What mini-games and time-savers do you do?

[zarrazee]

o7 all

As we know, there's a fair bit of flying about. Within Elite, what mini-games do you play, or what time saving tricks do you have to make the most of this "downtime"?

I've a few:

• When launching, I select "Launch" then select my next destination whilst the ship is going up on the lift
• Whilst waiting to jump to another system, I try to align the centre dot of the HUD perfectly in the target circle
• On short <1K LS flights, I do all my material housekeeping
• On long >100K+ LS flights, I'm looking at new potential trade routes, planing an explo trip etc
• When approaching a station (et al) I come in at 6 secs, avoid "Slowdown" as much as possible, line up the station slot and try to avoid the loop of shame
• When coming in to dock, I try to get through the slot without scraping the sides/other ships
• When landing, I don't ram it onto the pad, I try to park as smoothly as possible using all 6 DOF.

Looking forward to your thoughts CMDRs

 

[YinYin]

• I select enter hangar to be turned asap and launch before the elevator has even reached the bottom if my business with station services is done before then.
• I turn my ship at 50% throttle even in super cruise.
• I always fly straight away from gravity wells first for maximum cruise speed and minimum travel time.
• I jump systems to cut down intrasystem cruise time (instead of flying back towards/past the entry point).
• I select my next destination while super charging.
• I engage my FSD as soon as I'm charged within an ejection cone.
• I boost and deploy landing gear for tighter turns. Most commonly to slip into the mail slot at 90° from drifting right past it.

 

[JLS1981]

On short flights, I'll generally take the time to log information into my database (I'm a PS4 player, EDSM is not a luxury I have, so I keep my own records for future reference)...

Long flights, I'll run through a check of all my ship modules then start working on plotting the next leg of my exploration depending on what I want to see or find.. I especially like visiting Class B star systems just for some of the visuals you can get.. so I'm looking for those along my direction of travel.

 

[Ktonos]

1. Sometimes when bored after consecutive jumps, I try to pass each star as close possible but before heat raises above 101%
2. When interdicting wings of 3 easy target npcs I try to finish them off before the FSD cools down.
3. When I fly in SC towards a planet and its obvious I will miss my drop because I am speeding, I step on it and try to fly passed it as fast as possible but as close as possible. Borderline avoiding impact
4. When landing in a starport, 300-400 m before the pad I deploy gear and start rolling and don't stop until I am aligned to the pad's center. Now if it comes that I am aligned but ... upside down, I turn and do it again for a couple of times. Until I make it, I get bored or landing time is close to be up.

 

[DNA-Decay]

I try to figure out which way to approach a planet so that my pad will be directly in front of me when I arrive
at the port.

Adjust the approach to arrive at 45 degrees.

When I have to travel to the far side repeatedly, I try to stay high as long as possible for maximum speed.

 

[JLS1981]

I try to figure out which way to approach a planet so that my pad will be directly in front of me when I arrive
at the port.

Adjust the approach to arrive at 45 degrees.

When I have to travel to the far side repeatedly, I try to stay high as long as possible for maximum speed.

I'm kind of OCD about that as well.. lol

I'll come in between the planet and the orbiting station, level off along the orbital plane and drop out of cruise inside the station's orbital path.. most of the time I drop out pretty close to lined up on the mail slot.

 

[IndigoWyrd]

There is only one mini-game to play: The Interdiction Game.

I play. I play to win.

I win, a lot.

But for time-savers...

The Docking Computer:

I've never had any of the problems people claim to have with this, so I must be doing something wrong. My time-saver is to make my approach to a station, request docking, let the DC take over, plot my return-trip to where ever I happen to be hauling tons of whatever I'm hauling tons of, and be ready to go as soon as I offload my current haulage. It works well for me.

 

[pippo]

No time savers... More like time wasters...

But mini-game wise, one of my favourite is to flight in super cruise like a regular stellar object rather than like a ship. I've got "orbit lines" always turned off but also mapped to one of my Hotas buttons and set it on when supercruising in a populated system, never flying in a straight line but travelling as a comet would do, for example, following the natural curves dictated by the alignment of planets and even sometimes going fully around a planet before reaching the Starport... Very cool with headtracking especially.

 

[Riverside]

I always put my ship in the correct orientation compared to the Galactic plane before jumping. By correct I mean the same up/down plane as the Galactic map. Easy when traveling across the galaxy, can be harder when going up or down but I still do it.

 

[DaveB]

When trading I run multihop loops usually of four or more legs. If I am going to spend any time running one of these I rename all the bookmarks to the endpoints so that they appear in order at the top of the list. Between hitting "launch" and the ship being released there is enough time to hit the galmap, plot a route to the next bookmark and exit back to the cockpit.

