No, not everyone does that. Some of us appreciate the time it takes to do things. I don't want wormholes to Hutton etc. I'll send the ship's cat to make some tea or a bacon sandwhich then.
The Thread To Save Time
- Thread starter V'larr
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No, not everyone does that. Some of us appreciate the time it takes to do things. I don't want wormholes to Hutton etc. I'll send the ship's cat to make some tea or a bacon sandwhich then.
No, not everyone does that. Some of us appreciate the time it takes to do things. I don't want wormholes to Hutton etc. I'll send the ship's cat to make some tea or a bacon sandwhich then.
Good, that makes two of us then! I'd just like to not have so much time during long supercruise trips to make tea, a sandwich, consume both, digest, make a trip to the bathroom, and finish a movie with time to spare, all thanks to an artificial acceleration cap....
At least three of us as I got reped for my comment earlier.
The way I look at it is, that in RL there is lots of inactivity between the exciting parts. With any luck.
It would seem more game-y if there were no breaks. Less of a sim. If there was a way to do some maintenance or navigation during these times it would be more realistic. So I listen to audio books, especially when exploring. The Hutton example is a bit extreme, I admit.
Not what I was saying at all, don't pull things out of context. Pretty sure *billions* of locations effectively timelocked is pretty important, too. Lore has nothing to do with the acceleration rate cap whatsoever.
Ostensibly that is what it is, but I don't think it needs to be quite so long. Also there's a different between the charge-up sequence and the timer, which I'd reduce to 3 seconds if I had my personal preference. As for loading, the reason stars take time to load in now is because Fdev changed the way they load to reduce the amount being done in witchspace. I mean, it's always been pretty clear to me that witchspace is a very-clever curtain pulled over a loading screen (which I am not complaining about mind you, I think the way witchspace is working is just dandy), but that should serve as solid proof if you had any doubts.
There's a difference between self-imposed tedium and having to wait because of someone else. I mean, I'm pretty sure there's no "Stop And Go: Crowded Freeway Traffic Simulator" out there for anyone's "enjoyment". I know ETS/ATS has road traffic and all but nothing I'd approximate with the patience-testing experience with real life.
To me, hyperjumps involve about the same amount of repetitiveness as that game would have with stop-and-go. And no, it's not enough to *ruin* the game and it's something I've tolerated just fine; as many have intimated already, the experience of space travel is still pretty great - but that doesn't mean it can't be improved upon.
Elite: Clockpunchers?
That's a disingenuous light to portray things in. "Artificial" here means something that doesn't need to exist except to serve as a game rule or limitation as decided by the devs, akin to a dungeon master saying "No making saving rolls unless they are 30 seconds apart." It's got no footing in lore, it's not adding to the experience, and the idea it's technical in nature is questionable at best - therefore it's not "natural" to the game.
No? It's much more than 11 jumps...it takes me ~11 jumps in a 25 LY Python just to get from one Engineer to another (and I'm not talking about Palin, he's usually about double that).
That's backwards...travel takes too much time, so the game introduced mechanics to save time - namely faster-than-light travel. Skyrim had fast travel for the same reason.
The thing is that Fdev has created a to-life scale representation of the Milky Way Galaxy. Space is just that damn big that even with FTL travel it still takes considerable time to traverse, whether it be through Hyperjumps or the novel idea of Supercruise that we have wound up with.
Let's remember Fdev has said before they've been kicking around the idea of hyperjumps to other stars within a single system.
I don't rightly know why the acceleration cap exists, but it's certainly not *intentionally* there to just make travel take longer.
I do reckon that the reason we have timers on jumps and scans is along the lines of "well it should take a *little* time, right?", and to an extent I could agree - but I'm saying the extent it's at right now is a bit too large, and I'd like to push it more comfortably into the Goldilocks zone.
It's really not. Nor is ETS for that matter - speaking of which, I've never spotted a bunch of repetitive timers anywhere in ETS.
