o7 folks,
I've been reading about a lot of horror stories on mishaps (deadly or otherwise) when attempting to FSD supercharge from White Dwarfs versus Neutron Stars, and I can say I've certainly had the same trouble myself. I wanted to share a short checklist that a lot of you might already know, but that has made this relatively trouble-free for me for a while now and given me more options when getting the longest legs possible within and outside of the bubble.
Obviously, risk versus reward gives Neutron Stars the nod over White Dwarfs especially with the extra danger of the latter, but if you can minimize the risk you might find it's worth adding them back into your route. Here's what I've found consistently works for me:
Note : make sure you have orbit lines on in your display, or you won't see the star's ridiculous exclusion zone relative to its size, because if you don't have this enabled this is a much more dangerous gambit.
1 – Target your next jump and confirm in the upper right-hand of your screen it's one of our angry friends, a white dwarf to double-check ahead of the next steps. What you do while jumping is critical to this working out consistently.
2 – Begin your jump; after the countdown and while in Witchspace, bring your throttle to zero. Nada, nothing. You don't want to be moving any more than necessary once you drop back to normal space.
3 – Once you drop at your White Dwarf (still in supercruise obviously), you want to slowly move toward the lower or upper jet from the star until you get a glimpse of the exclusion zone ring on screen. Personally, I always head towards the lower jet from my ship's perspective, because it seems I have much better visibility to the exclusion zone ring that way.
4 – While that ring is visible, make a visual note of where that lines up with the jet. Head just below this point, into the upper or lower jet, at maybe half throttle. With a bit of practice, you'll enter the jet at a speed that gives you just enough time for the the supercharge but not long enough that you're lingering close to the danger zone, and should be close to exiting the other side of the jet at this point in time.
5 – You'll get buffeted around; a lot. Hold course and continue straight forward; don't deviate at all. The sooner you're out of the jet, the sooner you're exiting the star's gravity well and getting away from danger, charged and ready for the boosted jump.
Hopefully this helps newer commanders or those who have shrugged off White Dwarf boosts in the past, and if it helps I'd also be willing to edit this post later with some screenshots of me going through this process.
