Supercruising to another star system reveals design flaws
- Thread starter Vatox
- Start date
That word, "lie" is thrown around an awful lot here, and to be honest it's a little bit insulting. FD made it quite clear when they pitched to KS that what they deliver and when would be subject to change:
David Braben said:
They've also committed to continual ongong development; what you're hoping for, and what they said they were aiming for, may yet come.
I've been playing around with SpaceEngine, recreating journeys to where I have been in ED. That has me properly impressed with the scale of the galaxy, amount of stars and how far away I am now at 8k ly. ED literally keeps you in the dark as you travel. Not only does it get you disoriented with each jump, the background is also darkened at the star, thus following a path turns into a succession of loading screens without a clue where you are. You have to fly away from the star and then try to spot the chances to the background.
Anyway 2001c is far too slow for the stars to move. Except when you're inside a nebula, 2001c is the same as not moving at all. At about 0.1 ly/sec or 3 million c you start to notice star movement. 1 ly/sec is a nice pace to drift through the galaxy. 10 ly/sec is about the maximum before you start losing trek of the stars speeding by, feels like warp 9 in Star Trek.
Enabling those speeds in ED would diminish the accomplishment of exploring the vast distances. At 1 ly/sec it would take less than 15 minutes to get to the horsehead nebula, and about 9 hours to get to the center. You do get a much better impression of how many stars you pass by and the magnitude of difference between planetary and galactic scale.
Making 5 to 30ly jumps in SpaceEngine is extremely cool though. Center the star, press go to and you see the star field shift slightly before the new star shows up in front of you. It's a shame ED replaces the coolest part of space travel with a loading screen.
Anyway 2001c is far too slow for the stars to move. Except when you're inside a nebula, 2001c is the same as not moving at all. At about 0.1 ly/sec or 3 million c you start to notice star movement. 1 ly/sec is a nice pace to drift through the galaxy. 10 ly/sec is about the maximum before you start losing trek of the stars speeding by, feels like warp 9 in Star Trek.
Enabling those speeds in ED would diminish the accomplishment of exploring the vast distances. At 1 ly/sec it would take less than 15 minutes to get to the horsehead nebula, and about 9 hours to get to the center. You do get a much better impression of how many stars you pass by and the magnitude of difference between planetary and galactic scale.
Making 5 to 30ly jumps in SpaceEngine is extremely cool though. Center the star, press go to and you see the star field shift slightly before the new star shows up in front of you. It's a shame ED replaces the coolest part of space travel with a loading screen.
A lot of people seem to have an issue with my usage of the word "flaw". While I can of course see the point of reaching the design decision to have instances and to have the only way of travelling between those instances be a sort of hyperspace jump, the discussion of that mechanic was not my sole point when making the post. In the video you can see how upon close inspection, the "star system" starts behaving in a very weird fashion. It then also seems to pass directly through you. The greater issue I am having is with the way the design decision was presented to the players, i.e. the appearance of it all. And in that regard I daresay there is a certain flaw which I hope will be addressed, especially considering the otherwise so well crafted representation of our galaxy.
This. How much more incredible would it feel if you saw yourself moving through the universe. You might even be able to discern the general layout of the system as you approached.
There really isn't any need to be so rude nexxo. 
Eve isn't a good comparison either way, the whole underlying structure of the game is completely different to ED, but I guess you know that don't you?
FD probably could have created a system whereby you fly to another system using SC - after all when you drop out of SC there is a transition anyway - they have chosen not to spend time and resources doing so because it doesn't add anything to the game or at least very little for the amount of resources required.
The number of people who would actually bother to do it is tiny and the number of those who would do it more than once is even tinier - regardless of whether you want to do it or not I cannot see how anyone see how anyone thinks that it is unreasonable for FD to focus their time and efforts elsewhere.
Eve isn't a good comparison either way, the whole underlying structure of the game is completely different to ED, but I guess you know that don't you?
FD probably could have created a system whereby you fly to another system using SC - after all when you drop out of SC there is a transition anyway - they have chosen not to spend time and resources doing so because it doesn't add anything to the game or at least very little for the amount of resources required.
The number of people who would actually bother to do it is tiny and the number of those who would do it more than once is even tinier - regardless of whether you want to do it or not I cannot see how anyone see how anyone thinks that it is unreasonable for FD to focus their time and efforts elsewhere.
