What is the point of the countdown timer while in supercruise?

[specialsymbol]

You're all doing it wrong.

Map a key to 75% throttle ("r" for example).
Go full speed otherwise and wait for the counter to reach 6 seconds.
Hit "r".
Profit.

 

[ocflyer]

It must take you forever to get into the station's instance.

Oh, and 7s until 1.9Mm, then full throttle. I like to live on the edge, last moped to nowhere style.

I do full throttle once my speed drops to 900km/s which usually happens around 5M to 7M. But this means that I have to have reasonably good timing to hit the Jump button.

 

[salad]

Rookies, full speed until 4 seconds then throttle to 0% and use the gravity well to slow you down!

 

[Lowe0]

Personally mine is the 6 Second rule

The timer is used to gauge when exactly to set your speed into the blue zone (75% speed), so you won't overspeed and overshoot your target destination.
I usually set speed to 75% when it hits 10 seconds.

I've never been able to get the blue zone to work reliably. I use it because it usually works (put it in blue, kick back, wait for safe disengage), but I often end up with overshoots without any understanding of why. I've tried varying my approach past the planet, directly towards the planet, or my usual attempt to pick up the orbit line and ride that in, but I still end up with occasional loops back.

 

[Navynuke99]

It would make a lot more sense if it were possible for players to experience time dilation due to the fact that we're traveling at relativistic velocities. The countdown timer reflects that as well, if I remember right.

 

[askavir]

Its not a timer or a countdown.

Its an indicator of how much time it will take you to get to the targetted destination at current speed.

Speed is always changing, and it constantly decreases as you approach the target, that's why it stays still.

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I've never been able to get the blue zone to work reliably. I use it because it usually works (put it in blue, kick back, wait for safe disengage), but I often end up with overshoots without any understanding of why. I've tried varying my approach past the planet, directly towards the planet, or my usual attempt to pick up the orbit line and ride that in, but I still end up with occasional loops back.

Fly at maximum speed, when the displays says you're 8 seconds away set speed to the middle of the blu zone. You will never overshoot your target this way.

It works down to 6 seconds, but 7 or 8 is safer until you get used to doing it.

 

[Commander Dave]

Yes, I do get that but think about it...when you set your throttle in supercruise the ship auto-calculates your acceleration, braking point and deceleration based on your throttle setting. Therefore, the computer can easily calculate the actual, correct flight time because it is controlling the parameters involved itself. So why not just make it a proper, accurate flight time read-out?

You misunderstand what's happening here.
Your ship is not auto anything. It's not controlling your speed.
Your drive is reacting to the local gravitational environment. The throttle is not actually a throttle. It doesn't work like you expect it to. This is one of the reasons people have a hard time understanding what's going on. It's not working like the throttle on a bike or a car.

The throttle works as if it's in reverse. As if it's a forced retardation device. The drive wants to accelerate, it wants to do that a lot. If it can it will accelerate at its maximum rate. It can only do that when it's not interacting with a gravity field. This is why it accelerates slowly close to planets and stars but extremely quickly indeed when out in "flat" space such as way off the plane of the ecliptic away from the bodies in the system.
So your drive wants to go, but the gravity of a body is stopping it. If you add another braking system then that will give you some control over the rate of acceleration. In some places you have more control, your "brake" has a bigger effect. In others (flat space) your brake has a much lower effect per unit of throttle travel.
When you are going fast your drive is more sensitive to the gravity of system bodies, it can sense the body from a lot further away, and so its acceleration drops. It's not throttling back. It's that it can't accelerate because the gravity of the body is preventing it from running flat out.
If you had a drive without a brake and in an area of completely flat space it would accelerate at its maximum rate until it reached a point where it was consuming energy at a rate beyond its design parameters and it would then fail.
It's like having a car where the accelerator is always flat to the floor. You control the car with the brakes only. When your turn off is coming up (planet) you have to apply the brake or you'll go whizzing past it and have to turn around and come back again for another go.

It's not a throttle. It's a brake. You don't have pre-control, you only have post-control.
You do not do your thing, and then the drive responds to your command. The drive does its thing, and then you have to react.

 

[Para Handy]

It's not a throttle. It's a brake. You don't have pre-control, you only have post-control.
You do not do your thing, and then the drive responds to your command. The drive does its thing, and then you have to react.

This seems crazy to me, are you taking this from some official source or is it your own pet theory (I don't mean that rudely).

