this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2023
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Same with me. As soon as I realized that there is no sane way to travel from planet to planet even within the same system without fast travel, I stopped playing the game. Starfield literally made space boring.
Fast travel is the only sane way, without changing the lore and setting of the world, to travel from planet to planet inside of a system. Space is gigantic and even the distance between planets in a system are huge. Travel between planets, without having to wait real time hours or days to arrive, would need some kind of faster than light propulsion, but the only way to travel faster then light in the lore and world setting is with gravjumps.
The only thing I would change with the current space travel is using micro gravjumps animation between planets instead of the normal fly sequence shown when travelling inside of a system.
The designers chose this setting and lore, and could have chosen otherwise for the sake of game experience.
Additionally, there's no reason for the fast travel to have to be distinct, separate from gameplay, as loading screens.
Elite Dangerous keeps you in your cockpit, replaces the outside view with an animation while it loads the system you're jumping to. When landing on a planet, there are various "entering the atmosphere" effects on suitable planets to mask swapping from space to the landable planet.
For ED, in-system FTL is time consuming and you can shave off around 25% of the travel time by doing it manually (risking overshooting and having to loop back around), or you can have the ship's computer do it. ED is multiplayer and you can be yanked from this "supercruise" by players and NPC pirates, so it works mechanically to make the player waste time with it. In Starfield they could show you the ETA and give you the option to skip it or to wander around your ship during it while the ship does its thing.
If you're in a menu on your ship when FTL would end with autopilot, stop the clock before leaving FTL, pop up a message in the corner saying the ship is ready to drop from FTL, and let the player exit it manually from the cockpit so you can't get ambushed while you're on the other side of your ship.
No changes to setting or lore needed, except that there's a basic autopilot now.
As far as programming that goes, the engine already uses loading during gameplay when you're on the overworld, and they have done that since Oblivion. Overworld is set up in chunks, they keep a certain number in each direction around you loaded, and load/unload while you move around.
I won't say it would be easy to expand that background loading functionality, but I will say that they've had many many years to attempt it.
Thats sounds amazing, too bad i dont enjoy Sci-Fi
Kinda seems like they used the lore to justify the load screens, and not the other way around to me. But that's just a theory... A Game Theory!
So? The writers weren't forced to make there only be grav drives
And Tolkien was not forced to hinder the Hobbits from inventing full automatic guns, but the Lord of the Rings would be completely different if he hadn't.
And the same is true for Starfield and other options of FTL. It would be a completely different game, with a completely different story.
Starfield is hard sci-fi at it's core, with the exception of the grav drive and the powers/unity, a near future setting that is in most parts plausible and possible, a realistic game set in a realistic universe.
They could implement a timewarp mechanic like Kerbal Space program does and just speed up time.
But that's more or less what they have done with the flyby animation shown when travelling inside of a system. You could interpret that as watching a rapidly speed up version of the, boring because space is a huge and empty void, travel.
I am just bummed about it that's all. I feel like it would have served the game better if it had mass effect style fast travel menu because realistic space travel doesn't add a lot to the game if you can only fight in space but not travel from place to place.