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Author Topic: Hyperspace Topography  (Read 14830 times)

Wyvern

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Re: Hyperspace Topography
« Reply #60 on: October 15, 2022, 09:53:36 AM »

Could lead to some crazy chases if the AI understands how to use it.
I am firmly against anything that would allow AI fleets to come zipping in from out of sensor range even faster than they can with Sustained Burn.

That said, in the context of a specific "race around the system" type mission, allowing the AI access to this sort of thing could be pretty neat.
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Candesce

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Re: Hyperspace Topography
« Reply #61 on: October 15, 2022, 10:12:02 AM »

(Personally, I find myself doing a few things that needed doing in the core systems if that might help "line up" the slipstreams with my current objectives. Though, yeah, whether you can do that depends on the timing of the missions you have. But if the goal is "check out this medium-danger system I spotted on the way back from the previous exploration trip"? Then yeah, sure.)
This is pretty much what I do, usually - I'll look to see which way the slipstreams will be going, and then pick up exploration, survey, etc. missions in that direction, and then fart around in the Core a bit looking for extra missions in that direction while waiting for the streams to shift if they're going to.

Certainly if I'm going to go look for hypershunts and bulk surveys to find a system to set up colonies in, I'm gonna try and time it so that I can take slipstreams out, explore for a few months, and then take the slipstreams back.
Quote
It's "going right in the first half of the year, left in the second, and dissipating in the 6th and 12th months". And, hmm, that's an interesting idea, I'll make a note. The slipstream tooltip touches in it but doesn't actually explain the specific directions, just that it's a yearly cycle.
It might help to have an "event" pop up when the slipstreams start dissipating twice a year, the way faction hostilities work? That shouldn't take up much space, and it calls attention the way an out-of-the-way note on the Intel screen won't.

Admittedly, the single volatile cost per day is pretty low for a late game low tech fleet burning 160 fuel per day (250 vs 4000?), but it does mean hitting a location that can refill volatiles regularly, which I point out waystations don't stock (perhaps they should if they're intended as exploration extenders with size 3 colonies scattered about?), so keeping topped up on volatiles adds a bit of shopping overhead, along with supplies and fuel in the late game.  Or put another way, supplies and fuel are basically everywhere, volatiles are not.
Transplutonics aren't, either, and those can be pretty useful too.

That said? Derelicts can drop both of those things, and do pretty often. If you're actually spending a lot of time out on the rim, you're probably collecting both of those faster than you use them - especially since probes and the like are a great source of fuel and supplies already.
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smithney

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Re: Hyperspace Topography
« Reply #62 on: October 15, 2022, 11:34:09 AM »

(Personally, I find myself doing a few things that needed doing in the core systems if that might help "line up" the slipstreams with my current objectives. Though, yeah, whether you can do that depends on the timing of the missions you have. But if the goal is "check out this medium-danger system I spotted on the way back from the previous exploration trip"? Then yeah, sure.)
This is pretty much what I do, usually - I'll look to see which way the slipstreams will be going, and then pick up exploration, survey, etc. missions in that direction, and then fart around in the Core a bit looking for extra missions in that direction while waiting for the streams to shift if they're going to.

Certainly if I'm going to go look for hypershunts and bulk surveys to find a system to set up colonies in, I'm gonna try and time it so that I can take slipstreams out, explore for a few months, and then take the slipstreams back.
Interesting. I've personally thought of slipstreams as an obstacle first and I've been fine with it. But seeing this advice makes me wonder if there's something to them I missed by being too bull-headed with my exploration customs. In any case, if there's a logic that makes slipstreams significantly more useful by changing one's exploration behavior then I don't think it's been well communicated. To repeat myself, this might pan out differently with the updates. Anyway thanks for the tips ^^
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woodsmoke

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Re: Hyperspace Topography
« Reply #63 on: October 16, 2022, 11:44:27 AM »

(Personally, I find myself doing a few things that needed doing in the core systems if that might help "line up" the slipstreams with my current objectives. Though, yeah, whether you can do that depends on the timing of the missions you have. But if the goal is "check out this medium-danger system I spotted on the way back from the previous exploration trip"? Then yeah, sure.)
This is pretty much what I do, usually - I'll look to see which way the slipstreams will be going, and then pick up exploration, survey, etc. missions in that direction, and then fart around in the Core a bit looking for extra missions in that direction while waiting for the streams to shift if they're going to.

