It seems like most people agree, warpgates are under used, and have a lot of disadvantages. Most of these people seem to believe that the fundamental issue with warpgates is the line on the map that shows both end-points of the gate. People that think this way seem to also believe that removing the visual aspect of warpgates from the galaxy map. I don't believe that this would fix warpgates, because I believe there's an underlying issue of which we are merely seeing the symptoms of, and that we are attempting to fix the symptoms rather than the cause.
I believe that the core flaw with warpgates is their need for two stations, or planets. I believe this is an issue because:
-It's boring.
---You have to travel out to your destination first thing.
---You have to build two warpgates. I believe it takes exponentially more energy and patience to do the same task multiple times.
---Filling blueprints can be boring and hand-building gates on servers can be painful.
---A lot of people, if not - most, - play the game for fun. Boring stuff typically isn't the most fun thing to do. Unless you can provide a desirable outcome, monotony leads to boredom, boredom leads to quitting.
-There can only be one destination.
---Wherever your gate leads, is wherever it leads. Only if you build a completely new station can you have a new destination.
---If you do make a new station, you either have to cannibalize your old station and travel, under your own power, all the way back to the other gate, or you can just build a totally new gate from scratch. Both of these options are boring.
---Most people don't go to one destination that's really far away a whole ton. The only real exception to this rule, that is seemingly becoming less and less popular, is spawn. Other than that, the universe is so dense and evenly distributed with everything you could ever want, that you can get nearly everything withing two jumps of distance. Typically, when you want to travel long distances, it is not because you want to travel somewhere over and over again, it's because you want to travel to one specific thing likely only once or twice.
---With all of this in mind, it's not a worthy investment to set up a gate to go near your home, because at most it will take you ninety seconds to get where you want to go, but neither is it a worthy investment to set it up far from your home, because you likely wont be visiting often enough to care. You'll only be going far on occasion, and you'll be going a multitude of different places.
Now that I've bitched about this whole thing a ton, I figure I should say what I think the solution is.
Pretty simple really: have warpgates send you wherever you want.
It's stupid, right? Like, how would that even work?
Well, you'd go through the gate, you set the coords you want to go through with the navigation menu, and you pop out the other end. Possibly if you have a waypoint loaded, it could just send you to the waypoint instead of opening the menu. So yeah, it's pretty stupidly simple.
But, how would that work?
Well, going through gates is already a game mechanic. Rather than have the gate remember where the other end of it is, and making it use the change sector command, it'd just use the already existing navigation menu (which can already be linked to other menu's - see fleets) to see where you want to go. After that, it'd just use the change sector command exactly like it already does, but with a bit more flexibility.
But wouldn't that be unbalanced? Being able to travel across the whole galaxy?
If it were free, yes. Currently warpgates require more power based on the mass of the ship going through it. I'd think you could factor distance to destination in as well. To limit distance there could either be a hard cap (snooze fest) or power cost could exponentially rise based off of distance requested, effectively making bigger, more powerful stations more useful.
Wouldn't that be hard on servers?
Have you seen the current preferred method of travel.
Copy Pastable Logic Jump Drive
New sector every four seconds? Yeesh. You either load 126 sectors to go across 1000, or you load two. Take your pick.
...Would it be difficult to implement?
I doubt it. Like how I explained how it works, everything for this suggestion already exists in the game. There's not really any new mechanic here in terms of code. I'm not sure though, I'm not really a coder, I dabble in small things, but I don't do anything worth-while. There may be some difficulties of which I just don't know.
TL;DR: Two-point warpgates are annoying. Make gates send you wherever. Balance power cost with mass and distance in mind. This would be much easier on servers than the way people travel currently. It should (maybe) be easy to implement.
EDIT 1: Another concept just discussed in chat, going into battle with this would be sorta cheesy. To prevent that, warping should drop your shields and your cloak. That way, whoever warps into battle is at a significant disadvantage off the bat.
EDIT 2: There have been a few more ideas about functionality in the comments for this thread. Notable ones include; reduced power cost for gate to gate travel, gates being able to 're-call' players who are out in deep space ( long jump to gate, ) have inhibitors interact with this system ( on departure and on arrival, ) time required for travel ( to combat warping out of combat, require players ships to sit still doing nothing for short periods of time to use the gate, ) have where ships are about to appear marked on nav to disadvantage players warping into combat, increasing damage to ships going through gates ( discourages warping out of combat. )
Some idea's I really like out of those are the re-calls, time requirements and having warping ships show up on nav.
For re-calling, it would likely function the same as going through the gate, but rather than having the gate send you to wherever, you would be sent from wherever back to the gate. Possibly there could be an option on the galaxy map when you hover over stations and planets with gates to do this, or some other functionality could be added. To prevent players from using this simply to warp to enemy stations, it should probably factor in faction association, allowing only own faction by default, and having options for allies, neutrals and enemies.
Time requirements seem like a good idea to me, mostly on the re-call side, but slightly on the gate side as well. I don't know how long a wait time should be, and I really don't like quoting exact figures in suggestions (there's no real reason to most of the time,) but I feel like distance should be a contributing factor in wait time. Obviously it'd take a lot less time to warp somewhere, but I don't think it should always be instantaneous. Time requirements would also allow for nav icons/effects to be displayed where ships are about to warp to, giving an advantage to players that have ships warping in on them.
