I think the supercruise is fine but I still don't understand why you can't jump to alternate stars in a system after jumping to the main one in a system. If you can jump to main stars why not the others after getting into a system.
Why you can't CHOOSE the Star you jump to in binary systems?? Also why the "gravitational pull" is not plotted in supercruise? You know guys when you get close to a planet or star and suddenly the speed jumps VERY HIGH. Why you can not use that PULL to SLINGSHOT FASTER??!!
@@alechartman6240 Ive done the hutton orbital run a number of times. Terrible profits for the times, but I had just gotten VR and an Asp Explorer and was giddy with the new cockpit and the ability to effectively walk around the bridge in my VR play space. Walking around and admiring the stars as the ship flew, then sit and relax. It's not something I'm going to REdo now, unless the profit margins match the travel times. Though this run did expose the teleporting AI ships to me when I got interdicted twice by the same ship across the system when I was able to watch the ship fall off my radar after I had engineered my engines.
I really like supercruise. I don't like doing jump after jump having to go around the star everytime. I wish you could jump straight till you need to refuel.
I actually do that. Knock out 40 push ups or so before needing to even think about doing something in game HOWEVER you can get interdicted... so it's like a game where they want to keep your attention but don't have anything to do for you. Kind of sociopathic.
This is exactly my reasoning behind long travel times. If you are locked in and you can go hands-free for X amount of time, you can get any number of small things done in that time and therefore maximize your efficiency while breaking up your game time so it doesn't get old. This is the problem with Elite dangerous as, for the most part, you have to be at the controls 24/7 and can't step away for a second without possibly overshooting your target or getting interdicted. Quantum interdiction will be a thing in Star Citizen, but you will have AI crew that can fill in for you while you transition from whatever you were doing back to the game and it's also not going to be as frequent as in Elite dangerous depending on the system you're in.
The longest travel times in Elite Dangerous are very hands on, but in the dullest way possible. You want to travel across the galaxy, well that means doing the same thing (scoop as you pass main star > aim at next system > jump to loading screen) 100s if not 1000s of times. While the hutton anaconda run may not be exactly the most exciting gameplay, i've always found the supercruise 'sightseeing' much more appealing than the back-to-back jumping that plagues the game currently. I adore Elite, but sometimes I think that what I really adore is the potential of what the game could be rather than what it currently is.
@@khaosbydesignuk946 I recently finished a ~140 hop out-and-back in a DBack Explorer. ~40LY range per hop, so I got a whole ~5000LY from the bubble. Aaaand I'm done. I started before the changes to exploration. Each system took dozens of minutes to explore. Then I stopped playing for a while. Came back to the honk-and-scan and it was down to about 5 minutes. Stopped again. Picked it up again recently and found out that I can tell which planet types there are based on the range of the signal. I dunno if I just noticed it or if that is new. But then each system took ~30s to deem uninteresting, or 1-2 minutes to scan down the random water world. My trip out probably took 2 weeks spread across 3 multi-day play sessions over the span of 18 months. The return trip took about 3 hours. And even that return trip was mostly me listening to podcasts.
The problem I have with travel in Elite Dangerous is that it's not hands-off enough. You can't just plot a course and tell your ship to go there like in the X series you have to babysit it through each and every system. It's tedious. I think being interdicted every 5 minutes by some NPC wanting help isn't going to make travel any less tedious though.
You're right, having to manually enter/exit supercruise and manually engage/disengage hyperdrive is tedious on long voyages, it is more engaging, but if you want to just do something else you can't because you have to always pay attention, if the travel times are so diluted then there should be more automation, otherwise if you have to be always paying attention just make everything faster.
@@smattonellus8354 I agree. And I get that just setting a destination and after a simple button push I end up at my destination unless I get interdicted seems un-simulator-like, but what is Frontier simulating? Are they simulating a world where there isn't any autopilot in 3305? That's unrealistic in the opposite direction. At least Supercruise Assist helps a little. Now we need Hyperjump Assist!
@@robertjohnston8531 And yet, since you can get intercepted at any random moment someone will always have to sit in that pilot seat, so there the argument of SC having something to do goes out of the window for every solo player (many many ppl) and even in multicrew ships, someone has to endure the boredom.
MyN0N4M3 I've lost track of movies where the Hero is doing something in his ship and a proximity alarm goes off and they have to run to pilot the ship or man the guns. Your shields will be up and you'll appear at some random spot within range of the interdiction device. You'll have time to run back to your seat. Plus SC will have NPC crew and automated turret upgrade options. So not a problem.
@@MyN0N4M3 well in the end it when you travelling you dont reaööy need to be there during the whole cruise, but be prepared for some running if a interdiction alarm goes off. that in itself really adds to the future potential adrenaline rushes
They could add an overdrive option to supercruise that greatly increases acceleration but requires a constant struggle to control, similar to interdiction. This would significantly decrease in-system travel times, add gameplay elements to travel, not interfere with players who want to keep the old travel system and can introduce other elements like risk of damaging your ship, missing your target, new optional modules, etc. This is a win/win for everyone with no downsides.
add a simulation room inside medium to large ships where you can practice FPS, add engineering workstation in which you can test simulated engineering modules, change the air filters, npc AI interactions. etc
@@edgepixel8467 its infidelity not to watch Netflix while i wait an hour to get from point A-B. now ask yourself is watching the static noise on a TV gameplay?
Tennis court sized stretch of grass for me to exercise my dog, because she does travel with me on the exploration ship. Plenty of room in a conda for that, the swimming pool, hot tub, sauna, fully stocked bar and kitchen and a setup to play OG Elite.
I'd love to see a system where you spend time plotting your course for a few minutes and make one big jump that requires player interaction to stay on course. You would still spend more time stitching together long jumps, get to your destination in far less time, be engaged the entire time and still maintain the sense of scale.
I say if this system would be implemented it would be nice if it’s like the interdiction system except you have to stay on course while it attempts to force you off, it also should be dangerous in that it has a corrosive effect on your hold during hyperspace. It shouldn’t be as effective as using a neutron star. I think it could be interesting if it could be used as well as neutron boost to create a super jump
that is so well said... I just spend 36 hours to unlock an engineer, just to be told i dont have enough engineering experience... most of that time was traveling...
Elite has a lot of beautiful locations to visit, but once you realise it will take you hours upon hours (maybe even days) of mind-numbing repetative jump sequences with ZERO game interaction - the will to go there goes away really fast. SC is not better in any way. Now, long travel times can be mitigated with further game interactions. EVE does it perfectly since you can literally do anything you want while flying. From looking at shiny stuff around you, fiddle with ship fitting, browsing all the ships ingame, browsing the market, talking to people, managing your assets, plot routes with filters etc etc. The problem (itself) is not long travel, it's the fact you literally do nothing ingame during that time. And if you need to tab out to watch TV while "playing" the game... it's not much playing nor a game now is it?
Don't forget the danger of travel in eve, even in highsec you can get in trouble. Navigating anywhere outside and not dying is a specialised art, with lowsec different to null etc.
I disagree, Star Citizen is much better. It will not take you anywhere near as long as an hour to get anywhere within the current system. 20 minutes at the most, and that's if you're using a slow but efficient quantum drive.
Is the view appreciated more upon arrival? Does it feel special because you know not everybody just dashes out to see it for 10 seconds before zipping back in for some shoot-it-up?
@@shogun2215 Star Citizen isn't as bad but then it's not as big as Elite Dangerous either. If it continues to grow then it may become more of a problem
I've llargely stopped playing ED in part due to travel times. My play session aren't long these days and to spend 15 minutes just getting somewhere is a large chunk of my play allocation. ED could maybe have a more logarithmic scale for acceleration so you start off slow but accelerated much quicker as your speed increases. I dropped into a distress USS and the npc needed fuel. However I didn't have any fuel limpits so couldn't help. Why cant we have some form of ship to ship docking that would allow fuel transfer, it is just another barrier. I cant just help someone, I have to make sure my ship is kitted out to help, compromising what I might actually need for my mission etc.
I listen to Sam Harris RUclips podcasts discussing everything from how the mind works to the nature of the universe. The two activities fit together really well. Also great to listen to while playing Minecraft.
Other than the devs' arbitrary reasons, why can't we exceed 2000c in Elite? Why is a hamster wheel-powered Sidewinder able to reach the same velocity as a massive multi-engine state of the art mini Capital ship like a Corvette? Is there any lore at all behind it?
It’s just a standard FSD drive, I think supercruise just literally maxes out at 2000c. Even then it would be useless for that to be increased more, I’d rather have much better acceleration inside gravity wells
Agreed, and I also wonder what dictates how quickly you can accelerate to 2000c or any speed under. Whether it be a sidey or cutter, if a station is 2000 ls away, why do we have to crawl towards it at 50c instead of being able just accelerate to 1000c and be there in 20 seconds instead of 5 minutes? I don't get it
In a Single Player game where travel times are long simply for immersion, it should be something you can turn off in gameplay settings. However, in a massive pvp MMO with guilds with hundreds of members all spread out all over the galaxy, then travel time is important, otherwise, you could do an attack on a transport to steal their cargo, and before you know it, 100 players who were light years away magically pop in to protect it, and combat just turns into quantity of players in a guild rather than guerilla tactics and careful planning. I personally don't want that.
unless they changed it, FDEV failed to give me something to do while in supercruise: the FSS only worked in when standing almost still in supercruise, and all ingame tools for trading or planning where to go are not even a fraction of what you can do on out-of-the game websites. in system hyperjumps to stars should be a thing...
For me everything that is more than 6000LS away from the main star is just not appealing. It takes the ship so long to pick up speed in SC. Why don't they buff acceleration deceleration and maximum Top speed in SC so that traveling to a planet/moon 100000 LS doesn't take 15mins and more like 3-5mins. Which is still a long time of hands off gameplay. I am fine with the jumps between systems since it has a realistic aspect for me which justifies this part of the game.
ChrîsCross I was going to say this. They could literally double acceleration and the speed cap. Or..... remove the speed cap entirely. Let people really get cookin
The choice to have faster acceleration and quicker deceleration would fix the issues in SC to my mind.. I could sc quickly to a far point and then decelerate just before to not waste as much time just watching the throttle slow down.. mean while those players who want to sight see can go slower if they wish. Even with sc assist there is still a bit too much time wasting in my opinion
Honestly I don't feel that travel time is conducive with the level of technological advancement given the setting of the game. I have gotten to fly an actual flight simulator and after doing a list of preparation checks the plane literally flew itself. So I would love to see an autopilot feature with the bubble that will fly you directly to known bodies/stations which would notify you of hazards and non routine issues like potential hostiles or specific signal sources. The functionality of the autopilot would expand as explorers map the systems outside of the bubble
Upon your first time entering a system, you should have to fly to each planet individually. Once you have explored that planet, you have the option to drop from hyperspace within 100ls of the planet from the Galaxy Map. Still enough time to get interdicted if you have a pirate after you. Just my opinion.
I think they could embrace the concept of viewing other media while jumping all over the place, maybe they could program it so that the windshield of the spaceship turns into a tv, and you can stream media or put it into a folder from where it reads it, also, they could put a pile of magazines from where your character takes one and reads it and, again, you can put your own magazines, books, mangas, etc.
I think the hyper jump game mechanic in ED is one of the worst game designs ever. You have no autopilot to program in a series of jumps (seriously in the 31st century??), the jump itself is long enough to get bored but you can't really do anything else because the moment you arrive at a star, you have to quickly steer away otherwise you'll crash out in real space and damage your ship. So long enough to get bored, but too short to do anything else, excellent design guys, you have made it as painful as possible. Add to this that the jumpranges themselves are ludicrously short compared to the scale of the Galaxy so you have to make a LOT of jumps to get anywhere outside the bubble. I have just spent a good part of two days getting back from the outer reaches of Kepler's crest to the bubble and I really doubt if I can muster the patience and endurance to make the 500+ jumps to get out there again. I am not sure what ED was thinking when they designed this.
i'm pretty sure the system to system hyperspace jump is little more than a loading screen disguised as hyperspace ;) tbf it is the only loading screen in game, everything else is pretty seamless.
@@jasonthacker2912 haha well ok loading a different ship is also not seamless, but during orbital transitions you still have control so its seamless gameplay as the world is being loaded around you (dependent on lag obviously). Of course there's no reason why Hyperspace couldn't be developed to be more interactive like orbital transitions.
An Advanced Cruise Computer that did this alongside its existing Supercruise stuff would be AMAZING!! That and some additional entertainment in the ship would complete this game!
Here is the thing. Let's say I only can game for 5 hours a week. I can spend that time with an amazing singleplayer experience or instant fun with friends in most multiplayer games. Or Travel from point A to B in a space game. It is because of these travel times everyone I know straight up refuse to get into elite. I would be ok with gates or wormholes like in freelancer.
Every few months I quit Elite and get on with my actual life... and it's amazing. Like getting off weed or something. But Elite has a certain draw and then I start playing again... look at how much time I'm wasting, and leave again. Travel time is not game time, but it IS wasted time.
This could be a real problem for E:D in the not too distant future. Space games are pretty thin on the ground so there isn't much competition for Frontier to worry about, but with games like Rebel Galaxy Outlaw imminent there will be other tempting draws for the space fix which reward you with more engaging entertainment for your time. And at the end of the day, that's what it comes down to, we all have finite spare time and that decision process you made up above will become more difficult for E:D to win.
