Transporters: no transport on same entity

[Thalanor]

This is probably controversial, and yes I know balancing them will come later - however, if this isn't removed early on, people will have already built for it, and "the damage is done". I would argue that entity-internal transporting should not exist at all (not even with chargeup times, power costs and shield drops, which isn't even happening with same-entity teleporting right now). Entity-to-entity transport should naturally stay, it has it's uses.

The first steps towards boarding were implemented in an earlier update, plus we know that crew will become more of a thing. This would go hand in hand with a better astronaut experience, because there is more to do and more to interact with. However, this kind of becomes moot if intelligent interior or station design (basically the "maps" for all astronaut interaction) become redundant.

In addition, we were given a tool excellent for building both vertical and horizontal transportation - rails. Rail elevators and trains both are a great means of combining function and RP, and would create very interesting "dynamic maps" for boarding and astronaut fights. However, if the distance is large enough, it would always be more time efficient to just zap to a remote location on the same ship or station - which kind of works against both past updates (rails, torches) as well as future ones (crew).

 

[Keptick]

I 100% agree. Transporters have the potential to make interiors impossible to board. Especially if each room is encased in advanced armor and a transporter is the only way in or out.

In addition travelling inside ships with transporters feels sort of too easy/cheap (at least to me). You don't even need airlocks or doors, just stick a transporter somewhere outside the ship to get in. Just that makes boarding practically impossible, since that transporter can't be used by enemies or people not in the faction and there's no other way into the ship.

If in-ship transporters are to stay there needs to be serious limitations or requirements.

 

[FatCobra]

I disagree with this. I like the idea of being able to transport on the same entity. While I can see your concerns about boarding parties on large stations this would be most helpful. Even on large ships this would be helpful. We should be able to find some way to balance this. I'm not sure what it is off hand though.

 

[alterintel]

Perhaps the pathing off NPC's will require that all necessary parts of the ship will be accessible without teleporters.

 

[Ithirahad]

Personally, I would agree if it weren't for the planned crew systems. No matter how awesome Schema's path definition system is, someone somewhere is going to manage to create a transport system that is too complicated for the NPCs, and they will need transporters hidden in nooks somewhere for them while players use the transportation system.

 

[TartarusMkII]

I agree with the OP, I think that being able to easily warp around spots in the ship make designing most of the interior redundant. It's an easy way to have future AI navigate the ship, yes, but it's just too easy for my liking.

I feel like lots of people would like to teach the AI to use an elevator, or maybe even a small tram, as the design post by Bench says that the ideas is that we would be able to show the AI how to navigate logic- while yes we can still do that, the "meta" of doing the most effective thing for the ship would be to skip all of that and just warp things around.

I think it is over simplified.

Similarly, why even give us a grappling hook for boarding if now we can just board ships by looking at them?

I initially did not like the idea that you could use teleporters to board ships at all, and now it's reached a whole new level now that boarding ships causes the shields to drop. I don't understand the thought behind this decision.

Teleporters in their current implementation, and how we are aware of their future, is too simple.

 

[Ithirahad]

You can't even board ships with teleporters at the moment (They would have to have set their transporter to public access... If they left it that way it's their own fault), and when that is implemented the shields will probably already have to be dropped. Just saying.

 

[Thalanor]

I disagree with this. I like the idea of being able to transport on the same entity. While I can see your concerns about boarding parties on large stations this would be most helpful. Even on large ships this would be helpful. We should be able to find some way to balance this. I'm not sure what it is off hand though.

These concerns are critical (since they make planned features impossible) and cannot just be "accepted" by being weighted against how helpful this would be. I don't even think that they should be this "helpful" - they are just a very lazy way to avoid intelligent interior design and rails- or gravity based transportation.

Personally, I would agree if it weren't for the planned crew systems. No matter how awesome Schema's path definition system is, someone somewhere is going to manage to create a transport system that is too complicated for the NPCs, and they will need transporters hidden in nooks somewhere for them while players use the transportation system.

We can't let players use an OP method just because the NPCs might not be able to walk. Maybe a well designed interior that isn't totally messed up will actually be traversable by NPCs without problems - even minecraft gets mobs to enter a structure if there is any way for them to do so.

 

[Keptick]

In addition to what thalanor said above, the current transporters render the astronaut aspect of the game almost obsolete. Seriously, it's almost as good as Tab-F8, without being limited to admins. If you use transporters as your only form of transportation the only time you won't be in a core or build block will be while you're standing on a transporter pad...

And about NPCs, we'll be able to create custom paths for them. So if they can't use your 5 part mario elevator thingy just hide a tunnel/stairs for them in the walls. Emergency stairs anyone? You want to keep your crew in shape

 

[Ithirahad]

even minecraft gets mobs to enter a structure if there is any way for them to do so.

...Yes, Minecraft does, by having predefined Door block types and counting anything with a Door and walls as a structure. This game is not that simple, and players define all kinds of fancy rail doors, elevators, floating platforms, and strange transport devices of their own, each often with its own form of trigger system and its own wait interval before traversal is possible or safe... Hell, my cruiser's floating platform doesn't even have controls at the bottom level (The bridge/command gondola). You stand in an area trigger, the platform comes down from wherever it is, you step onto it, it goes back up to Deck 3 (Engineering) and you can hit a button to go wherever you want from there.

 

[Thalanor]

I like keptick 's suggestion for handling that - always also backup-connect everything vital with emergency stairs and regular doors (2x1 suffices), and have the epic rails transportation for the players. The extremely glaring issues intra-entity teleporting creates still don't go away, so the crew pathfinding must be tackled (even if that is done with emergency stairs which are realistic anyways), not the teleport left in place.

