Please automate Supercruise - its the most pointless gameplay element.

[Armour]

I think SC needs more work, definitely. There are 3 facts that can't be avoided:

• You can't shoot guns in it.
• You can't make money in it.
• You can't complete missions in it.

Right now, it's like a cross between a location menu, interupted by the occasional game of "tag-of-war", and an old RPG random encounter table.

The location menu part is a bit flat. We need more stuff out there. Sure, space is vast and empty, yada yada yada - but the game consists of modular outposts, 2 and a half types of modular station, stars, and planets with/without asteroid belts. More stuff please, and soon!

The concept art showed externally-docked giant ships refuelling and being loaded/unloaded by smaller vessels, with all kinds of unexplained but cool-looking machinery, and generally stuff that made the inhabited galaxy look a lot more like a bustling hive of activity, as it probably would be if cheap FTL travel was a commonplace affair. If we had some of that stuff dotted around systems, it would give us a lot more travel choice and break up that standard travel cycle a bit.

The random encounters (namely USSs) are too obviously geared around you, a bit like the Truman Show ("LOOK! THERE's the red car, THERE's the guy on the bicycle, and THERE are the unattended gold canisters!"). When you can get a job and follow NPCs in supercruise, that will help. But USSs are still a sore point with some people, and I'm not sure that simply upping the variety will mask the issue.

A few temporary locations wouldn't hurt. Stuff that's a bit more permanent than a USS, but not as permanent as an Orbis. Here are some throwaway examples:

Monty Python's Spacefaring Circus - see the amazing Bugblatter Beast of Traal! Watch the Fabulous Flying Pimento Brothers strain specially-adapted Vipers to near-destruction in a synchronised display of piloting skill and daredevil antics!
(Psst....and buy some very illegal rare items...)

White-Colllar Dogfights - Are you tired of space trucking? Want to see if you've got the canisters to enter the arena? Come on down!
(If you want to bet on the suckers - I mean brave warriors - you're welcome to do that too.)

Space Racing Circuit - Hey Citizens! Want to show off your high-speed, max powered, spacefaring magnet? Want to try your luck against the best the galaxy has to offer?
(Want to bet on the whole affair?)

Seasonal Outpost - It's Harvest Time again, and we've got all the unhealthy and downright dangerous entertainment that you might want before/after a stultifying journey carrying megatons of grain in a godforsaken freighter. Come and spend your time and money with us!

Black Market Outpost - Hey, you! Yes, you! Hurry up, we won't be around here for long. We've come across a whole load of valuable items and equipment in a very unofficial manner, and we have to find discerning buyers sharpish before the Feds get wind of what we're up to! The quantities we're talking about here, a normal station couldn't hide! Get your credits out already!

On a related note: the exploration mechanic could contain a lot more depth and fun. Waiting for the Hans Zimmer Horn of Discovery to announce that we found stuff with a loud PARP (without us really doing much in the way of looking) is a bit lame IMO. Where's the spectroscopic analysis? Where's all the cool sciency stuff that we should probably be doing instead of just activating the "VascoDeGamatron 3300" and waiting for it to do our work for us like we're microwaving a pop tart? Making it harder to find stuff would mean that more gets missed out on, and it might mean that stuff could actually be hidden from us, even in inhabited space.

 

[Winterwalker]

I think SC needs more work, definitely. There are 3 facts that can't be avoided:

• You can't shoot guns in it.
• You can't make money in it.
• You can't complete missions in it.

Right now, it's like a cross between a location menu, interupted by the occasional game of "tag-of-war", and an old RPG random encounter table.

Not sure how serious your post is Cmdr Armour, a bit off topic a lot of it .. ?

Tag of War might sum it up, in a way. But it does depend a lot on what the tag is, and powerplay adds that kind of content as advertised. Supercruise itself though, you don't like as a mechanic? How would you do in system travel instead? Personally I wouldn't change it, at all apart from optimising it.

 

[Armour]

Not sure how serious your post is Cmdr Armour, a bit off topic a lot of it .. ?

Tag of War might sum it up, in a way. But it does depend a lot on what the tag is, and powerplay adds that kind of content as advertised. Supercruise itself though, you don't like as a mechanic? How would you do in system travel instead? Personally I wouldn't change it, at all apart from optimising it.

