Update 18 | Update Notes

[Factabulous]

heh - people always demand to be told everything for the upcoming year+, but they won't even tell you what is happening tomorrow

 

[Northpin]

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:
View attachment 384889

That's one scenario case where Gravity Well message is silly and where the old message made more sense

It's an unintended side effect that cannot be done via normal gameplay, provides the user a definitive advantage, and requires actions that are unintuitive. That's pretty much the definition of exploit.

Is that FDevs stance on it? Have they addressed it anywhere?

Asking questions as this is the first I've heard its an exploit.

Given that dropping on a space station at full speed by abusing this quirk of the supercruise assist can make you literally fly through the space station, I would say that yes, it wasn't intended by the developers. (You can find videos of this if you search.) Most probably some kind of programming oversight.

To me, "exploit" is usually tied to cheating.
And in this particular case, SCA fast drop off, it doesnt seem like it's cheating nor it seem an unintended effect (in a negative way, like cheating)
Some of the actions done to brake (like the corkscrew maneuver at 5s) is also unintuitive and out of place compared with the regular FSD brake near gravity wells, but i'm not considering it an exploit

Also, i find it absolutely plausible that a nav computer would be able to have faster and more precise reactions than a human in terms of catching the right tiny fraction of a second to disengage the FSD at the very precise required moment
Like other assists - it has a safe mode - the normal 75% throttle operating mode, but also an override - nothing unusual.
Our current day cars have traction control, which works great most of the time, but also a traction control disable switch for the cases the said system will actually prevent your from doing certain maneuvers in certain scenarios.

Not at last, i always wondered how those pesky pirates were able to get out of supercruise at 3km from the station threatening to fry the greenhorn me.
After SCA was introduced, it was quite clear to me they had access to it waaaay before the Pilots Federation allowed it on its ships.

So yea,

 

[Northpin]

Titan Combat Rewards & Changes - Elite Dangerous

O7 Commanders, With the recent Aegis production of Guardian nanite torpedoes allowing commanders to successfully damage the Thargoid Titans we have so...

www.elitedangerous.com

View attachment 385034

I'm tempted to say NICE!!!, but i'm not so sure.

How about to make it an Open Only Event so its not limited to, for example, privately organized combat events like the AXI PG for example?
Also require it to have at least 100 participants for it to count?

 

[Northpin]

Pfft! What's the point of watching the livestream if they're not giving us all the info!

it's called teasing i guess, but i may be wrong.
luckily, it's only once per month so not an excessive amount of teasing

 

[DjVortex]

To me, "exploit" is usually tied to cheating.

That's a rather narrow definition of "exploit".

Bugs can be exploited, for many purposes. You could gain an unfair advantage in some manner (eg. in fights or in terms of money earnings), or it could allow skipping something that wasn't intended to be skippable, or it could allow getting somewhere faster than was intended. Speedruns exploit bugs all the time, and time-saving exploits can hardly be called "cheating" (unless it's considered somehow unfair against other competitors or players).

And a programming oversight, some kind of behavior that the developers didn't intend and is there by accident, counts as a "bug".

 

[Felix DiCestria]

I'm tempted to say NICE!!!, but i'm not so sure.

How about to make it an Open Only Event so its not limited to, for example, privately organized combat events like the AXI PG for example?
Also require it to have at least 100 participants for it to count?

Open instances seem bugged. I gave it a go but it's not looking worth it at this point.

 

[Darkfyre99]

To me, "exploit" is usually tied to cheating.

An exploit is merely a “beneficial” flaw in a game’s logic, rules, or a “good” bug. They inevitably make a game easier, but IME also much less fun. If it can be described as a “one weird trick,” it’s probably an exploit. ED is frequently described as a “boring grind” because it is littered with exploits that are easy to do, but take longer to perform, repetitive, and boring as frell.

Some of the actions done to brake (like the corkscrew maneuver at 5s) is also unintuitive and out of place compared with the regular FSD brake near gravity wells, but i'm not considering it an exploit

Once you understand how the proverbial “physics” of how the FSD works, it makes perfect sense. Maneuvers in Supercruise always bleed off speed vs straight line flight. A well done corkscrew maneuver keeps you in the at the edge of a small nearby body’s tiny gravity well, while still moving at the higher speeds permitted by a more distant, but much more massive, body whose massive gravity well dominates the rest of the region. In essence, you want to remain on the “peak” of the Hill Sphere until your speed is slow enough for a more traditional gravity braking maneuver.

