"Stardreamer" and the whole dream-state/stasis thing are Frontier concepts. We've never said that's how it works in Pioneer. Among the devs we just call it "timeaccel".

I don't really think of it as being an in-game mechanism, but more just a convenience for the player to keep the game moving. The only reason it has a lockout near massive bodies is because its too easy for the uninitiated to wind up inside a planet. And you can override the lock by holding Ctrl when you click the buttons.

Nothing in the game logic cares about it though. If it suits you to role-play with it a bit, feel free, but I think its very unlikely that there will ever be any in-game aspect to timeaccel.

You ever thought about adding Ctrl - F keys as shortcuts to the override? It seems odd that you can't do it from the keyboard...

I do like the idea about fuel cost increasing by using the higher stardreamer settings.  Interesting idea for a difficulty setting in game?

It would definately slow down the gameplay if a pilot opted to be fuel conscious.

Why would we want to punish the player for not wanting boredom?

I like to pretend that my crew play zero-G ping pong during the long voyages.

I like to pretend that my crew play zero-G ping pong during the long voyages.

Looking forward to that Kroo branch of yours, if you plan to merge it to the game.

I think Lacrosse would be THE best sport to play in freefall... full contact, got a stick for attitude controll and can whip a ball around for reaction mass when an opponent's body isn't available...

ping pong would be OK for chidlren and elderly astronauts, though 😉

Zero-G Paintball... or even Zero-G Frisbee!

Skateboarding / BMX.

"He's going for the octuple backflip to fifty-fifty grind again. So conservative..."

😎

nah, tiddlywinks man!

I wonder if the Stardreamer should help with G tolerance as well as biological stasis. Some (most?) of these ships would kill any human pilot at full power.

I personally like the idea of changing the "Thrust Limiter" to an "afterburner", with the default thrust of a ship being 5% or 10% what it is now and pressing SHIFT should increase thrust up to the current max. I'd even make the fuel consumption scale exponentially with the thrust... make high G manuvers more expensive, basically.

Generally, I've always been uncomfortable with the idea of subjecting a human pilot to the forces one of the Ships in Pioneer can produce, no way I would be able to survive a flight from LA to Discovery Station in the starting ELRF without a LOT of training and life support equipment!

Looking forward to that Kroo branch of yours, if you plan to merge it to the game.

Well, when it's more complete I do plan to make a pull request. Actual merge depends upon review. It's like sitting a test. (-:

Why would we want to punish the player for not wanting boredom?

Not about boredom It's about tactical.

Why wouldn't I just slam into every planet using the stardreamer and autopilot, In fact  why bother having ANY realtime piloting?

My point is if you happen to be low on fuel you would essentially get a bonus for traveling at a lower stardreamer speed.

Not that you can't join a fuel club - still - I think if one is piloting manually in realtime there should be some perk.

Maybe if you overuse the stardreamers high setting your fuel should spring the occasional leak?

Why wouldn't I just slam into every planet using the stardreamer and autopilot, In fact  why bother having ANY realtime piloting?
My point is if you happen to be low on fuel you would essentially get a bonus for traveling at a lower stardreamer speed.

You have that right now. Its manual piloting. You can fly more efficiently than the autopilot. The tradeoff is that it can be tricky to hit a target in the distance.
 

Not that you can't join a fuel club - still - I think if one is piloting manually in realtime there should be some perk.
Maybe if you overuse the stardreamers high setting your fuel should spring the occasional leak?

How does that make any sense at all?

Ok, I was polite above. Let me restate it. Unless someone arrives with a patch, this will not happen. Even then it probably won't happen, because there's pretty much no support for it among the core devs.

Feel free to continue talking amongst yourselves 🙂

If you can get better fuel efficiency in manual piloting traveling on fumes to reach a landing pad that would using autopilot or stardreamer cause you to run empty just slightly before reaching such a destination.

Then there is nothing to add.

Imagining a ship's hull would be subjected to a lot more stresses, micrometeor impacts, radiation over longer periods of time in space - these would logically create abnormal wear and tear on systems and hull.

The stardreamer might realistically reflect that by having relevant ship failures such as fuel leaks or structural integrity issues. Not having a shield on your ship could make this worse.

Anyways I'm not onboard with the whole concept here - but this part about fuel consumption is interesting.

If you can get better fuel efficiency in manual piloting traveling on fumes to reach a landing pad that would using autopilot or stardreamer cause you to run empty just slightly before reaching such a destination.
Then there is nothing to add.

This is the case. Piloting manually, you can be extraordinarily efficient with propellant. When travelling on fumes, the autopilot is not likely to be your friend.

Imagining a ship's hull would be subjected to a lot more stresses, micrometeor impacts, radiation over longer periods of time in space - these would logically create abnormal wear and tear on systems and hull.

A week in space is a week in space, regardless of whether you had to sit through it in a week, a day, an hour or a couple of minutes. When you accelerate time in Pioneer, you accelerate everything with it. Planets, ships, laser blobs, missiles, bulletin boards, scripted events - even fuel use. They all get sped up with the clock.

The stardreamer might realistically reflect that by having relevant ship failures such as fuel leaks or structural integrity issues. Not having a shield on your ship could make this worse.
 
Anyways I'm not onboard with the whole concept here - but this part about fuel consumption is interesting.

The stardreamer has one effect. Time speeds up. This is so that the player doesn't have to sit staring, bored, at the screen while their ship appears to sit still in deep space. A bored player isn't a player for long.

If there's a random chance per minute that your hull will be damaged, or your fuel leaks, this will also be sped up by the stardreamer, without requiring any additional magic. Those features could be added (it's really not hard, a ten line script could do it) but they should not be caused by the time accelerator.

 A bored player isn't a player for long.

 

Amen to that. In actual fact I love the stardreamer and wish there was another couple of notches more past max.

No slight at ALL to the Stardreamer - and I too would like to have a few speed-up features added.  I'm glad there's some scripting to increase the chance of damage over time - that's the main thing.

No slight at ALL to the Stardreamer - and I too would like to have a few speed-up features added.  I'm glad there's some scripting to increase the chance of damage over time - that's the main thing.

I didn't say that. I said, "Those features could be added."

Feel free to add them. Scripting in Lua is not difficult.

Amen to that. In actual fact I love the stardreamer and wish there was another couple of notches more past max.

There is actually one additional notch, 100000x, which you see in action during hyperspace. Unfortunately the autopilot gets harder and harder to make work the higher the timeaccel goes (and remember, the same autopilot has to drive non-player ships around as well). I doubt we'll ever see higher timeaccel multipliers available.

I didn't say that. I said, "Those features could be added."

Feel free to add them. Scripting in Lua is not difficult.

Guess I misunderstood you had already added some lua script that added damage to drives over time.

One aspect, any damage 'roll of dice' probably should take into account in such a lua script would be if you were travelling below peak thrust power on any extended journey.

- otherwise you may hear Scotty sayin 'Ach the bearings won't take anymore at this speed captain!' - even if he's technically in stardreamer sleep.

Stardreamer is not cryo sleep, but more of a reduced metabolism/cognitive activity. Obvious book references to similar mechanisms would be the golden age and Takeshi Kovacs series.

It is not a case where the universe speeds up, it is the pilot slows down - but keeps conscience. You could add a cost to do so (some drug needed?), but it would be strange it would make any difference to the ship.

Its not part of the game. Its a UI function. I don't understand where the confusion is coming from.

Indeed, it's just there to alleviate boredom for the player.