More Immersive Space Travel (MIST)

[AuronUmbra]

The goal of More Immersive Space Travel (MIST) is primarily to make traveling through space in Starfield feel more like a proper expedition and less like fast travel, despite the space setting and technical limits on contiguous flight in the game.

 

I believe most of the Starmap features described can be done with plugin and interface mods, but I'm much more familiar with the CK, so leaving this to more skilled hands. The Travel Component below is by far the more complicated, I imagine, so it's more a dream that I'd still like to put out there for you all to contemplate.

 

Starmap Component

 

Proposal: MIST modifies the galaxy, system, and planet map interfaces so using the star map feels less clunky and more immersive. In the galaxy map, you can now zoom out further and even rotate the map for a better view without it automatically snapping back to the default angle. You can of course use "Show Me" to return to the default view.

 

Hovering the cursor over a system in the galaxy view shows its usual info in the left side panel, though now slightly compacted so as to also include travel info in the same panel (distance, jumps, fuel, prompts, etc). Holding the usual travel button or key initiates travel to the selected system immediately rather than opening the additional travel window on the right side first. This is an annoying bit of friction in vanilla.

 

Tapping the travel button/key to "Plot Course" places a custom marker which can be cleared by tapping the travel button/key again on the marked system or by placing a marker on a different system. Custom markers now appear as orange versions of mission markers in the gameplay view and persist unless manually cleared or until you arrive. In space, these markers can be easily selected to travel, just like blue mission markers.

 

Activating a star as usual opens its system map. In the system map, hovering the cursor over a planet or moon likewise shows the info panel complete with travel info. Hold the travel button/key to immediately initiate travel to its orbit or tap it to place a marker over the planet or moon. The planet map, and thus the ability to select a place to land on a planet or moon, would ideally only be available while in orbit, to avoid selecting your destination twice - another annoyance in vanilla.

 

If you have the right perks to scan a planet or moon while not in its orbit, you'll no longer automatically zoom to its planet map upon scanning. Importantly, the zoom-out mechanic now allows you to back out from planet to system view or system to galaxy view; zooming in and out is now faster, with no acceleration effect. The exit button/key now does exactly one thing: from any view in the star map, tapping exit once (without needing to hold it) will exit the map menu.

 

Travel Component

 

Proposal: Rather than a cinematic take off or landing and cut to the respective orbit or landed position, the cinematic has been modified so that the gameplay camera (third person ship or first person cockpit) follows the whole process. The idea is that we should be part of these sequences rather than feel like we're teleporting.

 

During take off sequences, controls are disabled as usual but the player keeps their gameplay perspective starting from the ground and going well into space; this visual replaces the loading screen, to whatever extent is possible. Once in orbit, the player regains control as usual. After leaving a planet, in orbit, the default space view is facing toward outer space rather than facing the planet.

 

Upon activating landing, whether through the map or by selecting a site with the ship scanner mode, the gameplay camera again follows the ship as it descends. There is a moment during which the planet skybox appears to rapidly approach, with grav drive-like distortion around it, then the ship rotates so that the landing gear faces the ground and the player only sees space (or the effect of thruster exhaust or colliding with the atmosphere), which replaces the loading screen (as far as possible), as the landing area is rendered and the ship touches down.

 

For traveling between planets, the ship proceeds on course while following the gameplay camera instead of playing a cinematic cut. To obscure loading, a grav drive distortion effect plays during the trip between planets, which transitions to an orbital view of the destination planet. This transition scene appears as a rapid expansion of a tiny image of the destination planet to the full size orbital view, as though you've traveled to it at near light speed. I've seen other mods that radically increase boost speed achieve a similar effect when approaching planets, so there seems to be a basis in vanilla to work with.

 

MIST introduces a travel delay. The travel delay is a function of distance to the destination, engine power allocation, and ship mobility. With the option to initiate travel, the HUD and starmap show the travel duration in real world time next to the distance.

 

In-system travel: T(seconds) = 200 * distance(AU) / (mobility * engpoweralloc%).

 

Traveling between the furthest two planets in a large system, with a ship having 100 mobility, and fully powered engines would take about 24 seconds. Travel is unavailable for completely damaged or unpowered engines.

 

Once travel begins on a course that will take longer than 20 seconds, the player can get up from the pilot seat and move about the ship. A persistent notification appears showing the time until arrival such as "Arrival at Eridani II in 00:24" and disappears when it reaches 0 to be replaced by a notification of arrival such as "Arrived at Eridani II"; crew might also announce arrival using existing dialogue lines and prompts. The ship may be hailed or engaged in combat upon arrival, as usual, so be ready to get back in the pilot seat.

