proposal for alternative SC mechanic
- Thread starter Turd Ferguson
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They need to keep SC time so that when spacelegs comes out we'll have a place to put it. You dont want to add another time sink, you want to upgrade an existing one.
But I think SC is still a bit long, so there should be a boost that uses lots of fuel, causes minor damage and is hard to control. This would let you smuggle easier and interdict easier.
when legs comes you can WALK to the planet.
walking around in your ship is completely pointless other than some fan service eye candy. platers will do it a couple of times and it'll get annoying. like that SC countdown.
no...if the do it it'll be so you cam stand in line at the mission office and wait your turn to pick/drop off missions like you wait for a landing pad at busy stations after the real-time 3 mile walk to the mission office.
hours of standing in line and waiting!
Essentially, ED is first and foremost a simulator - the physics of SC/Hyperspace may be theoretical but they are far from being completely made-up. Verisimilitude is one of the key design goals FD are trying to achieve and they achieve that with the current mechanics.
What you are proposing is not really supported by any of the prevailing scientific theories on FTL travel thus lacks verisimilitude.
same can be said about jumps between systems...and yet we have supercruise for SOME solar systems, and instajump to others. The only distinction between the two being that some are generated as a secondary system within SF while others are the primary system.
Sirius b is 6 million LS away and requires SC, while other solar systems in the game are as close as 2.2 million LS and can be instajumped. You can just as easily bend over backwards and use "creative physics" defending the status quo (which is boring AF) as you can to justify changing it. However "accurate" the made-up physics in this game is, it's still made up. It's science fiction.
...and as FDev said, this is a game and sometimes gameplay wins over realism. The current asteroid belts and planetary rings aren't particularly accurate either, but having correctly-sized rocks km's apart wouldn't be much fun, would it?
If you'd rather have boring reality than entertaining gaming....well I guess you have it.
More could indeed be done to make supercruise more exciting. But, as you probably already know as the only non-neckbeard on this forum, all of those things will just make SC slower for those who don't have the skillz.
I also wonder why you think travelling is a waste of time in a game about space travel.
S
not at all, I want to make it shorter, and even shorter still using skills.
I think space travel is great. at least the parts that make it into the news reports and documentaries. sitting around, waiting for hours, and pooping in a bag....I could do without.
Not quite - there is a degree of randomness to what is generated BUT the system structures in general are derived from real world scientific data and use an accepted realistic mathematical model to fill the gaps.
Case in point - FD's mathematical model for our galaxy was proven as being very close to reality with the discovery of the Trappist-1 system.
When two or more stars in ED are part of the same system they are generally considered gravitationally coupled in some way and are generally very close to each other in relative astronomical terms.
I disagree. Elite is an awful simulator. We have space ships with speed limits. we have sounds in space. we have orbits and planets with properties that are impossible. I think Elite is a video game that makes a reasonable attempt at appearing to be realistic.
By the way, Alpha Centauri b and Hutton Obital's distance is WRONG. it was a typo that FDev thought would be fun to keep in the game.
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yes, but the way Elite Dangerous treats solar systems generated as secondary systems vs primary ones has NOTHING to do with reality. I'm questioning it's accuracy, simply that THE GAME treats primary and secondary solar systems differently, and in reality there is no difference between them other than HOW they were generated within SF and how the Elite Dangerous client handles them.
Two solar systems within a few million LS of eachother are going to be gravitationally couple whether SF generated them as secondary systems or not. Gravitational couple is a matter of mass and distance, not RNG seeds. If you go towards the core you find millions of systems that are closer to eachother than Alpha Centari A and B. are they not gravitationally coupled because SF generated them separately?
...but if you want to go there, there are PLENTY of examples of SF getting it seriously wrong. I don't think that matters.
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There are some environment compromises that are nominal for products like ED - even professional training simulators have compromises for one reason or another.
As for speed limits in normal space, like it or not there are practical limits to speed from Newtonian motion based propulsion systems and craft at least in a local area flight context.
Where the galaxy model is concerned, FD endeavour to address at least some of the less realistic cases and may allow some oddities to exist for one reason or another but their overall model as a whole is pretty fair.
You are ignoring the fact that the universe itself is procedurally generated according to a mathematical model with SOME RNG element(s) to fill in blanks and perhaps some simplifications.
Generally speaking, unless you are close to the galactic core, the distance between primary and secondary stars can legitimately be quite large. Closer to the core, the effect of the central galactic mass is greater and so even if they are relatively close to each other they are more likely to orbit the galactic core than each other (depending on the balance of gravitational forces in play).
