Currently, normal flight speeds are too slow for circumnavigation, surface searches etc. You can use Orbital Cruise, but that requires you to be a long way up from the surface and often out of visual range; plus you have to be careful not to accidentally fly below the Drop height. (Not to mention the Orbital Cruise sound gets annoying in long flights!). You can spam the Boost button, but that too gets a bit annoying while still being too slow for long-distance travel.
How about an "Overcruise" mode:
- (Technobabble) by diverting power from manoeuvring thrusters and other systems, you can boost the normal flight speed up to the minimum Orbital Cruise speed of 2.5km/s.
- You have VERY limited manoeuvrability at these speeds, can only do gradual turns/climbs/descents.
- You cannot deploy weapons while in Overcruise.
- Accelerating to Overcruise speed is initially very slow, then gets much faster (to prevent it being a "magic get out of combat" button)
- You CAN however use it to approach/attack other craft - zoom towards them in Overcruise, hard brake to normal flight and deploy weapons.
- There's no altitude limitations on when it can be used.
- Overcruise shares the same instancing as normal flight: there's no instance switching / delays when switching between the two.
Overcruise could be an automatic upgrade, or an Engineering upgrade / Tech Broker module. Or even a ship-specific feature!
How about an "Overcruise" mode:
- (Technobabble) by diverting power from manoeuvring thrusters and other systems, you can boost the normal flight speed up to the minimum Orbital Cruise speed of 2.5km/s.
- You have VERY limited manoeuvrability at these speeds, can only do gradual turns/climbs/descents.
- You cannot deploy weapons while in Overcruise.
- Accelerating to Overcruise speed is initially very slow, then gets much faster (to prevent it being a "magic get out of combat" button)
- You CAN however use it to approach/attack other craft - zoom towards them in Overcruise, hard brake to normal flight and deploy weapons.
- There's no altitude limitations on when it can be used.
- Overcruise shares the same instancing as normal flight: there's no instance switching / delays when switching between the two.
Overcruise could be an automatic upgrade, or an Engineering upgrade / Tech Broker module. Or even a ship-specific feature!