ANY way to speed up space travel? Way too slow.

[Justin_760]

Makes me wonder how Ostergaard/Taurians appeared at Artru almost instantly when it took me two MONTHS to get there... Think we have a Game of Thrones case of teleportation in the narrative of Battletech.

Any way, is there any way at all to speed this up? Ill finally save up 4 million credits, and by the time I finally reach the sweet little planets that have all the right tags (star league, research, etc) Im already down 2.5 million from two months of pay and the unreasonable jump ship fees.

This is compounded by the often frustrating RNG that makes travelling to those golden worlds utterly useless because theyll have nothing but junk for sale, then you gotta spend another month jumping to the next one on this list, and the process repeats until you finally find an Assault mech chassis, only youve spent all your money from monthly fees and are broke by the time you find what your looking for.

[desrtfox071]

Maybe this will help:
http://www.sarna.net/wiki/JumpShip

[Justin_760]

Originally posted by desrtfox071:

Maybe this will help:
http://www.sarna.net/wiki/JumpShip

How does that help? Maybe I should clarify the question.

Does anyone have any real advice for dealing with the long travel times? I have both jump drive upgrades on the Argo. Is there a way to modify game files, or a mod for this? I couldnt find anything on google.

[IRMcG]

Not for speeding up the Jumpship travel time, that's fixed AFAIK. You can only speed up your in-system travel speed with ship upgrades. Only editing I've ever heard of speeds up the real-time travel speed (quick Google search will find it) but doesn't alter the length of game-time it takes.

You should be taking travel contracts and/or taking a bunch of cash-only missions to build up funds before you decide to go on a joyride halfway across the galaxy if you don't want to bleed funds anyway.

[terrycpa1972]

Well if you know you aren't taking a contract for the whole month you can select the lower morale option to save some cash.

I have heard people say something about modding pilot costs downward. Don't remember if it was a mod or edits to the json files.

You could try the mod forum on paradox.

[MortVent]

A lot of the stuff can be found in the simgameconstants file and edited. Including basic costs, jump distances and the like

[wesnef]

Originally posted by Justin_760:

Any way, is there any way at all to speed this up? Ill finally save up 4 million credits, and by the time I finally reach the sweet little planets that have all the right tags (star league, research, etc) Im already down 2.5 million from two months of pay and the unreasonable jump ship fees.

Why are you traveling that far in a single go?

(just curious. Aside from trying to reach a Flashpoint before it's timer runs out, I rarely travel more than 2 links at a time. All those missions to take & loot to gather. . . )

then you gotta spend another month jumping to the next one on this list, and the process repeats until you finally find an Assault mech chassis, only youve spent all your money from monthly fees and are broke by the time you find what your looking for.

. . oh. Honestly, it never occurred to me to play that way. Sure, there are some planets with good shops, but I'll just fly around a circle of planets in that area (or a triangle of three planets), hitting missions on each one for loot & cash, and checking the store whenever I land there.

[Justin_760]

Originally posted by wesnef:

Originally posted by Justin_760:

Any way, is there any way at all to speed this up? Ill finally save up 4 million credits, and by the time I finally reach the sweet little planets that have all the right tags (star league, research, etc) Im already down 2.5 million from two months of pay and the unreasonable jump ship fees.

Why are you traveling that far in a single go?

(just curious. Aside from trying to reach a Flashpoint before it's timer runs out, I rarely travel more than 2 links at a time. All those missions to take & loot to gather. . . )

then you gotta spend another month jumping to the next one on this list, and the process repeats until you finally find an Assault mech chassis, only youve spent all your money from monthly fees and are broke by the time you find what your looking for.

. . oh. Honestly, it never occurred to me to play that way. Sure, there are some planets with good shops, but I'll just fly around a circle of planets in that area (or a triangle of three planets), hitting missions on each one for loot & cash, and checking the store whenever I land there.

Really? Your not aware of the tags? Way it works is, planets with certain tags have better loot. Some planets have ALL the good tags like research, rich, inner sphere technology, star league remnants... They have way higher chances of rare loot but they are spread far apart across the map, so obviously you have to travel far for them.

If your just shopping it makes no sense to waste time travelling to adjacent planets if they are abandoned or have no tags that add to shop loot spawn rates.

[Hidden Gunman]

At some points, it's better to play for loot to build up your stock of mechs and gear, and for mechs especially resale. You can get two or three times as much for a good big mech than some low paying contracts.

[wesnef]

Originally posted by Justin_760:

Really? Your not aware of the tags?

I'm well aware of the tags. Just never heard anyone talking about traveling months at a time to go to them.

[Lack of Stuff]

Originally posted by Justin_760:

Originally posted by wesnef:

Why are you traveling that far in a single go?

(just curious. Aside from trying to reach a Flashpoint before it's timer runs out, I rarely travel more than 2 links at a time. All those missions to take & loot to gather. . . )



. . oh. Honestly, it never occurred to me to play that way. Sure, there are some planets with good shops, but I'll just fly around a circle of planets in that area (or a triangle of three planets), hitting missions on each one for loot & cash, and checking the store whenever I land there.

Really? Your not aware of the tags? Way it works is, planets with certain tags have better loot. Some planets have ALL the good tags like research, rich, inner sphere technology, star league remnants... They have way higher chances of rare loot but they are spread far apart across the map, so obviously you have to travel far for them.

If your just shopping it makes no sense to waste time travelling to adjacent planets if they are abandoned or have no tags that add to shop loot spawn rates.

Keep in mind that the tag/shop system was completely re-done in 1.3. It used to be that the rare useful stuff only showed up at planets with the aforementioned combination of the tags. 1.3 split it up more so you have a chance at finding cool things at more planets.

[OrbPlaytime]

You can edit one of the .JSON files to tweak distance you can jump, systemtravel time, and time for fuelling at time of jump.
I modified these myself more to reduce idle downtime with travelling animations, but if you do decide to change these then be careful because you could ruin the financial feel/risk of excessive travel too much and lose a bit of the fun.
1. Under the Data folder, look for the simGameConstants folder and open it.
2. Backup (important to keep an original IMO) and then Edit SimGameConstants.JSON
3. Look for the following parameters
a) DefaultSystemTravelTime
b) DefaultFuelTime
c) FuelStationFuelTime
d) MaxJumpDistance

To maintain a bit of balance I tend to change it to a)3, b) 2, c) 2 d) 45
But you may prefer 60 for MaxJumpDistance; although that starts to push balance a bit too much in my experience.

[kingarthur772]

Upgrade the Argo. Or you cheating and won’t get rewards.

[Dheran]

There are 3 Argo (IIRC) upgrades that modify the subspace speed of Argo, thus speeding up the Jump point<->Planet travel part.

[OrbPlaytime]

Originally posted by kingarthur772:

Upgrade the Argo. Or you cheating and won’t get rewards.

I have this very minute just done a Career test and I received relevant reward at end of time, with the changes I mentioned above and also others for behaviour/combat/itemcollection/etc to suite my interests and in some ways increase tactics & strategy.
Campaign is fine with any changes as you also receive the relevant mech at end.

[wesnef]

Originally posted by Dheran:

There are 3 Argo (IIRC) upgrades that modify the subspace speed of Argo, thus speeding up the Jump point<->Planet travel part.

Of course, for the kind of travel the OP is talking about (going a dozen+ systems in one trip), the engine speed upgrades won't do much. Since most of his travel time is the 3 day waits at each jump point.

What he needs, is to mod the Jump Distance so that each leg of the journey can be longer / the whole trip would be less total jumps.