Why not both? Travel from A to B and while waiting play another game. That's what I do while I wait for downloads. Or like Ant shows at the beginning of the video, watch Netflix.
Peelster1 That’s EXACTLY the point, if you’re watching movies while “playing” a game because there’s nothing else to do, you aren’t playing a game, you’re staring at a loading screen and the developer is padding their “play time” stats.
@@tringalij I never really thought about the developer padding play time. Mainly because that stat doesn't matter to me, but I know it does for their metrics. Part of me does find space travel at an idle relaxing, But then again, so are slideshows of space images. There is a 2 hour trip where I did nothing but wait to get there, but part of me finds having the patience for that rewarding. Sort of like the feeling you get after a long Windows update finally being done. The only time the travel time actually matters that you can't do it instantly is because of interdictions or if you're under attack and you are waiting for reinforcements inbound from another system. That can enhance the gameplay with the tension of that situation, but the only reason for distance is scale and realism if you're in a universe without instant jump drives or gates. (Which brings the question of why not gates etc.?) and in most situations it doesn't add much because you could already be at your destination doing what you want to do. I think the only argument is the quote of "It's not the destination, it's the journey." But what is the point if the journey is empty?
"Oh CMDR, could you please get me 4T of domestic appliances? One can never have enough washing machines on these trips." "Madam, go f*** yourself. You're the criminal mastermind around here. Go and steal some. Have a nice day."
for elite dangerous, i feel long travel times are both essential to the "immersion" but also that they could do more with it. taking FSD jumps for instance, sure, they're mostly hands off after the initial lining up and spooling of the jump, but between jumps there might be quite a bit of activity, making sure you don't "crash" into stars, or planets, scanning, avoiding interdictions, or scooping fuel. this type of gameplay loop doesn't leave a lot of time to add in other things that wouldn't require you to be at the controls of the ship. so, while onboard activities (once we get legs) might be nice for immersion and all that, it's just not practical in the current gameplay to use while traveling, unless travel was automated (which is another thing that would be questionable in a game like this). also, part of the mechanics and progress system in elite is based on jump ranges and increasing them to decrease travel time (or the number of jumps required), however supercruise tends to be overlooked in this regard, traveling from one end of a solar system to another, will be roughly the same amount of time regardless of ship or upgrades, which could probably be improved by adding another layer to the engine or fsd modules, or become a module itself. Streamlining the process to go from "out of hyperspace-go around the star-jump", so the game didnt spawn you in staring at and speeding directly towards a star would help immensely. however, Fdev, "fixed" this by adding in supercruise assist, which doesnt fix the problem, it just moves the problem around on the timescale (by throttling down once you get out of hyperspace). you're still pointing directly at a star and close enough so that careless throttle control would still dip you into the star. imho, if you could just spawn in on a tangent to the star, it would smooth out the travel loop, making long trips that much more bearable. this is one of the biggest offenders of Fdevs contrived and artificial way of saying "WE REQUIRE YOUR 100% FULL ATTENTION AND FOCUS AT ALL TIMES". the fact that the game doesn't accept keyboard inputs while coming out of FSD attributes to this as well, i cant just hold "S" on my keyboard (to pitch up), because even once i regain control of my ship, I keep flying forward, because the system doesn't accept that input as valid, even though I'm holding the key down. This screams, "game from before 2015", or "console game ported to PC", as i'm sure analog inputs aren't subject to this, as other, older games do this exact thing. (R6S for example) another thing that adds to the empty time is the inability to do ANYTHING while in hyperspace, sure "MUH IMMERSION", but it's another QoL enhancement they could add in as an upgrade or module, you cant look at the galaxy map, use chat, look at contacts, view any status info, for 10 seconds out of a 30 second gameplay loop. I feel like some of these are pretty logical conclusions, and observations, but I guess im the only one. /endrant
@@TechnoMinarchist that is a shame, yeah. I'd be playing this game a LOT more if it was. In VR, you get a Han Solo/Millennium Falcon bond with your ship that makes even the mundane seem engaging.
The X series gives you shit to manage when you're traveling using the auto-pilock. Elite really needs to give us something to do while the ship is travelling(like messing around in the stock market, an in-game community forum, anything really.)
[disclaimer: haven't played ED, so my comments are primarily from the SC perspective and are my opinions. Also, I never saw a link to the other video, so haven't watched that one] I agree that the best solution is to make travel more interesting. SC had interdiction before. I'm sure they'll be bringing it back at some point. If those encounters tie into the modular mission system, I think it could lead to some really cool experiences. I would also like to see distress signals, and anomalies added ... and for every distress signal to not necessarily be a combat encounter or a trap. I'd even go so far as to say that I'd like for 90% of them to not be combat oriented (and only a fraction of those being traps set by pirates). As far as travel times not having a function outside of being an artificial time sync or (for some) conveying a sense of scale, I would respectfully disagree. Time is an important part of the calculation for economy when you are hauling cargo. If you can basically insta-travel anywhere, then the only thing that matters is the price difference on the cargo (buy low and sell high, right?). But with expanded travel times, you have to factor time in as well. The other case where it becomes important is pvp. If a player can get help from their org in just a minute or two, it makes orgs way more powerful. Also, if a player who dies can grab another ship and make it back to that location in two minutes, I feel that would damage the immersion and verisimilitude. It would also make things like piracy as you'd never have time to board and take the goods before the next ship shows up. The travel times give you a window to get the job done before reinforcements or respawns show up. Lastly, once planets actually orbit their stars, travel times will vary greatly over time. Right now the system is maximally spread out. Picture Hurston and Crusader at their closest point instead of in opposition. It would be less that 2 minutes, which is far more manageable.
Yeah but how long does it take Crusader and Hurston to complete an orbit? Could you imagine waiting 300 years for Jupiter and Mars to align for a shorter jump? 🤔
I don't mind long travel time in elite, I just hate how low jump ranges are even at the top level. When I pick a spot to explore and plot the course then look over to the nav panel and see 178 jumps to destination it's damn near heartbreaking.
I would agree and add that travel times are supposed to reflect the vastness of the galaxy and make E:D seem more like a simulation. But, have more creativity than just allowing us to jump around like fleas and abuse the neutron star highway! E:D isn't really a simulation (or it would seem more like Rogue System (which is not being developed at present)). Since E:D is not really a simulation, the monkey is off the back of Frontier to try to make it one, that you would think would help matters. P.S. my smartphone is more sophisticated than the computers aboard ship, the whole idea of going outside the game to do ANYTHING is a glaring indication of the lack of completeness in the game, don't you all think? In other words, if you don't use the out of game information, you are at a disadvantage in the game, and that is just sad!
@@bruced9786 totally agree. Besides how can you "simulate" 1,300 years in the future? The same theory that led fdev to say "probes are infinite because we don't want it to be hassle, we just want it to be fun" should be applied elsewhere but definitely to travel.
Liking these thoughts. Here's a summary of the ones I like: between systems: allow massive jump-ranges but the further you jump the less accurate the final destination is. Maybe have an interdiction-style tunnel you have to follow, who'se difficulty relates to the jump distance. Damage could also be suffered when you fail to follow the tunnel. Plotting the route before the jump could also be an aspect, allowing you to use the gravity of the intermediate systems to 'shorten' the distance (doing the Kessel run in under 12 parsecs) Within systems: similarly, use the planets wherever they are in their orbits to plot a course, then stay in the tunnel plotted during the journey. Use the planets gravity well to slingshort a quicker course. The closer you get to the planet, the more the boost and the shorter the journey but the harder it is to stay in the tunnel. Leaving the tunnel drops you from the jump and/or causes damage. Longer jumps have a higher risk of interdiction. There is actually quite a lot that can be done here along these lines.
My memory is terrible, but wasn't Colonia founded because a mega ship basically ended up running out of fuel, or something? It doesn't sound like a hard mechanic to implement something similar for explorers (which is my preferred past time in these space sims.) >Why not have derelict ships to scavenge >SOS signals we can bookmark, head back to occupied space, repair/refuel them. Even could have a second option to just pick them up in escape pods >Surface scans could indicate that a planet is in a state of volatility, and every 6 weeks or so, they need to be re-scanned because the information is out of date >Jumping between star systems can be interrupted (similar to hyperspace interdiction) and you can choose to just continue along your route, or maybe there's something risky to explore and figure out why you dropped out All off the top of my head after watching this, and I'm sure there are plenty of reasons these ideas wouldn't work. But there's also gotta be ideas that -do- work. And I believe these are all ideas (other than the last one) that wouldn't change anything for current explorers who are happy with the status quo.
In Elite Dangerous, there is a way of reducing the hands-off time without breaking either immersion or the gameplay elements of interdiction: Allow micro-jumps in system to a location close to, but not on top of, any given navigational fix. The supercruise leg you would need to make to get from your jump exit to the destination would allow for interdictions by NPC's and players, especially if you tweak the requirements for initiating an interdiction (more range, less speed difference, greater interdiction angle). This would make play more realistic: in space, you're way more likely to have stuff happening close to gravity wells anyway, and the exceptions (drifting wrecks, alien artifacts, etc) become visitable once you've done a system scan to discover where they are so you can plot a jump.
Honestly the main reason for long travel times in Elite: Dangerous is so player piracy is a viable playstyle instead of cargo ships getting to their destinations pretty much instantly
Aside from pirating a type 9’s worth of low temp diamonds in my Clipper, piracy isn’t that engaging either. And the hardest part about that was not blowing up said Type 9. Then about 2 minutes in realising I should have bought more collector limpet controllers. But even then, transferring several hundred tons of cargo wasn’t very hands on. It was just reapplying hatch breaker and collector limpets as required. Just like long dull supercruise flights, it’s not the height of engaging gameplay.
Hey ObsidianAnt I've got a proposal: How about a way to visualize the gravitational drag on your ship during long travel sessions? In Supercruise you Can save time by knowing how far to keep from certain massive bodies and plotting your trajectory around them appropriately. I would love a way to do this which is encouraged by more data, perhaps something akin to the interdiction alignment minigame, but with the addition of a visual gradient of gravitational strength (like we see as the rings when on approach to planets). A more involved implementation could include a special module to let you chain hyperspace jumps together. It might fire a probe into hyperspace, which you pilot to find an optimal path (leaving your ship either vulnerable or in the hands of your crew), but the path length is of course limited by your drive's jump distance, so you're on a timer of sorts to approach then swing by each Star along your route before your gravity-warping-magic-space-engine runs out of capacitor charge. Each star you pass successfully is a checkpoint, and at some point you end the probe run, then align and lock on as normal, initiating the server instance change to whatever the farthest point you achieved was.
GG for your honest views here! I have stopped playing ED because I went exploring and it's such a dull timesink. Rather than making the game more immersive it has turned me off.
I think you should be able to travel a certain distance in two ways. One, instant travel, for those times when you don't feel like exploring. And two, slower travel but with higher reward, like exploration points and stuff like that. This way people will have to choose which way they will travel and no one will feel like they are wasting time. Also, I think this way would be even more realistic since in real life there are many ways to travel, by train, airplane, car. Consider instant travel as traveling by plane and slower travel with traveling by train. With a train you'll be able to enjoy the view, get to know places, while with a plane you'll just see clouds.
We could have an auto pilot - OFFLINE AND ONLINE. Somebody ships my spacecraft to me for a fee, allow me to ship myself to my next system when I go take a poop or offline. At least within the bubble.
Or maybe a "Ferry" service. It could have a Downtime due to the travel distance, maybe pay money, and fixed routes, but in a manner that a Ferry downtime is less than travel downtime.
@@bruced9786 Having a Ferry service would allow people to teleport in between certain systems. You don't need to reach, have a fleet carrier, or be a part of a fleet.
@@SewerShark No doubt, but if I recall, your ferry idea is not so different from my idea of how I would use a fleet carrier, not what a fleet carrier was proposed to be.
As long as you still allow for a method for people to interdict you. I feel that part of the game is essential and I don't even do it. I want to know that there are ships that can come after me, if the game was just stations and jumping to them then the game would be terrible. Make the flight interesting not skippable. Micro jumping would have to require say flying to the nav beacon which would often be unguarded and require some time to get your jump lined up so anything beyond 5-10 minutes could be shortened but it would take to long to make it worth it if your destination is 2 minutes out. Don't give a universal mechanic that allows you to avoid interdiction. When I come back with a load of void opals the fear that some pirate could gank me keeps me alert and engaged and gets my blood rushing even when it all goes shiney.
"immersive traveltime" is todays incarnation of watching paint dry. i realy honestly and totaly do not have the time to waste. especialy since there are litteraly thousands of fun and engaging games i could play instead. it just such a shame that my beloved scifi gaming is so drenched in this poison.
I've thought about this some myself, and I have to agree -- I don't think the travel times are really adding that much of value to these games. There is a part of me that worries a bit: will the galaxy still feel vast if we can cross it much more quickly? But as you've pointed out, there are other examples of vastness that don't rely upon travel time. My most recent experience was with Distant Words 2. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but from what I can recall I think something over 3000 commanders officially completed the trip out of around 13-14k who signed up. So being generous, about a quarter of the participants. Granted, it's not expected that everyone's going to follow-through and complete these kind of trips. Still, I know for a fact that there are those who didn't but would have liked to. I am one such person myself. Now, I can already hear a certain contingent crying out, "You just want everything right away without working for it," "Your sense of entitlement is disturbing," so on and so forth. You're entitled to your own opinion, but I don't have to agree, just as you don't have to agree with mine. I'm not out to find this sense of "instant gratification" that some of you keep blindly throwing out there as an objection -- not at all. I'm looking for a sense of fun and engagement that often seems tantalizingly close, yet keeps getting mired in tedium. At this point, I'm not sure what the best solution would be. Honestly, perhaps just multiplying the high-end of jump ranges by a factor of 10 or 25 (just arbitrary numbers) and boosting the max speed of supercruise (or allowing some manner of in-system 'micro jumps') would be the way to go. All I can say for sure is that DW2 was really awesome, in terms of the work and organization put into it. I loved the POIs and waypoints that were chosen -- I really do enjoy seeing all the beauty of the ED galaxy. But in the end, it was just too time-consuming to keep up, too tedious to work through. Too much a chore for too brief a bit of enjoyment. Obviously this is only my own take on things, but I expect there are a number of those other 10k or so commanders who didn't complete the expedition who also would have been thrilled to see the rest of the sights and make it out to Beagle Point. We don't all have the same free time, the same tolerance, the same level of attention or . . . well, you get the idea. There are a lot of factors. It just seems, to me, that some reductions in the amount of time spent doing nothing but covering distance could make things better for a great many people.
I too had to drop out of DW2, as well designed as it was. But I got a new job just after I got to SagA*, and my time is too valuable now to play a game 12 hours or more a week. I get maybe an hour per month I could use to play, and that isn't enough to do much of anything! Make jump ranges much larger, at least 10x, but only in Solo. Keep Open the way it is, I don't play it anyway.
This. I stopped playing ED a little while after Horizons. I reinstalled it for the first time in years recently to see how things have progressed. After a few hours trying some new mechanics and re-fitting the ship, I found the transport time to feel any sense of achievement just way too long and frustrating. I sadly conclude this is not the game for me, which is a shame as I played Frontier 2 to death back in the day. Still I like to keep track of the game through this channel.
Thanks for tackling this subject OA :) On your preferred solution: "If travel times are going to be 10, 15, 20 minutes or more, then keep it interesting, keep the player engaged" I think you recognise that the RDR style solutions you're half-floating are hard to pull off in a space setting, as much as other games do populate their spaces with multiple incidents and interactions. The biggest problem for ED is not upping the USS rate or whatever, it's probably populating the USSes with an interesting variety of content, making stopping worthwhile. (& also creating a 'realistic' level of content out in unpopulated systems. What would you have the USSes contain in those scenarios?). Bearing in mind that we'd have to slow to try each one out the new content would have to be fairly compelling to make up for the fact that it'd lengthen the journey under ED's current acceleration/deceleration norms etc :/ Upping the interdiction rate would be all kinds of annoying ;). Broadening the ways it could happen would perhaps go some way to adding engagement though. (Say NPC Wings being able to deploy a 'net' between them which knocks you ourt of SC if struck. Meaning you'd have to keep an eye on activity in front as well as behind. A module which allowed a supercruise 'mine' to be deployed to challenge the interdictor could be interesting for both parties too perhaps). I'm not convinced that Legs faff will fill in the gaps successfully, and they're a moot point in their absence anyway. --- My preferred solution is a 'skill based' shortening of that 10-20 minute trip, for those that want it. Counter-balanced by the risk of severe damage or death. IE a game mechanism that allows you to skilfully transit at speed to secondary stars, but not straight to your destination. With the result that more time is spent amongst the 'geography' of the systems, where concentrated events can happen more realistically etc. Here's the pitch. (You may have seen it, I pimp it everywhere ;)) forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/inter-sun-a-micro-jump-graphic-novel.424282/
Honestly, WoW got travel time down well. By having increase in character progression mean shorter travel times (flying mounts etc), so you get that feeling of growing power. I'd like to see jumpgates or something similar in Elite, as player driven goals. Say to Colonia. It'd give a sense of community progression too.
Community-funded or constructed jumpgates would be fucking awesome Seeing massive behemoth constructs forged by human hands that create massive shipping lanes would be amazing
In World of Warcraft you can add mods that allow you to play Bejeweled and other mini games right on screen without alt-tabbing. This used to help with long flight paths or even the boredom of fishing. Not sure if that kind of thing would work here as well but its a thought.
I say keep the travel time but give us things to do in cockpit while we travel like giving us autopilot and let us get up out of the chair and go do things like set a radio on or use a companion panel to help us track stations or plan routes better than going into sub menus and attempt to understand the complex systems in place now
Consider recent chances FD have to address this issue, yet HAVE NOT. So most recently:- 1) FD revamp the exploration mechanics, and FORCE you to sit stationary while using the FSS to identify objects in the system. 2) FD introduce the Supercruise Assistant to fly you into orbit around an object. Why needlessly hamstring (2) due to (1)? Why can't we wisely use our time by flying to object X (using the Supercruise Assistant), while then using the FSS to identify the remaing objects in the system? FD just seem to have real trouble joining gameplay and mechanics up...
I dont have any problems with super cruise travel time, i like it how it is but what gets on my nerves is repetitive jumping, that is what stops me from longer trip trough the Milkyway :D
Travel problems in system are a problem indeed. but for me the real mind numbing times are between stars. want to go to the center? take a trip to a nearby nebula? hours and hours and hours. which is fine for those with the time but elite seems to have a slightly older audience and most of us don't have that sort of time. would like to see this redone in the same sort of way as the FSS. The same idea as before but with added gameplay, not necessary but for extra reward/distance. Perhaps plotting to find a more "efficient" way through warp? Who knows? but long range exploration is pretty painful. short of just constantly introducing new grinds to increase jump range it'll take a real overhaul of the system.
What upsets me most about long travel times in Star Citizen is that I can't just "go do something else" for 15 minutes. I have to stick around and stare at the screen, in case I get interdicted or overheat. Either give me something to do, or let me go get some work done.
I think one solution for Elite could possibly be reducing the time it takes for supercruise to get upto a decent speed on some of the longer journeys. Say you have a destination that is 100ls from the main star then you would supercruise as you normally do now. On the other hand if you have a destination that is 2000000Ls away from the main star you could have a turbocharge FSD option in your right hand panel that almost instantly puts you at 500 or maybe even 1000c to save you having to slowly build up your speed this could also be extremely helpful for escaping the gravity well of large bodies and because it's a toggle setting it would mean that if you fancied taking your time or you are just one of those stubborn people who wouldn't want to use it then you wouldn't have to.
I'm 100% with you Ant... and I'm a long timer too... pre-release Beta backer so I remember the original point to point jumping and the insane pushback with supercruise. At the time, I agreed because of how it was talked about and the supercruise was supposed to be much faster. The speeds, acceleration rates and gravity well slow downs are all arbitrary in the first place, I did NOT want to spend 20 minutes just jumping to where I want to go. And this has truly killed multiplayer with friends for me. If I want to link up with a friend 250 ly away, but I want to play for 30 minutes, do I we each want to stop what we're each doing, then spend a half hour jumping to meet up, sometimes changing ship configuration, etc. It's just easier to ignore each other. At least multi-crew allowed us to jump into our friends ships. The SCALE isn't portrayed by human time, it's portrayed by the 1:1 scale.
I tagged along with the Distant Worlds 2 expedition and made it as far as the Sag A*. The idea of having to travel back to inhabited space was enough to put the game back down for a few months.
I would love to see stable wormholes or star gates that would send you to specific destinations. This would reduce travel time, add new gameplay and not take anything away from current gameplay mechanics.
Well, Elite certainly has a problem with travel time. But at the same time, it is a necessity by design. I don't know what it would do to the game if you could jump anywhere in under half an hour (to name an extreme example). Exploration would become pretty much meaningless and require no more effort and trade would also get bust, since long and profitable trade routes could be traversed even faster, making everyone a billionaire within their first month of play.
Meh. You could substitute the endless jumping and travel in Superboring without losing much. Add interesting mechanics like gravity assists, proportional deceleration, and more time in real space dodging stuff and finding stuff with your sensors. All that was present in Frontier: Elite II. You could also redesign the ports to be a bit more like the concept art. They'd require you to navigate your way in rather than line up and thread the slot.
From my experience playing Elite Dangerous, I do think an adjustment would help. We have to remember that ED is first and foremost a game centered on creating an immersive, sci fi universe. Part of that living, breathing experience is the challenge of exploring and the time it takes. Removing travel time entirely would ruin that sense of immersion, danger, and challenge. However, it isnt so much the time itself that makes the scale massive, but the ratio of travelling inhabited space vs the wide frontier. A trip to Beagle Point should still feel long compared to a trip to Sol. But absolutely a cut in supercruise time or increase in jump ranges would benefit the game. Coupling that with new encounters would certainly not break immersion. Maybe more types of stellar phenomenon, derelict ships, more planetary nebula, and even far off supernovas or collisions could add that sense of interest while still being within semi-realistic sci fi. I may have focused quite hard on my trip to Beagle Point, and only required background noise to keep me happy, but not everyone has that kind of patience. I love this game and an adjustment to travel time would make it more accessible to others.
A couple key words come to mind about this discussion:Immersion - I also agree that instantaneous travel in Elite Dangerous would have been a mistake. That would make it too much like a point and click adventure. Balance - Games like Elite Dangerous and Star Citizen aim to emulate the experience of space travel/exploration/combat, without some of the more time consuming and repetitive aspects of real life such as the time it takes for repairs, outfitting, ect. Those are the kinds of short cuts that are expected in a game.. because it's a GAME. I don't have a problem with the way Elite Dangerous deals with the time it takes to travel within a star system, but I would not argue with those that feel it takes too long too often to get to where you want to go. That could be remedied very easily in most cases by changing the super cruise model to accelerate and decelerate much faster between stars and planets. Buuuut, don't got TOO fast. Then we are back to the realm of point and click.
It's not immersion though because it's a made up world to start with. There are no real-world physics behind jump distances or supercruise speeds, it's just arbitrary code. Some games like "Terminus" took place entirely in the solar system, because of the arbitrary speeds set by the developer. Some games just galaxy to galaxy across the universe. It's all just made up. Getting out of your seat and walking through the ship for 45 minutes would give a sense of scale if that's what people are looking for (and they are). Driving in supercruise and watching Netflix is just grinding.
@@tringalij Well if you want to split hairs, getting up and walking around your space ship is not possible because we don't know of any such tech as artificial gravity that comes from nowhere. Jumping to stars and super cruise IS actually based on real wold physics, it's called the Alcubierre drive. Another example is when you turn your ship, there are visible thrusters that fire. However implausible some things in the Elite universe may be, they have taken great lengths to tie it as close to our known reality as possible. THAT is the immersion I am talking about. Perhaps just popping from location to location will be plausible to a game player a thousand years from now, but not to you and I in this age, so it stretches plausibility too far and potentially breaks the immersion.
An option to "go to your cabin" and pass the time during hands off travel would be interesting. The autopilot calling you back if something interesting happens but including a delay whilst you scramble to the pilots seat. Would work like a speed up time thing but with a penalty of not being able to immediately deal with an issue like being interdicted.
Duncan Baxter It’s referred to as “The Spine” and if you do a quick Google search you can find the system name. I’ve been there and it’s pretty cool. I’m not near my galaxy map currently to give you the location but hopefully that helps. 🤙
The (mostly artificial) loading time between systems is a big problem in Elite. Should be cut down by starting the load when I start my FSD and not when I enter the witchspace. It should work like I charge up the FSD, jumping is a minimal (sub 1 sec) animation then arrive and thats it.
Ant, although unrelated to this video, *would you ever consider doing some gameplay and commenting about I-War 2* and the possibility of a 3rd I-War game or a new space game as detailed? I recently reinstalled I-War 2 and am having a blast, especially after adding a sensor range mod which alters my ship signature depending on how far I'm scanning for contacts. The in-game Engineering tab is quite complex, allowing you to manage your ship power in a much more detailed way than in most other space games; and the in-game encyclopedia is very well done and immersive, explaining pretty much every ship and weapory system in details, almost making you believe it was real. Right now, a "I-War 3" with Elite's/SC graphics level would probably be one of the best space games in the market.
I don't know about Star citizen, but regarding the Elite, I really can't understand why travel times have to be so long. When you think about it... there are 400 billion stars (or so) in game, and probably several trillion planets and moons. That's mind-bogglingly huge game world. Why is it there at all, if we can safely assume that with the current travel mechanics and existing playerbase 99% of it won't be visited at all during the lifespan of the game. Serves absolutely no purpose. Space engine is great example that you can have almost instant travel without losing the sense how ridiculously huge is the universe.
Jump; roll and pitch to avoid collision with a star; more rolling and pitching to scoop fuel, if applicable; roll and pitch to align with next jump destination; jump again; roll and pitch to avoid collision with a star; roll and pitch to scoop fuel; roll and pitch to align with next jump destination; jump again; roll and pitch to avoid collision with a star; roll and pitch to scoop fuel; roll and pitch to align with next jump destination; jump again; roll and pitch to avoid collision with a star; roll and pitch to scoop fuel; roll and pitch to align with next jump destination; jump again. I believe the problem is the repetition of such a small set of uninteresting control inputs.
