This is a SC mechanic I could support; additive gameplay resolution to a real and problematic issue but not faced playerbase-wide, that doesn't affect people who don't care or are opposite-minded but rather enhances the gameplay on a daily basis for all players. We really need more of these kinds of low-level-yet-all-encompassing features in the game. If we can get a goodly amount of smaller cool features then we can more easily do things while awaiting larger features.
If we're wishing for things then I want bigger mass shadows so that SC space has more texture and choice of routing, though not enough to just "slow down" the game again; contrary to certain opinions you see around here, at least for myself I don't want the current game we have to play more quickly so much as I want the stuff we have already to be more interesting, and to be joined by even further features.
It has much-less-to-nothing to do with how much time I want anyone to spend on anything as some sort of overarching concept, but rather that I myself want to have so many interesting choices that I can't possibly get to all of them. Just making current Elite play faster does nothing to add to the gameplay except in individual cases such as Multicrew where the speed of transfer totally makes sense (from a gameplay angle, we know the ingame reason is like @____. ; Ima say a spacewizard did it and consider it no more).
For the mass shadow pathing, it used to be about right in much earlier iterations imo; it wasn't like 5 hours out of a gravity well but your system routing and port approaches made a lot more difference. A poor route could slow you down but a good route could drop you right on target even in a crowded system. Combined with the heat/fuel concern SC booster system (let's add a range of kit in here while we're making wishes), I think that would help create a much more dynamic supercruise where your speed and route matter but can also be affected to a finer degree by player input on the stick as well as their decisions in the outfitter's and the map. Variable speeds in SC also makes that travel portion more dynamic for cat-and-mouse; maybe the guy's got A-rate SC boosters that heat up like a sun, but it's a Cool Runnings DBS so he burns half across the system either at or away from you depending on circumstances.
Okay now I really want this. ;_____;
