Horizons Neutron and white dwarf stars, what where you thinking with those?

I truly do not understand what went on when you designed the new neutron/white dwarf stars. I do get the risk/reward reason, but I truly fail to understand the logic between the pathetic harmless black holes and ridiculously deadly neutron/white dwarf stars.


And after spending alot of time stuck inside a few white dwarf stars, I have learned quite a few things, and the more I learn, the more I fail to see the logic behind what you did here.

For example, who is responsible for inverting your controlls? it really hard enough to combat the added gravity swinging, but reversing the controlls, WHY? and I'm not quite sure, but you seems to be doing this a bit random ontop of this.... so sometimes one axis do not appear inverted...


Or who managed to design our ships to be so darn front heavy, I mean, how come if we do nothing, the ships will always point in the gernal direction of the star? I would expect the ship to be more heavy at the rear, where all the big engines are, etc, and not to forget, ships tend to wider at the back, also suggesting that more weight are located here... so having ships always return to point towards the star make no sense to me... I do get that gravity could increase alot in a short distance (but not for black holes... ), so that a ship that is rear heavy would still point into the start if you started out like that, but if that is the case, once you manage to swing around, you would be rear heavy, and point away from the star.... but having you ship return to pointing into the star make no sense to me, perhaps there is a physical reason I do not understand here.



Also who messed up the graphics? When you jump in on a neutron/white dwarf star, the plumes are clearly visible and relatively easy to navigate to supercharge your FSD, but if you for some "stupid" reason decides to go back to super charge (guess how I get stuck in these stars), now the plumes are way smaller than before and you will most likely end up in dangerzone due to this... also stupid me, I forgot to target the star to begin with, so I know what way is the dangerous way to go (also with the front heavy ship here, if you nothing, you will end up pointing into the star...).



I think you get my rant, it is not the rebuy that makes me a bit upset here or the potential loss of exploration data, etc, etc, but the shear level of difficulty added here, that makes me question what where they thinking when changing these and ontop of this leave stuff like black holes way beyond harmless..... I have managed to escape these things a few times now,. but the big trial and error everytime makes me wonder if it really was meant for us to be able to escape those.... because you always had to be lucky to lock on to the escape vector, and it took me like 20 tries the first time to even actually point my ship in the general direction of the escape vector. and that was before I realised what they did to our controlls...


So why I tend to get stuck in those is my own fault for trying to supercharge in the the wrong way. But it is a challenge to escape, and the more I try, the more I question the the whole setup here... much of it does not makes sense to me. And all I can do is to feel for all the CMDRs who by pure bad luck get stuck inside the danger zone of those stars...I mean, you can go full speed into ANYTHING except neutron/white dwarf stars, where your ship will do an emergency stop in a "safe" location instead of trying to ram a planet or a sun, but here, you add stars that will most the time, kill you on your first 50+ tries to escape... and to be honest, you do only get one real chance per rebuy, if you play the way it is supposed to be played... so you are screwed as once your FSD is beyond repair.... and even if you have a field mantenance unit, the rest of the ship will ldisintregrate before your eyes, so even if you manged to repair the FSD, you will face the same happening to all your vital modules, like thrusters, powerpolant etc, and you are basically dead in space, waitng for destruction. And the only way to keep trying and learn about this is to resett the scenario and try and try and try again....

And then there is the RNG factor to this things, where you feel like you are about to line, and the Powerplant shutsdoiwn, or the FSD gives up just as are lined up and about to escape, or the powerdistributor malfuctions and makes boosting at the correct time impossible, etc, etc.



well, I am off too escape yet another white dwarf...
 
Whatever you do, don't do it with White Dwarfs - they are perilous !

Neutron stars are much easier to negotiate properly and give you a decent return on FSD boost. 4 x if I remember correctly.

Practice with the neutron stars, aim at a fairly slow supercruise speed for the area of the plume where it is almost (not quite) turning purple and aim for the 'exit' of the tornado in the opposite direction to the star.

This isn't intended to be a teach-you-how to do it properly, there are other threads that do that, but just to say find neutron stars and avoid the white dwarfs !

Good luck, Commander ..... you will find it gets better with practice ....... but on neutron stars ;)
 
Sounds like FD did a pretty good job. FSD boosting should be dangerous, not simply a free shortcut.

I do hope they improve the black holes soon.
 
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I thought they'd removed most of the gotchas from NS and WD scooping? I haven't read of anyone exiting inside a cone for a while, and that used to happen all the time. One of my CMDRs has just hopped from Colonia back to the bubble using the Neutron Highway and only once came close to hitting a NS exclusion zone, entirely my fault for poor throttle discipline. Otherwise he scooped hundreds of them with little to show other than FSD damage, and then nothing that an occasional AFMU run couldn't deal with.

I hate to say it but I think they're a little too danger-free at the moment. The biggest risk seems to be running out of AFMU ammo and losing your SRV so you can't rearm.