In elite your speed is based on your distance from objects with high mass. If I am trying to get from point A to B in elite dangerous and my speed is based off how far away from objects with high mass I am, getting close enough to even see a planet in my path means I am either just poking around the system and don't care about arriving at my destination or I am traveling in an intentionally wrong method. Your saying we should aim for the mud when making runs which artificially increases the amount of travel time (the topic we are talking about reducing). Your method increases travel time while only occasionally giving players something to keep them from accomplishing what they set out to do. Events that don't bring you closer to planets are far more desirable. How about your on ship speaker starts squawking out requests for help from a nearby signal source. I think its ridiculous that while traveling the system you have to stop change direction and stare at points spread around all over the place just to find out if someone is asking for help. They should either already be identified by the fact that your ship is already picking up the signal or should be identifiable regardless of your ships orientation, is my ships receiver in my canopy? They fixed this exact problem with scanning planets by making them not based on your distance to them or needing your ship to be flying at them. Minigames that get you there faster maybe don't make planets slow you down but give you a slingshot assist that speeds you up that way your path brings you close to these planets and you can see them rather than avoiding them like a space sand trap.
For me, traveling inside a system, on my own, is ok. Gives some sort of realism to the sim. But I would like to have the possibilty, to jump inside systems, when locations above 250.000Ls away
I would rather have more to do when we arrive at the destination. I am all for more optional tasks and activities when on route (like telescope, or space legs), but instant travel does not seem like the game I want. If it was single player sure hide the travel time, but with multi-player you should not be able to join a far away battle without some travel time. If travel times go away then, fuel should not be in the game either. Also with no travel time would there be pirates, sightseeing or a reason to get a mug. With no travel time in Elite it would feel obvious that all you are doing is jumping between instances.
I wonder how many of the people who say "travel time is fine, if you don't like it play a different game" subsequently turn around and whine for something ELSE to be changed.
I do recall there was a suggestions to put in card games or animated chess for the travel time we could see was going to be coming. I do agree with Ant when he suggests there should be things to do while travelling, asteroid storms, npc encounters with lost/stranded explorers, encounters with Thargoid scouts which are exploring the Galaxy, I'm sure more fertile minds than mine can come up with other plausible encounters.
in star citizen, when you travel on a big ship with a whole crew, hands-off travel time can be a fun part of gameplay since you can walk around in the ship, have a briefing in a different room etc.
One thing that could appeal to both camps of thought would be the ability to select what star you want to lock onto in multi star systems. It would still make the star systems feel big once you're there but you wouldn't always be forced to fly long distances to get to certain POIs.
As long as there is something to do within a 5 min radius of the warp in, I'm happy. When I want to go visit Neptune from Sol, I don't mind it taking several minutes (It would be 4.5 HOURS at the speed of light) Side note: I do NOT go that far out-system in any system unless I have good reason, and checking bounty boards or dropping of a passenger for a million creds is NOT a good reason. P.S. Long travel times give me time to watch your videos, M8
@@agonyaunt6325 ED, I was doing shipping missions, and I had to stop playing during the week as it was taking way to long to get were I needed to be, If I went to bed and came back I would get a fine for not completing the mission
@@CaptainDryBones how long? The average delivery mission takes just a few minutes unless you are delivering to stations a long way from their star, then maybe 10 minutes max (barring the really long distance journies like Hutton and the like). You saying you don't have 10 minutes to play? Just don't take missions to stations hundreds of thousands of LS out.
Idea: While in Supercruise, you are able to connect your systems to any nearby stations (nearby being measured by light seconds first for in system, and light years for nearby neighboring systems) in better plan trade routes, view mission boards remotely, initiate remote transfers of stored ships and modules, etc. You can set a time delay for communications between your ship and the neighboring systems so that there is a benefit for flying to the system you wish to be your primary interaction.
Just wanted to say, finally arrived at Obsidian in the Pleiades cloud and your voice is absolutely perfect as the station traffic controller. It’s awesome and also your channel is awesome.
I like how this is actually EXTREMELY realistic given the number of aviation RUclipsrs I follow who all listen to Audible while they fly to fill the time.
I prefer travel to be hands off to some extent. I mean It allows me time to look up other things and makes it easier to text chat if I don't have to keep my hands on the controls at all times. Where Elite is lacking in this regard for me is a lack of things to do or look at within the game while supercruising. For instance the FSS is disabled unless you idle but I would have liked to be able to examine signals and other things while traveling towards my target. Edit: To clarify. What I mean by hands off travel is that my full attention is not needed on the actual act of traveling. An example could be the use of horses in Breath of the Wild. They will follow the road for you and if you want to follow a road no input is needed from you. I love letting the steed take the lead and take the opportunity to focus on looking around at the environment instead.
I am in the relaxing side of the game. I have been playing it for 8 months and I really enjoy exploration and long distance travels while watching videos or movies. I haven´t started yet with combat, even mining. I am fine with this system.
The travel time adds to the impact of what you are doing in Elite Dangerous IMO. Your activities and actions wouldn't hold as much weight if you died and could just fast travel back to where you were before. I mean how would passenger missions work then, and a lot of other mission mechanics? Should I just be able to fast travel to a tourism beacon and fast travel back to the station for millions of credits and rep and influence in no time at all? The whole "taking a lot of time to get to one place" thing adds weight to your decisions IMO. Things wouldn't feel the same if you could just fast travel everywhere. Being able to fast travel everywhere would break Elite IMO. The best solution would be for you to be able to download some APPs to your ship, maybe some small games you would play on your ship like a bejeweled clone or games along the lines of that. There was a Bejeweled addon for WoW wayy back when when ppl were waiting between pulls. Also maybe some day trading sim where you could trade stocks while on your ship and make some skrill that way.
The moment you shorten travel time in a game, it automatically shrinks the game world. And for simulation games, that is essential for immersion and exploration. There's just no way around it. Then you also have the decision to make traveling dangerous, like possible interdictions, or make you invulnerable so you can add other distractions. This is where the problem lies. Frontier chose the 1st one, because it's easier. Maybe that will change in 2020.
Whilst I agree that travel times for the most part (an hour or more travel within a system is excessive however) are not the issue and that having something to do whilst Supercruising is certainly the best fix, I do have an issue with the concept of 'events' occuring along the way. Sometimes, you just wanna get to your destination and get stuff done, having random event along the way is just going to slow that down even further. Sure, have the events but make them optional, but also, for the people that don't wish to take part in that kind of thing, implement something to do on-ship during that time....a Thargoid Invaders mini game on a control panel or some such lol.
This would make a great differentiator between Open Play and Solo Play. In Solo, open up gameplay options just like your suggestion, and keep it out of Open, because part of the idea behind Open is to have a big sandbox that everyone has in common.
Travel time is great for separating the boys & girls from the men & women! Not everybody (including me) can raise that Hutton Orbital mug! If everything was a few minutes away, there'd be nothing special about making the pilgrimages to the places that require a lil endurance & fortitude.
I like the sound of your comments, but as for me, having maybe 1/2 hour per week to play makes things like pilgrimages the first kind of thing that drops off the list of things to do, and that greatly limits my experiences. The game is tuned for people that have 6 or more hours per week to play.
@@DigThat32 Although I wasn't trying to brag, my frustration is partly borne of the inability to get back home now that I made it out here when I had time between jobs. It's not an accomplishment to me, yet, I'm not finished.
I would support a module that added a function where your selected target effectively had a "small" bubble of space around it where you can only use the current super cruise speed, but when otherwise facing the object, you went at a CRAZY fast speed, and actually ate fuel less efficiently. You could then add engineering mods to boost fuel efficiency, etc.
My favorite part of space sims is the space flight itself. Only as far as I am concerned, the length of travel isn't a problem, but I wish the piloting and navigation of the ship mechanics and controls was as complex as a regular flight sim. It would keep me engaged more than it does now.
I'd agree with you, except for my view that if we are almost at the point of getting a car to drive itself from point A to B through C, it doesn't make sense in the case that my spaceship is stupider than my smartphone and my car? Do you advocate not having today's tech in 3305? A future simulator must simulate it all, not just the "we figured out how to go faster than light" part of it and leave the rest of it to be a copy of a Vietnam era jet dogfight brought forward! If you want dogfights in space, fine with me. But I would program my computer to dogfight for me, and wake me when it's over, because computers will be 1286 years better than they are today!
@@bruced9786 Certainly, if common space travel were to become an achievable feat, "self-driving" AI would not be a stretch of the imagination. However, not all games need to have in-depth autopilot. In Elite Dangerous, with its highly advanced flight computers, autopilot only really matters when it comes to hyperspace jumps and docking. Even if you discount a game not having autopliot for gameplay reasons, there could be any realistic in-universe reasons for a restricted self-driving AI. A future simulator that "simulates it all" would be nice, but that could include a future bureaucracy with laws on travel AIs due to any manner of accidents, "lobbying" decisions, or societal hysteria. A future space-faring society could still be too hesitant to leave the entire trip to AI.
Many MANY moons ago, I suggested a mechanic whereby you could use a nearby object to slingshot you into a faster supercruise speed. ie: You'd follow a path (shown on your hud) around an object and come out around that object travelling at a far higher/accelerating supercruise speed.
I don't really understand it-just provide an option in the settings to turn on/off Fast Travel. People who skip the travel time would miss out some stuff but it'd be kind of similiar to Witcher 3 and other games who provide the option for both. Problem solved! What's so difficult about that?
How about letting us choose a station as a home station, then let us fast travel to it no matter where we are. Why do we have to spend 3 months traveling and then another 3 months returning.
I think the supercruise is fine but I still don't understand why you can't jump to alternate stars in a system after jumping to the main one in a system. If you can jump to main stars why not the others after getting into a system.
@Higgs Bonbon I once had to fly to a station 0.13LY away. I made it but took forever.
@@Mockthenerd I'd like to bring your attention to Hutton Orbital, if you weren't already aware. Been there once, and I'm not sure I'm going back.
Why you can't CHOOSE the Star you jump to in binary systems??
Also why the "gravitational pull" is not plotted in supercruise?
You know guys when you get close to a planet or star and suddenly the speed jumps VERY HIGH.
Why you can not use that PULL to SLINGSHOT FASTER??!!
@@alechartman6240 Ive done the hutton orbital run a number of times. Terrible profits for the times, but I had just gotten VR and an Asp Explorer and was giddy with the new cockpit and the ability to effectively walk around the bridge in my VR play space. Walking around and admiring the stars as the ship flew, then sit and relax. It's not something I'm going to REdo now, unless the profit margins match the travel times.
Though this run did expose the teleporting AI ships to me when I got interdicted twice by the same ship across the system when I was able to watch the ship fall off my radar after I had engineered my engines.
I really like supercruise. I don't like doing jump after jump having to go around the star everytime. I wish you could jump straight till you need to refuel.
I started to workout while in supercruise. Guess who will be super ripped in a few months...
I actually do that. Knock out 40 push ups or so before needing to even think about doing something in game HOWEVER you can get interdicted... so it's like a game where they want to keep your attention but don't have anything to do for you. Kind of sociopathic.
This is exactly my reasoning behind long travel times. If you are locked in and you can go hands-free for X amount of time, you can get any number of small things done in that time and therefore maximize your efficiency while breaking up your game time so it doesn't get old.
This is the problem with Elite dangerous as, for the most part, you have to be at the controls 24/7 and can't step away for a second without possibly overshooting your target or getting interdicted. Quantum interdiction will be a thing in Star Citizen, but you will have AI crew that can fill in for you while you transition from whatever you were doing back to the game and it's also not going to be as frequent as in Elite dangerous depending on the system you're in.
Long travel times is the least of the problems with Star Citizen.
Same, I workout during that time as well.
Fly to Proxima Centauri, you’ll be ripped!!!!!!
The longest travel times in Elite Dangerous are very hands on, but in the dullest way possible. You want to travel across the galaxy, well that means doing the same thing (scoop as you pass main star > aim at next system > jump to loading screen) 100s if not 1000s of times. While the hutton anaconda run may not be exactly the most exciting gameplay, i've always found the supercruise 'sightseeing' much more appealing than the back-to-back jumping that plagues the game currently.
I adore Elite, but sometimes I think that what I really adore is the potential of what the game could be rather than what it currently is.
Yeah longest trip i've taken so far was 2 weeks, just scooping and jumping over and over.
There needs to be another way of doing long journeys.
@@khaosbydesignuk946 I recently finished a ~140 hop out-and-back in a DBack Explorer. ~40LY range per hop, so I got a whole ~5000LY from the bubble. Aaaand I'm done. I started before the changes to exploration. Each system took dozens of minutes to explore. Then I stopped playing for a while.
Came back to the honk-and-scan and it was down to about 5 minutes. Stopped again.
Picked it up again recently and found out that I can tell which planet types there are based on the range of the signal. I dunno if I just noticed it or if that is new. But then each system took ~30s to deem uninteresting, or 1-2 minutes to scan down the random water world.
My trip out probably took 2 weeks spread across 3 multi-day play sessions over the span of 18 months. The return trip took about 3 hours. And even that return trip was mostly me listening to podcasts.
@Xavier Breath so make the whole game a loading screen basically huh?
The problem I have with travel in Elite Dangerous is that it's not hands-off enough. You can't just plot a course and tell your ship to go there like in the X series you have to babysit it through each and every system. It's tedious.