Certainly if I'm going to go look for hypershunts and bulk surveys to find a system to set up colonies in, I'm gonna try and time it so that I can take slipstreams out, explore for a few months, and then take the slipstreams back.

I do the same - hell, I've been clustering my exploration missions to ~1/4 of the sector since surveying was first introduced back in... .07, was it? It just makes logistical sense to do so; spread 'em out too far and you probably won't have time to complete 'em all before the timer(s) runs out.

I've honestly been surprised by the number of people expressing frustration with slipstreams here. IME, as long as you understand their regular pattern (flowing right Jan-Jun, flowing left Jul-Dec) and plan around it, they're mildly irritating at worst, incredibly helpful at best.

Though I do think Hiruma Kai's suggestion of making volatiles more widely available is a good one. I essentially never use the neutrino detector simply because I never bother to travel with a stock of volatiles and, once I've already left the Core, going back to one of the particular markets wot sells 'em is more trouble than it's worth.
« Last Edit: October 16, 2022, 11:53:59 AM by woodsmoke »
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BCS

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Re: Hyperspace Topography
« Reply #64 on: October 16, 2022, 11:54:23 AM »

RE: Volatiles, you could put them in Supply Caches instead of or in addition to the Transplutonics.
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Gothars

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Re: Hyperspace Topography
« Reply #65 on: October 16, 2022, 03:42:35 PM »

This idea could finally be a great way to make you want to keep your poor crew alive: loosing crew should also subtract from the crew XP bar. You might be easily replacing warm bodies, but not their experience!

One niche (but nice for world building) effect of experienced crew might be that they are loyal and can keep their mouths shut when on shore leave: your "transponder off" combat encounters have less influence on faction relations. Your smuggling suspicion doesn't increase as fast. New bar encounters are possible. They go on longer without pay.

I'm against combat bonuses from crew, I think there are more than enough factors that influence your combat stats.

Yeah, I could see that. The only thing there is that *if* I was going to bring crew XP back in some way then I'd kind of like to tie it to ships, to give them more history/personality/etc; that seems like a high-impact thing feel-wise, regardless of how minor the bonuses might be.

Ok, hear me our. *waives hands excitedly*

Ship experience/veterancy/personality comes in form of special hullmods. They can be only picked up at certain "random" moments, which would be

- event triggered, e.g. suffering heavy losses, making in-flight refits, getting close to a black hole...
- but not reliably so, there's just a small chance for any given trigger
- overall very rare, maybe with a hidden timer after one event
- not mandatory, you can refuse to install them
- more flavorful than other hullmods, more side-grades than straight upgrades
- an, to tie it in with a crew Event system: the best of these special hullmod events only pop up if you have experienced crew
- Over a long time, a ship might even accumulate several of these hullmods, really making it unique

Some examples:

Spoiler
Forged in Blood
The recent, traumatic battle has forged an unspoken brotherhood between the surviving crewmembers of the ISS Derringer. They ask permission to paint their hull blood red. This will set the ship behavior to reckless and increase weapon damage by 10%. Will you grant permission?
[close]

Spoiler
Out through the backdoor
After almost losing core containment during the last fight, the chief engineer of the ISS Brazen had to come up with a rather creative solution. The flux vents are now connected through to the engine, increasing forward speed by 50% during active venting - but flaming out the ship when the flux bar is full. The changes could still be reversed - will you allow the engineer to make them permanent?
[close]

Spoiler
They have seen the light
After some of the external shutters failed to close, the recent dip into a solar corona has left a permanent impression on the crew of the ISS Reinhold - or rather, on their retinas. Their auto-firing accuracy has dropped by 50%, but they have taken it upon themselves to install and maintain, in their own time, almost religiously, a solar shielding variant that is twice as effective as the normal one. You could order your surgeons to replace the blinded eyes against their owners will, but that would surely rob them of the will to maintain their hull modifications. Will you let the current condition persist?
[close]


Using hullmods seems both simple to understand for the player and gives a lot of storytelling opportunities. I can't think of a more straightforward alternative, at least.

