We could use more nav beacons

[Jibroni Gibironi]

If nothing else but for the sake of convenience, and making the game less tedious with the unnecessarily long flights to your destination. All they need to do is blanket each star system with more navigation beacons, that way, all I have to do is pick the one that is closest to my destination. It will take me five minutes to get to the station, instead of 15-20 minutes. I mean, these are basically akin to little futuristic VOR/TACAN stations, except in space, so flying would be less of a chore and more realistic (there is that word again) if I had a little more control over how I plot my route and exactly where I stop in each star system. This would also somewhat help solve the problem with griefer's as well, since they would have to take a wild guess as to exactly which navigation beacon you'll use. The default beacon selected would of course be the one closest to the sun for the sake of brevity, but really, if this were for real, these star systems would be chalk full of beacons to use.

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

Why not just skip the beacons and drop directly into the station? Save any of that irritating 'flying your spaceship' stuff that ED seems to want to force onto us.

 

[rrobes]

I say we should have more compromised beacons.

And let's not get started with the beacon/bacon thing. I'm not really allowed to eat bacon anymore.

 

[[PS4] Filthymick420]

Why not just skip the beacons and drop directly into the station? Save any of that irritating 'flying your spaceship' stuff that ED seems to want to force onto us.

Even better, lets just get rid of space flight and ships alike. Station to station teleportation! That way we can just switch from one station's menu to the other for no apparent reason because screw it lmao

OP, we aren't traveling through witch-space to nav beacons btw. Those are just something that exist in inhabited space. We jump to the star itself. So, what would the actual point of more nav beacons be? I get the impression you haven't yet left the bubble

 

[Hooplah]

Nav beacons are needed for specific play styles. Even then an experienced CMDR doesn't need them. It is more about new players trying to figure out the game. As a new player look for other options. Then you will never need a Nav beacon. It is a complicated game.

 

[Vikestart]

Right now long supercruise flights are boring as hell, but I hope that when we get space legs and can float around in our ships (as artificial gravity does not exist in Elite) or walk around in them (magnetic boots), things could get a little more interesting. Maybe require certain tasks to be performed manually instead of just clicking on a menu icon. Then you could use the time efficiently to do those tasks while doing longer supercruise travels.

Endless possibilities here, I hope Frontier will take advantage of that.

 

[Jibroni Gibironi]

Right now long supercruise flights are boring as hell, but I hope that when we get space legs and can float around in our ships (as artificial gravity does not exist in Elite) or walk around in them (magnetic boots), things could get a little more interesting. Maybe require certain tasks to be performed manually instead of just clicking on a menu icon. Then you could use the time efficiently to do those tasks while doing longer supercruise travels.

Endless possibilities here, I hope Frontier will take advantage of that.

There is a reason why magnetic objects aren't allowed on aircraft. It screws with the flight instruments. There is nothing about ED ships that I know of that makes me believe that somehow changes. If we will be able to float around in ships just to screw around with certain things...well, why exactly? What exactly are you expecting to be doing? What does that add to the gameplay beyond immersion? Because doing it might be a fun immersive experience for the first 10 or so times, but eventually it will likely get as tedious as flying over 200,000LS to your destination itself. At the most, there might be some maintenance work to be done while in flight, and I'm basing this on my own personal experience in commercial aviation as a Flight Dispatcher.

At the air freight operation I worked at, a mechanic had to be assigned to be each flight, in case something went wrong. Sometimes they could fix it while in the air, but a lot of the times it was still done when they landed. So one change to the gameplay that could occur in odyssey that actually makes sense is in how the ship takes damage. Some things can be fixed while in transit, while others can only be fully repaired at the hangar, with you only doing just enough to keep the ship working. I highly doubt we'll get such a drastic change in the way ships take damage to even make such gameplay a necessity though. We might not be able to travel around ship interiors at all, and we don't need to. If there is any change to the ship gameplay that we have now, it still might boil down to you simply pressing a button to get to that part of the ship, or something to the effect.

 

[Rubbernuke]

Yes, they are called FCs.With one you can drop anywhere you like.

 

[[PS4] Lorenzo Waringos]

Every time you log on you should be instantly awarded 500m credits, you could then instantly log off having had a short but successful game session.

 

[Ydiss]

There was some talk from devs many years ago about the idea of in system jumps to stars but I think in the end they just said they wouldn't do this.

