I'm one of those corpses that pave the road that Frontier drives. I pick up the game from time to time, get frustrated by how long the most mundane parts can take, and then I leave again. This repeats about a year, and I just so happened to come back right as the SCO was added. From the horses mouth, I'll tell you this: it's bloody brilliant. I wish I could put it into words, but none of them would be better than what you've already said here. The number of little ways it helps really make for a mountainous improvement.
For me, the SCO drive has made a massive impact in Exploration. Not only does it give a (tiny) boost to range in my Phantom, but the ability to get to distant planets faster has been such a game changer.
it also allows for rapid escapes from neutron stars and white dwarfs, reducing the time you're stuck in the cone and if you get into that glitch of being dropped into the cone, you can quickly escape
I agree that SCO is probably the most important addition to the game with update 18.05. I have found gameplay loops I hesitated to do because of long supercruise times. Now, they are possible and, more importantly, enjoyable. Thanks for the Video and your 2 cents!
Been enjoying it. We need a cooldown indicator, and an SCO mass lock indicator - both result in keypresses that do nothing because the HUD doesn't give you the information you need about the state of the SCO.
Does SCO have a different mass lock to normal SC? I haven't noticed any difference between the two, since SCO can be activated at any point that SC is active. I definitely agree with having a visible SCO cooldown timer though.
Thanks again for this video! And yes, some of my ships have already been upgraded. As a Fuel Rat it is not uncommon to have to rescue someone many ls into deep space, quite recently someone got stranded 1.5M ls away from the entry point. In situations like this, SCO is no luxury when you want to get to a stranded cmdr fast. And of course there is another side to this, being the unwary cmdr switching on their SCO, and burning their fuel in no time leaving them alone far away with empty tanks, providing new and challenging rescues for us 😉
@nuggytube ah, that explains things, potentially. So the implication here is people assume that the context for "qol" is "a change with no downsides." That's fairly reasonable actually, and is pretty close! Only part they've missed is the minor nature and ... maybe that some will still dislike it? I'll work on that last inference.
I feel that the realization that “space is too damn big” is something that draws me to space games to begin with. But I understand not everyone feels that way and just want to fast travel where they’re going and get on with it. That being said, I think having things to do in the ship instead of just being glued to the pilot seat would have been a better solution. Like ship maintenance or what not a la ostranauts.
Dude exactly!! Like even though they said ship interiors, we didn't need the whole ship to be explorable. All we need is to be able to walk around the front of the ship.
Personally I don't think it takes away from that feeling too much. You can only activate it for so long before your ship starts overheating, and when you consider the fact that to cross say 400,000Ls of space in a timely fashion you have to boost to *thousands* of times the speed of light *multiple* times, I think it manages to make the experience less mundane without trivialising the vast scale completely.
I think the SCO is huge and my teenage sons and some of their friends have begun to play as well. It does make the WHOLE elite experience better because now everything you do is engaging, even the in-between bits
It's amazing to see how a single update to one component revolutionizes nearly every career path in the game. Trading, exploring and even combat all benefit from these new drives.
@@odortona9913 How delightful would it be that that the murder marigolds were a shotgun toting family desperately trying to retrieve a romantic miscreant who evaporated upon hearing a lovestruck princess was keen on marriage. With absolutely no communication, how would we know?
I've noticed SCO drives also have an overall greater base jump range, so I'm using them to retrofit all my old ships regardless of if I intend on using SCO or not. I'm a returning player, haven't played that much since Fleet Carriers were added, so I had absolutely no clue about what an SCO drive was when returning to the game lol
Yup! Jump range is improved across the board. The one exception is the pre-engineered V1 5A FSD, which when compared to a fully-engineered 5A SCO FSD has a jump range of ~0.25 ly more (ymmv depending on your ship and build). However even then I'd say the general utility of SCO is such a great value compared to that little bit that's lost that it's worth taking the SCO anyway.
I wonder if APEX and Frontline will install SCO drives on their ships, they seem able to use thruster boost quite well, hopefully the AI programmers can incorporate SCO to cut down travel times too.
SC drives. Complete game changer at the most fundamental level. Sleep mode waiting for normal drives to get you to the station with with 100LS remaining as it took for the rest of the time to travel up to that 100LS remaining. SC drives have restored my enjoyment in cruise travel. I warp into system with a fully laden Type 9. Pirate: "Theres that ship with the big haul!" Me: "Hold my beer". Targets station and engages SC drive.
