SRV Boost Mode, and other optimizations.

[DemiserofD]

I realized a huge problem with SRVs today.

Material deposits such as Outcrops and Metallic Meteorites only spawn a certain distance from your landing zone. You need to get out of your ship and travel a few km before they will appear. But since ships are so much faster than SRVs, people almost never use their SRV for moving long distances across a planet's surface. So people almost never see Metallic Meteorites and Outcrops and other organic means of finding materials! This, in turn, means people feel like they have to go to the Brain Trees or Crystal Shards to get their raw mats, which can feel like a real burden.

There are a few straightforward tweaks that really should be done to make using an SRV for travel across a planet's surface more appealing.

1. Allow us to get into and out of an SRV with a single button press.​

This is seemingly minor, but needing to navigate a few button presses whenever you want to get in and out of your SRV does make it meaningfully more annoying to use, and encourages using a ship instead. Letting us get in and out with a single button would make the experience much more appealing.

2. Optimize the black screen on getting into the SRV.​

Another seemingly minor element, but honestly, the black screen in Elite is Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad.

I held down a for as long as it takes(literally) to get into an SRV in elite. Want a comparison? Look:

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncFE3uQlHIE


Compare and contrast this to the 'load time' in the 2005 version of Star Wars Battlefront 2:

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGpEF4O1Eu4


Seriously. It's bad. Is it any wonder people don't want to bother using this? You could literally be at full HP before the black screen and load into being dead without ever being able to move.

3. Allow us to Air-Drop the SRV.​

Yet again, another element to simply make using the SRV more appealing. Getting back to your ship is fine, as it can find a landing zone for itself, but if you have to land to deploy the SRV anyway, why bother? Allowing us to air-drop the SRV is the clear solution. There do not need to be any safeguards here; if you screw up, you screw up. Just let us deploy it at any time.

4. Boost Assist Mode​

This one is the most tricky. SRVs just move too dang slow. Check out this video of what the typical exobiology experience looks like:

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXcFT-ug-Ek


As you can see, I can travel the 500m between Bacterium in about 20 seconds, INCLUDING the prolonged black screen. At present, the SRV simply cannot keep up with that. Reducing the black screen duration will help a lot, but to really make the SRV viable for exploration, it needs to be able to travel faster.

To help accomplish this, I'd like to propose a new mode, one that accompanies the Driving Assist On and Driving Assist Off. Boost Assist Mode would basically lock the back wheels in place, disabling 4WD, and point the thrusters backwards, giving you a 3x increase in your straightline speed(up to 120m/s). You would still need to point yourself in a safe direction, but this would allow you to VERY rapidly move around the map, making the SRV a far more appealing option.

As far as I can tell, the primary PURPOSE of a ground vehicle is to move quickly across the ground. Until it can do that, we can't really expect people to use it for anything, and we can't expect people to encounter any of the diverse and cool things you can encounter on the ground!

 

[Greasetrap42]

Material deposits such as Outcrops and Metallic Meteorites only spawn a certain distance from your landing zone.

I'm not sure that is correct. I believe I have visually seen these from my ship while skimming the surface for bio samples. Also when I have landed, nearby. Its possible they spawn when landing gear is down because I usually search with them extended to slow my speed as I search, and then I might land near a spawned outcrop by chance. I ignore them because I can't be bothered.

If we could air drop-pickup the SRV, then why not the cmdr? Why can't we simply exit the ship while it hovers? Why does it need to land? Yes it will consume fuel while hovering. Thats okay. After a couple hours hovering it will run out of fuel. Okay. Then I would certainly not use the SRV very often.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

I'm not sure that is correct. I believe I have visually seen these from my ship while skimming the surface for bio samples. Also when I have landed, nearby.

Can confirm that - I just landed in an anonymous bit of a rocky planet, deployed the SRV, and there were two meteorite signals immediately visible on the wave scanner. Driving up to one of them - just under 2km from my ship - put another two signals into range, and then going after one of them found another, and so on.

Given that the signals are relatively sparse - 2-3km separation seems normal for this planet, but it may well vary - then the odds are that there won't be one right next to you (or even within a km) wherever you land, but equally there are good odds of something being in wave scanner range at all.