It also helps if you consider the FSD as “applied Witchspace technology.” There’s “stuff” in Witchspace. Once you start viewing gravity braking as analogous to aero braking, it can much more intuitive.

Also, i find it absolutely plausible that a nav computer would be able to have faster and more precise reactions than a human in terms of catching the right tiny fraction of a second to disengage the FSD at the very precise required moment

True. But that’s not what’s happening using “this one weird trick.” You push your ship past the point of overshooting, and when you engage the SCA, you teleport to your destination, skipping over both the braking period and the part if your journey when you’re most vulnerable to interdiction. What should happen is that your ship overshoots, and the SCA then has to recover.

It’s identical to that “one weird trick” from FE2, where slower time acceleration settings can cause you to over or undershoot, but will instantly recover at the max setting.

Like other assists - it has a safe mode - the normal 75% throttle operating mode, but also an override - nothing unusual.
Our current day cars have traction control, which works great most of the time, but also a traction control disable switch for the cases the said system will actually prevent your from doing certain maneuvers in certain scenarios.

The SCA exploit is more analogous to engaging traction control, and your car teleports to your destination, skipping over the icy road.

Not at last, i always wondered how those pesky pirates were able to get out of supercruise at 3km from the station threatening to fry the greenhorn me.
After SCA was introduced, it was quite clear to me they had access to it waaaay before the Pilots Federation allowed it on its ships.

That’s just a bug that happens due to how trailing hostile NPCs spawn into your instance. They were close enough enough in SC that the spawning rules said they should spawn in your instance, but not so close they could initiate an interdiction attempt. The spawning rules say they should spawn right on top of you, but there’s no exception for nearby megastructures.

It’s one of the ways NPCs “cheat” in this game. A human following your low wake would spawn similarly, but your typical human player’s reflexes aren’t fast enough to react in time to take advantage of it. By the time they successfully drop into the low wake, you’ve already docked… or if you’re in deep space, waiting for them to spawn with your FSD spooled up and can instantly jump out, leaving them having to wait for their FSD to cool down then spool up.

 

[Northpin]

An exploit is merely a “beneficial” flaw in a game’s logic, rules, or a “good” bug. They inevitably make a game easier, but IME also much less fun. If it can be described as a “one weird trick,” it’s probably an exploit. ED is frequently described as a “boring grind” because it is littered with exploits that are easy to do, but take longer to perform, repetitive, and boring as frell.




Once you understand how the proverbial “physics” of how the FSD works, it makes perfect sense. Maneuvers in Supercruise always bleed off speed vs straight line flight. A well done corkscrew maneuver keeps you in the at the edge of a small nearby body’s tiny gravity well, while still moving at the higher speeds permitted by a more distant, but much more massive, body whose massive gravity well dominates the rest of the region. In essence, you want to remain on the “peak” of the Hill Sphere until your speed is slow enough for a more traditional gravity braking maneuver.

It also helps if you consider the FSD as “applied Witchspace technology.” There’s “stuff” in Witchspace. Once you start viewing gravity braking as analogous to aero braking, it can much more intuitive.



True. But that’s not what’s happening using “this one weird trick.” You push your ship past the point of overshooting, and when you engage the SCA, you teleport to your destination, skipping over both the braking period and the part if your journey when you’re most vulnerable to interdiction. What should happen is that your ship overshoots, and the SCA then has to recover.

It’s identical to that “one weird trick” from FE2, where slower time acceleration settings can cause you to over or undershoot, but will instantly recover at the max setting.



The SCA exploit is more analogous to engaging traction control, and your car teleports to your destination, skipping over the icy road.



That’s just a bug that happens due to how trailing hostile NPCs spawn into your instance. They were close enough enough in SC that the spawning rules said they should spawn in your instance, but not so close they could initiate an interdiction attempt. The spawning rules say they should spawn right on top of you, but there’s no exception for nearby megastructures.

It’s one of the ways NPCs “cheat” in this game. A human following your low wake would spawn similarly, but your typical human player’s reflexes aren’t fast enough to react in time to take advantage of it. By the time they successfully drop into the low wake, you’ve already docked… or if you’re in deep space, waiting for them to spawn with your FSD spooled up and can instantly jump out, leaving them having to wait for their FSD to cool down then spool up.

Party pooper

Now, in all seriousness, i can do the corkscrew maneuver, but i may still fail it sometimes - maybe more often than i'd like to admit.
And i pretty much prefer the SCA even tho some destinations have a weaker than expected gravitational well, which may lead to a surprise loop of shame.