I think being interdicted every 5 minutes by some NPC wanting help isn't going to make travel any less tedious though.
or evochron.
It is not going to be long before our cars can drive an itenerary without interaction, but we can't do that in 3305? Time for an E:D reboot.
You're right, having to manually enter/exit supercruise and manually engage/disengage hyperdrive is tedious on long voyages, it is more engaging, but if you want to just do something else you can't because you have to always pay attention, if the travel times are so diluted then there should be more automation, otherwise if you have to be always paying attention just make everything faster.
Yeah, long travel times in ED exist in this weird space where you have to pay attention but at the same time, there's nothing to do.
@@smattonellus8354
I agree. And I get that just setting a destination and after a simple button push I end up at my destination unless I get interdicted seems un-simulator-like, but what is Frontier simulating? Are they simulating a world where there isn't any autopilot in 3305? That's unrealistic in the opposite direction. At least Supercruise Assist helps a little. Now we need Hyperjump Assist!
If there was stuff to do inside your ship, like walking around to fix stuff or something while in super cruise it would pass the time better.
That's the plan for larger ships in SC.
@@robertjohnston8531 And yet, since you can get intercepted at any random moment someone will always have to sit in that pilot seat, so there the argument of SC having something to do goes out of the window for every solo player (many many ppl) and even in multicrew ships, someone has to endure the boredom.
MyN0N4M3 I've lost track of movies where the Hero is doing something in his ship and a proximity alarm goes off and they have to run to pilot the ship or man the guns. Your shields will be up and you'll appear at some random spot within range of the interdiction device. You'll have time to run back to your seat. Plus SC will have NPC crew and automated turret upgrade options. So not a problem.
@@MyN0N4M3 could use your NPC crew member or some sort of autopilot to maneuver the ship till you get back to the bridge
@@MyN0N4M3 well in the end it when you travelling you dont reaööy need to be there during the whole cruise, but be prepared for some running if a interdiction alarm goes off. that in itself really adds to the future potential adrenaline rushes
They could add an overdrive option to supercruise that greatly increases acceleration but requires a constant struggle to control, similar to interdiction. This would significantly decrease in-system travel times, add gameplay elements to travel, not interfere with players who want to keep the old travel system and can introduce other elements like risk of damaging your ship, missing your target, new optional modules, etc. This is a win/win for everyone with no downsides.
Like a hyper cruise, interesting
If we have to resort to RUclips and netflix while playing, something is wrong...
I watch an entire podcast while traveling sometimes.
You can do that in a lot of games, I’m sure it works to some players and on those games
I can watch things while playing Fortnite as well. ;)
@@agonyaunt6325 Yea but its not for lack of something to do is it
@@halo4176 Its sad. There's literally no game play involved
add a simulation room inside medium to large ships where you can practice FPS, add engineering workstation in which you can test simulated engineering modules, change the air filters, npc AI interactions. etc
Galactic Overlord that would involve space legs for elite. Which as we all know is either never happening or is years away still.
@@edgepixel8467 its infidelity not to watch Netflix while i wait an hour to get from point A-B. now ask yourself is watching the static noise on a TV gameplay?
@@MapleLeafAce well yes , is rumored to come in 2020 they called it "THE NEXT ERA OF ELITE" if it doesn't come then its time to play something else.
i want a holodeck :)
Tennis court sized stretch of grass for me to exercise my dog, because she does travel with me on the exploration ship. Plenty of room in a conda for that, the swimming pool, hot tub, sauna, fully stocked bar and kitchen and a setup to play OG Elite.
I watched the entire Star Wars franchise on the flight out to Hutton Orbital. but it was all worth it for the free Anaconda.
Did you do it in normal space? It's a 45 minute flight.
I know right? I thought it was a scam at first but it's actually real. One component being A rated was gold as well.
Payperheirplain Normal space would take literal decades if not centuries
@@ChiyoBebe. which is why I assume he's flying in it since in supercruise there isn't even enough time for a single film.
I felt like a mug after doing the Hutton run
I'd love to see a system where you spend time plotting your course for a few minutes and make one big jump that requires player interaction to stay on course. You would still spend more time stitching together long jumps, get to your destination in far less time, be engaged the entire time and still maintain the sense of scale.
Nice idea.
Just give us the option to bypass FSD safeties and risk it fucking exploding during the jump while it eats all the fuel you want to give it.
I say if this system would be implemented it would be nice if it’s like the interdiction system except you have to stay on course while it attempts to force you off, it also should be dangerous in that it has a corrosive effect on your hold during hyperspace. It shouldn’t be as effective as using a neutron star. I think it could be interesting if it could be used as well as neutron boost to create a super jump
Planned for system to system travel in SC. In system travel, not so much. In E:D we are just kind of screwed.
that is so well said... I just spend 36 hours to unlock an engineer, just to be told i dont have enough engineering experience... most of that time was traveling...
Elite has a lot of beautiful locations to visit, but once you realise it will take you hours upon hours (maybe even days) of mind-numbing repetative jump sequences with ZERO game interaction - the will to go there goes away really fast. SC is not better in any way. Now, long travel times can be mitigated with further game interactions. EVE does it perfectly since you can literally do anything you want while flying. From looking at shiny stuff around you, fiddle with ship fitting, browsing all the ships ingame, browsing the market, talking to people, managing your assets, plot routes with filters etc etc. The problem (itself) is not long travel, it's the fact you literally do nothing ingame during that time. And if you need to tab out to watch TV while "playing" the game... it's not much playing nor a game now is it?
Don't forget the danger of travel in eve, even in highsec you can get in trouble. Navigating anywhere outside and not dying is a specialised art, with lowsec different to null etc.
I disagree, Star Citizen is much better. It will not take you anywhere near as long as an hour to get anywhere within the current system. 20 minutes at the most, and that's if you're using a slow but efficient quantum drive.
Is the view appreciated more upon arrival? Does it feel special because you know not everybody just dashes out to see it for 10 seconds before zipping back in for some shoot-it-up?
@@shogun2215 Star Citizen isn't as bad but then it's not as big as Elite Dangerous either. If it continues to grow then it may become more of a problem
It takes you 5 hour to cross the whole System, with the right ships.. where do you travel for Days? ^^
I've llargely stopped playing ED in part due to travel times. My play session aren't long these days and to spend 15 minutes just getting somewhere is a large chunk of my play allocation. ED could maybe have a more logarithmic scale for acceleration so you start off slow but accelerated much quicker as your speed increases.
I dropped into a distress USS and the npc needed fuel. However I didn't have any fuel limpits so couldn't help. Why cant we have some form of ship to ship docking that would allow fuel transfer, it is just another barrier. I cant just help someone, I have to make sure my ship is kitted out to help, compromising what I might actually need for my mission etc.
I always have RUclips videos and podcasts going while playing Elite.
I listen to Sam Harris RUclips podcasts discussing everything from how the mind works to the nature of the universe. The two activities fit together really well.
Also great to listen to while playing Minecraft.
I watched half of critical role while playing elite dangerous and exploring.
Literally watching these as my ship is going to Hutton orbital
Frontier should double the supercruise acceleration and speed just to see what happens.
would result in quite a lot of pancakes
Other than the devs' arbitrary reasons, why can't we exceed 2000c in Elite? Why is a hamster wheel-powered Sidewinder able to reach the same velocity as a massive multi-engine state of the art mini Capital ship like a Corvette? Is there any lore at all behind it?
It’s just a standard FSD drive, I think supercruise just literally maxes out at 2000c. Even then it would be useless for that to be increased more, I’d rather have much better acceleration inside gravity wells
What annoys me is that 2000c is enough to travel to nearby stars rather quickly but the game doesn't load the system if you travel that way
Agreed, and I also wonder what dictates how quickly you can accelerate to 2000c or any speed under. Whether it be a sidey or cutter, if a station is 2000 ls away, why do we have to crawl towards it at 50c instead of being able just accelerate to 1000c and be there in 20 seconds instead of 5 minutes? I don't get it
Jacen Solo What the absolute fuck? Do you even play elite? It takes at least and at most days to travel to another system through supercruise!
Jacen Solo What the absolute fuck? Do you even play elite? It takes at least hours and at most days to travel to another system through supercruise!
In a Single Player game where travel times are long simply for immersion, it should be something you can turn off in gameplay settings. However, in a massive pvp MMO with guilds with hundreds of members all spread out all over the galaxy, then travel time is important, otherwise, you could do an attack on a transport to steal their cargo, and before you know it, 100 players who were light years away magically pop in to protect it, and combat just turns into quantity of players in a guild rather than guerilla tactics and careful planning. I personally don't want that.
unless they changed it, FDEV failed to give me something to do while in supercruise: the FSS only worked in when standing almost still in supercruise, and all ingame tools for trading or planning where to go are not even a fraction of what you can do on out-of-the game websites.
in system hyperjumps to stars should be a thing...
For me everything that is more than 6000LS away from the main star is just not appealing. It takes the ship so long to pick up speed in SC. Why don't they buff acceleration deceleration and maximum Top speed in SC so that traveling to a planet/moon 100000 LS doesn't take 15mins and more like 3-5mins. Which is still a long time of hands off gameplay. I am fine with the jumps between systems since it has a realistic aspect for me which justifies this part of the game.
ChrîsCross I was going to say this. They could literally double acceleration and the speed cap. Or..... remove the speed cap entirely. Let people really get cookin
The choice to have faster acceleration and quicker deceleration would fix the issues in SC to my mind.. I could sc quickly to a far point and then decelerate just before to not waste as much time just watching the throttle slow down.. mean while those players who want to sight see can go slower if they wish.
Even with sc assist there is still a bit too much time wasting in my opinion
Im personally fine with everything under a million Ls.
I stopped playing ED because of the travel time, I want my playing time to matter. Thank you for abording this subject. Really! Thanks!
yup i understand
Honestly I don't feel that travel time is conducive with the level of technological advancement given the setting of the game.
I have gotten to fly an actual flight simulator and after doing a list of preparation checks the plane literally flew itself. So I would love to see an autopilot feature with the bubble that will fly you directly to known bodies/stations which would notify you of hazards and non routine issues like potential hostiles or specific signal sources.
The functionality of the autopilot would expand as explorers map the systems outside of the bubble
Upon your first time entering a system, you should have to fly to each planet individually. Once you have explored that planet, you have the option to drop from hyperspace within 100ls of the planet from the Galaxy Map. Still enough time to get interdicted if you have a pirate after you.
Just my opinion.
I think they could embrace the concept of viewing other media while jumping all over the place, maybe they could program it so that the windshield of the spaceship turns into a tv, and you can stream media or put it into a folder from where it reads it, also, they could put a pile of magazines from where your character takes one and reads it and, again, you can put your own magazines, books, mangas, etc.
Yes, i agree that would be fun. I imagine the steam overlay is a hud from my helmet xD
I think the hyper jump game mechanic in ED is one of the worst game designs ever. You have no autopilot to program in a series of jumps (seriously in the 31st century??), the jump itself is long enough to get bored but you can't really do anything else because the moment you arrive at a star, you have to quickly steer away otherwise you'll crash out in real space and damage your ship. So long enough to get bored, but too short to do anything else, excellent design guys, you have made it as painful as possible. Add to this that the jumpranges themselves are ludicrously short compared to the scale of the Galaxy so you have to make a LOT of jumps to get anywhere outside the bubble. I have just spent a good part of two days getting back from the outer reaches of Kepler's crest to the bubble and I really doubt if I can muster the patience and endurance to make the 500+ jumps to get out there again. I am not sure what ED was thinking when they designed this.
I completely agree. That's why I don't ever play ED now. It's just not a good game. I've moved on.
i'm pretty sure the system to system hyperspace jump is little more than a loading screen disguised as hyperspace ;) tbf it is the only loading screen in game, everything else is pretty seamless.
@@jasonthacker2912 haha well ok loading a different ship is also not seamless, but during orbital transitions you still have control so its seamless gameplay as the world is being loaded around you (dependent on lag obviously). Of course there's no reason why Hyperspace couldn't be developed to be more interactive like orbital transitions.
According to lore. AI is banned in the ED universe. Autopilot is apparently included in that
An Advanced Cruise Computer that did this alongside its existing Supercruise stuff would be AMAZING!!
That and some additional entertainment in the ship would complete this game!
Here is the thing. Let's say I only can game for 5 hours a week. I can spend that time with an amazing singleplayer experience or instant fun with friends in most multiplayer games.
Or
Travel from point A to B in a space game.
It is because of these travel times everyone I know straight up refuse to get into elite. I would be ok with gates or wormholes like in freelancer.
Every few months I quit Elite and get on with my actual life... and it's amazing. Like getting off weed or something. But Elite has a certain draw and then I start playing again... look at how much time I'm wasting, and leave again. Travel time is not game time, but it IS wasted time.
This could be a real problem for E:D in the not too distant future. Space games are pretty thin on the ground so there isn't much competition for Frontier to worry about, but with games like Rebel Galaxy Outlaw imminent there will be other tempting draws for the space fix which reward you with more engaging entertainment for your time. And at the end of the day, that's what it comes down to, we all have finite spare time and that decision process you made up above will become more difficult for E:D to win.
Why not both? Travel from A to B and while waiting play another game. That's what I do while I wait for downloads. Or like Ant shows at the beginning of the video, watch Netflix.
