Spicing up long distance Super Cruise with space anomalies (Ion storm, anyone?)

[Deyn]

Apart from the typical arguments pro and con supercruise some guys came up with the idea to simply make super cruise a little more diverse, as in more things that can happen.

I think this is a pretty good idea.

Make longer super cruises more interesting!!! Really, I can imagine the typical (imitates Cmdr Rikers voice): "Captain, we have an Ion storm ahead, between the Enterprise and the station"
Cool! You can decide to go around, and lose some precious time or ride through it, risking damage to your ship and get kicked out of super cruise, interferences to your scanners/HUD. First no readings of ships, if it gets heavier even no planets, making navigation difficult as computer could not calculate blue zones anymore for example. A little basket of anomalies, could really spice up the longer travel times to far out stations...

The experience of riding through it could even be different than the "chase the escape vector" mini game. How about "storm fronts" coming from different directions pushing you off course, slowing you down, the more you angle into them until you either go 90° at them (push through the wave, losing less speed) or let your ship ride it , but get pushed off course?

some anomalies could simply interfere with your scanner the closer you get (like above, no blue zones anymore etc.) Others, could affect your shields, interacting with the energy field and drop you out of supercruise, so you either deactivate the shields to get the FSD working again, or the FSD start sequence needs considerably longer 60-90 seconds, or has the risk of damaging the shields geenrators (Some 1-5% would be "expensive" enough?).

The important thing is, it should not be overdone. Only travels to places far out from the star, and make it happen occasionaly. Definitely not more than one anomaly in one system... or make it as a larger event affecting multiple star systems in a region and post it on the News!

"Currently in the Eta Cephei sector, 3 systems encounter heavy Ion storms. Trade is severely hampered causing a rising demand for basic commodities like food, medicine and fuel"

The hampering effect to scanners, will affect System Authority vessels also, so daring smugglers, could use the opportunity to more easily sneak past the Police scans? A more powered down ship getting even harder to detect, yet risking damage from the storm if going to fast or without shields?

What do you guys think? Seems pretty cool to me... and better than tuning travel times in Super cruise (apart from Alpha Centauri, that is )

 

[laz001]

This is an interesting idea.

However, I know FD are pushing 'reality' over anything - so we might not see this.

It should be an interesting journey, to see if FD compromise in any way to bring in 'fun' features, even if they're not strictly realistic.

 

[Deyn]

Realistic, would be a real "Flight assist" off for example with no "superimposed speed limit"

I would be careful to use "not realistic" comments, as mostly everything related to eye candy and game play in a space simulation is not so real, at all.

1. light beam weapons can't be seen! - there is no atmosphere to fracture the light so the only chance to see it, is if it hits your eye!

2. For the same reason the only sounds you'll hear are the ones inside your ships hull! - No explosions, no weapons sounds, no missile whooosh, etc.

3. shadow means "no light(!)" as in total darkness! Any object blocking light other than reflected or artificial light will cast a shadow of total blackness

4. there are no artificial "particles" in space to give you a perceptive reference for speed, if necessary do it like I-war and put them on the pilot HUD...

... and so on, and so forth.

And when I think of the effects of a Supernova or other phenomenons we never even encountered (not so long ago mankind couldn't even see Infrared light, or ultraviolet, or measure radioactivity) still they are there and quite realistc?

BTW, how exactly are these "Shield" thingies powered, and what realistic radiation type do they use, magnetic, visual spectrum, gravitation? Yet we have shields in our "simulated" Space ship! And I won't talk about the Insectoid race of the Thargoids...

How is the reactor powering the ships system? How much power does it provide? Is it a nuclear, a fusion, or a MatterAntimatterReaction device? How much energy from a beam weapon (Laser) could be countered per cubic centimeter, if the shields power a surface around the whole ship with what, 5 MW? ...an outburst of sun activity or an unknown phenomen interacting with the unknown shield technology, sounds realistic enough to me.Or the shockwave of a supernova travelling through a sector...

 

[war4peace]

The "realistic" versus "non-realistic" discussion is interesting, however let me address some of your points.

