Space drift ?

[Comatosed]

I started playing elite dangerous finally yesterday, I have been umming and arring on whether to invest in the game or not for some time now and after watching twitch feeds, I finally took the plunge. The game is fun and the universe is vast, so many places to explore or to hide and hunt but the only thing that broke my immersion was, we don't have any space drift ? If you turn ur thrusters off, u magically hit a brick wall or loads of friction to come to a complete stop, which doesn't happen in space or does it ?. I found this out when I was running low on fuel, no fuel systems nearby and the only star system that had fuel was 0.10-0.20ly out of my jump range, I tried everything and the only thing I thought would work didn't, which was full thrusters towards said system and then shut the engines down for space drift to see if I could get close enough to jump but alas, nothing.
So I am wondering if this feature will be implemented at all, into this space sim ?

 

[Rikk]

Turn 'flight assist' off.
Try again.

It's not perfect, but with flight assist turned off you get closer to the newtonian model you expect. With flight assist on the ship responds to your reducing the throttle by firing the reverse thrusters to slow you down.

 

[Monk]

With Flight Assist On your ship computer is always trying to match your vector and throttle position. So at throttle zero, the computer will fire reverse thrusters to bring you to stop.

If you disable Flight assist you will drift at your last speed and vector.

 

[777Driver]

I started playing elite dangerous finally yesterday, I have been umming and arring on whether to invest in the game or not for some time now and after watching twitch feeds, I finally took the plunge. The game is fun and the universe is vast, so many places to explore or to hide and hunt but the only thing that broke my immersion was, we don't have any space drift ? If you turn ur thrusters off, u magically hit a brick wall or loads of friction to come to a complete stop, which doesn't happen in space or does it ?. I found this out when I was running low on fuel, no fuel systems nearby and the only star system that had fuel was 0.10-0.20ly out of my jump range, I tried everything and the only thing I thought would work didn't, which was full thrusters towards said system and then shut the engines down for space drift to see if I could get close enough to jump but alas, nothing.
So I am wondering if this feature will be implemented at all, into this space sim ?

The ships have two flight control laws.. ASSIST ON (Ships thrusters compensate for drift) ASSIST OFF (Thrusters only limit max speed)

Look in the controls menu, switch flight assist to Toggle, and assign a key stroke or joystick button. It takes a while to get used to it, took me a few months to use it full time

btw, trying to glide to another system wont work Carry a fuel scoop or plan your trips in advance.

 

[Commander Scipio]

Hello there, and welcome to the game!
Yes you can do that by turning off "flight assist", that will make you drift. Remember to pull domwn your thruster down to not give any imput to the engine. Enjoy

 

[edd]

You realise that at even a very good 400m/s or so out of super cruise you'd take about 75,000 years to cover the 0.1 ly you wanted to jump?

 

[Comatosed]

HAHA thanks, now I feel like a true noob, I didn't think to change that but that makes sense as to why I couldn't drift, but is there enough drift to save fuel >.< hmm shall be fun finding out

 

[777Driver]

HAHA thanks, now I feel like a true noob, I didn't think to change that but that makes sense as to why I couldn't drift, but is there enough drift to save fuel >.< hmm shall be fun finding out

No, you can only drift in normal space, so fuel saving is minimal. Assist off is just a preference & down to your flying style, I prefer not to have the computers interfere.

If you want to save a huge amount of fuel, select economy mode in the galaxy map before jumping. You can also disable unused modules to conserve fuel, or reduce the weight of the ship by installing lighter modules.