Well, I offered some ways to make the experience a bit more varied, but that was off-topic apparently. So I'll stick with my original suggestion, which was to introduce in-system micro-jumps between any 2 nav beacons, for distances over 10000 LS. Not quite jump gates, but not far off. I gave plenty of detail on this one previously. The jumps wouldn't necessarily be advantageous to the player to use (think "campers"), and some locations would not be on the jump network for good reasons (namely to avoid the cops), but it might stop people droning on about how boring it is to travel to Hutton Orbital, which is a positive.

 

[kubovsky]

Except we're talking about a gameplay mechanic that is... a non-gameplay mechanic. There is no complexity or depth to supercruise; it's just a pointless time sink, with the added annoyance of being unable to sit back and relax while you're doing it, lest an NPC brainlessly interdict you for the Nth time.

I really don't understand some of the attitudes in threads like this. People keep acting as if flying in a straight line is some deep and rewarding experience, and that cutting down travel times or automating the drudgery would "dumb it down". No. It is drudgery. It's pure, arbitrary grind. It is not complexity. You press a button, you go forward. That's it.

Furthermore, I really don't understand this myth that Elite is vastly complex. You fly a single, small ship. You have no fleet to command. You have no space stations to build, no resource chains to manage, no NPC dialogue to tiptoe through, no RPG stats to build up and decide upon. Crime and law enforcement involve shooting or being shot at. Mid-space repairs involve pressing a button to make a percentage go up. There is no research. All ship upgrades are vanilla, factory-default copies. Fuel scooping requires you to do little more than park next to a star for a while. Mining requires you to shoot an invulnerable, static rock. Exploring involves staring at things for an arbitrary length of time. Docking requires that you not fly into a massive wall.

Now don't get me wrong; I enjoy the game... but supercruise was a stupid idea. It's an amateurish idea. It's the kind of idea that other developers throw away early in development, because it is a bad gameplay concept; it's something that actually gets in the way of playing the game. You remember those old Resident Evil door-opening animations? Imagine if they took 5 minutes. That's supercruise. It's something that killed exploration for me; I went from being one of those idealistic, wide-eyed wanderers charting everything I found... to a weary cynic watching netflix and youtube videos while I waited for the ETA to drop to 6 seconds, celebrating any opportunity I had to actually fly my ship; to hear its engines roar instead of whine; to dodge things; to shoot things.

This is a great game, i really enjoy most of what it has to offer, but you are so right, cannot agree more....

...there is always room for improvements

 

[Winterwalker]

Well, I offered some ways to make the experience a bit more varied, but that was off-topic apparently. So I'll stick with my original suggestion, which was to introduce in-system micro-jumps between any 2 nav beacons, for distances over 10000 LS. Not quite jump gates, but not far off. I gave plenty of detail on this one previously. The jumps wouldn't necessarily be advantageous to the player to use (think "campers"), and some locations would not be on the jump network for good reasons (namely to avoid the cops), but it might stop people droning on about how boring it is to travel to Hutton Orbital, which is a positive.

Agreed ...

The DDF discussed this .. called micro-jumps at the time ( link ) ..

I also hope we see micro-jumps and that eventually don't need nav beacons either, but can choose destination at leisure (from an orrery view and etc !!)

 

[B33 ENN]

...Now don't get me wrong; I enjoy the game... but supercruise was a stupid idea. It's an amateurish idea. It's the kind of idea that other developers throw away early in development, because it is a bad gameplay concept; it's something that actually gets in the way of playing the game. You remember those old Resident Evil door-opening animations? Imagine if they took 5 minutes. That's supercruise. It's something that killed exploration for me; I went from being one of those idealistic, wide-eyed wanderers charting everything I found... to a weary cynic watching netflix and youtube videos while I waited for the ETA to drop to 6 seconds, celebrating any opportunity I had to actually fly my ship; to hear its engines roar instead of whine; to dodge things; to shoot things.

I agreed or at least sympathised with most everything you wrote up until that last block I've quoted. I'm not sure why you feel Supercruise was a bad idea. As a player of the original Elite, I can tell you it is a lot more enjoyable and intuitive to warp around a system like that then the old jump-masslock-jump-masslock... routine we used to have to put up with!

I think as a mode, Supercruise is perfectly fine, and, apart from the exit sequence (as others have said), well implemented. The problem is simply that when not using it to scout a system for action, such as WSS/USS/Nav Beacons etc., it is a chore just for ferrying. Having said that, auto-piloting would be a waste of the same amount of time as well, just without the player constantly at the controls.