1. I assume you are talking about lasers. Most laser wavelengths are invisible to the naked eye anyway, but apart from that you don't need "atmosphere" to disperse the light, dust particles and gases do that very well, even when very rarefied. with that in mind, a very powerful laser hitting a dust particle would be visible, provided the wavelength is within what the eye could see.

2. Sounds can be simulated by the ship's electronics from visual cues, for the sole purpose of providing feedback that a pilot expects. They are not actual sounds, but rather generated sounds based on an algorithm. With that being said, it would be nice to impair feedback in a fight through either damage or ECM and "mute" some or all generated sounds.

3. True. There is some diffraction (see point 1) but that would really be negligible and the reflected light would be impossible to detect by a human eye.

4. You can't foresee the effects of SuperCruise (after all, it is FTL travel) so one could as well let their imagination go wild and make some effects up. Who knows, maybe 10K years from now they would be proven right

Now on-topic: long-distance supercruise is a bit boring TBH. Yes, it is occasionally spiced with the odd interdiction (I escaped all so far, due to sheer luck or something else) but other than that... going 100K+ LS to a station was mind numbing (think "never again!"). It almost made me do an emergency drop at 500c just to see how bad it is.

 

[Deyn]

The "realistic" versus "non-realistic" discussion is interesting, however let me address some of your points.

1. I assume you are talking about lasers. Most laser wavelengths are invisible to the naked eye anyway, but apart from that you don't need "atmosphere" to disperse the light, dust particles and gases do that very well, even when very rarefied. with that in mind, a very powerful laser hitting a dust particle would be visible, provided the wavelength is within what the eye could see.

2. Sounds can be simulated by the ship's electronics from visual cues, for the sole purpose of providing feedback that a pilot expects. They are not actual sounds, but rather generated sounds based on an algorithm. With that being said, it would be nice to impair feedback in a fight through either damage or ECM and "mute" some or all generated sounds.

3. True. There is some diffraction (see point 1) but that would really be negligible and the reflected light would be impossible to detect by a human eye.

4. You can't foresee the effects of SuperCruise (after all, it is FTL travel) so one could as well let their imagination go wild and make some effects up. Who knows, maybe 10K years from now they would be proven right

Now on-topic: long-distance supercruise is a bit boring TBH. Yes, it is occasionally spiced with the odd interdiction (I escaped all so far, due to sheer luck or something else) but other than that... going 100K+ LS to a station was mind numbing (think "never again!"). It almost made me do an emergency drop at 500c just to see how bad it is.

Yep, all correct. I was talking about "atmosphere" as dust particles and gases are more difficult to argue, (saturation, molecular density, wavelength refractured or reflected etc.)... as well, as the sound can of course be "simulated", yet gases of an explosion would disperse in a spheroid fashion, as again no atmosphere or other pressure causes much, if any "turbulence". If you go the way of "simulating" the sound to give pilots feedback, why not do the same with a hud representation of ships vectors and the little "artificial particles" to give a sense of speed and direction? I-WAr and I-war 2 did that in a pretty realistic and conclusive way.

It is not so much about the "missing" realism, I like the game representation, and Star Wars etc. is fun especially as they do not care so much about "realism" all the time.

The point is, again we think alike, that "space anomalies" can't really be "unrealistic" as nobody ever traveled in a spaces hip that is FTL capable in real life! Any "not real" argument is a bit, let's say strange...

I think Frontier is making pretty good compromises, between simulation and game aspects/fun overall. They won't put too much fiction into the anomalies thing, I guess, but the general idea of some interesting things happening in Super Cruise, apart from Interdiction, is tempting and especially if not overdone, could enrich the environment.

I can really imagine a supernova going off, in one region of space some time in the future with lasting effects to that region, or the one or other Solar Flare (if Ion Storm is to much StarTrek) interfering with FTL and/or shields etc.

We have a representation of Black Holes in the game, yet nobody really nows how it looks like or how it would affect a FrameShiftDrive it is, in the end a fiction from Frontier developers. What different is the effect of a solar flare or a gravitational rift to a fictious FrameShiftDrive?

EDIT: on that point of Laser beams or bullets from cannons - why do they disappear after a specific weapons range, if they don't hit anything? Not even gas?