As for "don't like it just buy another game", as always I despise this argument. It's not fixing anything, it's not addressing issues, it's just trying to dismiss them. That's not how change or improvements work.
Since when does taking video of playing the game have to be a requirement of being competent? Or participating in combat-related discussions? (Which I have if it's balance-related.)
I know how to handle myself. I even did okay-ish in CQC when it wasn't done by pre-arranged group queuing.
The reason I don't participate in PvP or have any interest in it at all is because I know full well how imbalanced the game really is - it was even before Engineers with hitpoint inflation galore - but Engineers took any pre-existing balance issues and magnified all of them to be exponentially worse, and on top of that Fdev for some reason decided weapons totally needed the cheesy gimmicks we know as the special effects.
Which really, is also a reason I don't play CQC anymore - the game purely revolves around getting the Weapon Boost (and other boosts) which are gimmicky and imbalancing to the absolute max.
Kind of a theme, too. I stopped playing CoD when I was much younger because I learned the hard way about the respawn gimmickry, and the OHKO bullet-spray-luck silliness. I stopped playing World of _ games because of gold ammo and RNG gimmicks galore. I stopped playing MWO because of airstrike/artillery strike spam insta-gib gimmicks, and then the Quirkening gimmicks, galore.
When it comes to competitive PvP, I need an even playing field with no cheesing or insta-kill tricks to enjoy myself. If that's not possible, then PvE is the only way I'll be willing to interact with other players, period. Not because I'm "bad" at it - I had KDRs of 1.5 or above in all those games I just mentioned - but because I've learned I cannot emotionally and physically enjoy it when I know it's the game's hubris, and not myself or other players, getting in the way.
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That's nice to know you've been here since Alpha. You're still denying something anyone can see for themselves simply by entering supercruise and selecting a destination that is far away. Also your link isn't available to me.
I've been unable to dig it up via quick googlesearch but I seem to recall seeing a dev post, back when I was starting to play, explaining that the cap exists and is there for technical limitation reasons. To an extent it makes sense, to make sure our ships don't obtain run-away acceleration rates approaching infinity or something, but so long as the acceleration rate of increase is not excessive then it doesn't need that cap.
99% of a Buckyball trek involves hyperjumping from star to star, no? And of the 1% of supercruise time, 99% of that is spent in close proximity to a star, with only the final trek to/from a station involving really journeying via supercruise?
Competitively speaking, sure, I can see how it's a factor, but claiming it's the biggest part of a Buckyball journey is pretty far from the truth. Goes to show how little you can do anything about reducing Hyperjump times, because a good portion of it is taken up by timers you can do nothing about....
I do the same thing when I explore, though I also look for life-bearing gas giants...and I don't claim the entire system for myself, because I like giving other CMDRs a place to put their name somewhere to say they were there too.
Personally that's a pet peeve of mine, when I enter a system and it's all 100% marked by ONE player. It makes the system completely boring and offputting to me - the guest book is permanently closed for all time, and for what? What's it really costing explorers to just put their name down on the star and any locations of interest in the system and leave something for someone else to mark should they come across your system later? The best systems are when I look and can see a different name on every body available in the system - those are cool, those are ones where I can feel like I'm crossing my path with that of many explorers who have come before me. As opposed to "Oh look CMDR Starlord was here. All over here, in fact. Yawn." Ugh. Anyways.
(Also, a simple glance at the system view, and use of a couple handy "goldilocks zone" tools (or teaching oneself a *lot* about the particulars of stellar science), is all it takes - you don't *have* to scan a planet to figure out beforehand if it's liable to be terraformable. I got used to the habit of looking at the system view while scanning the main star *just* because that scan takes so long that I have time to do all that examining of the system and *still* usually have time to spare waiting for that scan to complete. I admit, I have gotten the scan-time-reduction blueprint on my scanners now, and it does scan fast enough now that it's complete before I'm out of system map most of the time - but as I've said before that feels to me like how it should be by default, not restricted behind an Engineer blueprint.)
