Let me start this off by saying im going to try and keep within the bounds of what we know the game mechanics are and the limitations in engine. What i would like is a discussion of the mechanics, how they work and how they can be used with minimal changes to improve current gamplay. Planetary Orbits Currently the planets do not follow their orbital path but we know that it is the plan to do so, at present they only rotate on their axis. I am assuming that they will have them follow a rail path (meaning their orbit is set and not simulated), to me this makes the most sense for gameplay and game code reasons. Firstly having them on a rail path makes them predictable so that QT paths can account for where the planetary body is going be with a high degree of accuracy, even rotation of the planet can be accounted for as the rotation rate is a constant and so is its orbit. The maths to work out where a given point in space will be with travel time (distance and speed of player) is pretty simple, so is the math to work out a location on a rotating object (rotation rate over time). This is all very simple geometry math as long as the celestial bodies follow a rail orbital path, if they were simulated the math becomes much more complex with gravity gradients changing orbits and making systems unstable (also you'd get rouge objects like asteroids). So each object container of a planet, moon, asteroid belt, etc... follows a predefined path, each object container would know the state of all other containers and objects within it (e.g. Crusader object container holds each of the moons object containers and the stations in orbit of crusader itself). What that means is that using the hierarchy of containers you can find the location in space and state of any location in the verse, plotting a course no doubt uses this system. My guess on how a course is plotted is from centre OC (Object Container) then to the next OC in the route, i imagine at present there is just an offset to the centre of the OC that is used to drop you out of QT. Then there are a series of offsets in a list that define nav points that can be used to plot a course while in the influence of the celestial body OC, defined as OM(Orbital Markers). Travel from hurston to yela for example, currently you'd travel past the moon to crusader then back out to yela using more fuel and cost more time than you'd expect when doing multiple cross-system QT routes. This can be improved by having an OM out on the furthest reaches of the Crusader OC, you have a choice then. You can either force the player to drop out on the edge of the system before taking the next step or you could use that point as part of the course. What i mean is, why not use the spline jump system? Using a further out node or distance variable you can have your cake and eat it(in the sense of keeping the parent>child relationship and making QT more intuitive). I propose that all multi-node QT jumps should be spline jumps, using the gradient of speed you can have it make course corrections by slowing down before making a manoeuvre. Plotting a course should entail you checking the course for areas of the plotted course being shown in red for example, when the course correction required is outside the limits of the QT drives ability to maintain its speed. Seeing this we should then need to just drag the parts of the course to a route that is more suitable in order to maintain our QT before we engage the drive or risk dropping out/drive damage. Using this system more dynamic courses can be plotted and then course waypoints can be added, as in a multi-destination journey in the nav computer. Planetary Orbital Mechanics This is where things get interesting, given that the celestial bodies OC knows what the range of the OC is. Why not add a gradient of gravity from the outer limit to the centre of the celestial body(this would not effect other planets as the gravity only effects things not on rails), i understand there is a very basic form of this currently but... Seriously, i'm hoping for the need to establish a stable orbit for our ships (as the ships do not travel on rails they are free to gravitational influence). This type of orbital mechanics would be much more immersive and intuitive as long as we had appropriate hud displays to show our orbital path and the path of detected objects around me once selected(make a marker/colour change for a future collision prediction of orbits). The opportunities for gameplay are vast when you have ships in orbital paths, for exploration scanning finding the right orbit can give you coverage of the entire planet for mapping/surveying from orbit. Useful to get a high level scan of the planet before going down into the unknown, you can even then check out the terrain and plan for a landing site. For military again having an orbit to scan from will allow you to scout possible enemy locations before sending a team for a closer look or launching a mission. In search and rescue again having an orbit or a team in various orbits you'll be able to search the whole planet before you go down, while using little to no fuel as you're along for the ride in orbit. Another great gameplay that comes from this is plotting a safe trajectory into atmosphere so to not get too much re-entry heat causing damage or death, making sure your shields are properly working and maybe even bolstering the side of most heat. It gives value to good pilots to find safe orbits when "parked" and for making sure they approach the planet properly, especially in larger and less aerodynamic ships. Edit: After some discussion and further thought, i'm adding some extra images and explanation behind this concept. description using the images above, from right to left: Space/time the very fabric of the universe warps and bends in response to mass which we perceive as gravity. shown in this image as a flat plane grid. This image shows the effect of gravity in 3D space/time. We know that Star Citizen is trying to illustrate this by evidence of Lagrange points(you might know them as R&R stations). These are areas in space/time where forces between 2 masses, one larger and one smaller orbiting(in the image earth orbiting the sun) would cancel out be effectively calm space. Objects in these areas would travel along the orbit with the child celestial body which is what makes them good places for rest stops, predictable and gravitationaly calm. This shows how the course of light is changed in response to a gravity field, causing what we see as a lensing effect. So if gravity can effect things travelling at the speed of light we can assume that all objects travelling slower than light(QT is less than light speed) will also be effected. Quantum Drives work by warping space/time as well creating a gravity well infront of the ship, anti-gravity behind the ship and a bubble of calm space/time for the ship itself. This is done so that the occupants inside the bubble are not subjected to the acceleration forces you would normally feel, making it even possible without death. Using the gravity of a celestial body combined with the direction of travel around its parent body/star and its rotation on its axis, you can gain/lose a great amount of speed in a predicable way. This has been shown to be used in the short QT jumps around planets, so it stands to reason that it could be used elsewhere. This image shows what for example a ship(blue) would look like using the gravity of an orbiting planet(black) from either the reference frame of the parent star(top) or the planet seeing the ship approach(bottom). You can see in this image just a few examples of the changes in course and speed you can do just by passing a large gravitational field. So if we take this into account we have then multiple ways to travel across a star system, these optional ways are: Straight line QT jump, avoiding celestial bodies. the most fuel use but fastest. QT with gravity assist, travelling faster than max rated speeds of the drive or reducing speed faster than drive alone. This also saves fuel! Using gravity assist with hydrogen fuel only to save fuel and gain/lose speed faster Ability to use hydrogen fuel only travel anywhere at the cost of a long time This system also has no need for maximum speeds of ships, in fact it makes more sense to remove that restriction in favour of using the thrust ability of your ship(mass of the ship+cargo and the thrust+fuel use of engines/quantum drive). This means that you would have to pay attention to your speed before any sort of approach, giving plenty of time to bring your relative velocity down. With proper hud indicators and layouts all this can be done pretty simply as well as learned quickly, its not the complexity of information its how that information is presented. Having proper orbital mechanics for ships will only serve in enrich the gameplay, remember that we have a quantum drive and can just jump to another point in orbit or location elsewhere at will. That doesnt mean that there should be no place for such mechanics simply as many will opt to just QT everywhere, i suspect though that many after reading here are already trying to think of ways they'd save fuel and/or time in their travels. That my friends is exactly the point, if you fly simple and just jump everywhere in a straight line you'll burn through fuel like crazy. On the other hand a professional would know how to maximise the ships abilities using the universe around them. Keep the discussion civil and constructive please :slightly_smiling_face: