Slow Travelling

Coyote

C
I'm currently attempting an experiment... I've got a loaded-down Clipper, jump range 17.64 Ly. And I'm aiming for a star the map said to be 17.79 Ly away. I keep accelerating outbound approaching 1300 c. In the meantime, my home base at this very moment is 720'000 Ls away. That's 12'000 Lmin or 200 Lh or 8.3 Ld or, if I didn't miscalculate, 0.02 Ly. I don't see any progress anywhere.

But while taking my sweet time writing this post, racalculating things and having a drink, I just noticed that the distance marker dropped from 14.8 to 14.7 Ly. I'm now beyond 1600c and 1.8 mio Ls or 0.06 Ly out. It works! Map still says 14.79 Ly, so that's static information. Should be just a couple of minutes until I'm in range.

I'm happy for some reason that this works. Maybe even low-speed (which means at a few thousand times the speed of light) interstellar travel is possible. Did anyone ever try this? Is space "whole" or still broken into system-sized chunks with a programmatic need for a hyperspace jump to change into a new context?
 

RingoD123

R
you cannot get to a separate instance without jumping. ie, you cannot "slow travel" from a station to the sun without going through supercruise, you also cannot go from one system to another without using frame shift.
Pretty sure you can decrease the distance to a system by doing what your doing either, the jump distance is always calculated from main star to main star, not your current location.
 
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Archgeek

Archgeek
Yup, I've tested this myself in an adder with a 10.1ly range trying to jump 10.3 to Ekuru (from somewhere nearby it, though I forget where). 'Hit the Arthur Clarke C limit, closed the .2ly distance and then some just to be sure, and was still unable to make the jump.
 

Coyote

C
I still have hope. The display says I'm 0.12 Ly (it actually switched over) out, which means my destination is 14.67 Ly away. Just 0.02 more Ly to go, then I'll know.
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No bummer about the instanciation - if I were FD, I wouldn't have bothered with that either. Makes the program more complicated for no actual benefit. But I would have had a reason to tip my hat to FD. These times one's gotta look hard for these.
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Edit: @archgeek: thanks for the confirmation. :( To be honest, this adds to my disappointment about the game.
 
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RingoD123

R
Coyote said:
I still have hope. The display says I'm 0.12 Ly (it actually switched over) out, which means my destination is 14.67 Ly away. Just 0.02 more Ly to go, then I'll know.
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No bummer about the instanciation - if I were FD, I wouldn't have bothered with that either. Makes the program more complicated for no actual benefit. But I would have had a reason to tip my hat to FD. These times one's gotta look hard for these.
Click to expand...

hope you realise that the more you fly in supercruise the more integrity damage you will cause yourself, leading to rather large repair bills :-D
 

Coyote

C
With about 250k cr per run, I can cope.
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Confirmed, 0.16 Ly out, that's 14.63 Ly in. No jump. :(
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Another weird observation: here I am at 2001c and it took a bit to get there from 2000c (I think I just fount out what Archgeek meant with "Arthur C. Clark limit"). When I pull on the stick, my speed drops quickly to 1850c only to rise again back to 2001c just as quickly when I let go.
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Some things are just so wrong.
 
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Coyote

C
That's okay, but why can't they just take the actual distance for their calculation instead of some totally unrelated value? I can't think of anything that'd complicate things that way (and the actual distance is even shown on the HUD, so the number's available) and it'd add at least one bit of sense and expectable bahaviour.

- - - Updated - - -

But, at least I found out one thing positive: since I took quite a ride, the paint job degraded significantly - *and it is visible damage!* There are scratch marks on my ship! Hallelujah!
 
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RingoD123

R
Coyote said:
That's okay, but why can't they just take the actual distance for their calculation instead of some totally unrelated value? I can't think of anything that'd complicate things that way (and the actual distance is even shown on the HUD, so the number's available) and it'd add at least one bit of sense and expectable bahaviour.

- - - Updated - - -

But, at least I found out one thing positive: since I took quite a ride, the paint job degraded significantly - *and it is visible damage!* There are scratches on my ship! Hallelujah!
Click to expand...

probably because it would make it the most fleshed out mechanic in the game, it has to be shallow and simple and stifle future possible gameplay mechanics (imagine being able to fly to the edge of a system before jumping on, you would have far less gravity restricing your jump radius and/or far less fuel requirements).
 

Coyote

C
I'm not sure about my irony detector readings, sorry. ;) It doesn't have to be as sophisticated at that with the system's own gravity being a factor. Still, it would at least allow them to add stuff like jump drive failures, dropping you at *any* place in the universe. Like halfway between two 20 Ly apart stars. With the current game mechanic, it would require me to have the fuel for a 20 Ly jump even though I only need to cover 10 Ly. That'd feel broken, while jump drive failures do feel immersive (I hate this word). Can't remember whether they were there in Frontier. The way it's now, it's just yet another thing that feels like nobody bothered to get right.
 

Archgeek

Archgeek
Coyote said:
Another weird observation: here I am at 2001c and it took a bit to get there from 2000c (I think I just fount out what Archgeek meant with "Arthur C. Clark limit"). When I pull on the stick, my speed drops quickly to 1850c only to rise again back to 2001c just as quickly when I let go.
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Some things are just so wrong.
Click to expand...
HEH, Nope, I meant Arthur Clarke 'C' limit -- a pun on the Arthur C. Clarke related limit to the number of 'C's we're allowed. That second bit's correct, though. You naturally slow down as you turn, but what holds your top speed back is the strength of local gravity field surpressing the FSD. Once you get far enough out to hit the Clarke limit, you can easilly get back up to it from zero throttle, as the gravitational interference is at minimum.

Another fun fact -- if you drop into a ring of a multi-ring system, you can fly across the gap between them, but your velocity will be based on the orbital velocity of the ring you came from, leaving a large relative velocity applied to the rocks or bergs of the ring you didn't come from. Also, you cannot interact with them without hopping in and out of supercruise. (The chunks will seem to be zipping by around you but you'll only see a weird dust effect in your immediate surroundings.)
 
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