Point is, here, exploring involves LOTS of jumping from system to system to find the ones that are worth stopping by and looking at all those things. With 400 billion potential places to visit, that's a LOT of hyperspace jumping involved with exploration, especially if you do it thoroughly via Economical mode or "bubble"-style exploration like I've done a time or two. Claiming otherwise is just outright silly.
You're still having to jump from point A to point B and then to point C, D, E, F, G....
You just said it yourself here: you don't "mission grind", as you tend to take missions that involve more than simply getting something from A to B, though with Sightseeing missions it's definitely getting from A to B to C and then back again, usually with lots of cross-bubble zigzagging involve...and lots of hyperjumping.
Typical only if you are focusing on those missions...and if you actually bother visiting USS or POIs, which most players will gladly ignore altogether unless it's needed for Engineers. I don't blame them, half the interactions I find in USS either do not make sense, aren't fleshed out, or involve wildly challenging combat scenarios (which I handle just fine, but would not be something I'd expect most players to succeed with).
I literally said how this is wrong in the reply prior. If all you're going to do is repeat yourself til we go in circles, what is the point of discussing anything?
Wrong, wrong, wrong. Teleporting from station to station would be Mass Effect/Warframe-esque fast travel nonsense. I mean, were you around at all during the intant-transfer fiasco? Did you see how much time (lol) I spent on the forum arguing against anything to do with instant-Pokemon-style gimmicks? And whatever reasons the timers are there are purely technical in nature at *best*.
Then that means it wasn't intuitive enough by half. I wouldn't mind trying out the "old" supercruise, actually, especially if it means that artificial acceleration cap isn't present for the long-distance journeys.
Also, it's not an "eye of the needle". It's simply 75% speed is the "maximum" you can go without overshooting whenever you approach 6s of approach time (usually 8-10s is what players aim for what with reaction time). Put your throttle to 25% or 12.5% increments and see for yourself.
Because that information was not intuitively presented ingame, most likely. A flaw that continues to this day with a great majority of the information necessary to play Elite Dangerous, unfortunately....
There's no "us" vs "they" here, pal. We're all fish swimming in the same sea.
And it is indeed a common complaint with Elite that travel takes too long - and my theory is that is largely due to the amount of repetitive timers one must endure with making jumps, which are necessary to get anywhere in the galaxy. Reduce those timers and I'm willing to bet you'll see those complaints drop off.
Now you're just being silly. There's nothing to get "good" at involving anything discussed in this thread. Timers don't have anything to do with anything I'm doing, they just exist. Same goes for the acceleration rate cap, no amount of hyperbolic or target-destination-selection finagling is going to change it one whit.
Neither am I petitioning to rip anything out. I'm suggesting quality-of-life tweaks to some particular, small things I've noticed that take up too much time and don't particularly *matter* to the game.
The AI difficulty discussion is one fraught with disingenuity, falsehoods, and highly subjective experiences and bias. Fact is that the AI in the past has been buggy to both extremes and continues to have issues that regularly get ironed out. SJA's been doing a good job of that, I reckon, the issue - as with all things to do with development in Elite - is Fdev having enough *time* to deal with it all.
I reckon if their workday involved multiple 10-second timer pauses and they could do something to reduce those timers, they'd leap at the chance!
As for PvP advice, a good part of the reason I know how imbalanced combat is thanks to reading and discussing here on the forums with PvPers like Truesilver. Just sayin'.
I'm not concerned with only my benefit here, though I remain dubious about how much time I could save beyond what I already do in supercruise. This thread here is something that can aid *everyone* in the game without adverse effect. It won't be making anything instant, it won't be making anything gimmicky, it won't be ruining the feeling of space travel, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with "skill" or anything you're putting into the game.
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At least three of us as I got reped for my comment earlier.
The way I look at it is, that in RL there is lots of inactivity between the exciting parts. With any luck.
