The truth behind "Unknown Permit" systems

[Fishmanos]

Hi Commanders,

After stumbling upon a few of them,I finally decided to check what lies in those systems guarded by "Unknown Permit".
The log of my expedition can be found here:

[video=youtube;nGWhxEuD2Ho]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGWhxEuD2Ho[/video]

Enjoy!

 

[AnnuverScotinExile]

Unfortunately, you cannot supercruise from one system to another. Even one without a permit.

 

[Bartizan]

Nothing really new here....we already know you can't SC between systems. The system is loaded during a jump.

 

[dayrth]

You can SC between systems (I have done it), but you won't find anyone there as the instance you are (still) in is busy back at the first system.

 

[Darth Ender]

Just a major dropped ball on the game design. The engine doesn't handle an activity allowed - this should never happen. Either you fix the engine or you make it impossible to do said action.

 

[Bartizan]

You can SC between systems (I have done it), but you won't find anyone there as the instance you are (still) in is busy back at the first system.

You have entered that new system and could interact with the bodies in it like star and planets all through SC? I doubt that is true. You can fly the distance like the video above shows, but you don't ever actually "enter" the system till you jump to it.

 

[Fishmanos]

Just a major dropped ball on the game design. The engine doesn't handle an activity allowed - this should never happen. Either you fix the engine or you make it impossible to do said action.

That's exactly what I wanted to point out with this video, I am glad not only I have such opinion.

I mainly did this test for two reasons:

1. To check how game design handles such events as interstellar travels (and permits system)
2. To see if the game engine actually tracks and records your long range progress on the 3D representation of the space

As I see it, answers are:

ad.1. Game design doesn't account for such events like crossing half-way between star systems (whether it is geometric or mass influence half-way) - which should trigger new instance generation and switching onto it.
ad.2. This proved to be true. This was actually my second attempt, first one was on the distance of over 7Ly but after around 0.7 Ly game dropped out due to "Server connection error" and when I logged in back, it placed me in correct distance and 3D placement towards a star I was heading to before. Here it can be seen also when I logged out and logged in and was placed almost at same spot.

Actually the point of logging out and logging in at destination was for the purpose of checking if the game will detect that the position is within different system boundary and will generate an instance for me inside this system. Unfortunately this hasn't happened, which I see as a big flow and game breaker in terms of immersion. What good is the sandbox design if it doesn't allow you to play the way you want it.

Thanks for the comment!

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

That's exactly what I wanted to point out with this video, I am glad not only I have such opinion.

I mainly did this test for two reasons:

1. To check how game design handles such events as interstellar travels (and permits system)
2. To see if the game engine actually tracks and records your long range progress on the 3D representation of the space

As I see it, answers are:

ad.1. Game design doesn't account for such events like crossing half-way between star systems (whether it is geometric or mass influence half-way) - which should trigger new instance generation and switching onto it.
ad.2. This proved to be true. This was actually my second attempt, first one was on the distance of over 7Ly but after around 0.7 Ly game dropped out due to "Server connection error" and when I logged in back, it placed me in correct distance and 3D placement towards a star I was heading to before. Here it can be seen also when I logged out and logged in and was placed almost at same spot.

Actually the point of logging out and logging in at destination was for the purpose of checking if the game will detect that the position is within different system boundary and will generate an instance for me inside this system. Unfortunately this hasn't happened, which I see as a big flow and game breaker in terms of immersion. What good is the sandbox design if it doesn't allow you to play the way you want it.

Thanks for the comment!

What a ridiculous comment. All sand boxes only allow you to play within the actual game bounderies. There was a MMORPG sandbox called Mortal set in fantasy medieval world, I could say it's totally out of order that I don't have a spaceship, or a car, or have superpowers like flight in that game as it doesn't allow me to play the sandbox the way I want to play it.

They have said that it is possible to do, but it is a massive amount of work that only very few people would ever use, they would and I would rather they put their resources somewhere else.