I'd have thought it was an OK compromise tbh. I like flying from star to destination and planetary landings have added a further layer that takes time. But there's nothing fun about flying over 75kls.

The "why not just remove flying?" argument is slippery slope logical fallacy. It's a safe logical fallacy to use though because I don't think there's any risk of fdev changing this.

I think it could have been changed in an interesting way that was fun but still retained reasonably long travel times.

 

[Rubbernuke]

Originally ED was jumps point to point (i.e. SC did not exist at all).

 

[Screemonster]

There was some talk from devs many years ago about the idea of in system jumps to stars but I think in the end they just said they wouldn't do this.

I'd have thought it was an OK compromise tbh. I like flying from star to destination and planetary landings have added a further layer that takes time. But there's nothing fun about flying over 75kls.

The "why not just remove flying?" argument is slippery slope logical fallacy. It's a safe logical fallacy to use though because I don't think there's any risk of fdev changing this.

I think it could have been changed in an interesting way that was fun but still retained reasonably long travel times.

I'd honestly be fine with an in-system wake that could only jump you to stellar bodies. In supercruise it'd just be countdown followed by a couple of seconds of ludicrous speed.

 

[Hairychest]

Space is BIG! In ED they very handily allow us to move between systems relatively quickly. Once there, most elements are within 10kls, there are some where you are talking considerably more, I think I came through one this week that had a grouping about 300kls. My choice if I want to head out there AND it should take time to get there, it is a LONG way from the main entry point. I think the logarithmic system for supercruise works pretty well.

In short, what I am saying is nothing needs to change.

You could make changes to in-system travel but it would break other aspects of the game like NPC interdicts etc.

 

[Ydiss]

I'd honestly be fine with an in-system wake that could only jump you to stellar bodies. In supercruise it'd just be countdown followed by a couple of seconds of ludicrous speed.

Yeh, then an extended delay before you could use it again (30s).

There would still be a lot of travelling to do. I'd guess on average we probably travel fewer than 1000ls most trips. The idea that 300kls trips are somehow enjoyable would be challenged in practice if we were able to jump to the nearest star (I'd guess very few would opt for the "more fun" and would still enjoy the ~5kls travel time plus potential orbital navigation thereafter).

You'd need to consider the impact on super cruise mechanics. Would it ruin interdiction? I'd suggest it wouldn't. I'd suggest interdiction interrupts the jump sequence (and the usual time delays are imposed) so it'd be better than the target simply high waking, which they can do now anyway. You'd just need a wake scanner as usual to follow them to their destination.

It'd have a positive impact on USS hunting. Jump in, read the nav beacon, head out, hunt the USS. There's a high grade 500kls away? No problem, jump to the star and travel the remaining kls. Just logged in? No USS visible? No problem, jump to the star with a nav beacon and get scanning.

Trading? Positive impact.

Missions? Positive impact.

There's still going to be plenty of travel time. And if you're desperate to still travel 500kls you still could. Fdev could even add some lore reason the star jumps are prohibited in Alpha Centauri so the Hutton Orbital trek still remains intact...

 

[peteuplink]

Probably an unpopular opinion here, but I've always thought that nav beacons should be near all stars in a system and (and here's the possibly unpopular bit) you should enter a system near your chosen beacon dropped out of supercruise. This would open up some pirate gameplay as there could be pirates hiding near the beacons waiting to ambush ships. Obviously not in all systems, but low secuirty and anarchy systems would be riskier than med or high security systems. In the higher security systems there could be system security ships on patrol as well as navy ships and checkpoints in systems at war.

 

[777Driver]

At the air freight operation I worked at, a mechanic had to be assigned to be each flight, in case something went wrong. Sometimes they could fix it while in the air, but a lot of the times it was still done when they landed. So one change to the gameplay that could occur in odyssey that actually makes sense is in how the ship takes damage. Some things can be fixed while in transit, while others can only be fully repaired at the hangar, with you only doing just enough to keep the ship working. I highly doubt we'll get such a drastic change in the way ships take damage to even make such gameplay a necessity though. We might not be able to travel around ship interiors at all, and we don't need to. If there is any change to the ship gameplay that we have now, it still might boil down to you simply pressing a button to get to that part of the ship, or something to the effect.

We have an AFMU & Limpets for enroute repairs, will likely get some sort of hand tools for external repairs in the next update, Power plant and integrity repairs is like the Boroscope stuff your guys do during C & D checks.