When you increase throttle, there is a lag in engine response, similarly when you reduce it there is a similar lag. Now if you let the ttg counter go below 0:04 there is a runaway of drive power, is this what you are referring to?

 

[Bacalao]

The timer is infinitely more valuable than the distance.

 

[Aussiedroid]

If the timer does drop below 0.06 (usually due to SC stutter) - zero the throttle and point nose down 45 degrees until engine note drops, then pull back up and reset to 75%.
The "dip of slight embarrassment" is infinitely preferable to the loop of shame"

LOL that is great .. I am using that! +rep

 

[Bacalao]

You misunderstand what's happening here.
Your ship is not auto anything. It's not controlling your speed.
Your drive is reacting to the local gravitational environment.

It does control you speed, find a USS out in deep space and target it, you'll slow down, unlock it, you'll speed up. Also, it isn't gravity, if it was gravity we'd be able to slingshot ourselves across the system (a function I would love, it would add some skill to supercruise), we can't though because we slow down as we get closer, regardless of the fact that gravity is pulling us in the direction of travel. I wish it was gravity, I can only assume it is due to the mass of the object that the FSD can't compress it, at least that is what I tell myself, because if it is gravity then FD are going to have a really hard time with planets because there is a major misunderstanding of how that works.

Now if I could just get the computer to let me fly the ship when I have a destination locked instead of limiting my throttle, supercruise wouldn't be such a chore.

 

[Spirit X]

The timer is infinitely more valuable than the distance.

I really don't see how it's useful for anything other than a braking marker. It's a timer that tells you how long it will take to get to your destination at your current speed...in a game in which it is impossible to maintain your current speed. Sorry but the timer is dumb and it annoys me that it hasn't been replaced with something useful.

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It does control you speed, find a USS out in deep space and target it, you'll slow down, unlock it, you'll speed up. Also, it isn't gravity, if it was gravity we'd be able to slingshot ourselves across the system (a function I would love, it would add some skill to supercruise), we can't though because we slow down as we get closer, regardless of the fact that gravity is pulling us in the direction of travel. I wish it was gravity, I can only assume it is due to the mass of the object that the FSD can't compress it, at least that is what I tell myself, because if it is gravity then FD are going to have a really hard time with planets because there is a major misunderstanding of how that works.

Now if I could just get the computer to let me fly the ship when I have a destination locked instead of limiting my throttle, supercruise wouldn't be such a chore.

Yes!! Let us turn off the engine in supercruise and have some fun with gravity. I used to love doing that in Frontier.

 

[Spirit X]

Wow, the forum auto-merges double posts. I'm impressed.

But not this one. That's weird.

 

[jack23011]

Come on guys...don't disparage the Loop of Shame--it provides comic relief after the long flights of boredom. So, I say thanks to all the daredevils, fuel wasters, planet smashers, etc., for giving me a front seat to the crazy light shows as I approach my destination.

 

[CmdrJacks]

If you're accelerating out of control just point your ship at 90 degrees to your destination. You now have all the time in the world to slow down and if you're moving perfectly perpendicular to your shortest route your distance will hold steady (you will need to curve your path to maintain this). Do it right and there are significant time savings without ever getting stuck in gravity wells, it's simple geometry. This has been a public service announcement from Cmdr Ophidius.

 

[Kosmetas]

Because FD could!

 

[Bacalao]

I really don't see how it's useful for anything other than a braking marker. It's a timer that tells you how long it will take to get to your destination at your current speed...in a game in which it is impossible to maintain your current speed. Sorry but the timer is dumb and it annoys me that it hasn't been replaced with something useful.

Without some other tool or the computer handling the braking exclusively the time to target is all that really matters or else you're going to have to get really good at doing the DRT math in your head. Having a total time to arrival wouldn't be useful unless the computer takes you in and then it would just be informative, so as a navigational tool, the time to target (at current speed) is all that really is useful.

 

[Para Handy]

Wow, the forum auto-merges double posts. I'm impressed.

But not this one. That's weird.

I think it's because you didn't have a quote in it. I believe the idea is that you can more compactly answer different posts (but don't quote me ).

 

[CmdrJacks]

Yes!! Let us turn off the engine in supercruise and have some fun with gravity. I used to love doing that in Frontier.

No inertia in supercruise, where you point is where you're going. It's a good thing really cos you'd suddenly find yourself weighing more than the universe, which would be embarrassing.

 

[Danger Mouse]

Microsoft Minutes.

Just like loading bars! They always inaccurate and never work properly and usually stay on the screen completed while the program continues to load/download! I hate loading bars!!