 

[Traveller_GG]

What a ridiculous comment. All sand boxes only allow you to play within the actual game bounderies. There was a MMORPG sandbox called Mortal set in fantasy medieval world, I could say it's totally out of order that I don't have a spaceship, or a car, or have superpowers like flight in that game as it doesn't allow me to play the sandbox the way I want to play it.

They have said that it is possible to do, but it is a massive amount of work that only very few people would ever use, they would and I would rather they put their resources somewhere else.

Well, quite. A sandbox still has limits... a prime example being "You cannot go that way" and being stopped dead in your tracks when you try to go off the map. This being a somewhat pertinent example in this case.

(mind you I did manage to fall off the map a few times in some games, which is in itself a major immersion breaker.)

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Well, quite. A sandbox still has limits... a prime example being "You cannot go that way" and being stopped dead in your tracks when you try to go off the map. This being a somewhat pertinent example in this case.

(mind you I did manage to fall off the map a few times in some games, which is in itself a major immersion breaker.)

It's not that it's off limits, its that you need to jump to the system to load all of the system assets, which you don't do when supercruising. It is like that with all systems, not just the permit systems. It is a limitation of the game itself, and it's only immersion breaking if you decide to supercruise for the 8 hours or whatever time it took to get there. 99.9% of poeple won't bother as it is a waste of time and you could be doing something else more worthwhile.

Permit locked systems are being reserved for future content. Just think of it that when you try to jump there you get an unknown FSD malfunction.

 

[Darth Ender]

the point is. If FD has no plan to allow SuperCruising to another system then they shouldn't allow players to do it. It would be trivial to say that once you are X distance from the star you jumped in on that your nav computer complains about losing navigation telemetry and drops out of Super Cruise, only allowing a high wake at that point.

Problem solved. Could have been implemented before the game was ever released.

Instead they left an embarrassing bug like this remain in the game. It's a bug no different than falling through a mesh because you allowed a player to reach an area that they weren't supposed to and the models aren't complete there.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

the point is. If FD has no plan to allow SuperCruising to another system then they shouldn't allow players to do it. It would be trivial to say that once you are X distance from the star you jumped in on that your nav computer complains about losing navigation telemetry and drops out of Super Cruise, only allowing a high wake at that point.

Problem solved. Could have been implemented before the game was ever released.

Instead they left an embarrassing bug like this remain in the game. It's a bug no different than falling through a mesh because you allowed a player to reach an area that they weren't supposed to and the models aren't complete there.

Yep, that would be the ideal scenario, or something like it anyway.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Yep, that would be the ideal scenario, or something like it anyway.

Complicated a bit by where you set the supercruise limit, so I think would either not entirely fix the problem or would introduce another one. There are certainly systems closer to each other than the 0.22LY in-system distance for Hutton Orbital - even if you made that a special case exception since there isn't anything near it, I suspect there are system pairs in the core closer than the 0.02LY distance of a standard 650,000Ls binary.

 

[Whiterose]

My sandbox is always full of cat poo.

 

[Fishmanos]

What a ridiculous comment. All sand boxes only allow you to play within the actual game bounderies. There was a MMORPG sandbox called Mortal set in fantasy medieval world, I could say it's totally out of order that I don't have a spaceship, or a car, or have superpowers like flight in that game as it doesn't allow me to play the sandbox the way I want to play it.

They have said that it is possible to do, but it is a massive amount of work that only very few people would ever use, they would and I would rather they put their resources somewhere else.

I am not sure what do you see so ridiculous here.

I agree that there'll always be some game boundaries, but I am not talking here about flying elephants or giant Cakes on planet surfaces. If game design is about space and exploration, and it is possible to make a way from point A to point B, designers should have thought about the fact that certain people will try this to see what will happen - and that's exactly what I did. "Playing the way you want it" means being able to do most actions you should be able to do taking into account idea of the game, with some restrictions obviously because of the game engine design.

