Update 18 | Update Notes

[Sublime]

lol

Not to mention that the current 'gravity well' warning does not even make any more sense than the original 'slow down' one, probably because there have always been 2 different scenarios when you got the warning:

1. you were trying to reach a destination somewhere within a gravity well but you entered it too fast because you throttled down too late: this was the case when the original 'slow down' message made sense (telling you that you should slow down otherwise you will overshoot your destination)

2. you were trying to reach a distant destination in supercruise, but you happened to fly too close to a planet, which had a decelerating effect and prevented you from accelerating again until you have left the gravity well: in this case the spelling 'slowdown' would have made more sense (telling you that something is slowing you down)

Now we have a 'gravity well' notification in both cases, but that does not make sense either, since the warning will go away as soon as you have managed to slow down, while you are very clearly still inside the exact same gravity well, so why does the notification get removed?

It’s just a notification that there is a gravity well that is affecting the current acceleration that you’re trying to maintain.

The computer is saying: “I see you have your engines set to a setting where you want to have -this- acceleration. I cannot provide you with the acceleration you want because there is a gravity well prohibiting me.”

Once you throttle down enough, the message goes away because you’re no longer trying to reach an acceleration rate that’s greater than the engines can handle in that gravity well.

You’re still in the gravity well, sure, but the engines can handle what you’re trying to do so there’s no need for the warning message.

 

[Ozric]

No, what you actually experience in these cases is the lack of a sufficiently strong slowdown effect that could, you know, slow you down to the required speed.
It's not slowing you down enough, that's why you will overshoot your destination if you cannot find another way to slow yourself down. Like, for example, deselecting the station you want to reach, in which case your FSD might magically learn how to "function optimally" in order to decelerate you very quickly.

Yeah, precisely. And there's another typical case when the station is near a planet, you are approaching it too fast, so you get the "Gravity Well" message, you thottle down to no avail, but when you deselect the station, you all of a sudden become capable of slowing down. Re-select station, no "Gravity Well" message anymore, pure magic.

Not magic unfortunately, although maybe the FSD is. But as mentioned, the FSD works out at what speed you should be accelerating to reach your target and slow down safely. With a target it always works within those constraints.

If you have nothing targeted, there's nothing for it to work out, and so it can accelerate/decelerate relative to the effect of gravity it's currently under.

You can play around with Asteroid Bases/Outposts that are far away from a gravity well. Slowly approach and then "stop" (30km/s) at about 20Ls away. If you were to deselect it and then just briefly accelerate to 100% throttle you would shoot past it in a split second. If you have it targeted, you would slowly speed up.

 

[galahad2069]

You can play around with Asteroid Bases/Outposts that are far away from a gravity well. Slowly approach and then "stop" (30km/s) at about 20Ls away. If you were to deselect it and then just briefly accelerate to 100% throttle you would shoot past it in a split second. If you have it targeted, you would slowly speed up.

And you'd get a nice friendly message saying "Gravity Well", in the total abscence of any gravity wells anywhere around you.

 

[aRJay]

No, what you actually experience in these cases is the lack of a sufficiently strong slowdown effect that could, you know, slow you down to the required speed.
It's not slowing you down enough, that's why you will overshoot your destination if you cannot find another way to slow yourself down. Like, for example, deselecting the station you want to reach, in which case your FSD might magically learn how to "function optimally" in order to decelerate you very quickly.

The problem is the correct term for what is happening can't be used for censorship readings.

What is happening is that your FSD is $%^Ued due to distortion of space time by stuff.

 

[Shurimal]

Going too fast. IE: caught by the gravity well and speeding up uncontrollably. Which is what causes overshooting destination, which leads to the loop of shame.

The message actually shows up whenever your current speed is more than what you would normally get with throttle at 100%. The cause can be either going into a gravity well with throttle over the blue zone, meaning that you're not slowing down fast enough (even if you are, in fact, slowing down in pretty much all of these cases) and your speed goes over the limit; or when you engage navlock to a target which has no gravity well--signal source, station or fleet carrier--and your speed at this current distance is more than the ship would normally allow you at 100% throttle with destination locked.

"Slow down" as in a command is wrong for both these situations because you might not slow down fast enough even if you zero the throttle; the situation is outside of your control.
"Slowdown" as in you're losing speed is incorrect in the latter situation because you're not slowed down, you might even gain speed.
"Gravity well" is incorrect in the latter situation because there is no gravity well involved whatsoever.
"Overspeed" is the most correct description of the situations in which the message shows up--you're going faster than the ship's flight systems would normally allow you to go.

