The idea is that if you want to save time, you would do shorter concurrent jumps instead of one large one. Its quicker and cheaper that way. 😉

I think he's talking about not being able to set time compression to highest when close to a planet or star. I do find it a tad tedious at times when it automatically sets itself to the lower speed settings when it would be quite safe to go at max. I assume it's there to stop you reaching a surface before it's managed to generate the landscape or something, so I'm happy to put up with the feature, especially considering how long it takes my not so great computer to generate it all. 🙂

I agree with that... for me, going too close to a sun always means game over ^

Pioneer is a simulator and a game. That's the appeal of FE2 and Pioneer for me. A simulator simulates the time it takes to do something as part of the simulation of the action itself. That's part of the immersion. If you really want to be frustrated, try Orbiter. You launch your spacecraft, burn for several minutes to get out of the atmosphere and set your apoapsis, then wait 45 minutes to do the burn to circularize your orbit! 😆

To encourage you to get a better hyperdrive (or make shorter jumps). A class 1 drive in an Eagle is underpowered, fyi - it needs a class 2 to really work well.

This has been asked for a lot. I've pushed back in the past because I feel like there's then no point having the normal one - everyone will just override. My resolve on this is swaying a bit though as there's actually quite a lot of risk involved with ramping up the timeaccel close to a planet - there's a good risk of ending up crashing. So I'm now thinking that the in-game reasoning is that the lockout is a safety feature that you can override, but don't complain to the insurance people if you do it and die 🙂

I think you made the right decision there robn with the stardreamer, best leave it up to the player to make the choice. If they muck it up, it's their own fault, not the game's. I can understand though why you left the safety feature in.

What about leaving it in an as option?

I understand a larger hyperdrive reduces the time needed in the game, but I still don't see the need why the player has to wait. In other games when for example you bring your aircraft for an engine overhaul, you don't sit behind your screen for weeks, unable to fly until the mechanics have done everything, it happens instantly. Correct simulation of time is a good thing in for example a Formula 1 race, where time is a key element in winning or losing. I'm all for hyperdrive/mass ratio influencing GAME time, not for increasing REAL time.

Pioneer is to me more a simulator than a game, even when completed I won't play it like I did Frontier 15 years ago. So I like to enjoy the scenery. If that's not important, why put so much effort in producing these beautiful planets? I'd love a stardreamer override so I can provide myself with the images I want, in the least amount of time. And being able to shut the automatic reduction off is only natural, you can switch off the safeties in your car by removing the right fuse or hacking the wiring. I hate it when technology dictates to me what I can and cannot do. For example I modified my car so the diesel engine keeps running without electricity, and I use my custom cable to starve it from fuel if I want to stop it. That's it, control. Furthermore, I have years of experience flying stuff in accelerated time, both in space and in atmospheres. I never complained to Braben or Oleg Maddox if I crashed my craft due to my own stupidity 🙂 My proposal: holding down the preferred stardreamer setting for two seconds locks it, unless automatic pilot is used.

@Marcel: I use a lot of Orbiter too. A few weeks back I flew an XR5 from Earth to Mars using my very limited knowledge of interplanetary travel and landed the thing there. And yes, with time compression. Would you sit for weeks or months behind your screen, looking at a pale dot in a black sky, for the immersion? Orbiter's time compression goes to x10.000 as well. Frak immersion, we have lives besides this, any waiting that can reasonably be avoided should be avoided, otherwise the whole concept of a stardreamer is an empty one. Time matters, I've read that Pioneers startup time has already been reduced and I didn't even ask for that 😉

Hey, Its optional. If you follow the rules of the game you don't... For Hyperspacethat is.

And if you refer to the hyperspace charge wait time, then that too is optional. Just enable time-compression. But the maximum wait time you would ever have to sit through would be something like 4 seconds for the biggest ship with the biggest drive on the surface where time-compression is limited.

Yes time-compression around a planet can be dull but there were fundamental reasons why it was set this way, however now-days it doesn't make much sense to keep it that way though. It can at least be ramped up one notch, so instead of locking at 2X speed it would lock at 10X speed around a planet. But any higher and you will die.

At this moment I have a perfect example where stardreamer reduction is overdoing things. Just for fun I wanted to look at Sol in it's "red giant" phase. So I edited the class and increased the size by 50. Next thing I wanted to do is land on Mercury to enjoy the view. But now I'm at 0.2 AU from Mercury, 0.46 AU from the Sun and the stardreamer kicks back to second position and nothing I can do about it. Present speed 300 KM/s. So if I want out of this situation, I have spin the ship around, wait until my vector is reversed and wait even longer until I'm out of reach, or jump to another system.

Please, if only a switch in a config file for "testing purposes only", make the thing optional for that very happy few 🙂

Well what about this doing this instead :

Would that be sufficient?

That's an increase from x10 to x100 right? I think that would help a lot 🙂

Ok, try this out over a copy of the latest nightly build: [attachment=850:pioneer time-accel.7z] Everything was just moved up by one for normal situations, but will still get over-ridden by docking and nearby ship.

If it still doesn't feel right then we probbaly need to change the way time-accel selection is handled.

Haven't tried your exe s20dan, but I'd think that would be a perfectly good solution, there are times when I'm testing when I just hack it a bit to do the same/disable it on my machine.

Well actually... I used to play Frontier by keeping the game date and time synced with the actual date and time. I didn't keep it running all the time, but when I came back to the game I'd time accelerate until I reached the current time. It gave me a good feeling for the actual distances involved. 🙄 That said, ramping up the time accel a notch and allowing the player to override and crash makes perfect sense to me. 🙂

I must be stoopid but I don't understand the directory structure. I copied the files to the main folder, the original .exe seems te same, the msvc exe won't run. Should I move all the dll's to data\libs?

Check stderr.txt in the game directory - chances are it couldn't load some data file.

The stderr.txt says "Could not load data/icons/volume_unmuted.png"

Allright, that's true because there isn't one. But neither in Alpha12.

They've been added after A12. Easiest if you just copy any of the existing icons as volume_unmuted.png and volume_muted.png.

It works! Great improvement!

Fyi, the nightlies are not alpha 12 😉 But you sorted it out.