As a side note, tying certain hullmods to a minimum crew experience level might work for some normal, non event-related hullmods, too.


On the other hand, a solar sail and a gravity slingshot both sound like fun things! Like, a lot of fun. Hmm. Both could be initiated by interacting with the star/planet, even (so: no ability slot), though that'd break the movement flow.

As the S key slows you down, the W key seems a good choice to make you go fast. Could call it gravity sail.

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Sly

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Re: Hyperspace Topography
« Reply #66 on: October 17, 2022, 01:56:29 PM »

"Spend enough time out there and it becomes second nature. Not all of us 'get it'. Lots do."

I don't have any issue with the present system, so this was a pleasant surprise. I think, like other long-time players, the vast majority of my playthroughs are spent outside the core worlds. So, you either learn how it works, or you end up on the drift, begging.

In my experience, for the most part, if you take a combination of getting lucky and plan ahead, you can even make 'short' work of a round trip through the Persean Sector, thanks to slipstreams. If you're really anal about it, you can time a departure to coincide with a change in direction of the slipstreams, but I've never felt that was necessary (only in hindsight, and only grudgingly). They're really good, up until you've got your [REDACTED] that makes travel quick and easy.

The early game teaches you the opposite of what you need to know in the late game: deep hyperspace is bad, and storms are really bad. Small fleets don't need to worry about storms, because deep hyperspace has little to no effect on them, and storm strikes are tickles. Storms are also easily evaded even in deep hyperspace, if you're careful. So it's easy to slip unmolested through even moderate strength hyperspace 'hurricanes'. So, when your fleet gets big and all of that is flipped on its head, new players might be left scratching their heads that their bee-line to the map dorito has become expensive. And their fleet feels large and very unwieldy.

I never read anyone talk about this, but hyperspace is just a big organic map, same as you might find on any planet. Deep hyperspace is like steep hills, and hyperspace storms are the cliffs - you just so happen to be able to climb and throw yourself from them to make big gains. You have natural arteries that lead almost everywhere on the map (that you can see), and smaller veins that branch off from them (that you can rarely see). Half the fun of it is just "charting hyperspace" and figuring out where all the large and small lanes lead. You can't always avoid deep hyperspace, I'll admit, but it doesn't take long to traverse in those cases. Slipstreams naturally throw all that out the window, but they're happy exceptions, IMO.

It's already been said, but I suppose the game should teach new players more about these things, and Hyperspace Topography should help somewhat with that. Otherwise they'll just have to learn the hard way.
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BCS

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Re: Hyperspace Topography
« Reply #67 on: October 18, 2022, 05:39:41 AM »

You have natural arteries that lead almost everywhere on the map (that you can see), and smaller veins that branch off from them (that you can rarely see).

Yeah, there are definitely "corridors" of regular Hyperspace that are never marked on the main map. Maybe nearby colonies could show these as well like they will do with Slipstreams?
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Alex

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Re: Hyperspace Topography
« Reply #68 on: October 18, 2022, 09:03:25 AM »

Wanted to add a few assorted replies; can't quite respond to everything (apologies!), though I've read everything so far :)

Good points re: availability of Volatiles (and Transplutonics, which are needed for e.g. building a sensor array); made a note to make Waystations stock these and I'll look at sprinkling a bit of volatiles as random salvage.

And, it's great to hear some other people are also using slipstreams in much the way I do!

I don't suppose you would be willing to add a light years traveled option to the historian graphs?  Or maybe just an odometer readout to the Hyperspace Topography progress tracker itself (You've traveled X light years in hyperspace, Y of them at burn higher than 20).

Ah, most likely not - it's interesting, but also extremely low priority given the bunch of stuff I've got to do.

I'll note, even if you do save a bit of fuel with the detour through a distant slipstream, you are often taking longer in terms of time (both real and in game).  Although I suppose another 50% factor of fuel reduction (25% effective fuel costs?) will help.