Not sure what I'd do to make them more dangerous, mind. I did post an idea a while back whereby the galaxy map would show the orientation of jet cones, so any stars that had their cones aligned with the arrival vector would have to be avoided or approached from a different direction. It didn't get any traction though. I think what happens at the moment is that the ship's arrival vector is kludged so you always arrive perpendicular to the cones. Very little danger as long as you throttle down prior to hyperspace exit.
 
I'm sure the current black holes are placeholders for when they get upgraded to something more dangerous. I'm patient.
 
So why I tend to get stuck in those is my own fault for trying to supercharge in the the wrong way.

That is literally the only thing you wrote that has relevance.

I'm not trying to be funny but if you're flying into the jets the wrong way after trying it once, problem is between keyboard and chair. Here's a helpful tip for you. If you're flying back to charge rather than doing it as you arrive (and let's be clear here, there is never, ever a reason not to charge up when you jump in to begin with) make sure you always target the star (like you said you didn't do) and for the love of God don't just fly straight at it hitting 75% throttle at 7 seconds like you would when flying to a planet, especially it it's a white dwarf because you will almost certainly cruise into the exclusion zone whilst trying to stop. Just zero your throttle when you're about 100 ls away, then open it slightly and fly in nice and easy.

That will give you time to fly round it and you can actually see the jets without any problem at all when you're not burning straight into it. If you really, truly, definitely can't see them, STOP. Reason being that the only time you can't see them from inside 8-10 ls distance is that you're end on to them and that is the only way you're going to have a problem with them because when you enter the jets they keep you facing the same way so you end up flying towards the star, hitting the exclusion zone and dropping out.

Always approach by flying directly at the star with the jets coming out of it to your left and right, then just pick your direction of choice, turn and fly along the jet at a shallow angle until you slip into it. I usually kill throttle for a second then, just to make sure I don't fly out of the end of the jet before I've charged up. Throttle back up and no matter how mucch bumping around you get your ship will never turn round to face the star, the jets work like train tracks - once you're on them and facing one direction you're not going to be doing a 180.

Oh and yes, white dwarves can be dangerous if you don't pay attention to what you're doing. Exploration should be dangerous, you know the whole 'entering the unknown' thing? The fact that you can faceplant black holes is just tragic, we need more risk not less.

If you want to practice your neutron and dwarf skills, your best bet is to find a binary system and fly between them. When you do feel confident with white dwarves though, have a try at landing here :D

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/357172-Challenge-to-land-on-the-world-of-death

It's massive fun, honestly. Sample shot:

T1lcemg.jpg
 
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Just be happy that you can now actually see the Neutron stars rather than the old white dot somewhere on the screen that you usually notice at the last second...
 
Of griefing explorers.
Wha? You always arrive in a safe location, everything untoward happening to you is purely your own fault.

The only thing here appears to be "y u no black hole", surrounded by a couple paragraphs of lacking experience. I've jumped into and navigated through dozens of N and Wd systems (including ending up in the fringes of the cones before that was fixed for good), boosted a few times, and watched someone who had been playing for less than a week successfully navigate the ' Neutron Highway halfway from Colonia. There's nothing "griefing explorers", there's just something been added to the game that the OP does not yet understand.
 
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let's be clear here, there is never, ever a reason not to charge up when you jump in to begin with)

Each time you enter the jet cone your frame shift drive will take module damage. So almost never.

The race has finished now but you can still fly the course of the recent Buckyball race for some charging practice and fun.
 
Wha? You always arrive in a safe location, everything untoward happening to you is purely your own fault.

The only thing here appears to be "y u no black hole", surrounded by a couple paragraphs of lacking experience. I've jumped into and navigated through dozens of N and Wd systems (including ending up in the fringes of the cones before that was fixed for good), boosted a few times, and watched someone who had been playing for less than a week successfully navigate the ' Neutron Highway halfway from Colonia. There's nothing "griefing explorers", there's just something been added to the game that the OP does not yet understand.

You're griefing me now. You're patronizing me, and you're making me explain again what everybody already knows.

Many of the people who originally put up the money for this game expected a Galactic exploration simulator. As soon as FD had their money, they immediately started making a game to sell to people who wanted a space combat game, to take their money as well. That's why in spite of the outcry for more depth of exploration gameplay, every update since release has been combat-oriented, and exploration is still a placeholder.

And then in combat, when you fight, you fight for one session, and cash in your bounties. If you die, you only lose your bounties for that session. In exploration, you explore for anything up to months at a time, but if you die, you lose all your exploration data for all of those months. That's FD deliberately picking on explorers. And then the only update feature since release that pertains exclusively to exploration, and which only happened by accident, is neutron star FSD overcharging, which is nothing but a deathtrap for explorers, an opportunity for them to lose all their exploration data for the sake of skipping three jumps. That's what I mean by FD griefing explorers, as if you didn't already know. So don't come the innocent with me boy.
 
