TLDR,
I use the bus.
It is more convenient and greatly cheaper.
Toodly pipsky old beans
Travel Methods
- Thread starter avarusbrightfyre
- Start date
TLDR,
I use the bus.
It is more convenient and greatly cheaper.
Toodly pipsky old beans
That sounds like you want to take the activity and interaction out of travelling. I suggest that you invest in a budget tablet or a second monitor for multitasking. I use a tablet for Inara, EDDB etc. and it feels like having another panel in my cockpit. With a better UI.
I really don't understand this argument, and it always seems to crop up. Why do people here so strongly resist suggestions that involve streamlining boring and repetitive processes? I always seem to run into this type of comment when I make a suggestion about reducing the tedium of the game.
I've found an excellent solution to deal with any game I find tedious.
I can't speak for others but I would rather spend ten minutes jumping, fueling and looking at the systems I pass through than ten minutes waiting for a loading screen to deposit me at my destination. Maybe I'm a weirdo but I enjoy the zen-like nature of jump, honk, scoop, jump, honk, scoop.
You find it boring, I find it relaxing. Space travel is a large part of the attraction and I have no desire to automate it. I don't want my enjoyable gameplay taken away. I guess that's the mindset whenever this type of discussion crops up.
I can certainly understand that point of view. I just can't agree with it. If I'm traveling from one point to another, I'm not really looking at anything; I'm just landing at a star, swinging around it to line up with the next one, and then charging my jump drive for the next system. Why have to jump ten times when I have enough fuel to get it done in one? I'd rather spend travel time reading an article or watching a video or doing something interesting to pass the time. Instead, I'm forced to sit there glued to the controls because there just isn't enough time in between jumps to really focus on anything else. You're going to spend the time travelling regardless, so why be forced to spend it mindlessly repeating the same task over and over?
It's like flying a plane. Modern aircraft have autopilots, and even super enthusiasts use it extensively because, after a while, it gets tedious to sit there manually keeping the plane on course. We don't feel any less pleasure from flying when we hand the controls over to the plane because we're far more interested in the takeoff and landing part than the boring cruise in between. It's the beginning and end of the flights that are the fun parts about actually controlling the aircraft.
I just feel that in these super advanced spacecraft we're flying around in, we should have it a bit better than 21st century technology. I don't feel that providing a choice to players on how they get from place to place in any way inhibits the fun of others. Nothing says you can't still just jump from system to system like you do now. It would just be nice to have the option to minimize the required amount of interaction when you just want to get where you're going.
When you just want to get 'there' to engage in some gameplay, it would be nice to avoid so much jumpy, jumpy. Should you choose to of course - not obligatory.
But a lot of ED is related to the jumpy, jumpy - ships, engineering, guardian, fuel scoop etc; and I wonder what proportion of 'engagement hours' this adds to their business statistics. The guardian fsd was a bonus, even if behind the usual grind-wall. Sad that none of the ship manufactuers have delopment better FSDs - yet.
After all, it is not as if ED is an acutal simulation of space travel. Just a video game played for fun. So all this is arbitrary anyway.
But a lot of ED is related to the jumpy, jumpy - ships, engineering, guardian, fuel scoop etc; and I wonder what proportion of 'engagement hours' this adds to their business statistics. The guardian fsd was a bonus, even if behind the usual grind-wall. Sad that none of the ship manufactuers have delopment better FSDs - yet.
After all, it is not as if ED is an acutal simulation of space travel. Just a video game played for fun. So all this is arbitrary anyway.
The cool thing about a more direct setup is they still get the same total logged on time, they just reduce the mandatory manual control, so no problem from a metrics perspective. I'm all about more personal choice, not just shoehorning people into one way because I like it better. A system that allows you to choose your own way is always preferable.
Now that you're advocating for a choice rather than a change I'm not opposed to the idea. 
That's why I like it when the discussion is rational. We end up getting to a place where more people agree. I don't know that my initial post was specifically about more choice, per se, but my underlying rationale about things tends to lean that way and we've ended up there. Now we've cleared that up and can come up with better ideas.Now that you're advocating for a choice rather than a change I'm not opposed to the idea.
Who knows? Maybe in the far future as thargoid technology gets better understood, we might be able to navigate more freely through hyperspace with a different type of frame shift drive.
But, more realistically speaking, I believe we already have a very unique way that could be improved to increase ship interactions: the wakes.
Scanned wakes already let you follow your target, it's just not done so in a very efficient way to let you catch them, and very few gameplay elements lead you into using them. You bounty hunt by killing infinitely spawning pirates in a RES or mission USS. There are no chases across multiple systems because you found the wake of a high value target.