 

[DemiserofD]

Can confirm that - I just landed in an anonymous bit of a rocky planet, deployed the SRV, and there were two meteorite signals immediately visible on the wave scanner. Driving up to one of them - just under 2km from my ship - put another two signals into range, and then going after one of them found another, and so on.

Given that the signals are relatively sparse - 2-3km separation seems normal for this planet, but it may well vary - then the odds are that there won't be one right next to you (or even within a km) wherever you land, but equally there are good odds of something being in wave scanner range at all.

Interesting. In my previous testing at the start of Odyssey's release, I tested by locating a meteorite, getting into my ship, and getting back out again, and they were gone. Maybe that's changed. Which would be great!

But the other points still stand, I think. The various inefficiencies and general slowness of SRVs makes them largely impractical for surface exploration, and making them faster would be a big improvement to exploration and surface activities overall.

 

[DemiserofD]

I'm not sure that is correct. I believe I have visually seen these from my ship while skimming the surface for bio samples. Also when I have landed, nearby. Its possible they spawn when landing gear is down because I usually search with them extended to slow my speed as I search, and then I might land near a spawned outcrop by chance. I ignore them because I can't be bothered.

If we could air drop-pickup the SRV, then why not the cmdr? Why can't we simply exit the ship while it hovers? Why does it need to land? Yes it will consume fuel while hovering. Thats okay. After a couple hours hovering it will run out of fuel. Okay. Then I would certainly not use the SRV very often.

The biggest problem with using the SRV is that the various inefficiencies in using it make it not worth using at all, and eat up all the little benefits you get from having a more agile vehicle.

The theory behind having a smaller vehicle is that you can get it closer to your objective and use it more easily. Rather than needing to land 50m away and run over to your biological, you can drive right up, hop out, scan, hop back in, and zoom away before the other person is even to the exobio in the first place.

But if you're only saving maybe 10 seconds, and you're going to lose 10 seconds just getting in and out, then it very rapidly makes that not worth bothering with.

These ideas would be to make the SRV a much more desirable choice. You can zoom up at full speed, skit to a halt(maybe even eject from the SRV while it's still moving, that would be nice), get your scan, and be on your away ASAP. So you don't WANT to use the ship, because the SRV does everything a ship can do more conveniently.

 

[Greasetrap42]

These ideas would be to make the SRV a much more desirable choice. You can zoom up at full speed, skit to a halt(maybe even eject from the SRV while it's still moving, that would be nice), get your scan, and be on your away ASAP. So you don't WANT to use the ship, because the SRV does everything a ship can do more conveniently.

If a ship was given the ability to hover 1.0m off the ground and drop either an SRV or the cmdr, I fail to see how an SRV would be advantageous for exobiology.

If the cmdr is flying a lumbering T10 Defender for exobiology I see your point. But in an Eagle or Viper4 with excellent accel, decel, speed, cockpit visibility, and height advantage for searching.... I really don't see how using an SRV would give any advantage.

 

[aRJay]

Didn’t bother watching the star wars video as your SRV video showed much longer black screens than I get using Odyssey nowadays back when I was using an underpowered device but the same connection I have now they were around that sort of time but my now two year old laptop usually has those transitions in the blink and you will miss them category.

I have also spotted meteor etc when flying at low level with the gear down and back when I used to hunt them with the SRV I would land and drive in a tight circle about my ship to find the best signal.

 

[DemiserofD]

If a ship was given the ability to hover 1.0m off the ground and drop either an SRV or the cmdr, I fail to see how an SRV would be advantageous for exobiology.

If the cmdr is flying a lumbering T10 Defender for exobiology I see your point. But in an Eagle or Viper4 with excellent accel, decel, speed, cockpit visibility, and height advantage for searching.... I really don't see how using an SRV would give any advantage.

Honestly I'd be perfectly fine with that. Of course, the SRV would still have the scanner which would let you see other stuff more easily, so it would still have some advantages, but in general? Why NOT make getting into and out of your ship a whole lot more pleasant? Sounds like an awesome win/win to me.

