Please reduce travel times in the bubble

[VR Golgot]

There are some that complain about various things regardless of the actual facts of the matter, the truth of the matter is that it is that it is unreasonable to expect super-cruise times to be effectively capped as some would like regardless of the size of given systems - it would be artificial and is unwarranted. Doing so would be tantamount to saying something like "Cruising at high-altitudes in Microsoft Flight Simulator X is boring so things should be made less realistic to make it more fun for group X (regardless of implications)".

Super-cruise is just a means of motion in ED, it does not need to be skill/risk based nor fun in itself, the lengths of journeys are not unreasonable in the main, and on the whole the mechanics are consistent with prevailing scientific theories on FTL type technologies. There are currently means of engaging in super-cruise optimally that keep transit times in the main to moderate levels, and there are various radiant and emergent incidents/encounters that can and do happen.

There has been a generally consistent argument effectively against ED being a 1:1 notionally true-scale universe product from various angles, the "super-cruise is boring" argument is just the current version of that. If people expect arbitrary hacks and tweaks to reduce travel times or increase frequency of incidents then on the whole they are being unreasonable in their expectations.

FD need to be careful not to change the already sold product in a way that kow-tows to the "bored" crowd too much, the FSS/DSS changes are already perhaps a step too far in that direction. To do so would be to change the fundamental nature of the product that some of us bought and would be tantamount to breaching their notional obligations to maintain their product in a consistent and acceptable way.

I've seen some jaw-droppingly bad arguments while campaigning for changes to travel times, but hearing that even 'tweaks' to the existing systems would be tantamount to a breach of the Terms of Service is indeed a flabbergasting new low. Congratulations.

I mean it's not as bad as that time a guy claimed long transit times could literally save lives (IE streamers would get up, walk around, and... not die), but it's pretty damn close.

Well just carry on regardless rlsg. You do anyway. Declaim that any changes to this artificial construct are 'artificial and unwarranted' if they don't fit your hard sim preferences. Laud riffs on alcubierre drives and transit at multiples of lightspeed as highly realistic and fully warranted, if they do happen to align with what you like. Decry, those beastly concepts of skill, risk and fun as desirable rationales for change. Keep on stating your opinions as facts.

And please do threaten legal action if FDev ever tweak supercruise. That would be hilarious

 

[CMDR Big Mike]

Cool novels but why can’t we just buff SC acceleration? Even if only along trade lanes to stations?

 

[Rustnsawdust]

I've resisted for days, but comes the time...

There are, as has been pointed out, few places in the Bubble where SC times are problematical. Hutton is no doubt the most famous, but I have seen a few where the target destination is around 250-500kls, so still slow.

But there are tens of thousands of stations in the Bubble, so why not have a few that are distinctive? What's wrong with a tiny minority that can't be reached in a few minutes? The only thing that distinguishes Hutton is the time it takes to get there... I think that's worth preserving. And as has been pointed out endlessly in these threads, no-one is forcing you to go.

If you make SC faster, or allow in-system jumping, Hutton becomes just another station exactly the same as all the other stations. Right now missions to Hutton pay better, but if you could reach it in a few minutes there's no rationale for those higher payouts.

Let's have a little variety, and a handful of distinctive destinations.

 

[CMDR Big Mike]

I've resisted for days, but comes the time...

There are, as has been pointed out, few places in the Bubble where SC times are problematical. Hutton is no doubt the most famous, but I have seen a few where the target destination is around 250-500kls, so still slow.

But there are tens of thousands of stations in the Bubble, so why not have a few that are distinctive? What's wrong with a tiny minority that can't be reached in a few minutes? The only thing that distinguishes Hutton is the time it takes to get there... I think that's worth preserving. And as has been pointed out endlessly in these threads, no-one is forcing you to go.

If you make SC faster, or allow in-system jumping, Hutton becomes just another station exactly the same as all the other stations. Right now missions to Hutton pay better, but if you could reach it in a few minutes there's no rationale for those higher payouts.

Let's have a little variety, and a handful of distinctive destinations.

If you buff acceleration, then stations that are far will remain far relative to the other stations in existence .

 

[Rustnsawdust]

If you buff acceleration, then stations that are far will remain far relative to the other stations in existence .

Yes, but what's the practical effect? Right now we have systems/stations that are easy/moderate/difficult to get to. If you compress everything then you end up with a galaxy that is easy/moderate. I think that's a real loss of variety.