You may question it's accuracy, but no mathematical model with the number of unknowns we have regarding our own galaxy is going to be 100% perfect. FD have proven their model to be uncannily accurate in at least the Trappist-1 case which kind of gives their model a fair degree of credibility with regards to it's general accuracy.
well if you're going to argue in favor of "selective realism, to be applied as I feel like it" there's really nothing else to say. I can only apply so much logic to a logically inconsistent viewpoint.
I'll just say this: are ridiculously long SC trips fun? Will you defend keeping them dull and a colossal waste of time for the sake of....I don't even know what...?
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It is not a case of "selective realism", the procedural model FD use follows a mathematical model based on real world observational data. You can try claim "ohh, but it is all just RNG and arbitrary" but you would be fundamentally wrong.
but I'm not faulting the procedural model! My problem is with the game's treatment of the model where some solar systems can be instajumped to and some cannot, based simply on whether they were generated as primary or secondary solar systems. I actually said that the accuracy of SF is totally irrelevant.
OK, so you want to insta-jump everywhere because you perceive the travel part of the space travel game to be boring. Fine. Tell me, however, which is more exciting: Scott slogging it for days through snow and ice to reach the South Pole, then slogging it back and not quite making it but leaving behind a well-written rendition of his efforts. Or, alternatively, him leaving behind the following: "Instajumped to South Pole. Pretty dull really, just grey ice and grey sky, and a bunch of Norwegian flags. Could have instajumped to local amusement park instead, that would have been more fun. Instajumped out but failed.".
You might struggle with it, so let me help you: In the first rendition, which you can check out at a library or find online somewhere, the distance and time spent crossing it were significant components of the drama. There was no drama in the second version, an analog of which might be modern tourists flying from destination to destination taking pictures of Matterhorn and Mount Hood as examples and stating that when you've seen one mountain you've seen them all.
So enjoy the travel time. It is unfortunate that the game can't provide you with suitable entertainment while you travel (and there are things that could be added, such as a "space-time density" overlay helping you navigate manunally or radiation danger forcing you to choose your destination and ship build with more care). If you can't enjoy it, that's OK too. It may just not be your kind of game.
SOK, so you want to insta-jump everywhere because you perceive the travel part of the space travel game to be boring. Fine. Tell me, however, which is more exciting: Scott slogging it for days through snow and ice to reach the South Pole, then slogging it back and not quite making it but leaving behind a well-written rendition of his efforts. Or, alternatively, him leaving behind the following: "Instajumped to South Pole. Pretty dull really, just grey ice and grey sky, and a bunch of Norwegian flags. Could have instajumped to local amusement park instead, that would have been more fun. Instajumped out but failed.".
You might struggle with it, so let me help you: In the first rendition, which you can check out at a library or find online somewhere, the distance and time spent crossing it were significant components of the drama. There was no drama in the second version, an analog of which might be modern tourists flying from destination to destination taking pictures of Matterhorn and Mount Hood as examples and stating that when you've seen one mountain you've seen them all.
So enjoy the travel time. It is unfortunate that the game can't provide you with suitable entertainment while you travel (and there are things that could be added, such as a "space-time density" overlay helping you navigate manunally or radiation danger forcing you to choose your destination and ship build with more care). If you can't enjoy it, that's OK too. It may just not be your kind of game.
I agree with almost everything you said, despite your passive-aggressive attempt to insult me and imply I'm dumb.
however I'd add that the current SC mechanic is NOT a slog. A "slog" as you put it to the South Pole implies a monumental effort. Pointing your ship at a target, setting throttle to 100%, and walking away from your computer for an hour or surviving an hour of mind-numbing boredom is NOT a slog. You can maybe say that it's a placeholder for a slog that doesn't exist so you can pretend you're having one, but there is absolutely nothing sloggy in the current SC mechanic. I'm proposing turning it into one in exchange for giving us some time back. Instead of just saying "gimme gimme" I'm proposing a system where you can choose to make an effort to reduce the time waste getting from point a to point b.
I would argue that getting to a system 2000-3000 LY away from Sol is much more of a "slog" than SCing to Hutton.
What you're suggesting sounds like creating a colossal time sink to make boring content look more exciting simply because you had to overcome boredom to get there - that's isn't good game design. If your game content is interesting, it's interesting - you should have to deprive your player of anything interesting to do to make the dull thing at the other end of a SC trip exciting. If you have to subject me to an hour of doing absolutely nothing and boring me to tears or making me resort to watching Netflix while I wait so that when I arrive at an otherwise unremarkable system I'll be excited simply because I was able to force myself to endure an hour of boredom, that's not good...but it's what we have today.