It would seem more game-y if there were no breaks. Less of a sim. If there was a way to do some maintenance or navigation during these times it would be more realistic. So I listen to audio books, especially when exploring. The Hutton example is a bit extreme, I admit.
I feel that there are plenty of those breaks without needing egg-timer mechanics injected into the experience. Plenty of space in space to just stop and take a break if you need one, too.
I too have consumed many books/shows/etc. while playing Elite. On the one hand I appreciate that it's "chilled" enough that I can do that multitasking, on the other, the areas I focus on in this thread are where I feel the game doesn't *need* to be taking up time.
I know Yembo quite well and Naddodur terminal is around 1100 ls away from the star, if you don't like SC so much how come you flew out that far?
At least three of us as I got reped for my comment earlier.
The way I look at it is, that in RL there is lots of inactivity between the exciting parts. With any luck.
It would seem more game-y if there were no breaks. Less of a sim. If there was a way to do some maintenance or navigation during these times it would be more realistic. So I listen to audio books, especially when exploring. The Hutton example is a bit extreme, I admit.
That was me with the rep.
Although it was more for the ship's cat and the attitude that not everyone wants to rush around everywhere. I've always appreciated longer Supercruise trips, because it gives me a chance to get up, and stretch my legs. Of course, these days the stretching of my legs is done in VR, so I can get up and lean against the canopy of my Asp, simply stargazing. It takes about two hours to get far enough from the Twin Cities that there isn't a lot of light pollution, so usually have to get my star gazing fix virtually.
This is objectively one of the longest ways of arriving at your destination. Even overshooting and looping back is faster.
[video=youtube;gy4zca1yjKw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gy4zca1yjKw[/video]
Thanks to Commander Furrycat for creating this video.
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and this is what I mean by threading the needle:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6nmFSX4jGk&t=400s
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That was me with the rep.
Although it was more for the ship's cat and the attitude that not everyone wants to rush around everywhere. I've always appreciated longer Supercruise trips, because it gives me a chance to get up, and stretch my legs. Of course, these days the stretching of my legs is done in VR, so I can get up and lean against the canopy of my Asp, simply stargazing. It takes about two hours to get far enough from the Twin Cities that there isn't a lot of light pollution, so usually have to get my star gazing fix virtually.
I don't like to rush around either, and I like to look at the stars too, you know.
A few nitpicks:
1. Of course staying in the blue zone all the way there is slower. Like I first said, you have to worry about overshooting only when you start approaching 10-7s of approach time to avoid going under 6s.
2. That's a hell of a body-populated system he's demonstrating cruise in, and it's also not involving long-distance cruising whatsoever: the artificial accel cap is a nonfactor here.
3. His pathing was very inconsistent. The fourth video is the only one he actually tries to avoid other planetary 'gravity wells' in. He also didn't take a efficient final approach and got himself slowed down by the final planet for the other three videos, probably due to how used he is to the 'planetary braking' demonstrated in the 4th. (Efficient being taking a tangent to the station rather than an angle that cuts across the sphere of influence and therefore slows you down too much if your speed was already down to 'cruise' levels already.)
I have to point out....
1. A full minute of your 12:50 video was dedicated purely to sitting still with FSD Charging + jump timer, and you only made 3 jumps.
2. Regarding the topic of average time spend jumping in an hour...you're stopping to land in every system here, a typical player's journeys involve many more jumps than this without stopping in-system.
3. Your first approach, when nearing the planet, would've taken less time with a tangent (and dropping speed only to avoid going under 6s) rather than looping around the planet twice, the second time of which particularly hurt your time. Well done on Tesla Dock, though I doubt that'd have been possible in anything that turns slower than the Hauler in supercruise (which is a fair amount of ships in the game
). Feels like I could've gotten to Vete Colony faster via tangential approach too, though.4. Still no distances involved there where acceleration rate cap would kick in.
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Thank ee kind sir/madam/AI*That was me with the rep.