A mini-hyperjump between large masses within a system would resolve this in the same way as a fast-travel system does for other open world games, yet would be a mechanic that would remain consistent with the suspension of disbelief aspect of the game's design. For those that must have an autopilot, for whatever reason, just make an Advanced Navigation Computer available for sale that is an upgrade of the Standard Docking Computer and uses a ship slot.

That way, everyone has choice to play their own way, and is happy.

The DDF discussed this .. called micro-jumps at the time ( link ) ..I also hope we see micro-jumps and that eventually don't need nav beacons either, but can choose destination at leisure (from an orrery view and etc !!)

Exactly, yes! I'll have to read up to understand why they didn't put this in the game...

 

[Lobstris]

Now don't get me wrong; I enjoy the game... but supercruise was a stupid idea. It's an amateurish idea. It's the kind of idea that other developers throw away early in development, because it is a bad gameplay concept; it's something that actually gets in the way of playing the game. You remember those old Resident Evil door-opening animations? Imagine if they took 5 minutes. That's supercruise. It's something that killed exploration for me; I went from being one of those idealistic, wide-eyed wanderers charting everything I found... to a weary cynic watching netflix and youtube videos while I waited for the ETA to drop to 6 seconds, celebrating any opportunity I had to actually fly my ship; to hear its engines roar instead of whine; to dodge things; to shoot things.

Is it really a less amateurish idea than 'hey let's connect a bunch of levels together via warp gates and call it space', which we find in a lot of other games. Personally, I blame multiplayer for the loss of seamless system travel that was present in the previous two games, but I understand why the compromise of the three-tier travel system was made, and I understand precisely why the DDF rejected the 'micro-jumps everywhere' approach that was initially proposed.

 

[Armour]

Is it really a less amateurish idea than 'hey let's connect a bunch of levels together via warp gates and call it space', which we find in a lot of other games. Personally, I blame multiplayer for the loss of seamless system travel that was present in the previous two games, but I understand why the compromise of the three-tier travel system was made, and I understand precisely why the DDF rejected the 'micro-jumps everywhere' approach that was initially proposed.

I get that micro-jumps can lead to the "rooms in space" problem, but if you place enough restrictions on their use (minimum distance, increased risks as jump distance decreases) along with some benefits on not using them (scooping, USSs, locations that don't have a beacon/gate), they would be a net benefit to the game IMO, as they would povide options. Min-maxers could play the jump game to their heart's content, but they would always be at risk from beacon camping pirates, who would in turn always be at risk from beacon camping bounty hunters. If the security level in a system really made a difference (lots of patrols at jump points in high-sec systems, few patrols in low-sec systems), it would really mix up inhabited space and make systems feel quite different from one another, even if the scenery is very similar.

 

[Fenster]

They seem to be planning on making more of Supercruise, so I can't see this one happening OP.

I would like to see in-system hyperspace jumps between nav beacons. Beacons would have to be a minimum distance apart (say 100K LS), because the nearer the destination, the more likelihood of a misjump, for scientific reasons that I can't be bothered to make up. You would have to start an in-system jump next to a nav beacon to target another, so you couldn't just jump out of danger or whilst drifting across a system nowhere near a beacon.

Some supercruise would be required anyway, quite apart for all the benefits of using it (hunting down targets, scooping, USS gameplay, other stuff).

The jump network would be patrolled by the cops in high-security system, and by the pirates (and the bounty hunters) in low-security ones, so it may be a safer bet to supercruise, or it may not. And some "landmarks" in a system would not be on the jump network, so as to avoid security patrols.

Actually this is very interesting idea ... Having to drop out of SC , sync with a nav beacon, and with some form of delay a jump in system .. Would actually give nav beacons a point

 

[Tate Papa]

Wow, I'm new here so take this with a grain of salt, but holy anger batman for no reason.

First, I'm with OP. FD should create an "auto-cruise" module that allows the ship to, at least, drop out of SC on to a locked target. I think it would be useful, if you don't don't freaking buy it.

What I think I have most difficult time with is the notion that I must play the game the way YOU like to play it. It is a sandbox sim for god's sake. If I think an auto-cruise module would free up to read the day's gal-net news, why is it so bothersome to some people that all that is spewed forth is vitriol (and "this is a troll")? I just got here so it is new to me.

