Station orbit height

[Jacobius]

This is a very simple suggestion: The orbits of most of the stations are very high. If they were brought closer to the planet/moon you'd have a much nicer view which would give you a real sense of scale.

(As an example, there's the odd one that's like this already, such as Azeban Orbital in Eranin)

You'd need to adjust the mass locking system to give the low orbits the new minimum distance/speed for FSD disengage. Any high orbit or deep space stations could then benefit from faster/farther supercruise dropouts.

 

[nanite2000]

Agreed. I'd love to see more low-orbit stations.

 

[Gun Star]

My guess is the reason the orbits are so high is because it is the planets Lagrange Point.

There is talk of moving the ISS to the Earth Moon L1 for a stopping point to the moon

 

[varonica]

My guess is the reason the orbits are so high is because it is the planets Lagrange Point.

There is talk of moving the ISS to the Earth Moon L1 for a stopping point to the moon

No, the reason the orbit is so high is simply gameplay reasons. Originally all the stations were much closer to the planets, however during the alpha many people complained because with the stations so close to the planets the speed of the ships in SC was severely limited, so for instance leaving a station to head to a ring to mine or bounty hunt took a much longer time than necessary to climb out of the planets gravity well. Also on some low orbit stations even now if you don't have horizons you can't use them due to the exclusion zone, if you don't have a planetary landing suite you can't get close enough to the stations to dock. The stations with the low orbits are actually in the very early start areas from the alpha and pre-alpha stage.

 

[Jacobius]

I sort of get that. But couldn't you then rescale the gravitational effects to make that possible?

Even in the game now, I was able to fly to an Earthlike world and drop out just above the yellow exclusion zone with no great difficulty. The view was spectacular, and I had no trouble leaving either. (I presume since it wasn't landable that a non-Horizons player would be able to do the same.)

For that matter, nav beacons are very close to a MUCH bigger gravity well, and they seem to work ok.

 

[varonica]

I sort of get that. But couldn't you then rescale the gravitational effects to make that possible?

Even in the game now, I was able to fly to an Earthlike world and drop out just above the yellow exclusion zone with no great difficulty. The view was spectacular, and I had no trouble leaving either. (I presume since it wasn't landable that a non-Horizons player would be able to do the same.)

For that matter, nav beacons are very close to a MUCH bigger gravity well, and they seem to work ok.

Umm, no?

If you rescale the gravitational effects it would make a lot of things silly. Gravity is what holds everything together, the simulation of gravity in ED needs to be consistent, not different for different objects. I can't even parse the wrongness of that request, it goes against everything, we have enough magic in the game already, lets not turn the entire galaxy into a magic wonderland where gravity isn't consistent and nothing behaves as it should.

And it's not as if something won't work ok, any location outside the atmosphere would be fine, a couple of hundred miles up for orbit? Sure, but people don't visit nav beacons over and over again, they visit them once maybe, if at all whereas they visit stations all the time and that's where the issue is. Ok I would be fine for having a couple station closer,I can always avoid them if I want, but there was a bug report put in about a player who arrived at a station and sold his planetary landing suite for some reason, probably experimenting and suddenly found he couldn't leave the station because it was to close to the planet, and he couldn't buy a planetary landing suite because he sold his and didn't store it and didn't realise the problem until to late.

So some non-horizon players wouldn't be able to get to some stations, if you sold the wrong think some people might not be able to leave, but the big complaint was the extra time leaving the vicinity of the planets if you were flying in and out of stations all the time.

 

[Limoncello Lizard]

If you rescale the gravitational effects it would make a lot of things silly. Gravity is what holds everything together, the simulation of gravity in ED needs to be consistent, not different for different objects. I can't even parse the wrongness of that request, it goes against everything, we have enough magic in the game already, lets not turn the entire galaxy into a magic wonderland where gravity isn't consistent and nothing behaves as it should.

Well done completely missing his point. He wasn't asking for gravity to be rewritten, just the effect it has on our ship's supercruise. There is little "consistent" with supercruise, so changing it wouldn't break anything.

 

[damon8r351]

I'd rather they address all the weird graphical issues involving planets, before they discuss moving stations closer to planets. Prime locations for vistas are meaningless if there's a problem with the vista.

 

[varonica]

Well done completely missing his point. He wasn't asking for gravity to be rewritten, just the effect it has on our ship's supercruise. There is little "consistent" with supercruise, so changing it wouldn't break anything.

No, gravity doesn't directly have an affect on SC, the "gravity well" does, to change the effect you would need to change the gravity gradient so that gravity was less in the location of the station, in effect changing the basic law of gravity so it no longer reduced by the square of the distance. This would give you the equivalent of a faster acceleration in SC since gravity would be affected galaxy wide, I don't really see how you could limit that just to stations, and get you out of the gravity wells faster, changing the balance of of SC itself in the game.

Now people have been asking for faster SC acceleration for a long time to get to places faster, so you could simply change it by increasing the acceleration of SC as you say and not muck about with gravity at all and save everyone a lot of trouble, but since people have been asking for faster acceleration in SC for ages because they don't like how long it takes to get to places this is probably not going to happen.

 

[DARGAN]

translator

I made this proposal several months ago now.

I do not understand why gravity disturbs, whereas making trips within the system that lasts for hours does not bother.

gravity is part of the experience, that's all.. there may be a small number without disturbing everyone.

indicate during mission to his stations .. as for distances from the star.. height orbit station.

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however, it may be true in terms of realism.. which is needed from an space elevator that rereads the planet to the station if they have to be really low to be seen from a SVR.. realism ? from what someone has to add.. a station too close ended up falling !?

or that the stations rather than being closer together should be much larger.. really gigantic stations well visible from the ground will require gigantic work.. but it would certainly be the most consistent thing to be seen from the ground up.

but after it's a game .. everything is possible .. well almost.. it's not possible to make a game perfectly realistic.

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off topic

besides on the stations that fell .. I made a suggestion .. find resorts type corialis (the largest) crush on the ground.. with possibility to enter in svr.. (its same versions destroyed in among debris fields in the space)

but it is a utopia, a dream that will probably never come true .. asks for too much work in my opinion.. although its stations already exist in perfect condition.