Peelster1 That’s EXACTLY the point, if you’re watching movies while “playing” a game because there’s nothing else to do, you aren’t playing a game, you’re staring at a loading screen and the developer is padding their “play time” stats.
@@tringalij I never really thought about the developer padding play time. Mainly because that stat doesn't matter to me, but I know it does for their metrics. Part of me does find space travel at an idle relaxing, But then again, so are slideshows of space images. There is a 2 hour trip where I did nothing but wait to get there, but part of me finds having the patience for that rewarding. Sort of like the feeling you get after a long Windows update finally being done. The only time the travel time actually matters that you can't do it instantly is because of interdictions or if you're under attack and you are waiting for reinforcements inbound from another system. That can enhance the gameplay with the tension of that situation, but the only reason for distance is scale and realism if you're in a universe without instant jump drives or gates. (Which brings the question of why not gates etc.?) and in most situations it doesn't add much because you could already be at your destination doing what you want to do. I think the only argument is the quote of "It's not the destination, it's the journey." But what is the point if the journey is empty?
I don't mind the traveling in Elite. What I do mind is the big pile of nothing when I get there!
lol
@@RandomNameLastName811 both of you have valid opinions 😂
Put autopilot on, walk to your luxury cabin and say hi to passengers.
Get attacked while you are away from your cockpit and kabloowie!
@@agonyaunt6325 So true!
"Oh CMDR, could you please get me 4T of domestic appliances? One can never have enough washing machines on these trips."
"Madam, go f*** yourself. You're the criminal mastermind around here. Go and steal some. Have a nice day."
How about how about an FSD that can jump 10 star systems at a time without having to go through 10 loading screens
for elite dangerous, i feel long travel times are both essential to the "immersion" but also that they could do more with it. taking FSD jumps for instance, sure, they're mostly hands off after the initial lining up and spooling of the jump, but between jumps there might be quite a bit of activity, making sure you don't "crash" into stars, or planets, scanning, avoiding interdictions, or scooping fuel. this type of gameplay loop doesn't leave a lot of time to add in other things that wouldn't require you to be at the controls of the ship. so, while onboard activities (once we get legs) might be nice for immersion and all that, it's just not practical in the current gameplay to use while traveling, unless travel was automated (which is another thing that would be questionable in a game like this). also, part of the mechanics and progress system in elite is based on jump ranges and increasing them to decrease travel time (or the number of jumps required), however supercruise tends to be overlooked in this regard, traveling from one end of a solar system to another, will be roughly the same amount of time regardless of ship or upgrades, which could probably be improved by adding another layer to the engine or fsd modules, or become a module itself.
Streamlining the process to go from "out of hyperspace-go around the star-jump", so the game didnt spawn you in staring at and speeding directly towards a star would help immensely. however, Fdev, "fixed" this by adding in supercruise assist, which doesnt fix the problem, it just moves the problem around on the timescale (by throttling down once you get out of hyperspace). you're still pointing directly at a star and close enough so that careless throttle control would still dip you into the star. imho, if you could just spawn in on a tangent to the star, it would smooth out the travel loop, making long trips that much more bearable. this is one of the biggest offenders of Fdevs contrived and artificial way of saying "WE REQUIRE YOUR 100% FULL ATTENTION AND FOCUS AT ALL TIMES". the fact that the game doesn't accept keyboard inputs while coming out of FSD attributes to this as well, i cant just hold "S" on my keyboard (to pitch up), because even once i regain control of my ship, I keep flying forward, because the system doesn't accept that input as valid, even though I'm holding the key down. This screams, "game from before 2015", or "console game ported to PC", as i'm sure analog inputs aren't subject to this, as other, older games do this exact thing. (R6S for example)
another thing that adds to the empty time is the inability to do ANYTHING while in hyperspace, sure "MUH IMMERSION", but it's another QoL enhancement they could add in as an upgrade or module, you cant look at the galaxy map, use chat, look at contacts, view any status info, for 10 seconds out of a 30 second gameplay loop. I feel like some of these are pretty logical conclusions, and observations, but I guess im the only one. /endrant
Let me watch netflix on one of the screens in the game itself.
TV's have picture in picture now for years lol
How are you playing? I use a VR programme that places a screen in 3D space... I wonder if it would work without VR.
@@D-S-9 I also play vr, what program is that? I wanna do that too
@@D-S-9 That's cool. Sadly psvr isn't suppprted for elite dangerous yet on ps4 (if ever)
@@TechnoMinarchist that is a shame, yeah. I'd be playing this game a LOT more if it was. In VR, you get a Han Solo/Millennium Falcon bond with your ship that makes even the mundane seem engaging.
The X series gives you shit to manage when you're traveling using the auto-pilock. Elite really needs to give us something to do while the ship is travelling(like messing around in the stock market, an in-game community forum, anything really.)
[disclaimer: haven't played ED, so my comments are primarily from the SC perspective and are my opinions. Also, I never saw a link to the other video, so haven't watched that one]
I agree that the best solution is to make travel more interesting. SC had interdiction before. I'm sure they'll be bringing it back at some point. If those encounters tie into the modular mission system, I think it could lead to some really cool experiences. I would also like to see distress signals, and anomalies added ... and for every distress signal to not necessarily be a combat encounter or a trap. I'd even go so far as to say that I'd like for 90% of them to not be combat oriented (and only a fraction of those being traps set by pirates).
As far as travel times not having a function outside of being an artificial time sync or (for some) conveying a sense of scale, I would respectfully disagree. Time is an important part of the calculation for economy when you are hauling cargo. If you can basically insta-travel anywhere, then the only thing that matters is the price difference on the cargo (buy low and sell high, right?). But with expanded travel times, you have to factor time in as well.
The other case where it becomes important is pvp. If a player can get help from their org in just a minute or two, it makes orgs way more powerful. Also, if a player who dies can grab another ship and make it back to that location in two minutes, I feel that would damage the immersion and verisimilitude. It would also make things like piracy as you'd never have time to board and take the goods before the next ship shows up. The travel times give you a window to get the job done before reinforcements or respawns show up.
Lastly, once planets actually orbit their stars, travel times will vary greatly over time. Right now the system is maximally spread out. Picture Hurston and Crusader at their closest point instead of in opposition. It would be less that 2 minutes, which is far more manageable.
Yeah but how long does it take Crusader and Hurston to complete an orbit? Could you imagine waiting 300 years for Jupiter and Mars to align for a shorter jump? 🤔
I don't mind long travel time in elite, I just hate how low jump ranges are even at the top level. When I pick a spot to explore and plot the course then look over to the nav panel and see 178 jumps to destination it's damn near heartbreaking.
I would agree and add that travel times are supposed to reflect the vastness of the galaxy and make E:D seem more like a simulation. But, have more creativity than just allowing us to jump around like fleas and abuse the neutron star highway! E:D isn't really a simulation (or it would seem more like Rogue System (which is not being developed at present)). Since E:D is not really a simulation, the monkey is off the back of Frontier to try to make it one, that you would think would help matters. P.S. my smartphone is more sophisticated than the computers aboard ship, the whole idea of going outside the game to do ANYTHING is a glaring indication of the lack of completeness in the game, don't you all think? In other words, if you don't use the out of game information, you are at a disadvantage in the game, and that is just sad!
@@bruced9786 totally agree. Besides how can you "simulate" 1,300 years in the future? The same theory that led fdev to say "probes are infinite because we don't want it to be hassle, we just want it to be fun" should be applied elsewhere but definitely to travel.
I quit ED for this very reason, there is nothing fun about long travel times.
Liking these thoughts. Here's a summary of the ones I like:
between systems: allow massive jump-ranges but the further you jump the less accurate the final destination is. Maybe have an interdiction-style tunnel you have to follow, who'se difficulty relates to the jump distance. Damage could also be suffered when you fail to follow the tunnel. Plotting the route before the jump could also be an aspect, allowing you to use the gravity of the intermediate systems to 'shorten' the distance (doing the Kessel run in under 12 parsecs)
Within systems: similarly, use the planets wherever they are in their orbits to plot a course, then stay in the tunnel plotted during the journey. Use the planets gravity well to slingshort a quicker course. The closer you get to the planet, the more the boost and the shorter the journey but the harder it is to stay in the tunnel. Leaving the tunnel drops you from the jump and/or causes damage. Longer jumps have a higher risk of interdiction.
There is actually quite a lot that can be done here along these lines.
My memory is terrible, but wasn't Colonia founded because a mega ship basically ended up running out of fuel, or something? It doesn't sound like a hard mechanic to implement something similar for explorers (which is my preferred past time in these space sims.)
>Why not have derelict ships to scavenge
>SOS signals we can bookmark, head back to occupied space, repair/refuel them. Even could have a second option to just pick them up in escape pods
>Surface scans could indicate that a planet is in a state of volatility, and every 6 weeks or so, they need to be re-scanned because the information is out of date
>Jumping between star systems can be interrupted (similar to hyperspace interdiction) and you can choose to just continue along your route, or maybe there's something risky to explore and figure out why you dropped out
All off the top of my head after watching this, and I'm sure there are plenty of reasons these ideas wouldn't work. But there's also gotta be ideas that -do- work. And I believe these are all ideas (other than the last one) that wouldn't change anything for current explorers who are happy with the status quo.
In Elite Dangerous, there is a way of reducing the hands-off time without breaking either immersion or the gameplay elements of interdiction: Allow micro-jumps in system to a location close to, but not on top of, any given navigational fix. The supercruise leg you would need to make to get from your jump exit to the destination would allow for interdictions by NPC's and players, especially if you tweak the requirements for initiating an interdiction (more range, less speed difference, greater interdiction angle). This would make play more realistic: in space, you're way more likely to have stuff happening close to gravity wells anyway, and the exceptions (drifting wrecks, alien artifacts, etc) become visitable once you've done a system scan to discover where they are so you can plot a jump.
Honestly the main reason for long travel times in Elite: Dangerous is so player piracy is a viable playstyle instead of cargo ships getting to their destinations pretty much instantly
Aside from pirating a type 9’s worth of low temp diamonds in my Clipper, piracy isn’t that engaging either.
And the hardest part about that was not blowing up said Type 9.
Then about 2 minutes in realising I should have bought more collector limpet controllers.
But even then, transferring several hundred tons of cargo wasn’t very hands on. It was just reapplying hatch breaker and collector limpets as required.
Just like long dull supercruise flights, it’s not the height of engaging gameplay.
Wait there are other people who play this game? if so i havent seen them
@@imskyrcheez Tur4ns out their net code is real bad for people in differing time zones
Hey ObsidianAnt I've got a proposal:
How about a way to visualize the gravitational drag on your ship during long travel sessions? In Supercruise you Can save time by knowing how far to keep from certain massive bodies and plotting your trajectory around them appropriately. I would love a way to do this which is encouraged by more data, perhaps something akin to the interdiction alignment minigame, but with the addition of a visual gradient of gravitational strength (like we see as the rings when on approach to planets).
A more involved implementation could include a special module to let you chain hyperspace jumps together. It might fire a probe into hyperspace, which you pilot to find an optimal path (leaving your ship either vulnerable or in the hands of your crew), but the path length is of course limited by your drive's jump distance, so you're on a timer of sorts to approach then swing by each Star along your route before your gravity-warping-magic-space-engine runs out of capacitor charge. Each star you pass successfully is a checkpoint, and at some point you end the probe run, then align and lock on as normal, initiating the server instance change to whatever the farthest point you achieved was.
GG for your honest views here! I have stopped playing ED because I went exploring and it's such a dull timesink. Rather than making the game more immersive it has turned me off.
I think you should be able to travel a certain distance in two ways. One, instant travel, for those times when you don't feel like exploring. And two, slower travel but with higher reward, like exploration points and stuff like that. This way people will have to choose which way they will travel and no one will feel like they are wasting time. Also, I think this way would be even more realistic since in real life there are many ways to travel, by train, airplane, car. Consider instant travel as traveling by plane and slower travel with traveling by train. With a train you'll be able to enjoy the view, get to know places, while with a plane you'll just see clouds.
We could have an auto pilot - OFFLINE AND ONLINE.
Somebody ships my spacecraft to me for a fee, allow me to ship myself to my next system when I go take a poop or offline.
At least within the bubble.
Or maybe a "Ferry" service. It could have a Downtime due to the travel distance, maybe pay money, and fixed routes, but in a manner that a Ferry downtime is less than travel downtime.
Hello, Fleet Carriers??
@@bruced9786 Having a Ferry service would allow people to teleport in between certain systems. You don't need to reach, have a fleet carrier, or be a part of a fleet.
@@SewerShark
No doubt, but if I recall, your ferry idea is not so different from my idea of how I would use a fleet carrier, not what a fleet carrier was proposed to be.
Easiest solution is allow for micro-jumps in cases where you have multiple stars, or where the travel time would otherwise be over 10 minutes.
As long as you still allow for a method for people to interdict you. I feel that part of the game is essential and I don't even do it. I want to know that there are ships that can come after me, if the game was just stations and jumping to them then the game would be terrible. Make the flight interesting not skippable. Micro jumping would have to require say flying to the nav beacon which would often be unguarded and require some time to get your jump lined up so anything beyond 5-10 minutes could be shortened but it would take to long to make it worth it if your destination is 2 minutes out. Don't give a universal mechanic that allows you to avoid interdiction. When I come back with a load of void opals the fear that some pirate could gank me keeps me alert and engaged and gets my blood rushing even when it all goes shiney.