Pretty much like, while i can stop my car in a ramp (for example while exiting an underground parking) and then resume driving without rolling back down a single tenth of an inch - i pretty much prefer my car to have a hill hold assist feature. Assists are made to make our life easier.

Like Arf said in the latest stream "we have a plan for something and then we give it to the community and then you do something totally different with it"
If FDev wasn't ok with it, they would have mentioned something about it, anything.

 

[Darkfyre99]

If FDev wasn't ok with it, they would have mentioned something about it, anything.

I doubt they’re even aware of it, and even if they were, I’m personally not bothered by it… anymore than I’m bothered by any of the hundreds of other “one weird tricks” out there people use out there. The only problem I have with them is if they become the “new normal,” like never ending cycle of ”gold rushes” that became the baseline for new sources of income, which in turn became the sources of new “gold rushes”… and only because it made my game far less interesting than it used to be, and lead to “You can buy my ship for that!” levels of reward.

But as I said above, if PowerPlay 2.0 becomes successful at encouraging PvP activity, this “one weird trick” is going to be in the crosshairs once enough haulers can effectively skip over the dangerous approach to their destination, and the SCA module becomes the new meta.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

this “one weird trick” is going to be in the crosshairs once enough haulers can effectively skip over the dangerous approach to their destination, and the SCA module becomes the new meta.

Wing nav-lock can drop you out into the station instance long before you even hit the gravity well, so would be the superior choice for that anyway for pilots not operating alone.

An even more coordinated group (it's Powerplay, after all) could do the following:
- put Fleet Carrier A in a nice parking orbit next to a delivery station (ideally one around a distant secondary star to discourage camping it even further)
- tens of delivery pilots fly to FC B in another system entirely
- FC A schedules a jump out; the second it departs, FC B schedules a jump in to replace it
- wing nav-lock means that the haulers are probably dropping into the station instance the moment they enter supercruise from FC B (and probably don't even need to depart FC B facing towards the station)

 

[galahad2069]

Wing nav-lock can drop you out into the station instance long before you even hit the gravity well, so would be the superior choice for that anyway for pilots not operating alone

Only if it does not happen to bug out, dropping you 30k behind the far side of the planet

 

[Morbad]

To me, "exploit" is usually tied to cheating.
And in this particular case, SCA fast drop off, it doesnt seem like it's cheating nor it seem an unintended effect (in a negative way, like cheating)

I do think that it was unintended for the fastest way to travel to be reliant upon SCA. Whether this constitutes an unfair advantage or not is debatable; we can all equip the SCA, but having the less skill dependent, and potentially more bot friendly, method provide an edge does seem out of place, given precidents set by other mechanisms.

Some of the actions done to brake (like the corkscrew maneuver at 5s) is also unintuitive

Increasing the length of one's flight path to extend the time one has to slow down always felt pretty intuitive to me.

Wing nav-lock can drop you out into the station instance long before you even hit the gravity well, so would be the superior choice for that anyway for pilots not operating alone.

Wing drop's range is, IIRC, ten seconds of travel time (and potentially thousands of LS of distance, if velocities are high enough) and there have been similar complaints in the past about it being able to abreviate SC travel and make ships harder (or easier) to intercept. It's a bigger deal than SCA, but it's also a clearly intended function that's required to make wing engagements practical (though the range could probably be reduced).

 

[galahad2069]

Wing drop's range is, IIRC, ten seconds of travel time (and potentially thousands of LS of distance, if velocities are high enough) and there have been similar complaints in It's a bigger deal than SCA, but it's also a clearly intended function that's required to make wing engagements practical (though the range could probably be reduced).

Fdev seem to have planted a remarkable number of bugs around navlock to balance out most its advantages tbh

 

[Morbad]

Fdev seem to have planted a remarkable number of bugs around navlock to balance out most its advantages tbh

I have a feeling they began consolidating network resources at some point to save costs and stuff that used to be fairly reliable started to fall apart...but there have certainly always been bugs.

 

[aRJay]

An exploit is merely a “beneficial” flaw in a game’s logic, rules, or a “good” bug. They inevitably make a game easier, but IME also much less fun. If it can be described as a “one weird trick,” it’s probably an exploit. ED is frequently described as a “boring grind” because it is littered with exploits that are easy to do, but take longer to perform, repetitive, and boring as frell.




Once you understand how the proverbial “physics” of how the FSD works, it makes perfect sense. Maneuvers in Supercruise always bleed off speed vs straight line flight. A well done corkscrew maneuver keeps you in the at the edge of a small nearby body’s tiny gravity well, while still moving at the higher speeds permitted by a more distant, but much more massive, body whose massive gravity well dominates the rest of the region. In essence, you want to remain on the “peak” of the Hill Sphere until your speed is slow enough for a more traditional gravity braking maneuver.