OP never said, make it the fastest point-to-point method, with interdiction invincibility. No he actually said the opposite. Again don't buy it, don't use it if you don't like the idea, but damn you for trying to quell an idea by forcing me to play the game the same exact way as you -- and I better enjoy it because it is a flight sim and gee that's what you do in a flight sim and golly it is perfect don't mess with it. OP never intended or said anything about messing with your joy of flying in a helix or arc pattern waiting for that crucial 2 secs to drop out of SC that you all find so enjoyable.

You know what sometimes I do that and I like it. Sometimes I just want a break from it and would like to have part of the process automated (feel free to interdict me while I'm off reading the news) but don't tell me how to play the game.

 

[Smugallo]

The trouble is, how do you propose they change this, given the entry point into normal space jumps?
.

I have no idea, I'm not a programmer or a game designer and it's not my problems to solve, it's Frontiers. Off the top of my head maybe they could automate the final approach? That way the position of the assets are determined by the game and not user input, making it a bit of a smoother transition? Bit of 'armchair' game development going on there but hey

 

[Nonya]

This is how it starts: Please automate "insert item here".
Next they'll want insta-docking, insta-mining, insta-discovery, automated attacks, and before you know we're all playing a giant spreadsheet clone of Eve.

No thanks.

 

[Rankaze]

Is it really that hard to just fly your ship? Don't you WANT to fly your ship? Why are you playing Elite if you don't want to fly your ship?

I can understand the desire for star-to-star microjumps - nobody likes the excessively long flight to Hutton Orbital - but if you don't have to at least fly your ship to your destination, what's the point of the game at all?

 

[mossfoot]

And this is why I'm glad that we got Star Command and No Man's Sky on the horizon. I suspect with that much variety out there, everyone will find what suits them best.

 

[Armour]

Is it really that hard to just fly your ship? Don't you WANT to fly your ship? Why are you playing Elite if you don't want to fly your ship?

I can understand the desire for star-to-star microjumps - nobody likes the excessively long flight to Hutton Orbital - but if you don't have to at least fly your ship to your destination, what's the point of the game at all?

The flying part of the game is fine - dogfighting, docking, all that nice stuff. One thing I have considered: in normal space, you can die quite easily. That's a lot more difficult whilst in supercruise. Sure, you can overheat whilst scooping, but I've never seen anyone die from that whilst in supercruise. You can fly too close to a star and get mass-locked and overheat that way, but that's normal space again. What other peril is there - interdiction? You don't die from that often (what happens after you drop into normal space is something else). So in SC, you are flying about without really being in direct danger - It's like one step removed from consequence, from actual gameplay. That might be one reason people find it dull. Micro-jumps, within reason, seem like a great idea, and could introduce a bit of direct danger to interplanetary travel, if misjumps at short distances were a real hazard, as well as all the beacon camping and stuff. I have no clue why the DDF peeps were so against it. I didn't really like the idea myself at first, but I have come to appreciate the extra choice and depth it would bring to the simple act of navigation in a system.

 

[kubovsky]

I love to fly my ship, but putting on an autopilot from time to time would make room to do some other ingame things, like checking the news or the starchart or watching my ship fly in debug camera mode.

Beside that, there is an ergonomic aspect. For me playing on a laptop, with Joystick and keyboard, i have to use both hands constantly. keyboard to adjust speed, joystick to adjust direction. After some time, this can be quite uncomfortable, because you have to hold the flightstick vertical and cannot rest your hand like you can do with a mouse.

maybe on a multi monitor setup, with one of those flightseats and pedals, reading the left or the right panel while in SC is easy. with my setup, which i would consider pretty standard, its a pain to switch back to front view every 5 seconds, just to check SC course and speed.

So right now, SC forces me to keep my arm in a quite unatural postion + prevents me from doing other in game things like Route planning, etc.

I mean, anybody against the use of the docking computer?

if you dont like auto functions, dont use them. Its not that they give you an advantage, its just comfort.

Nobody is talking about auto battle here....

 

[kurush]

I mean, anybody against the use of the docking computer?

if you dont like auto functions, dont use them. Its not that they give you an advantage, its just comfort.

Nobody is talking about auto battle here....

A whole bunch of people actually are against the docking computer. Things are pretty messed up here

 

[flyright]

We need this added for those that want it, those that don't can continue without it.

 

[Poplin]

What if there was an auto pilot computer internal, like the one for docking. Just has you go a little bit slower, and then more risk of being open to interdictions if you're not paying attention.

 

[Majic-12]

We need this added for those that want it, those that don't can continue without it.

If I don't want it, NO ONE must be allowed to have it, EVER!



/entirety_of_human_history_explained_right_there