"immersive traveltime" is todays incarnation of watching paint dry. i realy honestly and totaly do not have the time to waste. especialy since there are litteraly thousands of fun and engaging games i could play instead. it just such a shame that my beloved scifi gaming is so drenched in this poison.
you are not forced to do this, you can do a lot ofother things.
Might as well be a loading screens
I've thought about this some myself, and I have to agree -- I don't think the travel times are really adding that much of value to these games. There is a part of me that worries a bit: will the galaxy still feel vast if we can cross it much more quickly? But as you've pointed out, there are other examples of vastness that don't rely upon travel time.
My most recent experience was with Distant Words 2. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but from what I can recall I think something over 3000 commanders officially completed the trip out of around 13-14k who signed up. So being generous, about a quarter of the participants. Granted, it's not expected that everyone's going to follow-through and complete these kind of trips. Still, I know for a fact that there are those who didn't but would have liked to. I am one such person myself.
Now, I can already hear a certain contingent crying out, "You just want everything right away without working for it," "Your sense of entitlement is disturbing," so on and so forth. You're entitled to your own opinion, but I don't have to agree, just as you don't have to agree with mine. I'm not out to find this sense of "instant gratification" that some of you keep blindly throwing out there as an objection -- not at all. I'm looking for a sense of fun and engagement that often seems tantalizingly close, yet keeps getting mired in tedium.
At this point, I'm not sure what the best solution would be. Honestly, perhaps just multiplying the high-end of jump ranges by a factor of 10 or 25 (just arbitrary numbers) and boosting the max speed of supercruise (or allowing some manner of in-system 'micro jumps') would be the way to go. All I can say for sure is that DW2 was really awesome, in terms of the work and organization put into it. I loved the POIs and waypoints that were chosen -- I really do enjoy seeing all the beauty of the ED galaxy. But in the end, it was just too time-consuming to keep up, too tedious to work through. Too much a chore for too brief a bit of enjoyment.
Obviously this is only my own take on things, but I expect there are a number of those other 10k or so commanders who didn't complete the expedition who also would have been thrilled to see the rest of the sights and make it out to Beagle Point. We don't all have the same free time, the same tolerance, the same level of attention or . . . well, you get the idea. There are a lot of factors. It just seems, to me, that some reductions in the amount of time spent doing nothing but covering distance could make things better for a great many people.
I too had to drop out of DW2, as well designed as it was. But I got a new job just after I got to SagA*, and my time is too valuable now to play a game 12 hours or more a week. I get maybe an hour per month I could use to play, and that isn't enough to do much of anything! Make jump ranges much larger, at least 10x, but only in Solo. Keep Open the way it is, I don't play it anyway.
This. I stopped playing ED a little while after Horizons. I reinstalled it for the first time in years recently to see how things have progressed. After a few hours trying some new mechanics and re-fitting the ship, I found the transport time to feel any sense of achievement just way too long and frustrating. I sadly conclude this is not the game for me, which is a shame as I played Frontier 2 to death back in the day. Still I like to keep track of the game through this channel.
Thanks for tackling this subject OA :)
On your preferred solution:
"If travel times are going to be 10, 15, 20 minutes or more, then keep it interesting, keep the player engaged"
I think you recognise that the RDR style solutions you're half-floating are hard to pull off in a space setting, as much as other games do populate their spaces with multiple incidents and interactions.
The biggest problem for ED is not upping the USS rate or whatever, it's probably populating the USSes with an interesting variety of content, making stopping worthwhile. (& also creating a 'realistic' level of content out in unpopulated systems. What would you have the USSes contain in those scenarios?). Bearing in mind that we'd have to slow to try each one out the new content would have to be fairly compelling to make up for the fact that it'd lengthen the journey under ED's current acceleration/deceleration norms etc :/
Upping the interdiction rate would be all kinds of annoying ;). Broadening the ways it could happen would perhaps go some way to adding engagement though. (Say NPC Wings being able to deploy a 'net' between them which knocks you ourt of SC if struck. Meaning you'd have to keep an eye on activity in front as well as behind. A module which allowed a supercruise 'mine' to be deployed to challenge the interdictor could be interesting for both parties too perhaps).
I'm not convinced that Legs faff will fill in the gaps successfully, and they're a moot point in their absence anyway.
---
My preferred solution is a 'skill based' shortening of that 10-20 minute trip, for those that want it. Counter-balanced by the risk of severe damage or death. IE a game mechanism that allows you to skilfully transit at speed to secondary stars, but not straight to your destination. With the result that more time is spent amongst the 'geography' of the systems, where concentrated events can happen more realistically etc.
Here's the pitch. (You may have seen it, I pimp it everywhere ;))
forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/inter-sun-a-micro-jump-graphic-novel.424282/
Honestly, WoW got travel time down well. By having increase in character progression mean shorter travel times (flying mounts etc), so you get that feeling of growing power. I'd like to see jumpgates or something similar in Elite, as player driven goals. Say to Colonia. It'd give a sense of community progression too.
Community-funded or constructed jumpgates would be fucking awesome
Seeing massive behemoth constructs forged by human hands that create massive shipping lanes would be amazing
In World of Warcraft you can add mods that allow you to play Bejeweled and other mini games right on screen without alt-tabbing. This used to help with long flight paths or even the boredom of fishing. Not sure if that kind of thing would work here as well but its a thought.
I say keep the travel time but give us things to do in cockpit while we travel like giving us autopilot and let us get up out of the chair and go do things like set a radio on or use a companion panel to help us track stations or plan routes better than going into sub menus and attempt to understand the complex systems in place now
you talking about SC now right?
I’m talking about elite dangerous, all we got is look forward for hours some times
@@koolerpure What do you mean by complex systems then?
Consider recent chances FD have to address this issue, yet HAVE NOT. So most recently:-
1) FD revamp the exploration mechanics, and FORCE you to sit stationary while using the FSS to identify objects in the system.
2) FD introduce the Supercruise Assistant to fly you into orbit around an object.
Why needlessly hamstring (2) due to (1)? Why can't we wisely use our time by flying to object X (using the Supercruise Assistant), while then using the FSS to identify the remaing objects in the system?
FD just seem to have real trouble joining gameplay and mechanics up...
I dont have any problems with super cruise travel time, i like it how it is but what gets on my nerves is repetitive jumping, that is what stops me from longer trip trough the Milkyway :D
Travel problems in system are a problem indeed. but for me the real mind numbing times are between stars. want to go to the center? take a trip to a nearby nebula? hours and hours and hours. which is fine for those with the time but elite seems to have a slightly older audience and most of us don't have that sort of time. would like to see this redone in the same sort of way as the FSS. The same idea as before but with added gameplay, not necessary but for extra reward/distance. Perhaps plotting to find a more "efficient" way through warp? Who knows? but long range exploration is pretty painful. short of just constantly introducing new grinds to increase jump range it'll take a real overhaul of the system.
What upsets me most about long travel times in Star Citizen is that I can't just "go do something else" for 15 minutes. I have to stick around and stare at the screen, in case I get interdicted or overheat.
Either give me something to do, or let me go get some work done.
I think one solution for Elite could possibly be reducing the time it takes for supercruise to get upto a decent speed on some of the longer journeys.
Say you have a destination that is 100ls from the main star then you would supercruise as you normally do now.
On the other hand if you have a destination that is 2000000Ls away from the main star you could have a turbocharge FSD option in your right hand panel that almost instantly puts you at 500 or maybe even 1000c to save you having to slowly build up your speed this could also be extremely helpful for escaping the gravity well of large bodies and because it's a toggle setting it would mean that if you fancied taking your time or you are just one of those stubborn people who wouldn't want to use it then you wouldn't have to.
if during travlel i could i don't know ... WALK AROUND MY SHIP and do something it would be okay
I'm 100% with you Ant... and I'm a long timer too... pre-release Beta backer so I remember the original point to point jumping and the insane pushback with supercruise. At the time, I agreed because of how it was talked about and the supercruise was supposed to be much faster. The speeds, acceleration rates and gravity well slow downs are all arbitrary in the first place, I did NOT want to spend 20 minutes just jumping to where I want to go. And this has truly killed multiplayer with friends for me. If I want to link up with a friend 250 ly away, but I want to play for 30 minutes, do I we each want to stop what we're each doing, then spend a half hour jumping to meet up, sometimes changing ship configuration, etc. It's just easier to ignore each other. At least multi-crew allowed us to jump into our friends ships. The SCALE isn't portrayed by human time, it's portrayed by the 1:1 scale.
I tagged along with the Distant Worlds 2 expedition and made it as far as the Sag A*. The idea of having to travel back to inhabited space was enough to put the game back down for a few months.
I would love to see stable wormholes or star gates that would send you to specific destinations. This would reduce travel time, add new gameplay and not take anything away from current gameplay mechanics.
Well, Elite certainly has a problem with travel time. But at the same time, it is a necessity by design.
I don't know what it would do to the game if you could jump anywhere in under half an hour (to name an extreme example).
Exploration would become pretty much meaningless and require no more effort and trade would also get bust, since long and profitable trade routes could be traversed even faster, making everyone a billionaire within their first month of play.
Meh. You could substitute the endless jumping and travel in Superboring without losing much. Add interesting mechanics like gravity assists, proportional deceleration, and more time in real space dodging stuff and finding stuff with your sensors. All that was present in Frontier: Elite II. You could also redesign the ports to be a bit more like the concept art. They'd require you to navigate your way in rather than line up and thread the slot.
So?!
I mean were is the Problem? Tell me a Reason why its better ,if that month is inflated to lets say 5 or 6 Months
From my experience playing Elite Dangerous, I do think an adjustment would help. We have to remember that ED is first and foremost a game centered on creating an immersive, sci fi universe. Part of that living, breathing experience is the challenge of exploring and the time it takes. Removing travel time entirely would ruin that sense of immersion, danger, and challenge. However, it isnt so much the time itself that makes the scale massive, but the ratio of travelling inhabited space vs the wide frontier. A trip to Beagle Point should still feel long compared to a trip to Sol. But absolutely a cut in supercruise time or increase in jump ranges would benefit the game.
Coupling that with new encounters would certainly not break immersion. Maybe more types of stellar phenomenon, derelict ships, more planetary nebula, and even far off supernovas or collisions could add that sense of interest while still being within semi-realistic sci fi.
I may have focused quite hard on my trip to Beagle Point, and only required background noise to keep me happy, but not everyone has that kind of patience. I love this game and an adjustment to travel time would make it more accessible to others.
I can't wait for november 2014, when star citizen comes out!
I am quite happy with the current way. I simply got used to having a youtube or TV series on another monitor. It wouldn't feel right without it.
I bet a butt load of veteran elite players, masochists as they are, would love us to be limited to light speed.
Nah, you clearly haven't seen the mechanics from the earlier games in the series.
veteran elite players be missing their time warp ;)
I’m gonna take a nice *56 year* stroll to this station. It will be awesome
A couple key words come to mind about this discussion:Immersion - I also agree that instantaneous travel in Elite Dangerous would have been a mistake. That would make it too much like a point and click adventure.
Balance - Games like Elite Dangerous and Star Citizen aim to emulate the experience of space travel/exploration/combat, without some of the more time consuming and repetitive aspects of real life such as the time it takes for repairs, outfitting, ect. Those are the kinds of short cuts that are expected in a game.. because it's a GAME. I don't have a problem with the way Elite Dangerous deals with the time it takes to travel within a star system, but I would not argue with those that feel it takes too long too often to get to where you want to go. That could be remedied very easily in most cases by changing the super cruise model to accelerate and decelerate much faster between stars and planets. Buuuut, don't got TOO fast. Then we are back to the realm of point and click.
It's not immersion though because it's a made up world to start with. There are no real-world physics behind jump distances or supercruise speeds, it's just arbitrary code. Some games like "Terminus" took place entirely in the solar system, because of the arbitrary speeds set by the developer. Some games just galaxy to galaxy across the universe. It's all just made up. Getting out of your seat and walking through the ship for 45 minutes would give a sense of scale if that's what people are looking for (and they are). Driving in supercruise and watching Netflix is just grinding.
@@tringalij Well if you want to split hairs, getting up and walking around your space ship is not possible because we don't know of any such tech as artificial gravity that comes from nowhere. Jumping to stars and super cruise IS actually based on real wold physics, it's called the Alcubierre drive. Another example is when you turn your ship, there are visible thrusters that fire. However implausible some things in the Elite universe may be, they have taken great lengths to tie it as close to our known reality as possible. THAT is the immersion I am talking about. Perhaps just popping from location to location will be plausible to a game player a thousand years from now, but not to you and I in this age, so it stretches plausibility too far and potentially breaks the immersion.
Space legs so we can walk around the inside of the ship and use consoles, rest and eat.
A bathroom too...
Pirates would be glad to interdict you, while you are in bathroom.
@@semibiotic Me: "Hey, come back in like 15 minutes."
@@smokeclouds8 ;)
An option to "go to your cabin" and pass the time during hands off travel would be interesting. The autopilot calling you back if something interesting happens but including a delay whilst you scramble to the pilots seat. Would work like a speed up time thing but with a penalty of not being able to immediately deal with an issue like being interdicted.