It also helps if you consider the FSD as “applied Witchspace technology.” There’s “stuff” in Witchspace. Once you start viewing gravity braking as analogous to aero braking, it can much more intuitive.



…

Regarding the manoeuvring slows you down an example I use a lot is when landing on planets after mapping.
If where I want to go is pretty much a strait run from where I did the mapping just coming up to 50% throttle and flying in a straight line is almost certainly going to leave me too fast to start the glide and crash me out.
On the other hand if I throw my ship about with barrel roles and skid turns etc I can at the same throttle setting enter the glide reliably.

I liken it to the S turns the space shuttle had to do too scrub speed during reentry.

 

[Schmack]

I've used navlock for trading back in the day when flying the pig. It's useful that way. My friend parked outside a station and I would just drop right in.

 

[Schmack]

That's one scenario case where Gravity Well message is silly and where the old message made more sense





To me, "exploit" is usually tied to cheating.
And in this particular case, SCA fast drop off, it doesnt seem like it's cheating nor it seem an unintended effect (in a negative way, like cheating)
Some of the actions done to brake (like the corkscrew maneuver at 5s) is also unintuitive and out of place compared with the regular FSD brake near gravity wells, but i'm not considering it an exploit

Also, i find it absolutely plausible that a nav computer would be able to have faster and more precise reactions than a human in terms of catching the right tiny fraction of a second to disengage the FSD at the very precise required moment
Like other assists - it has a safe mode - the normal 75% throttle operating mode, but also an override - nothing unusual.
Our current day cars have traction control, which works great most of the time, but also a traction control disable switch for the cases the said system will actually prevent your from doing certain maneuvers in certain scenarios.

Not at last, i always wondered how those pesky pirates were able to get out of supercruise at 3km from the station threatening to fry the greenhorn me.
After SCA was introduced, it was quite clear to me they had access to it waaaay before the Pilots Federation allowed it on its ships.

So yea,

Is it really a FSD "brake" though? I'd think the gravity well is the brake and the FSD is whining because of increased load. If it was a motor the frequency would decrease but perhaps the output frequency increases in an to attempt to compensate for the increased drag, like how a cruise control would do to engine RPM when a hill is encountered, even if the speed actually drops on that hill, as the cruise control is trying to maintain speed.

 

[Northpin]

But as I said above, if PowerPlay 2.0 becomes successful at encouraging PvP activity, this “one weird trick” is going to be in the crosshairs once enough haulers can effectively skip over the dangerous approach to their destination, and the SCA module becomes the new meta.

No danger here.
As Ian mentioned below, SCA fast drop off doesnt work like a wing nav-lock to allow you to drop off at bigger distance. You still have to reach the normal drop-off distance, just you reach it a bit faster, while the wing nav lock can potentially drop you at the station before hitting the gravity well (in case of a small planet)
However, SCA or not, you will still be slowed down gravity welled when close to the destination, which will give your interdictor a solid chance to close in and interdict you - which might not happen in the case of wing nav-lock

If anything, people will start winging up and use wing nav lock to bypass the last part of the journey to station

Wing nav-lock can drop you out into the station instance long before you even hit the gravity well, so would be the superior choice for that anyway for pilots not operating alone.

 

[CDD_Juriy]

Hi! After update 18 there is another bug. This issue has been raised here before.
But apparently no one paid attention. The problem is that there are no icons for mission items in the "Commodities Market".

It's very uncomfortable. We need to get a paper and pencil. Are we slowly going to go back to Elite №1?

Spoiler: PS)

PS)
I'll take this opportunity to mention another problem. Legacy had a nice "Map Mode: Carriers" option.
This was very useful for lone explorers away from the Bubble. I don't know why, but it didn't go to "Live".
I've brought this up before

 

[Factabulous]

Hi! After update 18 there is another bug. This issue has been raised here before.
But apparently no one paid attention. The problem is that there are no icons for mission items in the "Commodities Market".
View attachment 385176
It's very uncomfortable. We need to get a paper and pencil. Are we slowly going to go back to Elite №1?

Spoiler: PS)

PS)
I'll take this opportunity to mention another problem. Legacy had a nice "Map Mode: Carriers" option.
This was very useful for lone explorers away from the Bubble. I don't know why, but it didn't go to "Live".
I've brought this up before

Vote here https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/63464