I also don't understand what do you mean by "massive amount of work"?
Implementing switch over between systems in half way between them while in supercruise is as easy as doing it by performing hyperjump. They could do a loop on the flight animation for 20-30 seconds and than unfreeze it, they could put some CGI animation indicating that you are crossing systems boundaries, heck, they could even put a static picture with the "Loading..." and that will be much better than not having it at all and having situation like depicted in the video.
That was about standard systems, without permit restrictions. But restricted systems is more or less same thing. It could be solved by millions different ways (a few proposed in posts above) most of which will not include almost any work, maybe couple of hours.

 

[morph113]

To be honest, I don't have any problem at all with how space travel is currently working in Elite Dangerous. The mechanic to jump from star system to star system has been in space games since forever and pretty much every game does it this way. I can't think of a single space game where truly everything is open without restrictions.

This way it works now, it's easy to limit player access to certain systems where you need a permit. I think of it more as a game mechanic in favor of the games performance and balance. I know you want to just have the possibility to cruise to said system. But how often would you do it? There would be literally only a very very small percentage of players willing to spend 10 hours to fly to another system in supercruise. And they would probably only do it once, like you did and then leave it at that.

What would be the other solution? To drop you out of supercruise after 8 hours of flight and 1 hour before reaching your target (unknown permit system)? I doubt this would be anymore fun. And allowing you to fly and load into systems which are placeholders for future content would be silly, how would that work?

 

[AnnuverScotinExile]

To be honest, I don't have any problem at all with how space travel is currently working in Elite Dangerous. The mechanic to jump from star system to star system has been in space games since forever and pretty much every game does it this way. I can't think of a single space game where truly everything is open without restrictions.

But that was perhaps the greatest design change facilitated by the DDF. We argued, long and loud, to be able to go anywhere, that 'rooms in space' was a bad thing, and FD agreed with us. From that FD came up with supercruise, and a genuine ability to go pretty much anywhere you want to go. FD should certainly have added the code to allow supercruise from one system to another - even if they had not thought of it during the supercruise design, the first unsuccessful attempt to do so was well before the game went GA. This was not a surprise. I would have no problem if the transition was cludgy in the extreme: after all, there should be no reason to actually do it in game, other than to see if it can be done. There have been 'sensible' attempts to use it (before fuel rats, people stranded in an unscoopable system tried to supercruise their way out), though even those could be mitigated by other approaches.

This way it works now, it's easy to limit player access to certain systems where you need a permit. I think of it more as a game mechanic in favor of the games performance and balance. I know you want to just have the possibility to cruise to said system. But how often would you do it? There would be literally only a very very small percentage of players willing to spend 10 hours to fly to another system in supercruise. And they would probably only do it once, like you did and then leave it at that.

What would be the other solution? To drop you out of supercruise after 8 hours of flight and 1 hour before reaching your target (unknown permit system)? I doubt this would be anymore fun. And allowing you to fly and load into systems which are placeholders for future content would be silly, how would that work?

I know the OP was specifically about permit systems, but we seem to have devolved into a discussion about supercruising between systems in general. In the case of permits I would have no problem with a cludgy wall here: get to the boundary between two systems and your navigation system refuses to go further.

 

[Mengy]

All sand boxes only allow you to play within the actual game bounderies. There was a MMORPG sandbox called Mortal set in fantasy medieval world, I could say it's totally out of order that I don't have a spaceship, or a car, or have superpowers like flight in that game as it doesn't allow me to play the sandbox the way I want to play it.

Back when I used to play World of Warcraft many years ago, one of my favorite things to do was to get into areas of the game that players weren't supposed to get into. Yep, I was an explorer in WoW too! I managed to get into some incredible places too, areas of the game that weren't quite finished yet but had map data already in the game, mostly areas that actually did eventually make it in with later patches and expansions. I found it fascinating to see developer stuff that they obviously were messing around with for fun simply because they assumed that no one would ever see it because it was "hidden".

That was back before flying mounts and such. Got into places like up and behind Loch Modan, on top of Ironforge and up to the Dwarf airport back before it was done, even got into that instance area in Stranglethorn before it was finished and implemented. Those were fun days.

I like games that allow the players to explore and discover stuff.