What is the canyon world seen around minute twelve? I’d love to take a visit!
Duncan Baxter It’s referred to as “The Spine” and if you do a quick Google search you can find the system name. I’ve been there and it’s pretty cool. I’m not near my galaxy map currently to give you the location but hopefully that helps. 🤙
Thanks! Was able to find your video on it with that, which does have the system name and planet in it
Duncan Baxter Oh really?! Wow! I’d forgotten all about that! Enjoy the journey Cmmdr! O7
o7
The (mostly artificial) loading time between systems is a big problem in Elite. Should be cut down by starting the load when I start my FSD and not when I enter the witchspace. It should work like I charge up the FSD, jumping is a minimal (sub 1 sec) animation then arrive and thats it.
Ant, although unrelated to this video, *would you ever consider doing some gameplay and commenting about I-War 2* and the possibility of a 3rd I-War game or a new space game as detailed?
I recently reinstalled I-War 2 and am having a blast, especially after adding a sensor range mod which alters my ship signature depending on how far I'm scanning for contacts.
The in-game Engineering tab is quite complex, allowing you to manage your ship power in a much more detailed way than in most other space games; and the in-game encyclopedia is very well done and immersive, explaining pretty much every ship and weapory system in details, almost making you believe it was real.
Right now, a "I-War 3" with Elite's/SC graphics level would probably be one of the best space games in the market.
I don't know about Star citizen, but regarding the Elite, I really can't understand why travel times have to be so long. When you think about it... there are 400 billion stars (or so) in game, and probably several trillion planets and moons. That's mind-bogglingly huge game world. Why is it there at all, if we can safely assume that with the current travel mechanics and existing playerbase 99% of it won't be visited at all during the lifespan of the game. Serves absolutely no purpose. Space engine is great example that you can have almost instant travel without losing the sense how ridiculously huge is the universe.
i feel the long travel times will actually help with keeping the economy stable it works the same way irl
Jump; roll and pitch to avoid collision with a star; more rolling and pitching to scoop fuel, if applicable; roll and pitch to align with next jump destination; jump again; roll and pitch to avoid collision with a star; roll and pitch to scoop fuel; roll and pitch to align with next jump destination; jump again; roll and pitch to avoid collision with a star; roll and pitch to scoop fuel; roll and pitch to align with next jump destination; jump again; roll and pitch to avoid collision with a star; roll and pitch to scoop fuel; roll and pitch to align with next jump destination; jump again.
I believe the problem is the repetition of such a small set of uninteresting control inputs.
I would add that the time wasted for people that play maybe once a month, like me, is also a factor. And that won't change.
Just adding more landable bodies, and interesting things to find could be interesting.
In elite your speed is based on your distance from objects with high mass. If I am trying to get from point A to B in elite dangerous and my speed is based off how far away from objects with high mass I am, getting close enough to even see a planet in my path means I am either just poking around the system and don't care about arriving at my destination or I am traveling in an intentionally wrong method. Your saying we should aim for the mud when making runs which artificially increases the amount of travel time (the topic we are talking about reducing). Your method increases travel time while only occasionally giving players something to keep them from accomplishing what they set out to do. Events that don't bring you closer to planets are far more desirable. How about your on ship speaker starts squawking out requests for help from a nearby signal source. I think its ridiculous that while traveling the system you have to stop change direction and stare at points spread around all over the place just to find out if someone is asking for help. They should either already be identified by the fact that your ship is already picking up the signal or should be identifiable regardless of your ships orientation, is my ships receiver in my canopy? They fixed this exact problem with scanning planets by making them not based on your distance to them or needing your ship to be flying at them. Minigames that get you there faster maybe don't make planets slow you down but give you a slingshot assist that speeds you up that way your path brings you close to these planets and you can see them rather than avoiding them like a space sand trap.
For me, traveling inside a system, on my own, is ok. Gives some sort of realism to the sim. But I would like to have the possibilty, to jump inside systems, when locations above 250.000Ls away
I would rather have more to do when we arrive at the destination. I am all for more optional tasks and activities when on route (like telescope, or space legs), but instant travel does not seem like the game I want. If it was single player sure hide the travel time, but with multi-player you should not be able to join a far away battle without some travel time. If travel times go away then, fuel should not be in the game either. Also with no travel time would there be pirates, sightseeing or a reason to get a mug.
With no travel time in Elite it would feel obvious that all you are doing is jumping between instances.
I wonder how many of the people who say "travel time is fine, if you don't like it play a different game" subsequently turn around and whine for something ELSE to be changed.
Multi-player poker mini-game.
Problem solved.
You're welcome. ;)
I do recall there was a suggestions to put in card games or animated chess for the travel time we could see was going to be coming. I do agree with Ant when he suggests there should be things to do while travelling, asteroid storms, npc encounters with lost/stranded explorers, encounters with Thargoid scouts which are exploring the Galaxy, I'm sure more fertile minds than mine can come up with other plausible encounters.
Then you get interdicted by another player while you are holding a royal flush 🤣
Yes, with the occasional appearance by holographic Stephen Hawking, a pale, yellow-eyed android in a green visor, etc.
in star citizen, when you travel on a big ship with a whole crew, hands-off travel time can be a fun part of gameplay since you can walk around in the ship, have a briefing in a different room etc.
I actually like the travel time in ED
One thing that could appeal to both camps of thought would be the ability to select what star you want to lock onto in multi star systems. It would still make the star systems feel big once you're there but you wouldn't always be forced to fly long distances to get to certain POIs.
As long as there is something to do within a 5 min radius of the warp in, I'm happy.
When I want to go visit Neptune from Sol, I don't mind it taking several minutes (It would be 4.5 HOURS at the speed of light)
Side note: I do NOT go that far out-system in any system unless I have good reason, and checking bounty boards or dropping of a passenger for a million creds is NOT a good reason.
P.S. Long travel times give me time to watch your videos, M8
A great breakdown here, nice one OA.
From the comments, I think a poll would be very interesting!
I sat for 2hrs just to get to one place, If I can hyperjump to a star system then let me jump just to stars when I jump to a trinity system it sucks
Ouch! What game? Or you're talking about Hutton in ED? That one takes just over an hour.
@@agonyaunt6325 ED, I was doing shipping missions, and I had to stop playing during the week as it was taking way to long to get were I needed to be, If I went to bed and came back I would get a fine for not completing the mission
@@CaptainDryBones how long? The average delivery mission takes just a few minutes unless you are delivering to stations a long way from their star, then maybe 10 minutes max (barring the really long distance journies like Hutton and the like). You saying you don't have 10 minutes to play? Just don't take missions to stations hundreds of thousands of LS out.
Idea: While in Supercruise, you are able to connect your systems to any nearby stations (nearby being measured by light seconds first for in system, and light years for nearby neighboring systems) in better plan trade routes, view mission boards remotely, initiate remote transfers of stored ships and modules, etc. You can set a time delay for communications between your ship and the neighboring systems so that there is a benefit for flying to the system you wish to be your primary interaction.
Listening to music is always fun to do! U feel like you are in guardians of the galaxy haha
Just wanted to say, finally arrived at Obsidian in the Pleiades cloud and your voice is absolutely perfect as the station traffic controller. It’s awesome and also your channel is awesome.
I'll have to take a trip there, sounds like fun
I like how this is actually EXTREMELY realistic given the number of aviation RUclipsrs I follow who all listen to Audible while they fly to fill the time.
I prefer travel to be hands off to some extent. I mean It allows me time to look up other things and makes it easier to text chat if I don't have to keep my hands on the controls at all times. Where Elite is lacking in this regard for me is a lack of things to do or look at within the game while supercruising. For instance the FSS is disabled unless you idle but I would have liked to be able to examine signals and other things while traveling towards my target.
Edit: To clarify. What I mean by hands off travel is that my full attention is not needed on the actual act of traveling. An example could be the use of horses in Breath of the Wild. They will follow the road for you and if you want to follow a road no input is needed from you. I love letting the steed take the lead and take the opportunity to focus on looking around at the environment instead.
I am in the relaxing side of the game. I have been playing it for 8 months and I really enjoy exploration and long distance travels while watching videos or movies. I haven´t started yet with combat, even mining. I am fine with this system.
The travel time adds to the impact of what you are doing in Elite Dangerous IMO. Your activities and actions wouldn't hold as much weight if you died and could just fast travel back to where you were before.
I mean how would passenger missions work then, and a lot of other mission mechanics? Should I just be able to fast travel to a tourism beacon and fast travel back to the station for millions of credits and rep and influence in no time at all?
The whole "taking a lot of time to get to one place" thing adds weight to your decisions IMO. Things wouldn't feel the same if you could just fast travel everywhere. Being able to fast travel everywhere would break Elite IMO.
The best solution would be for you to be able to download some APPs to your ship, maybe some small games you would play on your ship like a bejeweled clone or games along the lines of that. There was a Bejeweled addon for WoW wayy back when when ppl were waiting between pulls.
Also maybe some day trading sim where you could trade stocks while on your ship and make some skrill that way.
The moment you shorten travel time in a game, it automatically shrinks the game world. And for simulation games, that is essential for immersion and exploration. There's just no way around it.
Then you also have the decision to make traveling dangerous, like possible interdictions, or make you invulnerable so you can add other distractions. This is where the problem lies. Frontier chose the 1st one, because it's easier. Maybe that will change in 2020.
Whilst I agree that travel times for the most part (an hour or more travel within a system is excessive however) are not the issue and that having something to do whilst Supercruising is certainly the best fix, I do have an issue with the concept of 'events' occuring along the way.
Sometimes, you just wanna get to your destination and get stuff done, having random event along the way is just going to slow that down even further.
Sure, have the events but make them optional, but also, for the people that don't wish to take part in that kind of thing, implement something to do on-ship during that time....a Thargoid Invaders mini game on a control panel or some such lol.
This would make a great differentiator between Open Play and Solo Play. In Solo, open up gameplay options just like your suggestion, and keep it out of Open, because part of the idea behind Open is to have a big sandbox that everyone has in common.
Travel time is great for separating the boys & girls from the men & women! Not everybody (including me) can raise that Hutton Orbital mug!
If everything was a few minutes away, there'd be nothing special about making the pilgrimages to the places that require a lil endurance & fortitude.
I like the sound of your comments, but as for me, having maybe 1/2 hour per week to play makes things like pilgrimages the first kind of thing that drops off the list of things to do, and that greatly limits my experiences. The game is tuned for people that have 6 or more hours per week to play.
@@bruced9786 Yeah, I get that. In the pursuit of recording clips, I don't have a lotta hours to spend on that either. Cool achievement tho.
@@DigThat32
Although I wasn't trying to brag, my frustration is partly borne of the inability to get back home now that I made it out here when I had time between jobs. It's not an accomplishment to me, yet, I'm not finished.
I would support a module that added a function where your selected target effectively had a "small" bubble of space around it where you can only use the current super cruise speed, but when otherwise facing the object, you went at a CRAZY fast speed, and actually ate fuel less efficiently. You could then add engineering mods to boost fuel efficiency, etc.
Long travel times provide a sense of realism
My favorite part of space sims is the space flight itself. Only as far as I am concerned, the length of travel isn't a problem, but I wish the piloting and navigation of the ship mechanics and controls was as complex as a regular flight sim. It would keep me engaged more than it does now.
I'd agree with you, except for my view that if we are almost at the point of getting a car to drive itself from point A to B through C, it doesn't make sense in the case that my spaceship is stupider than my smartphone and my car? Do you advocate not having today's tech in 3305? A future simulator must simulate it all, not just the "we figured out how to go faster than light" part of it and leave the rest of it to be a copy of a Vietnam era jet dogfight brought forward! If you want dogfights in space, fine with me. But I would program my computer to dogfight for me, and wake me when it's over, because computers will be 1286 years better than they are today!
@@bruced9786 Certainly, if common space travel were to become an achievable feat, "self-driving" AI would not be a stretch of the imagination. However, not all games need to have in-depth autopilot. In Elite Dangerous, with its highly advanced flight computers, autopilot only really matters when it comes to hyperspace jumps and docking.
Even if you discount a game not having autopliot for gameplay reasons, there could be any realistic in-universe reasons for a restricted self-driving AI. A future simulator that "simulates it all" would be nice, but that could include a future bureaucracy with laws on travel AIs due to any manner of accidents, "lobbying" decisions, or societal hysteria. A future space-faring society could still be too hesitant to leave the entire trip to AI.
I think E:D could utilize jump gates.
Agreed... That is the only way I will get to Colonia or beagle point
@@josephallen6586 Too me about a week to make it out there. Worthless trip.
Many MANY moons ago, I suggested a mechanic whereby you could use a nearby object to slingshot you into a faster supercruise speed. ie: You'd follow a path (shown on your hud) around an object and come out around that object travelling at a far higher/accelerating supercruise speed.
I don't really understand it-just provide an option in the settings to turn on/off Fast Travel.
People who skip the travel time would miss out some stuff but it'd be kind of similiar to Witcher 3 and other games who provide the option for both.
Problem solved! What's so difficult about that?
The people who would complain non-stop on the forums about the time advantage other players would have
Short answer, BGS.
Long answer, BGS.
How about letting us choose a station as a home station, then let us fast travel to it no matter where we are. Why do we have to spend 3 months traveling and then another 3 months returning.