Didn’t bother watching the star wars video as your SRV video showed much longer black screens than I get using Odyssey nowadays back when I was using an underpowered device but the same connection I have now they were around that sort of time but my now two year old laptop usually has those transitions in the blink and you will miss them category.

I have also spotted meteor etc when flying at low level with the gear down and back when I used to hunt them with the SRV I would land and drive in a tight circle about my ship to find the best signal.

Just to make sure, I did test it out today to make sure that things still look the same; they did. For context, I've got a 4070 with an i9-13900, and I run on medium settings. What's yours? Have you actually paid attention? I don't mean to be rude in asking that, it's just that sometimes it's easy to ignore things you've learned to ignore, only for it to be a real breath of fresh air when they're fixed.

 

[aRJay]

Honestly I'd be perfectly fine with that. Of course, the SRV would still have the scanner which would let you see other stuff more easily, so it would still have some advantages, but in general? Why NOT make getting into and out of your ship a whole lot more pleasant? Sounds like an awesome win/win to me.




Just to make sure, I did test it out today to make sure that things still look the same; they did. For context, I've got a 4070 with an i9-13900, and I run on medium settings. What's yours? Have you actually paid attention? I don't mean to be rude in asking that, it's just that sometimes it's easy to ignore things you've learned to ignore, only for it to be a real breath of fresh air when they're fixed.

I have a 3080 Ti in an i9 laptop running on high and ultra, 4K 144Hz.

Not rude a perfectly good question and while I haven’t been paying that much attention I am sure the black is much shorter than that usually.

 

[DemiserofD]

I have a 3080 Ti in an i9 laptop running on high and ultra, 4K 144Hz.

Not rude a perfectly good question and while I haven’t been paying that much attention I am sure the black is much shorter than that usually.

In that case, I'd be real curious for you to go time it and see what sorts of load times you get. Honestly though, compare it and contrast with the Battlefront example. No matter how short, wouldn't you prefer that, where you can actively control the vehicle before your POV even moves there fully? It feels so much more fluid and pleasant.

 

[aRJay]

In that case, I'd be real curious for you to go time it and see what sorts of load times you get. Honestly though, compare it and contrast with the Battlefront example. No matter how short, wouldn't you prefer that, where you can actively control the vehicle before your POV even moves there fully? It feels so much more fluid and pleasant.

Next time I am in a ship with an SRV I will try to time it.

Actually I like the small break as it allows me to feel I have physically moved an instant transition would be more appropriate for telepresenceing into a drone of some sort.

 

[metatheurgist]

Yeah, the meteors and nodes are completely random.

The SRV is actually very fast. It seems slow because we drive on flat featureless plains without any cues that indicate how fast it is actually going and because we have entire empty planets to drive on.

 

[Iron Body]

On my system it takes about 12 seconds to deploy the SRV, 10 seconds of which is the animation.
The black screen time is difficult to measure, but is about 2 seconds. which I hardly notice.

I enjoy using my SRV and use it all the time I'm on the surface.

 

[Alec Turner]

1. Allow us to get into and out of an SRV with a single button press.​

This is seemingly minor, but needing to navigate a few button presses whenever you want to get in and out of your SRV does make it meaningfully more annoying to use, and encourages using a ship instead. Letting us get in and out with a single button would make the experience much more appealing.

I don't quite get that comparison since there's no single button press to get in and out of the ship either?

2. Optimize the black screen on getting into the SRV.​

Another seemingly minor element, but honestly, the black screen in Elite is Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad.

I held down a for as long as it takes(literally) to get into an SRV in elite. Want a comparison? Look:

Compare and contrast this to the 'load time' in the 2005 version of Star Wars Battlefront 2:

Seriously. It's bad. Is it any wonder people don't want to bother using this? You could literally be at full HP before the black screen and load into being dead without ever being able to move.

I checked on some of my videos, fairly consistently 4 seconds from button press to being in/out of the SRV where yours seem more like 5? I guess I agree it could be faster (sometimes when I make videos I will edit out those sections of black screen) but I can't say it bothers me that much.