*Delete as appropriate.
You've not met Greebo have you? Of course not or you would be complaining.
Got to keep the air con on high when he's aboard.
It's not as if you get points for finishing the game early.
And what do points mean?
Points are a place on a railway track where the rails can be moved to allow a train to change from one track to another.
Jammy
You missed the whole point of the whole video, which is demonstrating the difference between the two "forum recommended" methods, the so-called "loop of shame," and active piloting.
And for the last time, there is no acceleration cap! You are mistaking a change in your top speed, due to a reduction of mass lock, for acceleration. I even quoted one of Frontier's own programmers, who described exactly what is going on!
I have to point out....
1. A full minute of your 12:50 video was dedicated purely to sitting still with FSD Charging + jump timer, and you only made 3 jumps.
2. Regarding the topic of average time spend jumping in an hour...you're stopping to land in every system here, a typical player's journeys involve many more jumps than this without stopping in-system.
3. Your first approach, when nearing the planet, would've taken less time with a tangent (and dropping speed only to avoid going under 6s) rather than looping around the planet twice, the second time of which particularly hurt your time. Well done on Tesla Dock, though I doubt that'd have been possible in anything that turns slower than the Hauler in supercruise (which is a fair amount of ships in the game
4. Still no distances involved there where acceleration rate cap would kick in.
1. I normally spend that time more productively, but there is little point of doing so during a race. Its not like I'd abort the jump if I see an opportunity pop up.
2. We'll have to agree to disagree on that topic.
3. I won't disagree that I stuffed my first approach. During a previous attempt at Tesla dock, I cut it too close and crashed into the planet. Stuff like that happens when you operate outside of the "forum recommended" approach. Personally, I'd rather try to excel and fail, than play it safe. Especially when playing it safe is both slow and makes it much easier for you to be interdicted. And I also won't disagree that larger ships aren't as easy to handle than smaller ones, but I've seen the best pilots pull off that kind of stunt in Type-9s. I'm kind of in the middle of the pack, primarily thanks to tendinitis (from playing WAY too much Ultima Online back in the day) making me rather heavy handed at the controls.
4. See above.
Hey folks,
Just chipping in with what info I have on on the acceleration cap.
As far as I can tell the max rate of SC acceleration is variable and depends on 2 things:
- Gradient of the gravity well at the point in question
- Proximity to max supercruise speed
Max supercruise speed also seem to be dependent on the gradient of the gravity well, but there is a max, which is basically the speed where the gradient of the gravity well is 0. (Admittedly this effectively means the acceleration is just dependent on the gradient of the gravity well, but it's different dependencies.)
I can't remember what the exact top speed is I'm afraid - the highest I have on record is 2,001c, and that's at a high enough distance for it to be near max, but I can't remember if it crept over. 2001 would obviously make a lot of sense for meta reasons though.
The max acceleration I have recorded is 0-600c in approx 5 seconds, so 120c/s/s.
(Counting in my head, so the acceleration figures are only rough, but should it serve as a reasonable order-of-magnitude approximation.)
That's at a distance far enough out to be at or very near to the maximum, so can be treated as approximately the SC acceleration cap for all intents and purposes.
Photos and videos available if wanted, obviously.
Edit - taking into account Darkfyre's point above, I've just popped into game to do a comparison. Accelerating from 0 in as circular a route as I could in proximity to a planet (maintaining, about 1.8ls distance), the acceleration I recorded was 0 to 0.1c in 5 seconds.
Just chipping in with what info I have on on the acceleration cap.
As far as I can tell the max rate of SC acceleration is variable and depends on 2 things:
- Gradient of the gravity well at the point in question
- Proximity to max supercruise speed
Max supercruise speed also seem to be dependent on the gradient of the gravity well, but there is a max, which is basically the speed where the gradient of the gravity well is 0. (Admittedly this effectively means the acceleration is just dependent on the gradient of the gravity well, but it's different dependencies.)
