It turns out that hiding in your turret isn't just good for the contraband search skip. It suppresses most communication replies. This is good for...
Skipping the neutral response from hostile enemies you just talked down. Skipping big chunks of the Steltek Scout's monologues. Skipping Commodore Reismann's little speech just before the drone shows up.
I have to give credit to Bitcores on this one; he did it accidentaly in his last run.
And it is so slow! Probably because your computer is doing the translation but whatever. I think Menesch, the Pirate messenger and the Admiral in the Goodin 5 mission in RF would be the time saves from this. Jones just talks as he retreats to his holding point, so skipping his dialog probably won't save any time. Same with that Kilrathi dude, you're not actually waiting on his dialog.
I forgot you could kill those guys mid-monologue. Menesch is probably the big win here, since he's literally indestructible until he finishes his speech and jumps out. I'll have to check to see if anything funky happens with Menesch, since the salthis attack the player at a specific point during his speech.
Trying this out more, you can enter the nav computer and jump while in the turret, so there seem to be decent time saves available by entering the turret whenever you're about to jump into a system that you expect to be able to Autopilot immediately from (no scripted encounters, no asteroid field)
Just noticed that the Kilrathi after you pick up Monkhouse spawn far enough away you can autopilot if they're not sending dialog. So launch, enter turret, enter nav comp, wait out the message (if it's running), return to turret and you SHOULD be able to Autopilot immediately to Nav 1 (or Nav 3 if you want). No need to jump to Tingerhoff and back, straight auto to Basra.
I just tried it, and it works! That's about 85 seconds saved, I think - we don't have to afterburn 80000m to a navpoint (via an indirect route because of an inconveniently located planet), and we don't have to watch 2 jump-out cutscenes. We do pick up an extra autopilot cutscene of course.
Maybe 1:30 is possible after all.
A minute and a half is massive. Makes me wonder how far away from the jump point the Confed are on Lynch 3. They could be right next to it but if they're not...
