Oh look, it's another quick travel thread. Knock it off and just don't go there if you don't want to spend the time.
I'd say the better solution would be for players to be able to go there quickly and for the player who doesn't want to go to various locations quickly, just not use the feature of jumping to different stars within a system. Because it's a feature that's needed. What the OP suggested is a pretty good solution as it requires the player to travel to the other star first, which is a reasonable prerequisite. If this requires surface scans of the other star, it also makes sense. The whole thing requires some initial effort from the player in order to be able to cut the journey short in the future.
This solution is also quite an impressive compromise on the players' side, considering the existing mechanics, considering the gameplay balance and the game lore. Personally I'd rather Frontier went for a Supercruise Boost, making you effectively jump between the planets and stations. This would speed up the gameplay pace and that's something Elite could use.
As for knocking it off, that makes that 100k Ls + starport unlikely and unsustainable. Considering the cost of establishing something like this, nobody would build a station in such locations unless it was able to be self sufficient or unless there was something immensely valuable in the area that would be a really good incentive for traders to go there. Is that station selling Painite, Osmium or Platinium? If no, they better have diamonds the size of human's head, otherwise they are going to starve. Simple as that. So far none of these location has anything that would justify their existence.
When I look at the bulletin boards in systems I hang out in currently, each of them has some missions to a certain outpost in the middle of nowhere (150k Ls or so), in a multiple star system. I made a mistake of taking such a mission once and went to the place. Since then I just look in disbelief at those missions. 50k for going there? Go stuff yourself, dear local faction.
So yes, these get knocked off by players. Did you know some stations were removed by Frontier in the past because they were unused? So yeah, they took knocking it off approach as well. At this rate we'll end up with space being even more empty it is now. The truth is, Elite is always going to have vast distances and a lot of empty space in inhabited systems. I understand the space is big and they wanted to convey this message, but the way they chose to do so is an overkill. You just need to open the galaxy map and pick a random destination somewhere on the other end to get this message and get the sense of scale in Elite.
They will never be able to fill even the bubble with objects players would find interesting enough to visit frequently, except for the exploration. You need to give players reasons to go to remote locations (and I'm talking 10mil credits kind of reasons here) or you need to compress the space by cutting travel time down.
They added a lot of content and it's a good content, but so far it didn't change the general impression of the game. It feels as empty, as ever. This is one of the things that make reviewers say Elite is empty and with shallow gameplay. The truth is, gameplay in Elite is not more shallow than in many other games, but the sheer amount of time it takes to get to nowhere in order to perform a simple and basic task magnifies this impression. Another way of changing this impression would be to have the space busy with player activity, but for this we still didn't get even basic multiplayer tools.
They had it easy so far, but their free ride is going to end later this year. So it would be better if they prepare Elite for competition whilst they still have time.
