Two things I would like to see

[Markoz]

I don't know if any of these have been suggested before (my search may have been wrongly worded, so I'm sorry if they have), but they are a couple of ideas I have thought about often.

1. The option to turn the ships around in the dock without having to use ENTER HANGAR and RETURN TO SURFACE. And the action to be the same as the LAUNCH action, but without releasing the ship, once it's been rotated.

2. When selecting a destination in the Map, a visible line directly between the CURRENT LOCATION and the SELECTED LOCATION so that we can choose a destination along, or close to, that line, within the limit of the ships current JUMP RANGE.

At the moment, the most difficult thing for me to do is to try to select a System to jump to that is headed directly towards where I want to eventually end up. I usually wind up heading all over the place until I get with 98LY of the final destination when I can select it with a series of connecting jumps using ECONOMICAL ROUTE or FASTEST ROUTE. If the 1.1 update will increase the maximum distance for the route planner by ten times – up to 1,000 light years, allows for a route that long to be created, then suggestion #2 becomes moot. I guess. :/

 

[Tryst]

I agree. I can't understand why I can't plot a course from the LHS 3447 starter system to Sol or somewhere nearby. I'm also wondering why the routing planner didn't allow for more than 100LY range.

I can't really understand it, in the original elite, there were no "set" routes other than trade routes, there was just a jump range and you plotted your own course from there, follow the trade route or make your own. There was always a star within range you could jump to in order to get where you are going.

 

[Father Cool]

There are no 'set routes' in this game. Its limited by jump range. Granted the route selection tool is proper rubbish as it doesn't take into account your actual jump range when working out a route but you can override the route by choosing your own destination within your actual jump range (which you know of the top of your head right?). If you had a big enough FSD you could simply select Sol as your destination and jump directly there. 'There was always a star in range' is bull, I was prevented from travelling many times in the original Elite by my FSD not having the range to get where I was going. The stars on ED are as per the real galaxy so their ranges are determined by reality I'm afraid.

My suggestion to FD would be to fix the mechanic that sets you an indirect route when a more direct one is possible and 99.999% of the time is more desirable, eliminating the need to manually tweak where you are going to next.

 

[Markoz]

There are no 'set routes' in this game. Its limited by jump range. Granted the route selection tool is proper rubbish as it doesn't take into account your actual jump range when working out a route but you can override the route by choosing your own destination within your actual jump range (which you know of the top of your head right?). If you had a big enough FSD you could simply select Sol as your destination and jump directly there. 'There was always a star in range' is bull, I was prevented from travelling many times in the original Elite by my FSD not having the range to get where I was going. The stars on ED are as per the real galaxy so their ranges are determined by reality I'm afraid.

I know there are no "set routes". I have only ever encountered the problem of the jump range being longer than my ship can currently do a couple of times. On every one of those occasions, I had used the map to set a route, THEN I added more cargo. When I got to a jump out of my range, it was within range IF I had less weight. So I caused the problem.

My suggestion to FD would be to fix the mechanic that sets you an indirect route when a more direct one is possible and 99.999% of the time is more desirable, eliminating the need to manually tweak where you are going to next.

That would be nice indeed.

 

[Slippery Jim DiGriz]

On every one of those occasions, I had used the map to set a route, THEN I added more cargo. When I got to a jump out of my range, it was within range IF I had less weight. So I caused the problem.

Well not really, it's fault of ED for not having a "Default range to full cargo load" option. I often want to plan a route before I get the cargo because I will select cargo according to where I'm going so I always have to remember to slide the load pointer to max and then make sure it stays there.

 

[Tryst]

If you had a big enough FSD you could simply select Sol as your destination and jump directly there. 'There was always a star in range' is bull, I was prevented from travelling many times in the original Elite by my FSD not having the range to get where I was going.

What game did you play? It showed a sphere which was your jump radius, any star within that sphere was reachable which meant you could by-pass a lot of the jumps that the trade route, (yes, they did exist), showed on the way. Once there, the sphere showed any other stars within it's radius that you could get to. I think I only had to ever backtrack one jump once in the whole time I played Elite or Frontier but that was my own fault for doing it while half asleep and not checking the Z axis, turns out it was within range but on a 45 degree away from my route which took me just out of range of further jumps. All that's really needed is the same sphere to show you the max range of your jump. that way, you can by-pass some of the stops along the way that the route planner shows.

As for range of the route planner, it should be increased to show at least 200 LY. That's enough jumps for anyone in a single session. I just plotted a 34LY journey that has 19 jumps but I have a jump range of 15LY so more than half of those jumps are not really necessary. I can eliminate the first 4 jumps by jumping straight to the 5th one straight away. But, once again, without a pen and paper, you're going to be back and forth between the list on the nav panel and the galaxy map to which ones you can get to are on your route. The jump range sphere that we had in the original elite would eliminate that immediately.