To encourage combat, I wonder if it wouldn't be a good idea to show warps on the galaxy map. That way, a careful observer could see (if not exactly - roughly) where people are warping to. This idea somewhat comes from the ability to see active trade routes on the galaxy map, which hopefully someday can be intercepted. I really don't know about this one though, curious to see what other people think.
I believe that the core flaw with warpgates is their need for two stations, or planets. I believe this is an issue because:
-It's boring.
---You have to travel out to your destination first thing.
---You have to build two warpgates. I believe it takes exponentially more energy and patience to do the same task multiple times.
---Filling blueprints can be boring and hand-building gates on servers can be painful.
---A lot of people, if not - most, - play the game for fun. Boring stuff typically isn't the most fun thing to do. Unless you can provide a desirable outcome, monotony leads to boredom, boredom leads to quitting.
-There can only be one destination.
---Wherever your gate leads, is wherever it leads. Only if you build a completely new station can you have a new destination.
---If you do make a new station, you either have to cannibalize your old station and travel, under your own power, all the way back to the other gate, or you can just build a totally new gate from scratch. Both of these options are boring.
---Most people don't go to one destination that's really far away a whole ton. The only real exception to this rule, that is seemingly becoming less and less popular, is spawn. Other than that, the universe is so dense and evenly distributed with everything you could ever want, that you can get nearly everything withing two jumps of distance. Typically, when you want to travel long distances, it is not because you want to travel somewhere over and over again, it's because you want to travel to one specific thing likely only once or twice.
---With all of this in mind, it's not a worthy investment to set up a gate to go near your home, because at most it will take you ninety seconds to get where you want to go, but neither is it a worthy investment to set it up far from your home, because you likely wont be visiting often enough to care. You'll only be going far on occasion, and you'll be going a multitude of different places.
Now that I've bitched about this whole thing a ton, I figure I should say what I think the solution is.
Pretty simple really: have warpgates send you wherever you want.
It's stupid, right? Like, how would that even work?
Well, you'd go through the gate, you set the coords you want to go through with the navigation menu, and you pop out the other end. Possibly if you have a waypoint loaded, it could just send you to the waypoint instead of opening the menu. So yeah, it's pretty stupidly simple.
But, how would that work?
Well, going through gates is already a game mechanic. Rather than have the gate remember where the other end of it is, and making it use the change sector command, it'd just use the already existing navigation menu (which can already be linked to other menu's - see fleets) to see where you want to go. After that, it'd just use the change sector command exactly like it already does, but with a bit more flexibility.
But wouldn't that be unbalanced? Being able to travel across the whole galaxy?
If it were free, yes. Currently warpgates require more power based on the mass of the ship going through it. I'd think you could factor distance to destination in as well. To limit distance there could either be a hard cap (snooze fest) or power cost could exponentially rise based off of distance requested, effectively making bigger, more powerful stations more useful.
Wouldn't that be hard on servers?
Have you seen the current preferred method of travel.
Copy Pastable Logic Jump Drive
New sector every four seconds? Yeesh. You either load 126 sectors to go across 1000, or you load two. Take your pick.
...Would it be difficult to implement?
I doubt it. Like how I explained how it works, everything for this suggestion already exists in the game. There's not really any new mechanic here in terms of code. I'm not sure though, I'm not really a coder, I dabble in small things, but I don't do anything worth-while. There may be some difficulties of which I just don't know.
TL;DR: Two-point warpgates are annoying. Make gates send you wherever. Balance power cost with mass and distance in mind. This would be much easier on servers than the way people travel currently. It should (maybe) be easy to implement.
EDIT 1: Another concept just discussed in chat, going into battle with this would be sorta cheesy. To prevent that, warping should drop your shields and your cloak. That way, whoever warps into battle is at a significant disadvantage off the bat.
EDIT 2: There have been a few more ideas about functionality in the comments for this thread. Notable ones include; reduced power cost for gate to gate travel, gates being able to 're-call' players who are out in deep space ( long jump to gate, ) have inhibitors interact with this system ( on departure and on arrival, ) time required for travel ( to combat warping out of combat, require players ships to sit still doing nothing for short periods of time to use the gate, ) have where ships are about to appear marked on nav to disadvantage players warping into combat, increasing damage to ships going through gates ( discourages warping out of combat. )
Some idea's I really like out of those are the re-calls, time requirements and having warping ships show up on nav.
For re-calling, it would likely function the same as going through the gate, but rather than having the gate send you to wherever, you would be sent from wherever back to the gate. Possibly there could be an option on the galaxy map when you hover over stations and planets with gates to do this, or some other functionality could be added. To prevent players from using this simply to warp to enemy stations, it should probably factor in faction association, allowing only own faction by default, and having options for allies, neutrals and enemies.
Time requirements seem like a good idea to me, mostly on the re-call side, but slightly on the gate side as well. I don't know how long a wait time should be, and I really don't like quoting exact figures in suggestions (there's no real reason to most of the time,) but I feel like distance should be a contributing factor in wait time. Obviously it'd take a lot less time to warp somewhere, but I don't think it should always be instantaneous. Time requirements would also allow for nav icons/effects to be displayed where ships are about to warp to, giving an advantage to players that have ships warping in on them.
To encourage combat, I wonder if it wouldn't be a good idea to show warps on the galaxy map. That way, a careful observer could see (if not exactly - roughly) where people are warping to. This idea somewhat comes from the ability to see active trade routes on the galaxy map, which hopefully someday can be intercepted. I really don't know about this one though, curious to see what other people think.
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