3. Allow us to Air-Drop the SRV.​

Yet again, another element to simply make using the SRV more appealing. Getting back to your ship is fine, as it can find a landing zone for itself, but if you have to land to deploy the SRV anyway, why bother? Allowing us to air-drop the SRV is the clear solution. There do not need to be any safeguards here; if you screw up, you screw up. Just let us deploy it at any time.

God yes, I've been calling for this for years. Make it so the deploy SRV button isn't greyed out when you're not landed (or maybe just when you're below a certain altitude) but that you get a warning prompt about the SRV being dropped and potentially damaged so you can cancel if you want. If you choose not to tho' then the SRV is dropped and the ship retreats to orbit the same as when it's dismissed. Great not only for plant scanning but also for dropping onto the top of mountains where there's no suitable landing spot for the SRV (for "heli-skiing" like activites).

4. Boost Assist Mode​

This one is the most tricky. SRVs just move too dang slow. Check out this video of what the typical exobiology experience looks like:

As you can see, I can travel the 500m between Bacterium in about 20 seconds, INCLUDING the prolonged black screen. At present, the SRV simply cannot keep up with that. Reducing the black screen duration will help a lot, but to really make the SRV viable for exploration, it needs to be able to travel faster.

To help accomplish this, I'd like to propose a new mode, one that accompanies the Driving Assist On and Driving Assist Off. Boost Assist Mode would basically lock the back wheels in place, disabling 4WD, and point the thrusters backwards, giving you a 3x increase in your straightline speed(up to 120m/s). You would still need to point yourself in a safe direction, but this would allow you to VERY rapidly move around the map, making the SRV a far more appealing option.

As far as I can tell, the primary PURPOSE of a ground vehicle is to move quickly across the ground. Until it can do that, we can't really expect people to use it for anything, and we can't expect people to encounter any of the diverse and cool things you can encounter on the ground!

OK, so this is an interesting one. You're dead right about the rear wheels steering in opposition being one reason the SRV is hard to control at speed. It's gives you an excellent turning circle when going slow but perhaps ought to copy certain real world vehicles whose rear wheels stear in opposition when travelling slowly but which automatically straighten up above a certain speed. That said, even then I'm dubious about the SRV's ability to travel along the ground at those kind of speeds. The surfaces we're driving across are often icy, they have rocks that are a lot bigger than many people realise (this is more apparent in VR), and the gravity is generally much lower than on earth which means the slightest bounces can send you into the air. The real way to travel at speed in the SRV is to get off the ground. What you need to master is the art of "flyving"!

By tilting down when in the air you can then effectively make the boosters point backwards and can "easily" get up to speeds well in excess of 120m/s.

For example, in this video I hit around 150 I think and (believe it or not) I'm holding off because the race penalises mid-air repair synthesis and because I need to slow down again at the end to satisfy the finish line requirements.

Source: https://youtu.be/24MlXwOgVGk


I love doing exobiology in the SRV. I think in many circumstances using a small ship probably is just a bit faster but I've always felt like one of Frontier's main goals with the exobiology game loop (and the thing of having to find three samples a certain distance apart) was to get people out of their ships and into their SRV's to experience planet surfaces up close and personal (and speaking as someone who's completely circumnavigated 6 planets and covered a total distance of something like 0.5ls this is an activity I absolutely adore). A few years back I did the Canonn speed scanning challenge using the SRV and managed to come 2nd so it can definitely be extremely effective with practice.

Source: https://youtu.be/PhD3m7nPAX4

 

[HRDiagram]

As others have already stated, I can also confirm that I have experienced meteorites being close to where I landed my ship.
Not talking about geo signals, but proper one off meteorites being visible on my SRV contacts list as soon as I was deploying it.

I would love the ability for the ships to deploy the SRV or the CMDR whilst hovering. What could be even more useful, however, it the ability to recover the SRV/Pilot in hover mode, since I have had countless episodes where the ship would not land at all, and would depart again after several seconds spent hovering. (Or trying to land witth every portion of its surface in extreme cases).

When out in the black, alone, the inability to be recovered by the ship is scary (although it's now mitigated by the Unstuck feature, or the old relog-in-Horizons).