If you're going at burn 40, it'd be 12.5% effective fuel costs. *Right now*, without the change, it's 25%.

It turns out, with a dram at base burn 10 (20 sustained), travel by slipstream one way takes 15.25 days, 19 fuel and 3 supplies.  Flying directly on autopilot either there or back takes 13 days, 25 fuel and ~7 supplies.  Even in a perfect knowledge situation, and a slipstream with an endpoint on my destination, it is unclear in this case that the slipstream option is better.  Estimate 2 days in system to do the exploration scan, then head back.  Assuming you are chaining contracts, 2 days saved out of 30 on a 50,000 credit contract is roughly 3,333 credits since you can grab the next one and go, compared to the slipstream savings of 550 credits.  So for a Dram exploration start knowing the slipstream is there 7 light years away does me no good.  Neutrino detector usage in this case isn't worth it.

I'm not sure how it'd be more supplies for direct travel which takes less days. Honestly, though? That it's at all competitive for the case of a Dram seems like a good sign. That's a pretty degenerate use case and it'll only be better for larger fleets with less relative fuel capacity.


I'd think you want an ability slot, but potentially an alternative movement mode button, akin to dark or sustained burn, because you need to maintain inertia afterwards.  Gravity Slingshot or Interial Dampers Off or something.  You turn it on, and now your fleet burns normally plus picks up acceleration towards nearby masses, and maintains inertia much better.  So as it approaches the planet it accelerates faster and faster, and then off you go as you pass over.   If you make the acceleration proportional to the planet's mass, it could make gas giants natural objectives for fast travel - or even across the sun at the cost of some supplies due to the corona.  Could lead to some crazy chases if the AI understands how to use it.

Possibly, possibly - figuring out just how to hack work with the current movement to have it be good will be much of the trick. The AI's never going to do it (intentionally) or be good with it, though; that's way too much for the campaign-level fleet AI to handle.


Ok, hear me our. *waives hands excitedly*

Spoiler

Ship experience/veterancy/personality comes in form of special hullmods. They can be only picked up at certain "random" moments, which would be

- event triggered, e.g. suffering heavy losses, making in-flight refits, getting close to a black hole...
- but not reliably so, there's just a small chance for any given trigger
- overall very rare, maybe with a hidden timer after one event
- not mandatory, you can refuse to install them
- more flavorful than other hullmods, more side-grades than straight upgrades
- an, to tie it in with a crew Event system: the best of these special hullmod events only pop up if you have experienced crew
- Over a long time, a ship might even accumulate several of these hullmods, really making it unique

Some examples:

Spoiler
Forged in Blood
The recent, traumatic battle has forged an unspoken brotherhood between the surviving crewmembers of the ISS Derringer. They ask permission to paint their hull blood red. This will set the ship behavior to reckless and increase weapon damage by 10%. Will you grant permission?
[close]

Spoiler
Out through the backdoor
After almost losing core containment during the last fight, the chief engineer of the ISS Brazen had to come up with a rather creative solution. The flux vents are now connected through to the engine, increasing forward speed by 50% during active venting - but flaming out the ship when the flux bar is full. The changes could still be reversed - will you allow the engineer to make them permanent?
[close]

Spoiler
They have seen the light
After some of the external shutters failed to close, the recent dip into a solar corona has left a permanent impression on the crew of the ISS Reinhold - or rather, on their retinas. Their auto-firing accuracy has dropped by 50%, but they have taken it upon themselves to install and maintain, in their own time, almost religiously, a solar shielding variant that is twice as effective as the normal one. You could order your surgeons to replace the blinded eyes against their owners will, but that would surely rob them of the will to maintain their hull modifications. Will you let the current condition persist?
[close]


Using hullmods seems both simple to understand for the player and gives a lot of storytelling opportunities. I can't think of a more straightforward alternative, at least.
[close]

A bit over-the-top, perhaps, but neat! Hmm. I've been kicking around (without any serious intent to do it, just as a very-maybe) the idea of using s-mods for this sort of thing, where they'd gain an extra effect which would then improve with the ship gaining experience. Similar general idea, I think. And, yeah, using hullmods to explain this is very *thumbs up*.

I don't think a crew-experience "event" really brings much to the table at that point, though.

As a side note, tying certain hullmods to a minimum crew experience level might work for some normal, non event-related hullmods, too.

I get what you're saying here, but it feels more like "trying to give the crew experience event a reason to exist" rather than "the crew experience event solving an existing design problem", if you know what I mean.


As the S key slows you down, the W key seems a good choice to make you go fast. Could call it gravity sail.

That would make sense, wouldn't it! And the immediacy of that - even compared to an ability toggle - is nice, feel-wise. It might feel weird if AI fleets didn't do it then, though; with the ability you could handwave it as being something the player has learned etc, and have it be unlocked with a mission... hmm.


Yeah, there are definitely "corridors" of regular Hyperspace that are never marked on the main map. Maybe nearby colonies could show these as well like they will do with Slipstreams?

(A large part of that is an implementation issue - hyperspace is kind of a specialized nebula, and showing enough detail to be able to see the smaller corridors makes the map chug.)
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gG_pilot

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Re: Hyperspace Topography
« Reply #69 on: October 18, 2022, 09:26:56 AM »

Ship experience/veterancy/personality comes in form of special hullmods. They can be only picked up at certain "random" moments, which would be
There  are several topics about skills and S.mode  issue: it is all very  static. In case player want to change ship type, or size or tech, or find a new ship, or try a mission which ask for specific ship, or .... The game do not allow comfortable switch.
Add another mechanic which requires slow build up bonus means, the current problem is even worst.
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Doctorhealsgood

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Re: Hyperspace Topography
« Reply #70 on: October 18, 2022, 02:09:08 PM »

The issue of S-mods seems to stem due to the fact that story points are used for a lot of things (and sometimes in monstrous quantities) yet the adquisition of them becomes increasingly scarcer overtime.
Perhaps story points need a bit of a revision?

Anyways that ship exp/event mod is kinda cool and i would like to see it in some sort of way (automated ship versions of it sound specially F U N) Although i would be cautious to make sure that different ships can be unique because they are like it and not because you have to make them unique yourself... If that makes any sense.
« Last Edit: October 18, 2022, 02:16:39 PM by Doctorhealsgood »
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SafariJohn

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Re: Hyperspace Topography
« Reply #71 on: October 18, 2022, 06:30:56 PM »

On the other hand, a solar sail and a gravity slingshot both sound like fun things! Like, a lot of fun. Hmm. Both could be initiated by interacting with the star/planet, even (so: no ability slot), though that'd break the movement flow.

As the S key slows you down, the W key seems a good choice to make you go fast. Could call it gravity sail.

That would make sense, wouldn't it! And the immediacy of that - even compared to an ability toggle - is nice, feel-wise. It might feel weird if AI fleets didn't do it then, though; with the ability you could handwave it as being something the player has learned etc, and have it be unlocked with a mission... hmm.

Could fold all the speed stuff into a "throttle" control. I am not sure what a gravity sail is, but careening around with it and contending with AI fleets using it sounds like fun.

Sustained Burn, E Burn, or some other go-really-fast movement
-- (confirmation like Transponder)
Gravity Sail
Normal
Go Slow
-- (confirmation like Transponder)
Go Dark


Ah! But you don't *know* that big empty system is actually empty, I think that's pretty big.

For many big systems that quickly falls into the system searching version of TL:DR - even a research station is not worth the time it takes to search a big system. Not to mention sometimes stuff is just in a random location - GL finding that.
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Candesce

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Re: Hyperspace Topography
« Reply #72 on: October 18, 2022, 06:58:53 PM »

Searching big systems is what Neutrino Detector is for.

Turn on sustained burn, set a waypoint a long ways off, turn on the detector and zoom in as far as it can go. Turn off mouse look. Makes it really easy to figure out which sensor spikes are moving, and thus points of interest, and which are fixed, and thus false positives.

You'll probably have big chunks of the system blotted out by the system's primary, but that just means you run a second line on the other side. Job done, system clear.