The improved SCO drives now they are in A grade and can be engineered are quickly replacing 98% of my fleet , the only exception is the pre engineered one for the 2 second reboot time on a ship that needs it turned off for combat. The QOL improvement this has brought about is game changing and I am looking forward to the changes with PP v2 . o7
I usually engage supercruise the moment the mass lock drops. I don't wait until I reach the upper levels of orbit. Then, if the jump point is in sight, I'll jump immediately. I'm just glad that those jumps don't damage the planets at close range or a lot of people would be angry with me! I do like how SCO can get me across a system faster. The trick is knowing when to cut it off so you don't do a loop of shame. But there are times I'll just let the ship cruise at "normal" velocities and use that time to get something else done. Like getting a cup of coffee.
This will be a huge efficiency boost for exploration. Stumbling on a First Discovered system is a great feeling, but that feeling can be quickly undermined when you want to scan everything down to the First Footfall level and have to escape every....single...gravity...well...for...dozens...of...planets.. 😭
I’ve liked the SCO for longer jump range on my mining ships, but as someone who started playing the game literally just for mining… I haven’t actually needed the SCO part for the mining part as much? I’m guessing I’m missing something being fairly new or just not imaginative enough, what sort of stuff are you up to using SCO with core mining? I was thinking to use it for cutting down travel time / exploring really far off rings just for the fun of it, but the mining itself would still be just dropping in and filling up to max before going to station / jumping out I think
Iam still on Exploration... 2Yrs and on goin - iam near the Center of the Galaxy and still was not in Colonia. :D :D :D This will be my Goal... after exploring the Center of the Galaxy - going "West" towards Colonia and make my very first visit there... missed the whole Stargoid Thing and so on - when my Char will be back in the Bubble there will be many new Things and my DBX will need a whole new Painting and new Cockpit Glasses. :P
I finally got around to putting a 6A SCO in my mining Anaconda - and a bunch of heatsinks. My first test was to run it at Supecruise for 90K LS until I ran out of enough fuel to maintain it. I was sure I would end up on a re-buy, but made it back to the station on fumes. This is definitely a gamechanger for my mining runs.
Buur, I only just got around to watching this one and your insights into the challenge of getting newer players to those amazing moments and why they give up are so good. I really do hope SCO and other improvements to the game bring in more players that stay.
I've been away from E:D for a few years, and not sure I'll come back, but I gotta say the way they introduced this tech with the Stargoids is amazing, and an example that other live service games should point towards.
Even without using the boost, the new SCO's have a longer jump range. Especially when engineered. There's absolutely no downside to using them and they're better in every way.
Individual star systems being made more accessible with SCO is amazing for playability. You don’t loose scale as you still have the whole milky way to explore and that is huge monster what you do, even if you could teleport anywhere at a whim. Old Fdev couldn’t see the forest for the trees…
SCO clearly is one of the biggest game changers during all ED history ... allows enjoy play of ED during whole play session, needs some skills for use efficiently and is fun :)
ED was one of the very few (the only) game where I could set my ship in a direction, leave the keyboard, boil the kettle, make a cuppa and be back in the chair before I needed to take control of the ship again.
If players are bored with getting to a place in 8 minutes, they'll get bored with getting to it in 5 minutes. The problem is not the speed of getting to places. The problem is the lack of things to do during the journey. This is why ship interiors are needed - we need minigames - things to manually tweak in the ship, stuff to clean, components to upgrade, gadgets to make from raw materials that can be sold later, or maybe even just something as simple as playing chess against the ship's computer - something that takes time and is interesting, to take up our attention during the voyage.
@@Beery1962 The thing is, the player IS currently occupied for almost the entirety of those 5 minutes. The 3 minute dead air is all that's been eliminated, which, in my opinion, is great.
SCO drives are truely amazing. I installed and engeneered them in almost all of my ships. Normal FSDs became obsolete the day that A rated SCOs joined the party :)
I already were excited about the supercruise assist, making it possible to take the eyes of the screen, when travelling huge distances in supercruise. As soon as I return, I'm definately checking out the overcharge
Even just the higher jump range had me sold. The sco boost itself is just the cherry on top. Makes on-foot missions faster too, when leaving the surface.
I took a break from Elite a few months ago, and this is the first I've heard of SCO. WOW... I agree this is a big deal! I have always felt irritation/ disappointment when exploring in the black, finding a juicy-looking system with lots of planets, only to realize that most of those juicy planets are 200K light years away. It looks like SCO will solve that. Thanks for the great video Commander! o7
Note that POIs and other signals may drop more engineering materials nowadays than before. On SCO drives, testing it on few ships, gathering materials to engineer more of them. Likely keeping many Sirius drives on ships for these are parrly tharg tech.
there should be salvage option in the game where you deliver your unwanted upgraded modules for disassembly and recovery of at least portion of used materials for upgrade. and with ownership of the carrier, limit of available storage for modules should increase to the carrier capacity, or purchase of additional slots in the stations with arx at least.
Agree 100%. Dramatically reduces down the time of doing nothing and improves the overall experience of playing the game without degrading the overall scale. Fantastic, well thought out addition by the developers.
I agree, it really speeds up travel times while still making the scale matter; your ship will whip around in SCO and you have to actively control and pulse it. Of course it works remarkably well in the Mk2 iteration of the Python, but I also fit up my old Mk1 BGS workhorse Python with a SCO drive. It has sped up mission times considerably! I'm also eager to see what exploration discoveries CMDRs make in the far reaches of bigger systems (particularly around Guardian space, where I have noted 100,000 Ls+ unscanned things).
Where I enjoy the sco the most is breaking out of the gravity wells, then I switch back to standard sc and bs with my buddy and take in the sites. It's great we have the option to kick it down and hit the NOS! Though I hope Sirius will build a micro jump option to there variant, so you can jump between in system stars and brown dwafs. Great video Burr as always!
Couldn't have FDEV just added an 'overdrive' to standard FSD drives? Seems they've added a complication rather than a quality of life improvement imho.
Will be upgrading all transports. Found SCO works extremely well with planet lift-offs (like your video comparison), and looking forward to trying HGOs once I've done the priority upgrades.
As a small ship pilot, the 3D engineered SCO (deep charge) drive is the new standard. The increase in real space speed (+30m/s) is an easy trade off for an 1.7 extra light years, and it still beats the 'old' A class engineered unit.
I love the SCO drives, they are a game changer, and I thank FDEV for it. But, I've been playing 6 months and I have engineered all my 20 odd FSDs in that time, so, now I have a load of engineered and pre-engineered FSDs that are obsolete. What a waste of time and materials that was!
Yes FSD SCO is a beast, my first activation happened by accident, got interdicted by a npc, a pirate, evade him and jump into supercruise, i pressed my boost button and ship went it flew to fast, i was like "WTF WHAT IS THIS" until i dropped out of Supercruise, ran out of fuel, i had a bit to return to the station. It was hilarious.
I wasn't aware of what SCO was until I accidentally triggered it close to star and was violently plunged into deep space tossing and turning like crazy. I didn't realize it until after a few more similar accidents, that I was triggering it due to pressing B on my controller, which also closes the menus, but also works as a boost after dropping out of SC. I was out of fuel and super far away and confused, with much of my modules in wreck because I panick dropped out of SC. Well, apparently I could do better.
I just hope AI pirates and overall interdiction gets new possibilities, too. As it stands now, SCO is just an "easy mode" button to delete pirate and interdiction threat, which is not all that great.
I might also consider this for exploration! so much of my time is spent in system crawling from planet to planet to map them out. Even more so with multi star systems with lucrative planets at each star.
Completely concur regarding the importance to the game the SCO drive has made. Tested these since the non-engineerable C classes came out initially and saw the potential back then. They are a great addition to the game, especially as they can be engineered and every class is available now - awating the FSD wars and what we get next when Sirius responds :D
I agree. FDev added this feature in exactly the right way. I have to commend them. I just wish they would take a look at exploration/science, smuggling, scavenging, piracy and bounty hunting with the same creative eye. So much could be done to lift this game up to the next level. The fact that they have ignored this, is what made me stop playing 4 years ago, or is it 5?
Indeed SCO is a great addition,i am in the process of removing old timey drives and replacing though i wish i had some give back in materials when selling old drives.Great Video Buur !! Hope you and fam are well :D
Currently im 40kly away from the nearest SCO selling station, but once i get back i will for sure get one for every single one of my 39 Ships and do the G5 grind again. Grind is fun!
As someone who likes running missions, SCO made the game *so* much more fun. I'm a little disappointed that they already released A-class ones and made them engineerable, though. It was a good opportunity to start to undo some of the excesses that engineering brought to the game. Still, and excellent addition to gameplay!
thats exact what i love about this new fsd. wisely used it is a real new way of flight, and hell, no pirate ever will get me with this! 😀 I want my Elite V Merchant badge!
I'm back playing ED after not playing for about 6 years and I had every ship, got it on pc now. I was very disappointed with ED, nice to see they are doing better now.
I love elite dangerous and have played it for a long time but after watching this, I'm reminded of how many times i would just set my destination and then go make some food or take a shower or do laundry. I think the addition of this new mechanic is great but i would even say that they should make missions available from the engineers that make travel within a system a bit more close to the way that star citizen has it. Or make a way to manage other things while your waiting.
the nice part being its struck a good balance, it gives you speed but at a cost, its hard to control, hard to time and consumes fuel and creates heat, you dont get something for nothing.
