Warp gate between station and planet

[AeonOfTime]

Hi all, I have been reading up on warp gates and built my first one semi-successfully.

This is my setup: I have built a station orbiting a planet (in a 3000 km orbit), and thought it would be nice to be able to travel quickly as an astronaut between the station and the planet base. To this effect, I built a warp gate room on the station as well as groundside within the planetary complex. I linked both gates with each other with the marker beam. So far, so good.

However, I have two issues:

1. Using the gate from station > planet drops me off somewhere in the planet's stratosphere, way too far from the destination gate.
   Could this actually be the intended behavior?
   
2. Using the gate from planet > station gives me the "Jumping to station" message, but nothing happens.
   How can I troubleshoot this? The destination is obviously set correctly, but the jump just does not happen.

Any input is appreciated!

 

[Crusade]

The way jump gates work is by changing your sector. Not your local position in the sector. When going to the planet, it drops out out of it's collision - so out of gravity and all that junk.

As for planet to station, no idea sorry though.

 

[StormWing0]

If the sector changes between planet and station it should work. As for what is wrong on the planet end maybe you can't trigger it within the atmosphere?

A couple of gravity units will be far less costly unless you have collision damage on.

 

[AeonOfTime]

The way jump gates work is by changing your sector. Not your local position in the sector. When going to the planet, it drops out out of it's collision - so out of gravity and all that junk.

Ah, so it may be more of an issue of precision then. It does not actually make you step out of the target warp gate, but somewhere in its vicinity.

If the sector changes between planet and station it should work. As for what is wrong on the planet end maybe you can't trigger it within the atmosphere?

I read in the forums that someone had his warp gate buried deep underground on the planet, which did not work - he had to build it on the highest peak for it to work properly. That was an earlier version of the game (0.17 if I remember correctly), but maybe it's still valid. The fact that my gate on the planet deposited me somewhere high up in the atmosphere does point in that direction.

I will tear down my current planetside gate and replace it with one in a high altitude and see what happens.

 

[AeonOfTime]

I tested it with a gate on a planet in another sector, on one of the highest mountains. It works both ways now, but my idea of a quick jump from the station to the planet below in the same sector apparently won't work.

As a newbie, the way gates work isn't very straightforward. I did some additional testing, and unless there is something I'm missing, you always end up randomly somewhere in the vicinity of the target gate, but never close to it. For travel with a ship usually that's not an issue (and I understand the need to place the entity you are warping as where there is space), but as an astronaut it can get really tedious, and even dangerous if there are enemies nearby and you have to slowboat to safety.

Since astronauts can use gates, I assumed it would be possible for example to put up a small gate in the main concourse of a station, and enable people to easily jump to other stations - stepping in one gate, and back out the next.

Please correct me if I'm wrong!

 

[Trekkerjoe]

Ok, as far as I can remember, if you use a warpgate, the algorithm that places you in the destination sector keeps you outside the bounding boxes of other objects. This means that you cannot have an indoor warp gate. There are plans to fix this (as far as I can remember) so you can have your stargates indoors. I am not sure if you will be able to warp to a point within a sector though...

 

[AeonOfTime]

Ok, as far as I can remember, if you use a warpgate, the algorithm that places you in the destination sector keeps you outside the bounding boxes of other objects. This means that you cannot have an indoor warp gate. There are plans to fix this (as far as I can remember) so you can have your stargates indoors. I am not sure if you will be able to warp to a point within a sector though...

Thanks for clarfying, that makes sense. It explains why I always end up far off the mark - my gate is too close to the planet's bounding box.

If there are plans to fix it, I can live with the current implementation I'll use ship-only gates in space.

 

[StormWing0]

I say we should come out of the other gate rather than 50km away from it. XD That said in the case of other types of warping or jumping the range needs to be a bit further, aka blackholes. >_>

 

[AeonOfTime]

I say we should come out of the other gate rather than 50km away from it. XD That said in the case of other types of warping or jumping the range needs to be a bit further, aka blackholes. >_>

Agreed, coming out of the gate would be great. The gate system in general would need to be a bit more intelligent though. Between an astronaut and a titan-sized ship, you need to make sure there is enough room at the target gate. A message telling you that you can't use the gate because there isn't enough space at the destination would be great for example.

If there was a way to tell a gate on which side and in which rotation ships or astronauts should spawn, deciding where to spawn them would be easier as well, as you then know where to make the collision checks.