But, more realistically speaking, I believe we already have a very unique way that could be improved to increase ship interactions: the wakes.
Scanned wakes already let you follow your target, it's just not done so in a very efficient way to let you catch them, and very few gameplay elements lead you into using them. You bounty hunt by killing infinitely spawning pirates in a RES or mission USS. There are no chases across multiple systems because you found the wake of a high value target.
Now that's a cool idea. Especially if you're tracking someone who is using all their fuel to get to a refuel star and they have to sit there a bit. Gives a hunter time to catch up and snag them. I like it!
Another thought that just occurred to me is that if they ever implement ship interiors, this form of travel would be added incentive to utilize more of your ship. You can putter around your ship while you're waiting to arrive, and if they do cool things like manual maintenance and other things like that, it's the best of both worlds. Getting where you're going while you're taking care of business on the ship.
i fail to see how this is different from eve. in eve people is waiting for you at the jumpgates, too. and they are equally clueless as to who is going to pass. elite just uses virtual jumpgates, jumpgates without actual gates.
what makes eve dangerous is, well, that it is dangerous: on some routes you can expect danger but there is a reason to take them, if you get jumped on escape is hard, and if you are destroyed the loss is total. none of that happens in elite: all space is equally dull (gameplay wise), danger is optional to begin with, even then escape is trivial, and in the worst case scenario, if you are blown up either willingly or by sheer incompetence, you get about 90% of your ship back, nothing really happened.
also, the eve universe is much smaller, but more importantly has lots of choke points and is carefully crafted so interesting routes emerge among systems and regions of space where security levels actually mean something. in comparison elite is just a screenshot generator.
other than that, yes, i also would prefer that we could jump to any arbitrary coordinate in space, fuel or engine permitting. has nothing to do with encounters, though.
I think a couple of the ideas in this conversation start to flesh out making PVP more organic and less like Eve, which wasn't really what I was advocating anyway. I was more making the point that Eve makes you feel more invested because there is ever present danger. The method they chose to make it happen is irrelevant. The wake tracking idea specifically would make you not really safe anywhere, which I think would be pretty cool and bring about a bigger sense of adventure.
the method is irrelevant and then of course you go on making a thread specifically about the method, about how it compares to other methods, and how it makes the danger go away according to you.
which it doesn't, of course, which is exactly what i just said: it's not about the travel method, there isn't any danger. if there was any, gameplay could be designed around the jump mechanic, like eve does. since there isn't any ... what is this thread about now? i'm confused.
The thread is primarily about thinking about potential methods that could reduce the boring repetitiveness of the current short jump system. The added danger would just be a bonus. I was never advocating for making things safer; quite the opposite. Several of my responses state I think it should be more dangerous. Proposing a method is not the same things as stating it should be the end all be all solution. The whole point was to start a discussion about different methods or versions of methods and come up with some cool ideas. You never know when the forum community might come up with something the developers actually like.
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I think the problem is that "a hyperspace jump that lasts ten minutes" rather than "ten hyperspace jumps lasting a minute" is the opposite direction to what's needed.
If I'm supercruising from one place to another in-system, minute-long supercruises are absolutely fine - a bit to do lining up the acceleration, a few seconds of straight-line travel in the middle, some careful optimisation of the deceleration at the end. Do that ten times in a session, and I've been playing the game, hands-on controls, for most of those ten minutes.
... but a single ten minute supercruise trip to a station that far out ... nine minutes of it is spent basically entirely hands-off the controls waiting for the next thing to happen. That increases the amount of repetitive boredom. Players have literally fallen asleep while doing those supercruises and woken up half a light-year past their destination. At least with interstellar travel, repetitive as it is, you do at least need to stay awake enough to press some keys every thirty seconds, and you can use things like neutron boosts to both increase the interactivity and decrease the total time taken, take a break to scan the systems you arrive in and check out interesting things you see, etc.
What's needed is not to streamline these boring bits so that they require even less thought, but to make the whole process more interesting by providing more things to do on a long journey.
I think the original Elite / FE2 / FFE which dropped you out of hyperspace some distance out from the main star (a couple of thousand Ls) had the better idea, though more than just "where the drop-out point is" would need to change to make that work in Elite Dangerous as lots of other bits of mechanics currently assume you're dropping out near the primary star, and it's probably far too late to switch it.
I think that's one of the reasons the conversation has shifted toward giving people the option of doing either short jumps or long jumps based on how they prefer to travel rather than just making it one or the other. For people like me who can't stand being forced to do the same task over and over we can choose a more direct route that frees us up to do other things, and people who like to have a more hands on approach can choose to take shorter hops.