Regarding jumps, I like your idea, but the lore behind current FSD's is that they lock on to high mass targets, the nav beacon is not acting like some futuristic VOR or RNAV system.

Am fairly certain when carriers where designed, they wanted to kill off some of the QoL complaints from old school cmdrs, hence why we have point to point jumps and less than a minute in SC for most of the work. Gotta pay 5 bill for the luxury though.

Personally I would like to drop out of warp, and see planets rushing at me in VR, some variation on long trips in a regular ship.

I doubt very much that they would add extra nav beacons for point to point jumps, they are part of the game for fast downloading system data, and a place to hunt ships.

Geek fact, for interstellar navigation (and likely insystem navigation in the future) Pulsars & Neutron stars will be used for RNAV.

 

[Old Duck]

Why not just skip the beacons and drop directly into the station? Save any of that irritating 'flying your spaceship' stuff that ED seems to want to force onto us.

Good idea! TBH, I personally would love the ability to hyperspace to a station with the caveat that it drops you much further away. "Flying your spaceship" to me is more interesting in normal space than supercruise, and I actually like watching a tiny station in the distance grow bigger over time as you approach it. This would give us reasons to do crazy things like trade in a Mamba or Orca (speed matters in normal space).

This would also have made pirating / ganking more interesting, since pirates / gankers would have to patrol normal space and actually catch their prey without the use of easy-mode interdictors. This is the way ED should have been, not this magic supercruise which makes zero RW sense

 

[CptArcher]

Yeh, then an extended delay before you could use it again (30s).

There would still be a lot of travelling to do. I'd guess on average we probably travel fewer than 1000ls most trips. The idea that 300kls trips are somehow enjoyable would be challenged in practice if we were able to jump to the nearest star (I'd guess very few would opt for the "more fun" and would still enjoy the ~5kls travel time plus potential orbital navigation thereafter).

You'd need to consider the impact on super cruise mechanics. Would it ruin interdiction? I'd suggest it wouldn't. I'd suggest interdiction interrupts the jump sequence (and the usual time delays are imposed) so it'd be better than the target simply high waking, which they can do now anyway. You'd just need a wake scanner as usual to follow them to their destination.

It'd have a positive impact on USS hunting. Jump in, read the nav beacon, head out, hunt the USS. There's a high grade 500kls away? No problem, jump to the star and travel the remaining kls. Just logged in? No USS visible? No problem, jump to the star with a nav beacon and get scanning.

Trading? Positive impact.

Missions? Positive impact.

There's still going to be plenty of travel time. And if you're desperate to still travel 500kls you still could. Fdev could even add some lore reason the star jumps are prohibited in Alpha Centauri so the Hutton Orbital trek still remains intact...

Space is big and distant destinations are a snowflake deterrent, keep it that way

 

[Para Handy]

If nothing else but for the sake of convenience, and making the game less tedious with the unnecessarily long flights to your destination. All they need to do is blanket each star system with more navigation beacons, that way, all I have to do is pick the one that is closest to my destination. It will take me five minutes to get to the station, instead of 15-20 minutes. I mean, these are basically akin to little futuristic VOR/TACAN stations, except in space, so flying would be less of a chore and more realistic (there is that word again) if I had a little more control over how I plot my route and exactly where I stop in each star system. This would also somewhat help solve the problem with griefer's as well, since they would have to take a wild guess as to exactly which navigation beacon you'll use. The default beacon selected would of course be the one closest to the sun for the sake of brevity, but really, if this were for real, these star systems would be chalk full of beacons to use.

As I pointed out to you elsewhere - nav beacons play no part in where you arrive. H-jump arrival is determined by the largest mass in the system.

 

[Ydiss]

Space is big and distant destinations are a snowflake deterrent, keep it that way

It's never likely to change and I'm not in charge of changing it so I'll definitely keep it that way, don't worry. I like talking about ideas though, particularly when Sandro himself actually suggested it as an option once. Albeit not one I think we'll see. Still, if we can't talk about stuff, what's the point of forums?

But please do elaborate on this. Explain to me your definition of snowflake, their negative impact on the game, an example of when your enjoyment of a game was reduced because you encountered one and how distant destinations deter them (deter them from what, exactly)?

For further clarification, please go into detail why this is a benefit to us.