Let's see, if we double up cruise speed, smugglers can easily trade off plane and off lane to completely avoid interaction. Corporate traders might do the same to avoid pirates.
Trade ships are the main reason why activity exists, and making them even less interactable would surely cause more harm, than yo apease your wish to cruise through desolate systems quicker.
Changing speed up would cause decrease in the cargo value for balance reasons. So, we would end up in the very same time of earning as a trader, all in all.
I would see however some differences in cruise for same classes, like I would make civilian ships faster with cruise, but weaker on hull and one less weapon on them.
There is however other thing we could do: shrinking systems a bit. Core systems were always bigger, but in vanilia, most of the systems weren't bigger than about 100x100-K (vide Hokkaido, Cortez - that are rather small systems).
Or the different thing: merging some systems and making them a bit bigger, like I would merge Ellesmere and Alaska, where there would be one system, but two suns from different systems - I would put Ellesmere with its incredible Badlands-like field into the North-West of Alaska, because there is nothing.
(11-03-2014, 01:57 AM)Void_Nemesis_GOF2 Wrote: Increasing the cruise speed to 600 would equal to having a magnificent firework each time a LF tries to enter an asteroid field. Let's not.
"Were engaged in a hot pursuit of a Rogue that just entered the badlands"
"All ships, spread out an---"
*slams into asteroid*
*other light fighters slam into asteroids*
>no more light fighters ever
[ sci·am·ach ]
/sīˈamək/
A simple, angry man casually working his way through life on a personal quest to acquire copious amounts of street cred.
It's realy sad, that, in FL, you can't managing cruise speed, like you can do with impulse speed.
For example: Max cruise speed of your ship is 600. When there is empty space around, you much your speed to max. When, some obstacles appears, you decreas your speed, to 250, but remaining at cruise. (Im not talking about EK) You back to empty space- push to max again and so on.
There is one space combat game, made in Russia, called Zavtra Vojna (Tomorrow is War). With all crap it has, there is a nice thuster control, I give that to it. You can fly in impulse speed, with afterburn, or you can engage cruise drive. It has minimal possible speed, and maximal, and during your flight, you can adjust it. Entered into asteroid field- decreas it (small touch of an other object, in 99% instadeath.) to speed, which seems to be safe for you. When ship is clear from any other obstacles, you can increas cruise speed back to max.