Thoughts on changing Supercruise drops

Many of you may have already experienced this:


You drop from supercruise and when you drop into the instance it's empty... then the NPC's spawn in and life commences due to your presence there.

this happens with stations, combat zones, RES etc



But I never have this happen on a planet surface near a station, and I think that is owing to the "Glide" mechanic dropping you into normal space (and the instance) a bit of a way out and letting you hurdle in at 2500m/s (so things "spawn" out of visual range and sensor range)


I had the following thought, please let me know what you the community think



One solution (I believe) to the prespawning issue is, we could have the same type of "drop in" that glide offers for normal SC drops....

In other words you drop like 30km from a station in glide and hurdle toward the station at 2500ms like glide and have the slowdown to normal speed like 4 seconds later at 10km...

That way things can spawn in normal space while you are gliding in and also players would come into your radar in a cooler way than just popping out of SC like it is now... They would appear at distance and speed in with contrails behind them.

This would not take much, if any time away from how long it takes to drop as you can use this time to position yourself better in front of the slot during glide (if approaching from the wrong side)



it will be great to have the galaxy feel like it exists even when you are not there ( "immersion" :p )

also it would remove some of the... Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. BAM station in your face situation. and make the entry look a bit more seemless



and who knows it may even be a quality of life thing that makes positioning post SC drop easier

Thoughts? is this something you would like FDEV to consider?
 
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I concur. Having P2P infrastructure means you'll have to hide all these in order to make the experience more seamless. It would be nice to have seamless transition from supercruise into stations even if it has to hide behind a glide animations just to make the game more immersive.
 
+1, excellent idea, would be ideal to have the drop to glide be instantaneous & use as long a glide time as necessary to eliminate the standstill load-in. That's one of the biggest immersion breakers in the game, IMO.
 
If I recall correctly, using the Frame shift glide for approaches to stations came up in a Q&A before and it was a "idea worth investigating"

It might just be down the list of improvements, that will appear in one patch, just like the new station interiors, White Dwarf, Neutron star, and Hyper space revamps.
A Question of how many work hours will it take and how many do we have spare.
 
If I recall correctly, using the Frame shift glide for approaches to stations came up in a Q&A before and it was a "idea worth investigating"

It might just be down the list of improvements, that will appear in one patch, just like the new station interiors, White Dwarf, Neutron star, and Hyper space revamps.
A Question of how many work hours will it take and how many do we have spare.

I remember that question, and I recall it relating pop in effect we have at the moment where the station goes from a glowing dot instantly to a massive thing in front of you, much like our current hyperspace.

I thought my use of existing game mechanics to augment our current visuals and gameplay was noteworthy because it should take minimal dev time to port over the planet drops to SC space drops (at least I think :p )
 
I would like to see this added when coming out of supercruise. But what happens if you do emergency exit? does it work the same way? Or do you start spinning like now.

But I agree with OP that when you enter any area its empty and then it starts refilling npc. It has 1 big negative side and it is that you know instantly if a commander is in the system/res/station/CZ when there are npc`s already flying. It looks cool but you know its because there is already a player :(

Even if we wouldn´t get the glide thingy I wish that the npcs would be doing something already instead of just spawning.

But I know that doing these "simple" things takes     load of times and they have tons of stuff what they want to implement. And usually they have to cut stuff like this. I wish more people would buy elite so they could hire more skilled people to work on the game :D
 
I would like to see this added when coming out of supercruise. But what happens if you do emergency exit? does it work the same way? Or do you start spinning like now.

But I agree with OP that when you enter any area its empty and then it starts refilling npc. It has 1 big negative side and it is that you know instantly if a commander is in the system/res/station/CZ when there are npc`s already flying. It looks cool but you know its because there is already a player :(

Even if we wouldn´t get the glide thingy I wish that the npcs would be doing something already instead of just spawning.

But I know that doing these "simple" things takes load of times and they have tons of stuff what they want to implement. And usually they have to cut stuff like this. I wish more people would buy elite so they could hire more skilled people to work on the game :D

Emergency exits can be as they are currently, and it will better explain why you take hull damage when doing an emergency drop. you didn't get a chance to glide, so your ship was subjected to immense force.