 

[Sha3es]

I think that this would in fact be beneficial for the game if we excluded the possibility of teleportation within an entity. It would as mentioned above make interior design worthless and would in fact lead to problems with boarding and trying to take over ships.

 

[Ithirahad]

I like keptick 's suggestion for handling that - always also backup-connect everything vital with emergency stairs and regular doors (2x1 suffices), and have the epic rails transportation for the players.

Yep, definitely. It's too bad that in the ship in my example there is no neat way to route service corridors between decks; there're systems, other rooms, and even docked power right in the only feasible locations for most inter-deck ramps. >.>

 

[Zaphord]

I can't speak for everyone else here, but the only place I would put transporters on a ship is in a designated transporter room. As for my stations, transporter pads would be located in a heavily defended customs area where invaders would have to get through several layers of security before gaining access to the station's main structure. No point having transporters that bring you right to the command deck if it can be exploited by enemy invaders.

I like designing interiors, and ot having lifts, trams, and other rail devices to get around then there's little point in making anything other than a teleported maze.

 

[Edymnion]

No thank you.

I am currently building a very large station, as boundary box of a cubic kilometer. The lag is currently very bad when you bring a large ship into the bounding box of a large station, so I a building satellite docking ports out at the edges of the bounding box for large ships to dock to without having to drop to 1 FPS trying to navigate closer in to dock directly to the station proper.

It is my intention to have site to site transporters in those docking satellites to allow quick access from the dock to the central areas of the station. Otherwise, the only option is to make people walk half a kilometer to get to the station, or to build rail cars which frankly are still pretty damned slow even at max speed. Or rig up old fashioned gravity tubes and have people fall around the station just to get from their car to the front door.

And I just have to say I hate boarding parties, I honestly think they have no purpose in the game, and if the only reason someone has to be against something is "It makes boarding harder", then I'm totally fine with it.

 

[Thalanor]

You are aware though that boarding is a planned mechanic, as are crew elements? If you "hate" them or think they "have no purpose in the game", then you'll be surprised that the game is developing in a direction you "hate"..

If your station is extremely large, then you would have to come up with an intelligent interior design just like everyone else - and in the worse case, gravity tubes allow for rapid movement even if 500m are to be travelled. Large entities lagging when overlapping their bounding boxes is something that needs to be fixed separately, since it also heavily effects large ship combat.

 

[Edymnion]

You are aware though that boarding is a planned mechanic, as are crew elements? If you "hate" them or think they "have no purpose in the game", then you'll be surprised that the game is developing in a direction you "hate".

Why would I be surprised by something I don't like when its been repeatedly said to be coming?

Just because there is a part of the game I don't like doesn't mean I toss the entire game aside, it just means I don't like that part of the game, I don't use that part of the game, and if something comes along that hurts or cripples that aspect of the game, I don't care.

I do care if something breaks parts of the game I do enjoy just to support the parts I don't, however. If you like boarding and want more of it, great, knock yourself out. But when you start saying that I can't build my stations the way I want to because it makes your boarding harder, hell yeah I'm going to push back.

 

[Sha3es]

I could also see this being abused, since the process drops shields down to zero, in combat by those that want to sabotage the enemy... While I am not horribly opposed to the idea... it just brings what I feel to be another unnecessary level of worry when it comes to security and permissions within a faction.

 

[lilheartless]

heres the thing though.... we already have transporters they can already move you between multiple entities what possible justification can you give where it would make logical sense that you cannot have 2 of them on one structure?

I would have been all for not adding teleportation in the first place, but just putting some limiting factor on a system already in place because it makes things harder or more difficult makes no sense.

On a side not I believe warp gates were fixed so that astronauts appear right in front of them when you go through them.... you could also use warp gates for inter station transportation in the exact same way you can use transporters.

 

[Thalanor]

Why would I be surprised by something I don't like when its been repeatedly said to be coming?

Just because there is a part of the game I don't like doesn't mean I toss the entire game aside, it just means I don't like that part of the game, I don't use that part of the game, and if something comes along that hurts or cripples that aspect of the game, I don't care.

I do care if something breaks parts of the game I do enjoy just to support the parts I don't, however. If you like boarding and want more of it, great, knock yourself out. But when you start saying that I can't build my stations the way I want to because it makes your boarding harder, hell yeah I'm going to push back.

Noone is stopping you from building your stations the way you want. You just might have to adjust to the the 30 seconds it takes for a gravtube to travel that distance, since your need for zapping around a giant station would hardly outbalance the wish for functional boarding a substantial amount of players have expressed interest in. Or better yet - design your station so that it doesn't build around an issue you won't have to face anymore in the future (bounding box overlapping lag).

I could also see this being abused, since the process drops shields down to zero, in combat by those that want to sabotage the enemy... While I am not horribly opposed to the idea... it just brings what I feel to be another unnecessary level of worry when it comes to security and permissions within a faction.

Entity-internal teleport right now doesn't even drop shields; if it would, then there would at least be a balance between extra fast travel and security, and a faction could choose to just not have internal teleporters and gain safety that way.

heres the thing though.... we already have transporters they can already move you between multiple entities what possible justification can you give where it would make logical sense that you cannot have 2 of them on one structure?

I would have been all for not adding teleportation in the first place, but just putting some limiting factor on a system already in place because it makes things harder or more difficult makes no sense.

On a side not I believe warp gates were fixed so that astronauts appear right in front of them when you go through them.... you could also use warp gates for inter station transportation in the exact same way you can use transporters.

I agree it should probably not have been added in the first place, but now that we have it, we have to somehow bend it to not break planned features. Coming up with an in-universe explanation for why this doesn't work (for example close range interference or whatever) is definitely preferrable to leaving it broken as it is.