Physics/ Flying in Supercruise

Does anybody know/ can explain the physics in supercruise?
Sometimes you break or you are being accelerated while there is no planet/ star near.
What are the blue circles around planets?
Is there a source to look up?
I wanted to know if there is a faster route than the direct one where you perhaps can accelerate and break faster.
 
Nearby mass interferes with the efficiency of the Frame-Shift drive, pulling you further out of Witchspace, thus decreasing your speed relative to normal space. This mass lock effect is the same mechanism that drags you out of deep Witchspace during a hyperspace jump.

It is possible to use this effect to rapidly slow down in supercruise. I used mass shadow breaking in Alpha 5 and Premium Beta 1 to cut my travel time almost in half. Sadly, mass shadows were nerfed in PB2 after too many complaints that supercruise took too long, and we now travel too fast to "tread the needle" accurately. Frustratingly,I'm find it now takes longer to get anywhere in supercruise than it did when mass shadows were longer. Slowing down used to be the shortest part of Supercruise if you knew what you were doing. Now it's the longest.
 
Nearby mass interferes with the efficiency of the Frame-Shift drive, pulling you further out of Witchspace, thus decreasing your speed relative to normal space. This mass lock effect is the same mechanism that drags you out of deep Witchspace during a hyperspace jump.

It is possible to use this effect to rapidly slow down in supercruise. I used mass shadow breaking in Alpha 5 and Premium Beta 1 to cut my travel time almost in half. Sadly, mass shadows were nerfed in PB2 after too many complaints that supercruise took too long, and we now travel too fast to "tread the needle" accurately. Frustratingly,I'm find it now takes longer to get anywhere in supercruise than it did when mass shadows were longer. Slowing down used to be the shortest part of Supercruise if you knew what you were doing. Now it's the longest.


i find it annoying that gravity seems to have no effect other than to slow supercruise down

if you come into a planet's gravity at the speed of light shouldn't you slingshot around it, speeding you up massively, rather than slowing down..?
 
As I've posted many times, SuperCruse or FSD is broken and has been since Alpha 4.

If you fly directly to a planet so that you just clip it's atmosphere and not hit it, it's gravity well should slow you down because of it's mass and the negative effect of it on your drive - like when you are forced to fly slowly from a star because your drive won't accelerate much because of the immense gravity well you're stuck in.

In Alpha 4, you could use this to fly closer or further away from the centre of a planet's gravity well in order to slow down or speed up when doing a sling shot to get quickly to a station.

However since Beta 1, flying close to a planetary body doesn't slow you down at all, and as someone told me on this forum, it won't unless you 'target' the planet and not the station or object you're trying to get to.

There are a vocal few that have come on since Beta, that never knew what it was like and won't accept any critic on it's 'feel' and therefore scream heresy when someone says it's not right, but this close to release, broken is broken.

Some say you have to manually keep moving the trottle up and down and THAT will allow the gravity well's to have effect (but that's even less scientifically plausible) and all it means is that you can't use advanced flying techniques to get around quickly and cleverly and you just have to spend those extra minutes in super cruise planning your next holiday.
 
Well, the blue circles are the gravity influence of the astronomical body. It makes your ship lose speed, so if it happens to you in the deep space, it usually means there is some undiscovered star or planet. Stars influence area is really huge. Just today, thanks to this mechanics, i found an red dwarf i was looking for (Draconis B, it was 260000ls from Draconis A!). Draconis A orbit showed me the direction, i was already losing hope to find it (only intermediate scanner onboard) i was going already at 800c and my speed started to drop, so i knew its somewhere here.

I dont know about the source of material explaining it, sorry. But you are right, it is quite faster to hit the top speed, go very close to a planet that your target station orbits, go around it (or beside, as long as you are in the planets gravity influence) and lose the speed close to the planet. This way you skip the long breaking, you can literally go from very high SC speed to almost 5 Mms. After 200ls of constant accelerating you can get as close as 1 ls close to the target station, its awesome. Also, great if you want to avoid interdictions, as deccelerating is the best opportunity for a hostile to catch and interdict you.

So, you were right to think theres a faster route than direct one :). Just try not to hit the planet, the emergency SC stop can damage your ship.
 
As I've posted many times, SuperCruse or FSD is broken and has been since Alpha 4.

If you fly directly to a planet so that you just clip it's atmosphere and not hit it, it's gravity well should slow you down because of it's mass and the negative effect of it on your drive - like when you are forced to fly slowly from a star because your drive won't accelerate much because of the immense gravity well you're stuck in.

In Alpha 4, you could use this to fly closer or further away from the centre of a planet's gravity well in order to slow down or speed up when doing a sling shot to get quickly to a station.

However since Beta 1, flying close to a planetary body doesn't slow you down at all, and as someone told me on this forum, it won't unless you 'target' the planet and not the station or object you're trying to get to.

There are a vocal few that have come on since Beta, that never knew what it was like and won't accept any critic on it's 'feel' and therefore scream heresy when someone says it's not right, but this close to release, broken is broken.

Some say you have to manually keep moving the trottle up and down and THAT will allow the gravity well's to have effect (but that's even less scientifically plausible) and all it means is that you can't use advanced flying techniques to get around quickly and cleverly and you just have to spend those extra minutes in super cruise planning your next holiday.

That explains a lot, we should raise the attention of that issue!
 
As I've posted many times, SuperCruse or FSD is broken and has been since Alpha 4.

If you fly directly to a planet so that you just clip it's atmosphere and not hit it, it's gravity well should slow you down because of it's mass and the negative effect of it on your drive - like when you are forced to fly slowly from a star because your drive won't accelerate much because of the immense gravity well you're stuck in.

In Alpha 4, you could use this to fly closer or further away from the centre of a planet's gravity well in order to slow down or speed up when doing a sling shot to get quickly to a station.

However since Beta 1, flying close to a planetary body doesn't slow you down at all, and as someone told me on this forum, it won't unless you 'target' the planet and not the station or object you're trying to get to.

There are a vocal few that have come on since Beta, that never knew what it was like and won't accept any critic on it's 'feel' and therefore scream heresy when someone says it's not right, but this close to release, broken is broken.

Some say you have to manually keep moving the trottle up and down and THAT will allow the gravity well's to have effect (but that's even less scientifically plausible) and all it means is that you can't use advanced flying techniques to get around quickly and cleverly and you just have to spend those extra minutes in super cruise planning your next holiday.

Hmm, it works for me very well. I target the station every time and with a bit of speed adjusting i can come as close to a station as 1 ls (one "roll"), after accelerating for more than 200 ls. And i have a normal size planet on my mind. Hell, i do it even after 1500ls acceleration.

Well, i guess i should be happy that my game is not as broken as Yours :).
 
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What is it with the acceleration caused by every object? It seems completely wrong that even a small object, even a USS with perhaps only one small ship accelerates you if you are not carefully slowing down inside that ~7 seconds ETA - but only if you selected it^^
I think it shouldn't be a problem for an up to date PC to calculate mass dependencies of 3-5 bigger objects and i suppose FD can write the appropriate code for it. There must be a game-mechanical problem that it is solved like this.

...

If i lose speed now in the mid of nowhere, is this due to invisible unexplored planets?
 
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