 

Travel between star systems works basically the same way, but requires jump fuel, shows the more dramatic grav drive effect, and takes longer. Travel time is a function of total distance in LY across all jumps needed, grav drive thrust, drive power allocation, and ship mobility.

 

Interstellar travel: T(seconds) = 3000 * distance(sumlightyears) / (gravthrust * gravpoweralloc% * mobility).

 

So making a five-system jump traversing a total of 100 LY with a fully powered grav drive having 25 thrust in a ship with 80 mobility would take 150 seconds (2m30s). Selecting a Mission marker or custom marker from space shows the travel time on the HUD next to the marker; time can also be seen in the travel info in the star map.

 

On activating travel, the usual countdown begins, provided the grav drive is powered. The end of the countdown dictates the start of the jump at which point battles, scans, and similar have been evaded. The visual grav drive effect is a less climactic looped snippet of the vanilla version so it can be played continuously while the jump is in progress.

 

Once the jump has begun, options will appear while seated in the cockpit to wait until arrival using the same key/button as to take off or undock, as well as to get up and move about the ship using the same key/button as usual, provided the travel time is longer than 20 seconds.

 

While on course, the player may use a bed for the option to sleep until arrival. Plotting a new course is unavailable while a jump is in progress. Adding power to the grav drive during a jump updates the calculation for travel time accordingly, but at least one unit of power must be retained until the jump concludes.

 

Just by adding such visual substance and time delays to travel would significantly improve the experience compared to the vanilla fast-travel-anywhere method, as though heading off into the void is actually a meaningful endeavor. In space, traveling to planets, systems, and locations, including procedural landing sites requires the whole process outlined above; there's really no sense having a fast travel system on top of what is effectively a default fast travel system, even with the above proposals, especially with the option to wait.

 

Naturally, travel to discovered locations on-world should have the usual fast travel option, so for discovered locations on the surface; again, tapping it adds (or removes) a Plot Course marker and holding it initiates fast travel.

 

Note: MIST proposes none of the following, but extended travel through open space would be an excellent opportunity to add new content, reposition encounters, or even just pick up signals from nearby systems which may be announced by the crew or appear as Activities in the quest log to investigate. For instance, the player might receive a notification or crew announcement of a disruption, giving the player the option, from the cockpit, to exit the jump prematurely and later resume course by using the same key/button as to open the planet map when in orbit. In doing so, instead of being at the intended destination, the ship may encounter a derelict station, a rogue planet, or a stranded ship in open space. For technical reasons, leaving an open space location may only be possible by resuming the plotted course with the same key/button.

 

Thanks all!

 

[Edited: Corrected a typo.]

[FALCmods4all]

I think these au and ly per sec (Real Time RT) stats look good. In game if map displays travel time might be good to state travel times in UT (20x RT I think?).

 

Your first person suggestions would really help for VR.

 

Really hope people master hiding travel loading screens behind more immersive travel like this as soon as mod tools come out.

 

I’ve also been thinking about ship computer upgrades as relating to travel. Like the less AI on board the more manual acceleration and deceleration required for in system travel to adjust travel time vs chance of dock collision or entering atmosphere at too high velocity. Fancier computer, the more automated course plotting and docking. Faulty/damaged computer could even get you lost. Sarah does imply that bad grav jumps are possible by acting relieved every jump.

[dertien]

Traveling great distances and a mechanic as you described above, but even with more interaction was done as it should by a game called I-War 2 edge of chaos. It was not only done correctly and quite realistically but it was done well.

 

It used a combination of Auto Pilots that would take the fuss out of judging how fast a ship should go and when it needed to decelerate not to overshoot the planet or nav point it was aiming to approach, even if this was many LS away, by using an LDS drive (Linear Displacement) To travel between planets at great speeds.

 

The game had 4 autopilots which were activated with F5, F6 F7 and F8.

 

-Autopilot Disengage

-Autopilot Approach

-Autopilot Formate

-Autopilot Dock

 

An Intercept Autopilot was available as a separate ship system one could purchase and mount separately, (a bit like we can do in Starfield using the Equipment tab to install Comspikes and such) This add on Interceptor autopilot would effectively intercept your active target (with newtonian physics in play during dogfights and gouges, that was sometimes a godsend, and sometimes a burden, but it was there.) And you could of course target subsytems on ships as well.

 

So, for example flying from Sol to Wolf, you would plot a course from Sol to Wolf on the Navmap, lock in the destination, activate the Approach Autopilot, and it would drive you in LDS (Warp or Supercruise) at great speeds to the nearest Lagrange Point. At this point the autopilot would line up with the point of entry and capsule jump between Sol to a Lagrange point in Wolf. From there another LDS (supercruise) leg would take you to your final point.

