I'm going to call Boost Gliding (BG).
- Offered the greatest fuel efficiency under SCO but was dependent on the distance from gravity wells.
- Testing is incomplete for this and only has some niche use cases. More on this below.
Nice to see larger ships got more benefit out of the lower speed state as smaller ships already enjoy better fuel efficiency. I feel that some of the community's most revered exploration ships, like the DBX and Asp Ex, are hit hard by SCO use more so than other ships because of the level of control interference at that FSD class and their natural SC agility. At the extreme other end, the Type-9 is fairly easy to control due to its poor agility. When testing, there didn't seem to be a mass-related link to this, but can't be sure at this stage.
The other speed state, boost gliding, is something most Cmdrs will already be using I think. It's about reaching max SCO speed and then killing the boost to glide back into natural SC speeds, then boosting to max speed again to repeat the process. When killing the boost, the F/H would take approx. 6 secs to return to resting F/H rates, but the speed took much longer to return to the natural SC speed. This meant during the period of deceleration you could enjoy higher than average speeds at the resting F/H rate of your ship. The longer the acceleration process boosting to max, like when close to a gravity well, the less efficient it was, sometimes even less so compared to 0% throttle fuel efficiency, so the best use of this was far away from the gravity well where natural SC speeds were already 1300C+. For example, the sidewinder fuel efficiency is 0.057 at max, 0.053 at 0% throttle and 0.037 over a period of BG where natural SC speeds were 1800C. Where natural SC speed was 1C next to a star, sidewinder BG was only 0.056 fuel efficient. If you were fuel conscious travelling to very far away bodies, but still wanted a faster time than regular SC, then the 0% throttle or BG speed states would be good use case.
I was thinking of suggestions I could make for ideal SCO use for popular player activities - I might make some later on. Think the community probably has this covered but can't hurt.
Edit: Reduced length, too wordy, spelling etc.
. I'll probably revisit fuel efficiencies for A class, speeds, deceleration times from SCO to normal supercruise, and module differences.