System to system travel using SC rather than Hyperspace = Hypercruise?

[ZeroAi]

Ignoring the technical limitations, imagine you could seamlessly accelerate to Hypercruise speeds and travel from system to system directly, manoeuver around stars, etc. You get the idea. Hyperspace jumps would be removed from the game. Route plotting would give you a vector that you can follow, if you navigate yourself you could find potentially faster but more dangerous routes. Would you prefer that over the current system?

+Rep

I like it

I would also like a v2 FSD that can make longer jumps - right now all jump distances take about 1 minute, but it would be cool if you could jump until your fuel was low, making one long jump of say 5 or 10 minutes.

Would give you time to play space chess with Chewy ;-)

 

[CMDR Zadian Lichtfrost]

Epic idea. I'd love that.
Imagine the multitude of factors influencing the ride and skill involved in exploiting them (stellar phenomena, slingshot maneuvering, hazard regions and avoiding danger/risk to cripple your ship, even proper/enginered modules installed for longer/faster journey). …

Considering that space is mostly empty it would be in most cases a straight line flight for x seconds until the fuel tank is empty - a long hyper jump that might look different.
If you want to test it, fly to Hutton Orbital

(Stellar phenomena, hazard regions and other interesting stuff can and should be added to the current game).

 

[xondk]

Ignoring the technical limitations, imagine you could seamlessly accelerate to Hypercruise speeds and travel from system to system directly, manoeuver around stars, etc. You get the idea. Hyperspace jumps would be removed from the game. Route plotting would give you a vector that you can follow, if you navigate yourself you could find potentially faster but more dangerous routes. Would you prefer that over the current system?

Faster? then jumping? seems insanely unlikely given the insane distances some jumps cover.
While this would be 'cool' it would also be a 'why'? why? who would ever use it often, rather then a very very few that might find the idea novel?

 

[Traveler]

Considering that space is mostly empty it would be in most cases a straight line flight for x seconds until the fuel tank is empty [...]

It is relative to the speed - and we're talking here ludicrous speed.

Been to Hutton, been to Smeaton - no joy.

 

[Winterwalker]

If you want to test it, fly to Hutton Orbital

In the bubble, star systems are quite far apart on average .. true.
As you get near galactic centre though, systems are much closer together.

 

[CMDR Zadian Lichtfrost]

In the bubble, star systems are quite far apart on average .. true.
As you get near galactic centre though, systems are much closer together.

Sure, but the suns are still tiny compared to the distances between systems. Space is empty, even if it is crowded like at the galactic core.

 

[GunnerBill]

Are you talking about replacing single jumps with flying or actually just flying x number of Ly until you arrive a the destination possibly 100's of Ly away?

If it's the former then you'd either have to slow the game down a lot to make whatever content you wanted to add possible or well it wouldn't be possible!

If you mean flying an entire journey of possibly several hundred ly manually then IMO - no. I personally view this travel time as a bit of downtime to perhaps concentrate less on the game, check engineering app's etc. So it wouldn't suit me.

However it could be made to suit journeys to star out with the reach of conventional jumping i.e. to get further out on the rim systems.

 

[YinYin]

I would never remove a current feature. But I would totally consider adding this as an alternative via new FSD technology.

What sort of speed would be talking about though?

It has to be gravity well based just like super cruise is now and hence scale with local system density.

In a system dense area such as the core, you'd be slower - which allows actually getting to the next system instead of overshooting things all the time.
In a system sparse area you would travel much faster, not wasting time going through mostly empty space.

It would open up reaching distant clusters with fuel tank filled ships or straight up stranding yourself in the void.
(imagine a fuel rat rescue, where two ships have to go half the distance, with one refuelling the other before turning back to fetch more fuel for the final return trip of the customer and rescue ship)


The most fun about this to me would be the idea of dodging systems, since I'd assume that proximity to a system would make you drop into it (giant gravity well).
So if you make a long trip, prepare to steer around many glowing dots.

Travel could in fact be a lot faster, since you don't really have to load any systems en route while in hypercruise (pass one every two seconds?). Although reentry would still have to load a system as usual (I doubt streaming system data with so many possible destinations is feasible), which should be fine if the arrival sequence has the appropriate animation (little different from a hyperjump).

I would probably make ships using this technology drop in at the edge of a system rather than the star (like an exclusion zone).
Identifying scoopable stars in hypercruise and then deciding when and where to drop for refuel could be a delicate challenge, since you then still have to super cruise to the star.
Knowing your fuel stops in advance (multi star system configurations being visible as they already are when selected) would be of importance.


What would different grades of this technology and ship weight do, with flat range not being a factor? Fuel efficiency I guess.
A grade or a light ship will get you further on one ton of fuel than E grade or a heavy ship.
Speed remains unaffected for usability among different scales (same as super cruise).

A super charge from a jet cone would probably further increase fuel efficiency as well until you refuel again.
So charging up from one in supercruise as usual will allow you to travel further in hypercruise.

 

[Drelthar]

Speed should be roughly the same like jumping now. In other words: Fast.

It'd be really hard to design some fun/useful gameplay into that time frame.

Unless it was something lime the bonus levels in Project X (Amiga game) but that would be super arcady and much cry would occur.

 

[Valorin]

I somehow like the witchspace tunnel. I'd keep it that way.

 

[Henri]

this is not Star Citizen

 

[Winterwalker]

I somehow like the witchspace tunnel. I'd keep it that way.