I'm just saying, people will use it because they are stuck in supercruise. You'll need a supercruise assistant while you walk about your ship of course, but yeah. Beats waiting to arrive at a planet.
I don't actually care about your intellectual capabilities and I was hoping to avoid the passive bit.
What I do care about is constantly being told that what I find fun is actually boring. Guess what: It's not. Not boring. Not to me.You are suggesting making travel times faster so the time-sink you perceive is less so. And I counter that reducing time (and therefore the sense of distance) in a 1:1 model of the Milky Way negates the point of the 1:1 model.
You suggest this is because there is nothing to do while travelling, and I agree. I might just be more patient than you, or better able to entertain myself without taking my eyes off the game. Before you get going, let me stop your worries and state that I listen to music or podcasts while I travel, or muck about in the Codex. I play in VR and can't really watch other stuff meanwhile, as the 2D/3D switch is jarring to me.
However, travelling means time spent doing just that. I have worked on ships where we set a heading and walk away for a few hours, or take turns watching the helm while the boat does what we told it to do (125°, 6 knots). I have done similar driving in Antarctica. It IS boring. Elite doesn't let us walk away, however. Until we can lift our bottoms out of the seats and go do maintenance or look out some other window, we are stuck there. With no real danger otherwise, we can't even be mildly entertained trying to avoid a radiation source or try to supercruise through where space-time is thinnest. We can listen to GalNet and look out the window.
Hopefully some day we will be able to do stuff while we travel. But please stop with these suggestions to make travel faster because it is boring. Make suggestions as to how it can be made more interesting.
SThere is no such thing really as a primary or secondary solar system as such, the principle is more akin to a binary star system with objects orbiting both stars. In such cases, they are one solar system.
See this article for a high level overview: https://www.polygon.com/2017/2/25/14737940/elite-dangerous-trappist-1-system-predicted
The important part is:
Given your line of reasoning, the accuracy is not totally irrelevant - it is a key factor as to why the systems are as they are.
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I don't actually care about your intellectual capabilities and I was hoping to avoid the passive bit.
You are suggesting making travel times faster so the time-sink you perceive is less so. And I counter that reducing time (and therefore the sense of distance) in a 1:1 model of the Milky Way negates the point of the 1:1 model.
You suggest this is because there is nothing to do while travelling, and I agree. I might just be more patient than you, or better able to entertain myself without taking my eyes off the game. Before you get going, let me stop your worries and state that I listen to music or podcasts while I travel, or muck about in the Codex. I play in VR and can't really watch other stuff meanwhile, as the 2D/3D switch is jarring to me.
However, travelling means time spent doing just that. I have worked on ships where we set a heading and walk away for a few hours, or take turns watching the helm while the boat does what we told it to do (125°, 6 knots). I have done similar driving in Antarctica. It IS boring. Elite doesn't let us walk away, however. Until we can lift our bottoms out of the seats and go do maintenance or look out some other window, we are stuck there. With no real danger otherwise, we can't even be mildly entertained trying to avoid a radiation source or try to supercruise through where space-time is thinnest. We can listen to GalNet and look out the window.
Hopefully some day we will be able to do stuff while we travel. But please stop with these suggestions to make travel faster because it is boring. Make suggestions as to how it can be made more interesting.
I guess pointing out that I'm not talking about changing the SCALE of the galaxy, only the amount of time it takes the ingame sci fi technology to get you there, which is already arbitrary and gamey and in no way consistent with travel times in a real galaxy would matter? The only thing you can say about the current SC mechanic is that it's what you're used to. If it was faster or slower you'd probably be arguing that it was just right too just because it's the status quo. ok then.
Regardless, If there was a CHOICE to make the SC travel times less, what would be the harm? you could still throttle down and go slow and enjoy the nothingness while I pop over to the next station on my list and do what I need to do? why do you feel that you have to impose YOUR gameplay on me and exclude my gameplay? I fully support your decision to slow down and take an hour to travel in SC...why can't you let me do it my way if it doesn't affect your ingame experience in any way?
meh....why would I continue to talk to someone who has stated that they're actually trying to insult me? I think I'm done with this conversation. when one party in a conversation turns to insults they've clearly admitted defeat in the arena of ideas.
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