And when all's said and done, why not have a tiny minority of systems/stations that are difficult?

 

[lenna]

Cool novels but why can’t we just buff SC acceleration? Even if only along trade lanes to stations?

If you buff acceleration, then stations that are far will remain far relative to the other stations in existence .

Universally and arbitrarily buffing SC acceleration/speeds would be tantamount to adding an easy button - less time in SC means less simulation ticks and less time for random in-flight wrinkles in effect. There would also be wider complications regarding overall mission reward balancing which has been pointed out numerous times already. In addition, arbitrarily increasing SC acceleration/speeds would by consequence increase the probability of overshooting POIs in SC.

Things in general are balanced fairly and reasonably as-is currently, I can see FD perhaps tweaking the engineering effect of FSDs on SC "safe" throttle zones but that is about it.

 

[WinterKing2112]

If you buff acceleration, then stations that are far will remain far relative to the other stations in existence .

Still not keen on buffing supercruise acceleration, speed or any other sort of fast travel. I want the space between a station and a star, or a star and a planet to feel immense. Because those distances are immense. Getting there any faster will just ruin that sense of almost incomprehensible size and distance. Then ED will just be another insta-hop game for the bored easily crowd. There are games for people who get bored easily, I think that they should play those games and leave ED as it is. For those of us who are not bored easily, and sick of the constant dumbing down of games, tv shows, books, movies and everything else that is dumbed down for the sake of those who have limited attention spans, please leave us just 1 thing that is not dumbed down!

 

[Captain Willard]

Just say no to this thread. A major change for just a few is not worthwhile.

 

[lenna]

Cool novels but why can’t we just buff SC acceleration? Even if only along trade lanes to stations?

To address the later point specifically, trade lanes in ED are not some magic sauce highway (c/f Microsoft Freelancer or X-Rebirth/X4) - just the notional estimated shortest but not necessarily fastest path between two points that are not normally stationary relative to each other nor other objects in the system. It would make no logical sense to alter SC mechanics for trade lanes but the trade lanes themselves could perhaps be recalculated to be the notional fastest path.

 

[Darth CareBear]

Looks like.... wouldn't be surprised if..... Great, more speculation, just what we needed!

Golgot quoted actual FACTS from annual financial reports and Fdev CFO meetings, what more do you want...you must still be in the honeymoon phase with the fresh account and all...welcome to the game seeing as you are the fresh new meat Fdev need.

 

[Darth CareBear]

You don't know this but...... maybe stick to commenting on facts, not speculation. Facts are actually a lot more useful than speculation. Like, 100% more useful.....!

It was my Oppinion, like you your salty oppinion, besides i started asking a question. The facts are in the financial reports for Fdev, go educate yourself newbie, or get CNN fake news to fact check for you...begone.

 

[lenna]

Hutton is a special case. It was likely built to be that far out, just so people who wanted to could do that.
Even something that is say 2,000ls out from the main star is not that far in terms of actual time. Just a few minutes. And SC speeds up over time, so you can hit over 900 times the speed of light.
I fly around and take the 'scenic route' and look at undiscovered plents etc, and that can take time, but I also consider that fun. If I have a definite place to go within the Bubble and I want to get there fast, I can and I don't have a fancy ship (except for engineered hyper drive, still that's about 20 ly)

In general agreed, the only times I tended to deviate from notional ideal flight paths in supercruise is when I was looking for rare materials (certain types of POI), looking for mission targets, or wanting to reduce the chance of being interdicted.

5-10k Ls is the longest mainstream single-SC-trip journey I have noted but more often than not either closer to the 5k or significantly less.

 

[CMDR Big Mike]

To address the later point specifically, trade lanes in ED are not some magic sauce highway (c/f Microsoft Freelancer or X-Rebirth/X4) - just the notional estimated shortest but not necessarily fastest path between two points that are not normally stationary relative to each other nor other objects in the system. It would make no logical sense to alter SC mechanics for trade lanes but the trade lanes themselves could perhaps be recalculated to be the notional fastest path.

Right what I’m saying is the change the trade lanes. They should be an optimal path to the station that avoids gravity wells. They should also be visible to some degree (similar to orbit lines). This improves something that already exists in game at no detriment to anything else. I’m also pretty sure that trade lanes only go to stations, not outposts, which is fine.

