I frequently have to travel 20km+ from jump-in to a station, that is boring and time consuming. maybe a short-range jump device (like in space engineers) or a cruise drive (like in everspace) could be implemented?
This would be great, especially in combination with the ability to walk around your ship while it's in motion. You could get up and do some fabrication, work on your gear, or etc. while the ship is moving.
For those 20km flights I usually go and grab a tea or beer. It's a lot of time literally wasted during gameplay. But once I returned with a tea cup to see that half of my ship was destroyed to pieces, probably some bad encounter on the way So, to keep your idea and still make the game challenging on these flights, I would suggest making these short-range jumps volatile. I mean, if you use it, be prepared to be highjacked half-way in some unpleasant situation being surrounded by Zirax or some other angry guys. So, if you want to make it safe, you fly your way through as usual. This would add up to the challenges and speed up the process for those who fear nothing.
Well, I made it myself using a script for ASTICs Empyrion Scripting mod: https://empyriononline.com/posts/456579/ (was about to make it as a "real" mod, but hit an roadblock and went "wait, what does the script teleport command do if the player is piloting a ship?")