I can't remember what the exact top speed is I'm afraid - the highest I have on record is 2,001c, and that's at a high enough distance for it to be near max, but I can't remember if it crept over. 2001 would obviously make a lot of sense for meta reasons though.
The max acceleration I have recorded is 0-600c in approx 5 seconds, so 120c/s/s.
(Counting in my head, so the acceleration figures are only rough, but should it serve as a reasonable order-of-magnitude approximation.)
That's at a distance far enough out to be at or very near to the maximum, so can be treated as approximately the SC acceleration cap for all intents and purposes.
Photos and videos available if wanted, obviously.
Edit - taking into account Darkfyre's point above, I've just popped into game to do a comparison. Accelerating from 0 in as circular a route as I could in proximity to a planet (maintaining, about 1.8ls distance), the acceleration I recorded was 0 to 0.1c in 5 seconds.
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Sounds about right. The dev post I quoted above said that acceleration is directly proportional to your current maximum speed. If the region of space you're in has a maximum speed of 0.1c, then it would take about 5 seconds to get up to speed from 0. If the region of space you're in has a maximum speed of 10c, then it would also take about 5 seconds to get up to speed from 0.
What V'larr is calling acceleration is a change in a ship's maximum speed as it travels out of the nearest gravity well, normally a system's primary.
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That relationship between speed and acceleration would also explain why one of the "forum recommended" method always has you reduce your throttle before you reach the five second mark.
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I don't know where the thread is now but in addressing some low hanging fruit as far as time sinks go:
When you enter a new system and your next target is obstructed, you should still be able to charge your drive, just not engage. You can already do it when you aren't even pointed at your target as long as it's not obstructed.
There should be drive cells like shield cell banks that you can pop off to instantly charge the FSD.
It doesn't matter that the game feels big. We don't get to experience the large majority of it because our progress is slowed to a crawl to create the feeling that the distance between two points is huge, but the ability to jump between stars basically contradicts that. Instead, I think the game should feel fast. We should be able to feel that same feeling you get when you're overshooting the target, but in normal speed.
I find it odd that the limits were set so low but somehow the engineer narrative magically makes it ok to go twice as fast as before. Obviously it was ok to go fast from the beginning. and probably twice as fast as we can now would be just fine. It would allow us to scan a planet surface without feeling like we're crawling through cold syrup.
As for long SC times, I'm ok with it since I can simply avoid it if I like. It's an option that offers reward for a time sink of staring at a screen that's virtually indistinguishable from lag (you know that screen you get when you're trying to drop into a station and you sit in that blue tunnel for 5 minutes before finally appearing at the station. That's what the long SC treks remind me of. "Hey, I stared at the screen for over an hour today.. I want the mug!")
When you enter a new system and your next target is obstructed, you should still be able to charge your drive, just not engage. You can already do it when you aren't even pointed at your target as long as it's not obstructed.
There should be drive cells like shield cell banks that you can pop off to instantly charge the FSD.
It doesn't matter that the game feels big. We don't get to experience the large majority of it because our progress is slowed to a crawl to create the feeling that the distance between two points is huge, but the ability to jump between stars basically contradicts that. Instead, I think the game should feel fast. We should be able to feel that same feeling you get when you're overshooting the target, but in normal speed.
I find it odd that the limits were set so low but somehow the engineer narrative magically makes it ok to go twice as fast as before. Obviously it was ok to go fast from the beginning. and probably twice as fast as we can now would be just fine. It would allow us to scan a planet surface without feeling like we're crawling through cold syrup.
As for long SC times, I'm ok with it since I can simply avoid it if I like. It's an option that offers reward for a time sink of staring at a screen that's virtually indistinguishable from lag (you know that screen you get when you're trying to drop into a station and you sit in that blue tunnel for 5 minutes before finally appearing at the station. That's what the long SC treks remind me of. "Hey, I stared at the screen for over an hour today.. I want the mug!")
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