You can verify this yourself on the ship HUD throttle bar: on the left you have the blue optimal throttle zone; on the middle is your actual speed and on the right is the available throttle range. In supercruise the available throttle range bar changes length according to the maximum speed the ship allows you to go at in current conditions. It depends on gravity and how far you are from your locked destination. The middle wide bar shows your current speed and the crucial part is, it can go over the max allowed speed as indicated by the right thin bar if the maximum allowable speed decreases faster than your actual speed, resulting in ship going faster than it should be able to and the display of the previous "Slow down" or current "Gravity well" warning message.

 

[galahad2069]

It’s just a notification that there is a gravity well that is affecting the current acceleration that you’re trying to maintain.

The computer is saying: “I see you have your engines set to a setting where you want to have -this- acceleration. I cannot provide you with the acceleration you want because there is a gravity well prohibiting me.”

Once you throttle down enough, the message goes away because you’re no longer trying to reach an acceleration rate that’s greater than the engines can handle in that gravity well.

You’re still in the gravity well, sure, but the engines can handle what you’re trying to do so there’s no need for the warning message.

I know what the original message meant and I also know what the current message means. I just merely pointed out the logical inconsistencies in either cases
Neither the original 'slow down' not the current 'gravity well' wording is perfect, therefore none of them is better than the other because of the reasons I presented in the above posts, but the whole thing is utterly irrelevant, the message could even just read 'warning' or 'error' for all I care.

 

[yianniv]

The Vulture has no S1 hardpoints. It has two S3 ones.

Maybe he's cmdr Thrust in disguise and he's been flying MkII.

 

[Sublime]

And you'd get a nice friendly message saying "Gravity Well", in the total abscence of any gravity wells anywhere around you.

There are always gravity wells all around you, it’s just a matter of if you’re trying to do something within that gravity well that the engines can’t handle at that point. That’s when you get the message.

 

[galahad2069]

There are always gravity wells all around you, it’s just a matter of if you’re trying to do something within that gravity well that the engines can’t handle at that point. That’s when you get the message.

When you get the message near a signal source in a system containing a single star, the only gravity well around you is that of the star, and the warning has nothing to do with that particular gravity well or with how quickly you can decelerate in it. You'll only need to deselect the USS, throttle down and your FSD will magically become capable of slowing you down in the exact same gravity well where it wasn't capable of 1 second before.

 

[Shurimal]

You'll only need to deselect the USS, throttle down and your FSD will magically become capable of slowing you down in the exact same gravity well where it wasn't capable of 1 second before.

Probably because the logic of the FSD firmware is "if locked to a target, at X distance max allowed speed is Y and acceleration/deceleration rate is Z" but when no target is locked, it's "speed and acceleration are only limited by spacetime curvature; go wild, flyboy!". The goal was to make overshooting a target in the flat space (where you can go from 0 to 100 C in a very short time) harder by limiting both speed and acceleration when nearing it. But the side effect is that while you can't accidentally overshoot a target with instant 20 C/s² acceleration when you jump into supercruise 1 ls from it, the FSD also can't slow you down at 20 C/s² when you overshoot your 6 second arrival time target. Unlock the target, and now you can use the full acceleration/deceleration capability. That sounds suspiciously like a real world manufacturer would screw up the firmware of a piece of equipment

And here's a pic of a "Gravity well" in completely empty space where I'm going way faster than the FSD speed limit at only about 50% throttle:

 

[Darkfyre99]

Probably because the logic of the FSD firmware is "if locked to a target, at X distance max allowed speed is Y and acceleration/deceleration rate is Z" but when no target is locked, it's "speed and acceleration are only limited by spacetime curvature; go wild, flyboy!". The goal was to make overshooting a target in the flat space (where you can go from 0 to 100 C in a very short time) harder by limiting both speed and acceleration when nearing it. But the side effect is that while you can't accidentally overshoot a target with instant 20 C/s² acceleration when you jump into supercruise 1 ls from it, the FSD also can't slow you down at 20 C/s² when you overshoot your 6 second arrival time target. Unlock the target, and now you can use the full acceleration/deceleration capability. That sounds suspiciously like a real world manufacturer would screw up the firmware of a piece of equipment

It's probably produced by the same company who programs the docking computers...

 

[aRJay]

It's probably produced by the same company who programs the docking computers...

In which case filing a few of the cams and greasing the gears might help.

 

[nemolomen]

The message actually shows up whenever your current speed is more than what you would normally get with throttle at 100%. The cause can be either going into a gravity well with throttle over the blue zone, meaning that you're not slowing down fast enough (even if you are, in fact, slowing down in pretty much all of these cases) and your speed goes over the limit; or when you engage navlock to a target which has no gravity well--signal source, station or fleet carrier--and your speed at this current distance is more than the ship would normally allow you at 100% throttle with destination locked.

