My Problem With Long Travel Times In Star Citizen And Elite Dangerous

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.

I started to workout while in supercruise. Guess who will be super ripped in a few months...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 watched the entire Star Wars franchise on the flight out to Hutton Orbital. but it was all worth it for the free Anaconda.

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?

If we have to resort to Youtube and netflix while playing, something is wrong...

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

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 YouTube videos and podcasts going while playing Elite.

Frontier should double the supercruise acceleration and speed just to see what happens.

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?

I stopped playing ED because of the travel time, I want my playing time to matter. Thank you for abording this subject. Really! Thanks!

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.

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.

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...

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