What would be awesome is a kind of ultra cruise
It would fast travel from different stars in systems (direct from star A to star B) and would look like the hyperspace effect used in the capital ship battle video from a while back
Hah, while that effect is absolutely staggering, I think for impact/awe-inspiring reasons it's likely to be reserved for things with gigantic mass, like those capital ships.
Oh, I just had a thought! Regarding the potential of micro-jumps: what if, hypothetically, when people did micro-jumps, instead of dropping out into supercruise at the end like a hyperspace jump, they instead drop into normal space? Suddenly there'd be a natural in-lore explanation for all the ships in normal space at Nav Beacons... the beacon is actually there as a reference point for other people in the system to know where the system jump-in is, rather than for people outside the system arriving. After all, there's no nav beacons at unexplored stars out beyond inhabited space, so they're clearly not required to jump into the system. The Nav Beacon as a traffic marker? And people micro-jumping back to the original jump-in star from within the system are all the ships at the Nav Beacon, waiting for their FSD cooldowns to complete (or people there to jump them).
In gameplay terms, there could be a fairly long FSD cooldown after a micro-jump (like after an interdiction), and the drop to normal space means people then have a decision to make - do I risk ending up at a known choke-point, waiting for my FSD cooldown, or do I just supercruise the trip instead? Takes longer, and I'm visible in supercruise - but the dynamics might change with more pirates waiting in normal space at beacons, so there's less watching supercruising ships. To a pirate, anyone who jumps in on the beacon is guaranteed to have a long FSD cooldown, and you're saved the trouble of interdicting and the damage that can result, so it creates opportunities for them to ambush impatient people who would rather micro-jump than supercruise. The cooldown also does something to enforce the sense of size in space - in lore terms, you
can choose to use your FSD drive to make this kind of jump, but the nearby mass once you're in system means you're overcharging it to overcome the masslock - hence the long cooldown. You're asking a lot of your FSD to basically do a hyperspace jump (even a miniature one) within the mass of a system and it needs a long time to recover - and it gives you a sense of cost to jumping such a distance instead of letting your FSD operate in the far less demanding supercruise mode to cover that distance instead. Even more so if there are obvious audio cues and other real effects - the whine of the FSD sounding like its going to tear itself off its bearings when you spool up, and then winding down with a groan at arrival, and your heat rising alarmingly - unlike say a normal charge, it increases it by 50% (or a graded increase based on FSD rating, but far more than charge to hyperspace or charge to supercruise).
It also explains what kind of jump capital ships might be making within system currently.
Hm, I better stop rambling.