... Most of the pain is going to come from derelict systems, where you will spot the stupid probes in the middle of nowhere. If you're full up on fuel and supplies, the probes aren't going to have anything interesting - but you still need to check, because maybe it's a survey ship instead.
« Last Edit: October 18, 2022, 07:00:26 PM by Candesce »
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Hiruma Kai

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Re: Hyperspace Topography
« Reply #73 on: October 18, 2022, 08:05:12 PM »

I'll note, even if you do save a bit of fuel with the detour through a distant slipstream, you are often taking longer in terms of time (both real and in game).  Although I suppose another 50% factor of fuel reduction (25% effective fuel costs?) will help.

If you're going at burn 40, it'd be 12.5% effective fuel costs. *Right now*, without the change, it's 25%.

Oh that's a good point, I forgot burn speed above 20 doesn't use more fuel.  Although my average speed in a slipstream is probably 30-32 burn (this is with sustained burned off).  But even then it would be 31% not 50%.  So yeah, I'm estimating that wrong.  Thanks for the reminder.   I will note many, if not most, slipstreams won't allow me to keep a sustained burn of 40 since they have too many twists and turns.  I get thrown out to the edge or even out of the slipstream entirely if I'm running sustained burned to be able to hit burn 40+.

I'm not sure how it'd be more supplies for direct travel which takes less days.

I was cutting through deep hyperspace and hitting the occasional storm, so taking the occasional storm damage and CR hit.  While on a slipstream, you don't have to worry about those.  These were in practice numbers I was able to achieve as opposed to theoretical just based on distance and daily supply usage.

Honestly, though? That it's at all competitive for the case of a Dram seems like a good sign. That's a pretty degenerate use case and it'll only be better for larger fleets with less relative fuel capacity.

True enough.    Dram is pretty much best case, and I do expect full fleets to do worse.

Just for fun, I just loaded up command console, slapped in 6 Onslaughts, 6 Ox tugs, a Prometheus and an Atlas, added some hullmods and tried the exact same routes on the same map at 10 supplies per day and 99 fuel per light year.  Turns out arrival time is a dead heat, about 15.6 days either way (slower deep hyperspace speed hurts the direct path more).  Slip stream also did only take 172 supplies vs 334 on the direct route (again due to storms), and only 1803 fuel compared to 2,620.  So about 45% more fuel (instead of the 31% of the dram example), but roughly same proportional supply cost.  So 20,000 credits more in fuel and 16,200 credits in supplies, on presumably hitting a contract bounty for 400-500k.  So in this particular instance, I must concede seeing and taking the slipstream 7 light years out would be economically worth it.

On the other hand, this particular map has a second slipstream heading right to the destination.  A destination which was 3 light years to the west, for example, would have shifted in favor the direct route by 2-3 days.  14.1 days out, 2 days fighting, 14.1 days back, vs 17.1 days out, 2 days fighting, 14.1 days back is 9% faster for the direct route and slightly less fuel/supply use since it's closer.  At which point it is arguably better to do the direct route for this particular low tech fleet with Industry 5.

How often will it be economically advantageous to take the farther out slipstreams?  Hard to say without a lot of aggregated data, but I don't feel like I'm missing out significantly by not running the neutrino detector in hyperspace in the current iteration.  Although that feeling could be wrong.
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Brainwright

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Re: Hyperspace Topography
« Reply #74 on: October 18, 2022, 08:16:47 PM »

Searching big systems is what Neutrino Detector is for.

Turn on sustained burn, set a waypoint a long ways off, turn on the detector and zoom in as far as it can go. Turn off mouse look. Makes it really easy to figure out which sensor spikes are moving, and thus points of interest, and which are fixed, and thus false positives.

You'll probably have big chunks of the system blotted out by the system's primary, but that just means you run a second line on the other side. Job done, system clear.

... Most of the pain is going to come from derelict systems, where you will spot the stupid probes in the middle of nowhere. If you're full up on fuel and supplies, the probes aren't going to have anything interesting - but you still need to check, because maybe it's a survey ship instead.

The first leg takes a month when you also add in the time to travel to the hits.  Just traveling from one side of a big system to another is going to take, at minimum, twelve days.

Combined with any other objectives, it's not feasible.
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