Elite / Frontier Unexpected Mis-Jump Mechanics

[Manfred Belheim]

I know that one of the stories in the booklet that came with Frontier describes a mis-jump where the ship still comes out in a system, just the wrong one and "a little further out than usual" (or words to that effect). However, I didn't think this was possible in the game and that mis-jumps always ended up in interstellar space.

In addition, I always thought that the "you are here" marker on the galactic map would always stay fixed in place no matter how far you travelled, only moving when you made a hyperspace jump.

Yesterday evening I was trying some forced mis-jumps and triggered one while jumping from Anquphi to Beexda, so I was quite surprised when I noticed that the bottom right of the screen showed "Relative to Beexda A,B". I had a look around the sky and found them. Clicking on the revealed they were about 37,000 AU away! The "you are here" marker on the galactic map was out in interstellar space and not on top of the Beexda system, which it said was 0.59 light years away. I haven't checked, but I suspect that is probably about 37,000 AU.

I did save the game and I'm interested to see if travelling into the system will actually move the marker on the galactic map, although of course if it's 0.59 light years away then it's going to take the best part of a year in game time anyway, which might take a while even with the stardreamer at the maximum.

But yes I'm really surprised that a mis-jump can actually get you into an actual system, and that such a range affects the galactic map.

 

[Arioch]

Cool! I’ve only ever had a few misjumps (usually because I’d forgotten about annual maintenance) but never anything as close as what you’ve described.

You suspect right - 0.59 ly is 37312.24 AU

 

[Manfred Belheim]

I suspect there is still a binary switch that happens between coming out of hyperspace "in system" or "nowhere", but perhaps there is a check to see if your exit point is within a certain minimum distance to any system, and if so it will put you in that system at the appropriate distance from the central star.

It might well be that the "you are here" marker doesn't actually move after all, so I could thrust all the way back to the star in normal space, but still be shown as 0.59 light years away on the galactic map I'll give it a try tonight as I think it should only take about 45 minutes at maximum time acceleration to get there.

 

[Frankymole]

0.59ly should take less than 3 hours at 2,000c (the supercruise max without doing a hyperspace jump).

 

[Gwyther]

Never mind

 

[gunbladelad]

If memory serves me correctly, you simply hold shift while jumping to force a mis-jump. (If pirates could follow you between systems, then a misjump would be a great way to lose them)

 

[Manfred Belheim]

0.59ly should take less than 3 hours at 2,000c (the supercruise max without doing a hyperspace jump).

This is Frontier (Elite 2) from 1993 I'm talking about, so there's no supercruise I think the maximum speed you can go in Frontier (due to precision issues) is about 200,000 km/s, which is about 0.6c. If you try and go any faster than that you suddenly end up going in the opposite direction. So it will take nearly a year in game time. At 10,000x time acceleration that should still be under an hour though.

I have never had a mis-jump before. How do you force one?

I remember in the original game you had to move your ship upwards as you jumped. You then found yourself in witchspace surrounded by Thargoids.

If you hold down the Alt key while going into hyperspace you will force a mis-jump, which has a decent chance of breaking the drive as well. I never managed to get that method you mention working with the original game, even though it's mentioned on Ian Bell's site who is presumably a reliable source.

 

[Gwyther]

Never mind

 

[Gwyther]

Never mind

 

[Arioch]

Ah again. Maybe mention that beforehand lol.
Thought you was talking about ED.

The post is tagged “Elite/Frontier” - and this section of the forums is for the old FDev games (and original Elite, of course).

Watch out for the cobwebs and smell of boiled cabbage around these parts

 

[Manfred Belheim]

So after 11 months of travel, and everything on the ship breaking down, I made it into the middle of the system, but was still 0.59 light years away according to the galaxy map, so it looks like that doesn't move after all.

And this is the only time I've ever been able to jump into the same system I'm already currently in Interestingly it seems that doing so resets everything so any pirate ships that were in the system are replaced by new ones.

 

[Arioch]

So after 11 months of travel, and everything on the ship breaking down, I made it into the middle of the system, but was still 0.59 light years away according to the galaxy map, so it looks like that doesn't move after all.

And this is the only time I've ever been able to jump into the same system I'm already currently in Interestingly it seems that doing so resets everything so any pirate ships that were in the system are replaced by new ones.

I thought you were jumping into Beexda?

The Witchspace tunnel is when the new System gets loaded/generated, but in the case of misjumps I wonder how the game proceeds then? In your case it seems to have loaded the original destination System, but I wonder how it does it at other times? Nearest star, perhaps?

Probably something we can never test due to the distances and timeframes involved (unless it’s like your lucky leap), but very interesting nonetheless. Always cool to find out something new about FE2

 

[Manfred Belheim]

I thought you were jumping into Beexda?

The Witchspace tunnel is when the new System gets loaded/generated, but in the case of misjumps I wonder how the game proceeds then? In your case it seems to have loaded the original destination System, but I wonder how it does it at other times? Nearest star, perhaps?

Probably something we can never test due to the distances and timeframes involved (unless it’s like your lucky leap), but very interesting nonetheless. Always cool to find out something new about FE2

Sorry if I wasn't clear. So yes, initially I had Beexda set as my target when I forced the mis-jump, and still ended up "in" Beexda, just 0.59 light years out. Then I tried flying in in normal space, which took about 11 months, just to see what happened on the galaxy map. That never moved from 0.59 light years. Then I reloaded the save from when I first jumped into the system (because everything had broken down) to see what happened when I jumped to Beexda, while I was techchnically already there, and noticed that it basically reloaded the system and ave me a new set of random ships, rather than just moving me nearer the centre in the same "instance" (determined by looking at the dots in the system map. I hope that makes sense.

I would guess that if this ever happens at other times it would pick the nearest star, but I'm pretty sure I've never had a mis-jump that landed me in a system before. Normally there's just nothing there.

 

[Frankymole]

11 months?

 

[Arioch]

11 months?

No FTL intra-system travels in FE2 - it’s set nearly a century before the SuperCruise drives were invented, so after jumping into a System it can take from several days up to a few weeks to reach the destination planet or Station - even travelling at several thousand km/s. What FE2 & FFE have is the StarDreamer - it supposedly induces a hypnotic state to speed up the perception of time passing. In gameplay terms, at the highest setting it means in-game weeks can fly by in just a few minutes.