On a "6 second" approach in SC I fly an arc that will bring me up directly in front of the slot. This always involves some planetary braking. As the planet slows me down and the timer increases I throttle up trying to keep it at 6s. This always eventually fails but by then the speed has gone blue and I can max the throttle, and while it still gives me a "slow down" the speed will still be blue when I get within drop range and can do a safe disengage. This emerges at full throttle towards the slot and usually has me in range to request docking in less time than it takes to call up the contacts screen.

I fly a curved approach to the pad, using the circle of illumination from my ships lights as a cue for how much clearance there is between my ships nose and the pad (this is especially useful in the 'conda.) By keeping that circle at the right diameter and walking it up the center line of the pad as I gradually throttle back I will level out and come to a stop in exactly the right position to engage the pad.

It's sometimes faster to plan a refueling stop at a waypoint with a close-in station than to scoop fuel.

When I get NPC pirate chat near the entry point, I can usually shape a course where their pursuit will drop them into the stars safety zone. At the other end of SC a deliberate overshoot and a 180 will usually prevent them getting back on my tail. They always catch up eventually but tend to emerge under the station guns and the local fuzz waste 'em while I land in peace. They can count themselves fortunate, because if they get an interdiction tether on me in midflight I'll usually submit and fry 'em myself. The nerfing of the KWS will change this approach as the return on 'em will not be worth the time it takes to kill 'em.

 

[yolomcbobbinz]

I cut down my supercruise time a few seconds by aproaching my destination following the six second rule. When my speed hits the blue i go back to full throttle, you still dont over shoot when

 

[Stealthie]

Not exactly a "time-saver" but whenever it's important I'll always use the galaxy-map and the system-map to plot a course right to my destination station/platform/outpost.

That way, when you jump into a system you don't have that 30 seconds of faff where you're trying to find your destination and target it, which gives outlaws a chance to interdict you.

 

[YinYin]

That way, when you jump into a system you don't have that 30 seconds of faff where you're trying to find your destination and target it, which gives outlaws a chance to interdict you.

Those 30 seconds (sounds a bit much) are best spend flying straight away from the star to gain speed anyway ...

But I do this as well.

 

[vegemite]

Docking computer.
Macro for requesting docking.
Hit one button and let the ship do its thing while I grab another beer from the fridge. It has yet to cause me any issues.

 

[Stealthie]

Those 30 seconds (sounds a bit much) are best spend flying straight away from the star to gain speed anyway ...

But I do this as well.

Depending on the ship (and the situation), I always like to scoop fuel when I arrive in a system.

Wouldn't want to leave myself in a position where I either don't have enough fuel for an emergency exit or make an emergency jump to a no-fuel star and get stuck there.

 

[WR3ND]

I use a big fuel scoop.

 

[mamsa]

When landing at planets, I try to come in at steepest angle possible with highest speed. So slightly less than 60 degrees, ETA at 6-7 secs so when ship starts to slow down a lot, even at full throttle, I'm below 100km from land/landing pad and Glide engages around 30 km from target. Glide disengages around 3-6 km from planetside stations so it's a very fast landing. I can ask for landing permission before even getting out of Glide-mode.

 

[the100thmonkey]

1. I like to line up the slot while in supercruise.
2. I do all my manoeuvring outside of combat in FA-off, so that I can go backwards to the pad if need be.
3. I look at the galaxy map and inspect systems to determine the fewest number of jumps and minimise supercruise time. Planetside bases always last, unless there's a long SC out to an orbital.
4. I always try to stack missions to the same system rather than taking missions that lead me all over the place.

 

[krylite]

When approaching a station in my cutter. I often initially boost, get landing clearing, while decelerating, then using landing gear and cargo hatch like flaps and spoilers for a heavy airliner, to further slow down for the final approach into the slot. Then on "final" for the landing pad, using the landing gear like flaps for slowdown on landing. (of course deploying landing gear is also used as a major decelerating maneuver in aviation)

 

[Arkadi]

I accepted the game has a lot of down-time. As I write, my ship hovers in front of a M-class star, fuel-scooping long completed, while I browse the intergalactic elite forums, instead of doing my jumps to reach Kuwemaki. I really should go on jumping, since I have an appointment with Lady Tani, who informed me of a incoming price surge in engineering.

As always I'll be coming late to our appointment becouse of my dawdeling around. I'll have to compensate her with some bottles of Lavians for her lost time and waste some more of her precious time drinking it with her :O