I've found myself engaged non-stop with the game after the SCO came out. Before, I always had Reddit or RU-vid open on the other screen, waiting for the supercruise to end. Now I find myself not having time to engage with anything else. I actually often have to slow down if I need anything on Inara or EDSY. There is still downtime - waiting for a jump to charge, the jump itself, slowing down for a station or a planetary landing but it's so much less than before. Lately I've been doing settlement stuff with an Imperial Courier that is very light and can do over 700 m/s sustained (this includes boosting but it never goes below 700 if I don't forget to boost), 800-something in a boost. The speed of my ship combined with the SCO just makes flying between settlements/stations super quick.
I haven't tried SCO yet, but I hope to soon. That said, AFK+tea is kinda my jam, too! Now, if there were only a way to avoid being interdicted while travelling between the stars by mean ol' Thargoids who attack unarmed exploration ships when they're only four jumps away from a return to civilization.
As I was already out in the (not so) black when the SCO frame shift drives hit the shelves, I still traverse large systems with the 2001c speed limit and lesser acceleration of the old FSD. But I don't mind, yet. Even if I sometimes happen to fall asleep on those long travels.
I personally don't care for them, and won't be using them outside some dicking around, because I like the journey. I like staring out into space and relaxing. I don't do PVP either. I guess im completely alone in this opinion though.
Totally agree, SCO drives is an absolute game changer, really does make a huge difference with travel time. I’m planning on replacing all of my FSD’s with the new SCO drives . It does mean having to reengineer the drives, but i don’t care it’s worth it.
Of course installing it is a must, getting to those far stations (like 50.000Ls away and further) is certainly a pain. I even managed to fall asleep on a few of those trips, almost crashing against some planet or being interdicted midway.
Totally agree. Able to get to Titan Hadad to complete attack runs without having to constantly evade interdictions on route. Made two attack runs possible this afternoon instead of one. I'm also going to be using it to get the rare commodities from stations that are up to 600,000 ls. For the ones over that I will be using my carrier!
Loving them and will surely help reduce the tedious climb to Supercruise drop height to re-engage the surface probe scanner needed to locate your next bio type when doing multiple landings when hunting all the different exo-bio types on a body. Such a game changer. O7
I kinda feel a little bit proud being one of the two or three people in frontier forums brainstorming the features of what would become the sco. And the reason it happened was because I was ranting or joining a rant about supercruise travel being sometimes too long and boring, and we tried to come up with an idea that wouldn't be some kind of teleportation like many games do. Now the next question : should I include this in my set of EDRPG custom rules...? 😂 Now I can't say I'm excited at the prospect of seeing a focus on pvp, just like I was not about the focus on in-game events and storylines. I've always played Elite because it was a sandbox. I don't like online games when they work like television : you're assigned hours at which you must be around if you want to be part of any special events, just like when you had to be in front of your television at a specific time to watch a certain show. I hate that. That's partly why I play offline games or actual sandbox games, in which you're the one triggering events and having the fun you want when you're available for it. I don't need another job and artificial constraints (especially when I'm the one paying for it 😅)
I've said it before but I REALLY want to see an alternate FSD that can navigate in the regions between stars at roughly 1LY/s You would need to be mindful of the various witchspace hazards that can impede your movement or throw you off course, maybe some beneficial anomalies you can glide along for a boost. Fuel usage would be increased, and if you run out you end up tumbling to the nearest star. I just really hate the chain of loading screens involved in any sort of long trips. I think the closest comparison I can make is hyperspace in Starsector.
[x] SCO by default in my ships. Currently in Python MKII and my brand new DBX; more to follow all through the year at the point when mats farming will be made easier.
I decided to take a trip before I figured out about SCOs. Thankfully it won't be too long before I get back. I'm already running a guardian boosted fsd. I think I'll have to swap it out in that case. As an explorer I've already decided that if there's something that's way out there that's worth going to see I'm going to put the time in for travel. Still, having the option would be nice.
I tried SCO, I loved it and I'm using it. I have already changed the ships I use most and I will change all the remaining 27 ships as soon as it is convenient. And I haven't changed yet because I have a secret hope that FDev will change the way engineering works and let me recover part of the materials I spent engineering the old FSDs. Great video, as always. o7 everyone
Well. I exchanged my 5A FSD (grade 5 engi with mass tweak) on my 72ly explorer to a SCO (grade 4.3 engi with mass tweak) and that alone incrased my jump capability to 78ly, guessing 5 on engi would get it to 80ly. In other words - 8ly extra, just for changing it from old fsd to new. That itself makes it worth the change for my part. And i have changed most my ships to a SCO, and i will gladly do the grind for material to get them all to grade 5 again.