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To implement seemless system transitions or not to, that is the question. For those of us willing to take the long way around things, to find all those hidden nooks and Easter eggs that might be stashed there while all the other less intrigued hyperspace everywhere, I think that it's a worthwhile endeavor. All the naysayers might also ask why anyone would want to climb Mount Everest, or fly around the world, or venture to Mars, etc., etc., etc.
No permit visit to Sol is one legitimate user story for this missing feature.
It's not a huge deal as it's hardly relevant to normal gameplay, but it would be nice to see them eventually supporting system loading through supercruise. It helps preserve the illusion. There are many other things to address first, though.
I believe that's what's being called "code optimization". Having separate instances for each system is probably the most efficient way to make things work. For what it matters, skybox is still real, showing stars and nebulaes at their correct respective positions so what you see is really there. One just have to jump
i have these suspects:
may be they had a galaxy version that is ''seamless'' .. but they made some test and they found it ''incompatible'' with the multiplayer necessities..
may be they still have a version that is 'seamless' and they keep it for a future build, who knows.. ?
sure it would be nice to hear something directly from devs about this matter,
as usual we are talking with ourself into an useless ''gran canyon of echoes'' and nothing more...
may be they had a galaxy version that is ''seamless'' .. but they made some test and they found it ''incompatible'' with the multiplayer necessities..
may be they still have a version that is 'seamless' and they keep it for a future build, who knows.. ?
sure it would be nice to hear something directly from devs about this matter,
as usual we are talking with ourself into an useless ''gran canyon of echoes'' and nothing more...
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Certainly FD have already admitted that the networking model/code they had, that worked perfectly on a LAN, did not transfer to the internet well (with the slower responses, data packets arriving out of order and the massive variation in internet speeds and reliability).
It is just possible that FD are too busy to spend all their time answering every single point and question that is raised on this forum and/or just don't want to discuss this particular point at this time.
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Afaik, Cobra engine is capable for unlimited seamless transitions between the stars, from space to planet's surface etc. Why shouldn't it be? After all, Frontier could do that 20 years ago. But this is MMO game running in persistent universe - so I guess FDEV decided that keeping players sync'd in such (fully seamless) environment is too complicated and is not of much use because only few would decide to waste hours/days/weeks for interstellar supercruise.
Which reminds me to once promising MMO project, now vaporware, called Infinity: Quest for the Earth. Guy behind it was always pretty adamant that his game must be completely seamless - no exceptions, no limits. But in reality he never offered any valid technical solution so it turned out to be more or less just a pipe dream.
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There really isn't any need to be so rude nexxo.
Eve isn't a good comparison either way, the whole underlying structure of the game is completely different to ED, but I guess you know that don't you?
I think that Eve Online cleverly worked around all the issues that might be problematic in network play, but therefore had to sacrifice some immersion. Elite Dangerous bravely meets those problems head-on to enhance immersion, but that means that they are having to work out solutions for them as they go along. I can live with that.
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given the scale of the universe and the speed you are allowed to travel in supercruise, i don't see a downside to the implementation.
It's actually still in development. I don't think the problem is/was so much the seamless nature, and more that they're an indie studio with no money or investors backing them, all seemingly working in their spare time since they had to have paying jobs. If they had done a crowdfunding campaign earlier, they would be much farther in development, I think.
I believe their design is justified, at least in terms of a cost-benefit analysis. However, I do hope they will return to this issue in the future and attempt to resolve it or at least create the illusion that they have solved it.
Does supercruising towards a system reduce the jump-range?
Sorry to resurrect an old thread...
In light of the announcement that 1.3 will add extended fuel tanks, it would be interesting to know if supercruising towards a distant star system reduces the jump range required to reach it. That is, can you use this technique to reach systems which are otherwise out-of-range?
Or is the jump range perpetually bound to the centre of the system of origin?
For example, if your 30Ly-Asp carried extended fuel sufficient for 100 hours of supercruise, it could travel over 20Ly towards a system 50Ly away, and then jump the remaining distance.
This would open up some isolated fringe systems to the most stubbon of explorers...
Sorry to resurrect an old thread...
In light of the announcement that 1.3 will add extended fuel tanks, it would be interesting to know if supercruising towards a distant star system reduces the jump range required to reach it. That is, can you use this technique to reach systems which are otherwise out-of-range?
Or is the jump range perpetually bound to the centre of the system of origin?
For example, if your 30Ly-Asp carried extended fuel sufficient for 100 hours of supercruise, it could travel over 20Ly towards a system 50Ly away, and then jump the remaining distance.
This would open up some isolated fringe systems to the most stubbon of explorers...