 

[Alec Turner]

I would love the ability for the ships to deploy the SRV or the CMDR whilst hovering. What could be even more useful, however, it the ability to recover the SRV/Pilot in hover mode, since I have had countless episodes where the ship would not land at all, and would depart again after several seconds spent hovering. (Or trying to land witth every portion of its surface in extreme cases).

The funny thing is that it can actually do this. I've had numerous occasions where the ship was unable to land but instead hovered dozens off meters off the ground where I was still able to drive underneath the boarding hatch and have it lift me up off the ground and into the ship.

 

[HRDiagram]

The funny thing is that it can actually do this. I've had numerous occasions where the ship was unable to land but instead hovered dozens off meters off the ground where I was still able to drive underneath the boarding hatch and have it lift me up off the ground and into the ship.

I had that too, on occasion! So long as the hangar is open and the yellow light is up, it's fair game, however it's just a lucky draw at the moment.

 

[Alec Turner]

speeds well in excess of 120m/s

I just remembered a thing ... the Patch Day SRV Speed Challenge!

The Patch Day SRV speed challenge.

While waiting for the servers to come back up yesterday I spotted that you can still occupy yourself with the Training missions and Challenge scenarios. So, here's a little challenge for people to complete next time the servers are off-line (or if you just have 20mins or so to spare and are...

forums.frontier.co.uk

Personal best is 414m/s but sgurr (the true SRV champion) hit something like 600m/s at ground level before catching a bounce that took him into orbit where he eventually managed an orbital velocity of 1440m/s!

 

[DemiserofD]

As others have already stated, I can also confirm that I have experienced meteorites being close to where I landed my ship.
Not talking about geo signals, but proper one off meteorites being visible on my SRV contacts list as soon as I was deploying it.

I would love the ability for the ships to deploy the SRV or the CMDR whilst hovering. What could be even more useful, however, it the ability to recover the SRV/Pilot in hover mode, since I have had countless episodes where the ship would not land at all, and would depart again after several seconds spent hovering. (Or trying to land witth every portion of its surface in extreme cases).

When out in the black, alone, the inability to be recovered by the ship is scary (although it's now mitigated by the Unstuck feature, or the old relog-in-Horizons).

That's really interesting, and I feel as if it must be quite rare, because I did exobiology for like 2 months back when it first released and in thousands of planets I never once saw that.

You can see geologicals and biologicals, but I've never dropped in next to a meteorite. As far as I was aware, they were just randomly generated.

OK, so this is an interesting one. You're dead right about the rear wheels steering in opposition being one reason the SRV is hard to control at speed. It's gives you an excellent turning circle when going slow but perhaps ought to copy certain real world vehicles whose rear wheels stear in opposition when travelling slowly but which automatically straighten up above a certain speed. That said, even then I'm dubious about the SRV's ability to travel along the ground at those kind of speeds. The surfaces we're driving across are often icy, they have rocks that are a lot bigger than many people realise (this is more apparent in VR), and the gravity is generally much lower than on earth which means the slightest bounces can send you into the air. The real way to travel at speed in the SRV is to get off the ground. What you need to master is the art of "flyving"!

The problem with 'flying' such as it is, is that while it DOES work, it takes so long to actually use it is functionally unusable for something like flying between exobiologicals, which is where you need the speed the most. By the time you've traveled that far you may be able to put on 10-20 m/s, which is decent, but not a game changer.

Don't get me wrong, by no means would I want flying to be changed or removed, it's just that it's not enough. If we could press the boost button and boost straight to 80 or 120 m/s and THEN start flying, then we're getting a lot closer to a more positive general experience.

 

[Alec Turner]

The problem with 'flying' such as it is, is that while it DOES work, it takes so long to actually use it is functionally unusable for something like flying between exobiologicals, which is where you need the speed the most. By the time you've traveled that far you may be able to put on 10-20 m/s, which is decent, but not a game changer.

You mean takes so long as in the acceleration using that technique is quite slow? Yeah, it's true ... it definitely does work better with a bit of a run-up and is more suited to travelling multi-km distances. I can see a short burst of boost acceleration to the SRV being quite interesting. On a tangent, the way SCO has revolutionised supercruise travel by actively adding a gameplay element has been brilliant.