Interdictions will need to be thought about too, and they can exist in its current state, or perhaps have a glide like exit where both participants are put in {insert distance} from each other
 
If I recall correctly, using the Frame shift glide for approaches to stations came up in a Q&A before and it was a "idea worth investigating"

It might just be down the list of improvements, that will appear in one patch, just like the new station interiors, White Dwarf, Neutron star, and Hyper space revamps.
A Question of how many work hours will it take and how many do we have spare.

In one of the streams this weekend, someone praised the hyperspace animation with the target star at the end of the tunnel and connected it to a question about if it was possible to do the same thing with station approaches.

Sandro said it was a very different kind of transition but it was something worth looking at in the future, and it sounded like they had some idea as to what to do about them. I got the feeling from his facial expression they were already talking about some way to make the station approach better because he looked really confident saying it might certainly possible to make it better.

Now it never occurred to me to use the glide mechanic for this before (I'm an idiot sometimes) but maybe this is the exact thing they are thinking about using for one of the future releases.
 
Count me in as one of those who would love to see this as an improvement. No mor having to spiral into a planets' gravity well for an optimal mail slot approach. I would +1 but I'm on my mobile
 
In one of the streams this weekend, someone praised the hyperspace animation with the target star at the end of the tunnel and connected it to a question about if it was possible to do the same thing with station approaches.

Sandro said it was a very different kind of transition but it was something worth looking at in the future, and it sounded like they had some idea as to what to do about them. I got the feeling from his facial expression they were already talking about some way to make the station approach better because he looked really confident saying it might certainly possible to make it better.

Now it never occurred to me to use the glide mechanic for this before (I'm an idiot sometimes) but maybe this is the exact thing they are thinking about using for one of the future releases.

I'm a South African pleb on a 4mb/s line, so the only facial expressions I saw was this :p :p :p

jMDQYFL.jpg
 
Whilst I agree the glide mechanic is more immersive than suddenly having the wildlife pop in to existence - I do appreciate the *speed* at which you drop out of SC and then go dock at the station, versus the extra length of time going in to orbital cruise -> glide -> Normal space, to dock at a planetary-based station.

Not complaining, but I prefer doing missions/trading in space stations due to the reduced landing times :)
 
Whilst I agree the glide mechanic is more immersive than suddenly having the wildlife pop in to existence - I do appreciate the *speed* at which you drop out of SC and then go dock at the station, versus the extra length of time going in to orbital cruise -> glide -> Normal space, to dock at a planetary-based station.

Not complaining, but I prefer doing missions/trading in space stations due to the reduced landing times :)

What I'm suggesting is to not have the "space glide" take any more time that a normal drop would otherwise,

It could potentially decrease the time spent by allowing you to use the glide to better line up with the slot if you drop out on the wrong side of the station...

in other words, "Space glide" will last for a max of 45 seconds, and end the moment you come within a certain distance from station,

So with space glide you could swing wide (outside of the drop/slowdown range) and slingshot around the station to line up with the mail slot.

I hope that better explains

TLDR: Glide directly to station = ~4 seconds, but can be extended (if you choose) to about 45 seconds slingshotting around station outside of no fire zone


Also what makes surface landing so slow is the extreme supercruise slowdown on the surface and having to align in the goldilocks zone of angular glide
 
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Whilst I agree the glide mechanic is more immersive than suddenly having the wildlife pop in to existence - I do appreciate the *speed* at which you drop out of SC and then go dock at the station, versus the extra length of time going in to orbital cruise -> glide -> Normal space, to dock at a planetary-based station.

Not complaining, but I prefer doing missions/trading in space stations due to the reduced landing times :)

How about some 'superglide' or something not specific to stations but used for belts and USSs as well?

At the ordinary drop distance (depending on gravity from surrounding objects, just like now), it'll say 'safe disengage ready' and if you disengage, you'll get into a kind of glide but much faster than 2500 m/s initially, gradually slowing down while giving you some control. Obviously just like glide, you'll have to be facing some cone extending from the station (just like the approach angle requirements for glide to engage).

This would make approach require at least some skill,

leave time for corrections,

you could easily glide past the station if you are approaching from the backside and as OP said

It would make the ambient NPC spawning much much better.

A generalized approach GUI could be devised, just like they did for orbital flight, engaging automatically when you are flying near approachable objects under a certain speed.
 
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