And then in combat, when you fight, you fight for one session, and cash in your bounties. If you die, you only lose your bounties for that session. In exploration, you explore for anything up to months at a time, but if you die, you lose all your exploration data for all of those months. That's FD deliberately picking on explorers. And then the only update feature since release that pertains exclusively to exploration, and which only happened by accident, is neutron star FSD overcharging, which is nothing but a deathtrap for explorers, an opportunity for them to lose all their exploration data for the sake of skipping three jumps. That's what I mean by FD griefing explorers, as if you didn't already know. So don't come the innocent with me boy.
I don't really know how to put it politely, but this fits quite perfectly for once, so…

[video=youtube_share;D4Ha_XjCuA8]https://youtu.be/D4Ha_XjCuA8[/video]

Neutron star boosting exists deliberately, it's not a feature that randomly happened. There was a testing phase that had the ranges adjusted and everything. Nothing and nobody forces you to get even close to the ejecta cones of Wd or N stars. If you cannot figure out a reasonably safe way to do it, don't. It's a potential threat that you face to take longer jumps, it's in no way a mandatory part of exploration; if anything, it's a means to reach further at a potential risk.

Again, I've seen an otherwise complete noob pass thousands of lightyears via N boosts until his AFMU ran out from normal wear, and not even once did he crash out of SC. That's something to measure yourself against.
 
Diffin is right, exploration is a shadow of what was talked about pre-launch and the punishment for ship loss, in terms of time invested, is utterly brutal.

Shadowdancer is also right; while punishment is brutal, the actual risk is very low and nearly always the result of bad choices by the pilot. Wrong loadout, misjudging a landing on a high-g world, flying into the exclusion zone of a neutron star.

All are potential gotchas, but all can be avoided. Anyone who is falling victim to them more than once, especially repatedly, is doing something very wrong.

I lost my first Asp to a planetary crash. It may have been the result of a bug, but there was also stupidity involved so I took the hit. Never done anything as stupid since.

I nearly lost another Asp to a neutron star because I didn't throttle back in time. Had to abort the exploration trip and limp home. Never done that again either.
 
Each time you enter the jet cone your frame shift drive will take module damage. So almost never.

The race has finished now but you can still fly the course of the recent Buckyball race for some charging practice and fun.

1% module damage. Given how many times you're likely to drop into a system intending to charge and make a long jump and then change your mind later, I still say there's never a reason not to do it. Remember you are there in front of the star and are intending to make a long jump at that moment - if you're not intending to make a long jump at that moment you wouldn't be charging anyway...

I was looking at that Buckyball race thread last week actually as well as the current one. When I get back to the bubble and I'm intending to stay there for a while I think I'm going to have a look at doing some of them; I did actually sign up for one over a year ago which was a race from one side of the bubble to the other, did three runs and managed to screw up my screenshots for the best one so ended up as a DNF and then just kind of drifted off doing other things. Now though I'm at a point in the game where engineering the rest of my ships and finally finishing off my last rank for a cutter can be fitted in around other things.

Shadowdancer is also right; while punishment is brutal, the actual risk is very low and nearly always the result of bad choices by the pilot. Wrong loadout, misjudging a landing on a high-g world, flying into the exclusion zone of a neutron star.

I'm about 12k LY rim-side of Sag A* at the moment about to turn for home. I set off from Founders on 1 June and have flown a very winding route from there to Sag A* then across to Colonia, down to that white dwarf system in the post above and back to Colonia then from Colonia to where I am now. There has been over 2K LY of vertical distance involved in the journey too and I've gone from 1K LY above the galactic plane to 1K LY below it multiple times. My total distance travelled so far since leaving Founders is 85,369 LY.

My ships total damage at the moment is my hull being down to 99% and my power plant down to 97%. That happened due to flying at full speed directly into a black hole as a result of dropping my lighter during a jump and not being back at the keyboard in time to zero my throttle, in other words 100% pilot error.

The risk isn't low, it's effectively non-existant. :D
 
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I've performed literally hundreds of neutron jumps since they fixed them (no more disconnects inside the wake!) and while they are inherently dangerous, as long as you don't lose your wits they are relatively safe. If anyone regularly dies while neutron scooping then they are doing something wrong and it's due to pilot error. I practiced a lot before I found my preferred way of doing them, practice does pay off with these.

Second only to planetary landings, neutron jumps are my favorite addition to the game since 1.0. And yeah I'm serious about that. :cool:
 
Before they do anything to black hole behavior, they need to add accretion disks to both black holes and neutron stars.

I think accretion disks would bring their own problems when I think about it. What happens if you end up jumping into the disk?

With the OP's point, white dwarf stars are ridiculously hard considering the payoff in terms of jump range boost, whereas the Neutron Stars are ridiculously easy.

It does sound though as if the OP is lining up on the Jet and flying towards the body in the first place (Please correct me if I'm wrong though) which is a recipe for disaster, although.

I was also thinking about his point about it being front heavy. I think the ship would if possible try to settle into the path of least resistance, and given their shape would actually tend to point against the flow, ie towards the star, if one is not careful.
I've only just started Neutron Jumping last week, and to be honest, I don't find it difficult at all. There are one or two occasions where I've misjudged my entry and gone too close to the star, but so far I've never been dropped into the jets the way I do it.

Tim
 
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