Now they could buff the acceleration along that route by 25-50%, which would make sense in that there are no wells or anything to slow down the ship. This would reduce time to station for the folks that choose, and also likely condense traffic to a particular corridor for the pirate types.

The argument that longer SC should be kept in there for difficulty is trash. A longer SC is only difficult if you’re sleepy. Also faster acceleration means you have to be more aware of your dropout speed, making the faster route more dangerous. It could also be limited so that SC assist would not work in these lanes.

This change would make SC faster to stations in the bubble/ anywhere with stations, while adding new depth to gameplay and taking nothing away from the scale and immersion of the existing galaxy. There is literally no down side

 

[VR Golgot]

But there are tens of thousands of stations in the Bubble, so why not have a few that are distinctive?

If it were a case of 'a few' that would be fine. But it's not a few, it's supposedly 10% of all stations that are far flung. That too could perhaps be manageable, if it weren't for the fact that uninhabited planets are also used as destinations (for missions, story locations & rare phenomena etc). That raises the number of far-flung destinations significantly.

And as has been pointed out endlessly in these threads, no-one is forcing you to go.

See the link above for regular missions which give you a 'go or fail' choice. This creates a deeply unfun 'choice' for those who hate the empty transits.

Right now missions to Hutton pay better, but if you could reach it in a few minutes there's no rationale for those higher payouts.

I've tried to make a 'win win' micro-jump solution, using risk of death as a counter-balance. (Click the image in my signature). In that system super far destinations such as Hutton wouldn't be 'instant', and would come with an incredibly high risk of death. But for the hose who wished to try they could at least have an option of arriving via gameplay and skill. And could weigh up the risk/reward for themselves. Those who wished to slowboat could still do so and be competitive. Because they wouldn't die on every third transit

 

[VR Golgot]

Just say no to this thread. A major change for just a few is not worthwhile

How do you know you are not the few?

 

[lenna]

Now they could buff the acceleration along that route by 25-50%, which would make sense in that there are no wells or anything to slow down the ship. This would reduce time to station for the folks that choose, and also likely condense traffic to a particular corridor for the pirate types.

I disagree that buffing acceleration like you would seem to is either warranted or justifiable - we are not talking about magic sauce trade lanes, just optimal paths. The underlying technology responsible for the motion does not change.

You want to travel faster, from A to B in super-cruise then you should be willing to go outside the notional safe throttle limits (which means not relying on SCA nor other auto-pilot in effect), be willing to manage your approach speed, and accept the increased hull integrity loss for doing so.

The balance argument regarding longer SC times is less about difficulty and more about time-risk-reward balancing for missions and knock on effects in other areas such as interdictions.

There is NO justifiable reason to reduce travel times to stations (and populated planets) like some seem to want.

 

[VR Golgot]

There is NO justifiable reason to reduce travel times to stations (and populated planets) like some seem to want.

Oh great, you've capitalised some subjective opinions again. That's resolved it then.

Looks like you agree that unpopulated planet distances need looking at though. Progress maybe?

 

[lenna]

If it were a case of 'a few' that would be fine. But it's not a few, it's supposedly 10% of all stations that are far flung.

10% is not a big enough percentage to complain about, it is a few in statistical terms - not insignificant, but certainly not sufficiently large to justify the kind of wholesale changes some seem to want.

That too could perhaps be manageable, if it weren't for the fact that uninhabited planets are also used as destinations (for missions, story locations & rare phenomena etc). That raises the number of far-flung destinations significantly.

Such missions are essentially exploration/frontier-expansion related in the main regardless of whether they are in the bubble (location wise) or not.

 

[lenna]

Looks like you agree that unpopulated planet distances need looking at though. Progress maybe?

Nope... you are way off-track, I have never implied nor said any such thing.

Overall, the situation is fine and balanced as-is with no justification for the changes that some seem to be campaigning for.

 

[VR Golgot]

10% is not a big enough percentage to complain about, it is a few in statistical terms - not insignificant, but certainly not sufficiently large to justify the kind of wholesale changes some seem to want.

If you actually read the post, rather than regurgitating your usual opinion-as-fact, you'd note that the situation likely applies to more than 10% of potential destinations. Getting statistically significant enough for you yet?

Such missions are essentially exploration/frontier-expansion related in the main regardless of whether they are in the bubble (location wise) or not.

Completely wrong. Such destination reveals occur in assassination missions, massacres, wetwork etc etc etc.