 

Mind you that the L-Point would never be next to a station, so another LDS leg would be required to go to the station or planet you set up in the nav computer. The autopilot would thus take the calculation and the guestimate on when to decelerate out of the pilot's hands.

 

It got interesting though for a number of reasons.

1. The Autopilot could be turned off manually by disengaging it, and you could take over manual control. In addition to the Newtonian Physics the game had, this created some interesting navigation possibilities.
2. Pirates that would be roaming around the L-Points to prey on incoming freighters, that emerged at the L-Point from their Capsule jump (they just spawned there with a certain velocity and vector) would be scanning cargo and a juicy freighter would be targeted with an LDSI missile. The LDSI (inhibitor) missile denied the quarry from turning on their LDS drive to jump away until a certain cooldown period was reached. IIRC countermeasuers such as chaff or flare could not spoof LDSI, unlike regular missiles that locked on which could be outrun or outmaneuvered given the right circumstances LDSI missiles were loudicrously fast. When at the start of your LDS transit from one point to another they could catch up with you while you were accelerating. These missiles could be compared to what Elite Dangerous does when you interdict someone in Supercruise, but instead of creating a thether that you have to keep in line while the interdiction took place, LDSI was immediate. The difference between Elite Dangerous, where you were immediately pulled down together with your assailant in the same 'bubble', your attacker would take some time to reach you depending on the distance you already covered, giving you the chance to prepare your own LDSI to attack it when it got close, in order to have your LDSI cooldown precede theirs and run away again by engaging your LDSI or, facing your attacker and dealing with him once and for all.
3. You could manually add or retract speed from the LDS warp, (so go from warp 8 to warp 4 for example) by reducing pips allocated in the engineering screen to the engines, or by reducing thrust.
4. Once you got interdicted or you wanted to help an NPC to kill off some pirates, you could take manual control or let the autopilot do the calculus for approach and optimal vector and then manually disengage the autopilot and start dogfighting yourself, once you had a good idea of target speed and vectors, and you were in control of your approach and orbiting around your target manually using thrusters was manageable.
5. Your Ship could be run 'cold' both by purchasing Chemical thrusters instead of the 'burning variety' or by allocating less power to all unnecessary systems, to make you less 'bright' on the enemy's sensor, and effectively let you sneak past some checkpoints or catch a pirate by surprise, or evade patrols.
6. Remote Links to control drones and certain smaller ships was also possible.
7. Lasers, and PBC cannons had a much lower firing rate than in Starfield, but every shot was very powerful, making shots count on target important. You needed to lead your shots on to a certain point if you switched off your auto aim (keeping the nose of your ship and your weapons pointing at a certain area where your weapons could adjust slightly) or if your auto aim was malfunctioning due to having been hit before in the encounter and being auto-repaired by the engineering software and repair bots and power was being rerouted to other systems, making 'dogfighting' a tactical real time affair, which didn't require split time decisions, but a careful planned approach, but not turning it into a turn based strategy encounter. Something that Starfield does now by slowing down time in 'targeting mode'
8. You only had 1 (or sometimes 2) shields, that were constantly being redirected by the ship computer to face the attacker at all angles, except in the rearward direction due to covering your engines, a bit like a knight holding a real shield when performing a gouging attack while on their horses, so your 6 could only be covered by you facing your enemy while flying in the opposite direction, as is feasible with Newtonian Physics. So you had the option of 'flying backwards', trying to keep yourself orbiting your enemy without getting closer or getting out of range to keep your ordnance from hitting it, and trying maneuver to the enemy's six while denying him the same favor. With one on one encounters this was doable with practice, mutiple opponents would require a 'dance' to come out on top so to speak, or make a run for it.
9. The shots of your enemy could actually be evaded, like Neo dodging bullets in 'The Matrix', if the distance between you and the target ship was a few kilometers away. Again that would also count in both directions.

A lot of these mechanics are actually already part of Starfield. LDS is a reality in starfield, the autopilot that takes care of the acceleration and deceleration however is not (yet). Lagrange points could be added. And Newtonian physics is already a thing in Starfield.

 

This would be a dream come true if someone actually would be able to program this into Starfield when the CK comes out.

 

I-War 2 can be found on GOG and Steam for a bargain as well, and mods for the game are still available at https://www.i-war2.com as are still a few gameplay videos on YT, if you want to have a look at this.

 

I will try to make a gameplay video showing these things off and linking them here.

 

A freeroam mod, providing 'open end gameplay' where you can pirate, trade, hire ships etc... is also included after finishing the main story.

Edited November 1, 2023 by dertien