I don't think the idea is to replace witchspace at all (I wouldn't agree) but to have the point to point supercruise as an alternative.

It's an edge case thing but - just spitballing - imagine if you could use hydrogen cannisters (cargo/commodity) to refuel, that could mean epic expeditions between distant stars with refuel ships? Or could you use as a way to sneak into permit locked systems in some way?

So I think there are (some) official gameplay things could be done with it but also it 'knits' the 3D galaxy together. Knowing that you could supercruise to the next system is very different from actually doing it .. but it stops the galaxy feeling (a little bit) like individual star system rooms, separated by witchspace load screens. Hyperspace becomes the shortcut and the OP would be a classy add for me.

 

[RandomGun]

Ignoring the technical limitations, imagine you could seamlessly accelerate to Hypercruise speeds and travel from system to system directly, manoeuver around stars, etc. You get the idea. Hyperspace jumps would be removed from the game. Route plotting would give you a vector that you can follow, if you navigate yourself you could find potentially faster but more dangerous routes. Would you prefer that over the current system?

Definitely. That's something I have dreamed about.

In my dream stars and planets would cause turbulenses in hyperspace. Ships would have to detect and avoid turbulenses to fly fast and stay undamaged. Star-based turbulenses would affect flying between stars. Planet-based turbulenses would only be an issue in-system. No straight flight in-system ("Hutton") or between systems would be possible. Avoiding would mean maneuvering around them or slowing down enough that the ship can take the stress.

Turbulense detection could be improved by scanners (and engineering). In the bubble major turbulenses would be already mapped and ship's computer would know and show the standard safe route to the destination system. Sparse regions of space would have less turbulenses and would be easier to navigate. Flying near the galactic core could be a nightmare.

Then, the hyperspace gameplay could be spiced up with other stuff: tools (e.g. "tunnel maker / turbulense penetrator"), weapons (e.g. "interdictor / turbulense creator"), defences (e.g. "turbulense mine"), aliens, anomalies and mysteries.

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

Ignoring the technical limitations, imagine you could seamlessly accelerate to Hypercruise speeds and travel from system to system directly, manoeuver around stars, etc. You get the idea. Hyperspace jumps would be removed from the game. Route plotting would give you a vector that you can follow, if you navigate yourself you could find potentially faster but more dangerous routes. Would you prefer that over the current system?

Both would be good.

Imagine the game was new. Release day. (It's far too late to change it now)

Unexplored systems can't be jumped to, unless it has a nav beacon, or you purchase the data (assuming someone else has scanned it).
You hypercruise to new systems, then map them, sell the data for others to buy.



Hypercruise would need to be extraordinarily fast in order it actually reach them in a normal time frame. With no frame of reference, hypercruise would always feel slow.

The game only needs to load the stars, then the transition to a new system could be covered by a short "turbulence" a bit like orbital cruise while all the planets load up.

Or something.

CMDR Cosmic Spacehead

 

[Ophion]

I like the idea very much, this would make traveling a lot more interestig. Too bad this will remain out of the game, like many more great ideas on the forum.

 

[babelfisch]

That would be the option loading screen at the start and end of hyper-cruise. And making travel times much longer. If the hyper-cruise travel time is identical to the hyper jump time, then there is not that much difference to massively increasing the jump-range.

No, there would be no loading screen.

 

[babelfisch]

Now the problem is since a Hyperspace jump is going from X.cs to stupid speed as soon as you activate this mode you will be having to slow down straight away.

I get what you mean. I am just making more point into the discussion. The way lore as made the Hyperspace jump stuff seems like speed would be the problem with it all being possible

Currently it takes ~45 seconds to jump to a system. That's plenty of time to accelerate and decelerate. If you think about it it's really not different than going from a star to a station. Speed and size of objects are relative.

 

[babelfisch]

Considering that space is mostly empty it would be in most cases a straight line flight for x seconds until the fuel tank is empty - a long hyper jump that might look different.
If you want to test it, fly to Hutton Orbital

(Stellar phenomena, hazard regions and other interesting stuff can and should be added to the current game).

No, it would be nothing like that. There would be gravity wells when passing stars and the fact that you compare it to Hutton Orbital shows that you still don't get the concept

 

[YinYin]

To add to my previous thoughts:

A normal FSD would probably be much faster around the core, where you can skip hundreds of systems in a single jump.
(there is no feasible real time travel to both reach and pass that many destinations)

While the hypercruise FSD would be much faster in sparse areas (skipping multiple systems with a giant fuel tank that would take a jump each even with the longest range).

I'd say the bubble system density should be the tipping point, making both feasible there depending on what you do.

 

[babelfisch]

Are you talking about replacing single jumps with flying or actually just flying x number of Ly until you arrive a the destination possibly 100's of Ly away?

If it's the former then you'd either have to slow the game down a lot to make whatever content you wanted to add possible or well it wouldn't be possible!

If you mean flying an entire journey of possibly several hundred ly manually then IMO - no. I personally view this travel time as a bit of downtime to perhaps concentrate less on the game, check engineering app's etc. So it wouldn't suit me.

However it could be made to suit journeys to star out with the reach of conventional jumping i.e. to get further out on the rim systems.

It would work exactly the same like SC. Just on a bigger scale with higher speeds. Since both are relative you wouldn't notice a big difference between flying from Sol to the Earth or flying from the Sol to Alpha Centauri.