"Slow down" as in a command is wrong for both these situations because you might not slow down fast enough even if you zero the throttle; the situation is outside of your control.
"Slowdown" as in you're losing speed is incorrect in the latter situation because you're not slowed down, you might even gain speed.
"Gravity well" is incorrect in the latter situation because there is no gravity well involved whatsoever.
"Overspeed" is the most correct description of the situations in which the message shows up--you're going faster than the ship's flight systems would normally allow you to go.

You can verify this yourself on the ship HUD throttle bar: on the left you have the blue optimal throttle zone; on the middle is your actual speed and on the right is the available throttle range. In supercruise the available throttle range bar changes length according to the maximum speed the ship allows you to go at in current conditions. It depends on gravity and how far you are from your locked destination. The middle wide bar shows your current speed and the crucial part is, it can go over the max allowed speed as indicated by the right thin bar if the maximum allowable speed decreases faster than your actual speed, resulting in ship going faster than it should be able to and the display of the previous "Slow down" or current "Gravity well" warning message.
View attachment 384869

Exactly! I stand by my wording though which basically condenses everything you said .

My experience agrees with this interpretation...

Going too fast. IE: caught by the gravity well and speeding up uncontrollably. Which is what causes overshooting destination, which leads to the loop of shame.

And yes, while you are technically slowing down the whole way, you are still traveling faster than normally possible using ANY of these methods:

approaching at 6 seconds, or in the Blue Zone, or using SCA

My term "speeding up uncontrollably" can be rewritten as "decelerating more slowly than normal", thereby covering the same distance in less time, which is what is actually happening in the first place.

Also there's no such thing as the Loop of Shame it's faster than approaching at 6 seconds, or in the Blue Zone, or using SCA

I don't bother with the loop anyway, I usually end up making a "Pre-Arrival Maneuver"...to get back to the faster than I should be traveling but locked onto the target via SCA. Its faster than doing the loop.

 

[kosnett]

Was there some problem with the maintenance earlier?
I'm at the Vess Landing in Ahol. I'm getting zero missions and I can't board my ship, the bulkhead is down between the elevators and the hangar. Also noticed that Pioneer Supplies inventory didn't update. I've tried logging out, full quit and restart, no joy.

 

[Disemboweled Ego]

I had Geordi Blazkowicz before, now I have some random nerd as my carrier commander.

Before this patch I'm pretty sure the face for the odyssey one didn't update in that inbox message there (left screengrab is from horizons atm) and I was ok with that, but the faces are just such an obvious downgrade from horizons. No glasses accessories and a much smaller pool of repeated faces.

 

[Ned Flandalorian]

Was there some problem with the maintenance earlier?
I'm at the Vess Landing in Ahol. I'm getting zero missions and I can't board my ship, the bulkhead is down between the elevators and the hangar. Also noticed that Pioneer Supplies inventory didn't update. I've tried logging out, full quit and restart, no joy.

Looks like another bug that was previously fixed has returned.
Ahol is now in alert state so the concourse is closed. You must have been disembarked before the maintenance and now you're trapped - log out of the game, and from the main menu go to help->stuck recovery to be relocated.

 

[kosnett]

Looks like another bug that was previously fixed has returned.
Ahol is now in alert state so the concourse is closed. You must have been disembarked before the maintenance and now you're trapped - log out of the game, and from the main menu go to help->stuck recovery to be relocated.

Right you are, much appreciated. Note to self, never disembark before a maintenance period.

 

[varonica]

There are always gravity wells all around you, it’s just a matter of if you’re trying to do something within that gravity well that the engines can’t handle at that point. That’s when you get the message.

The entire universe is a gravity well, in reality that is because gravity extends to an infinite range in the actual universe, not in game though, so hence the warning. If gravity extended to infinity in the game you would never get the warning because you would never be able to enter a gravity well in excess of the speed it allows because you would already be in it. We have to work with what we have, and if you understand what the warning means then that's all that matters. Actually trying to fit a relevant explanation in the text box length assigned in the game would be impossible, so we have to take what we are given. Some people just don't get that and that's a them problem.

 

[Kria]

I am a low end laptop user playing EDO( nv850gtx, i5dc ) and have noticed a massive increase in frame rates after the update.
Whatever you did, thanks!

 

[Disemboweled Ego]

Also on my alt the horizons carrier commander also looks different in different menus:

I spent so much time doing HR to only hire dudes with sunglasses and my efforts were undone by odyssey and U18 dealt the final blow.