Jump Drives and... Stars?: A proposal to expand the effective size of the universe.

[Ithirahad]

Because traveling to the star the way the shield system works and the time is dumb

What? Why? How? You wouldn't be required to go inside a star's burn radius to charge up. You would just have to be near the star.

 

[MacThule]

I like this proposal a lot. Not a lot to add, I think it would work as proposed and I would be happy with it. It would also have a side effect of increasing the value of jump gates due to allowing more straightforward routes.

 

[Xskyth]

I like how this idea adds more skill to fast travel navigation!
as a compromise for the chain drive lovers, maybe leave the jump drives as is when too far from a star, accept that there is some randomness to the destination, amplified by how far you jump. say, when jumping max distance you arrive to the left, right, up, or down 2-3 sectors, relative to the direction you jump? with short 2-3 sector jumps being more accurate? meaning that you could still use a chain drive to get to the next galaxy, but not much control over where in that galaxy.

and perhaps the star jumps have a longer jump distance, but not too far, along with being 100% accurate?

 

[alterintel]

What an Absolutely Awesome Idea.
schema Bench Saber Criss
Please implement right away.

I also like the idea of Capital ships being able to have at least one Jump Field Generator on board. If the idea of Capital ships is not to have conventional engines but to only have Jump Drives and Field Generators, that makes for a very strategic Capitol ship.

 

[PLIX]

maybe the current blocks could be capacitors and add a realyy power innefficiet recharger to only allow one jump limit to small craft

 

[pesce rocks]

What? Why? How? You wouldn't be required to go inside a star's burn radius to charge up. You would just have to be near the star.

I see what your saying but if you want star Trek like you said why go to a star

 

[Ithirahad]

I see what your saying but if you want star Trek like you said why go to a star

I said it'd be cool to see a Star Trek-style warp drive, but that might be impractical and would have balance issues.

While the warp drive was awesome on Star Trek, and would be great to have in real life, in a game, creating something like that without some tweaks would leave us with what is essentially a prettier, more polished chain drive, with all the balance issues they bring with them. You'd essentially be able to hit a button and fly anywhere you wanted with minimal difficulty, a short travel time, and no risk.

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I also like the idea of Capital ships being able to have at least one Jump Field Generator on board. If the idea of Capital ships is not to have conventional engines but to only have Jump Drives and Field Generators, that makes for a very strategic Capitol ship.

I don't see why capital ships shouldn't have "conventional engines," otherwise they're effectively stations, not ships, and if they were ships then people would be able to use Push Effect to send the ship flying uncontrollably. Besides, that's honestly not much fun.

 

[Panpiper]

Ok, I'm going to be the odd man out. I am having serious trepidations about this idea, despite reading the OP a few times and the whole of the thread twice. Maybe I am missing something.

I see the consequence of this idea as being; that in order to recharge my jump drive, I have to fly close to a star or to a friendly station that has been equipped with the appropriate gear. I have to fly there, with my not at all fun to fly slugboat, through molasses, for many, many minutes. Why am I doing this? Because people complain about the existing situation of having to wait 40 seconds to recharge their jump drive. So in order to make painless recharging for long distance jump driving, for those who only bother with single module jump drives, I am to be subject to massive tedium.

I build my ships with 10% jump modules. I recharge my jump in ten seconds. This is quite painless. I can take any of my ships, miners, battlewagons, whathaveyou, and move them galactic distances in a matter of minutes. I have absolutely no problem with the existing jump mechanics.

I do have a problem with chaindrives. They are clearly a massive exploit. The way to fix that is perhaps to fairly simply to cause 'all' jump systems on a ship to deplete by maybe 1000 jump modules of charge, every time the ship jumps.

Most people see themselves able to jump with but a single jump module and then decide to go that way rather than make the massive investment in making ten percent of one's ship a jump system. They then complain about their 40 second recharge time. That was their choice. Why should I now be forced into a mechanic I am convinced I would absolutely loathe every time I jumped somewhere where I could not promptly recharge, simply because they want to keep using their one module jump systems?

Maybe change the jump systems so that not only jump recharge speed increases dependant upon the jump system percentage, but also the jump range. Give people a lot more incentive to get off their one module jump system obsession.

Let me restate. I do not mind waiting ten seconds to recharge my jump drive in order to go somewhere. On the other hand, I absolutely hate actually flying ships in Starmade. It is NOT FUN! I do not build ships that do not have massive amounts of thrust. A two to one thrust to mass ratio is a slow ship for me, and they still feel like I am not flying through space, but instead flying through wet concrete! A system to 'fix' jump drives (which I do not believe is broken at all except by chaindrives) that requires me to do more of that absolutely tedious wet concrete flying, is no solution at all to me.

 

[Ithirahad]

A two to one thrust to mass ratio is a slow ship for me, and they still feel like I am not flying through space, but instead flying through wet concrete! A system to 'fix' jump drives (which I do not believe is broken at all except by chaindrives) that requires me to do more of that absolutely tedious wet concrete flying, is no solution at all to me.

First of all, I recommend never actually flying through space; you'll be severely disappointed. :P

Second of all, I find that thrusters are kind of underpowered; I mentioned this in another thread of mine. Buffing them by some would help the annoyingness of flying a ship at sublight, at least for me, though it already doesn't bother me much.

Third, I didn't just propose this specifically because of chain drives. I proposed it because normal jump drives are... ehh... AND because of how the current mechanics allow for chain drives to just cross immense distances too quickly and easily.

 

[aRottenKomquat]

On further thought, there are some interesting ideas in the OP that could add to the game, but I don't want to see current jump drives go away. The new system looks more limiting and I think jump drives are already limited enough by jump distance and recharge time.

I think the OP's idea could be used to improve intergalactic travel somehow. Maybe there's a new Long-Range Jump Drive which can jump huge distances, but recharges slower, and needs to be in the mass well of a giant star to activate. That would tend to turn giants into strategic resources, sort of an on-ramp for fast, long-distance (even intergalactic) travel.

 

[Ithirahad]

On further thought, there are some interesting ideas in the OP that could add to the game, but I don't want to see current jump drives go away. The new system looks more limiting and I think jump drives are already limited enough by jump distance and recharge time.

This would significantly increase your jump distance if you actually plot out where you're jumping, and with this system in effect it'd be safe to buff the base charge time of jump drives as well.

I think the OP's idea could be used to improve intergalactic travel somehow. Maybe there's a new Long-Range Jump Drive which can jump huge distances, but recharges slower, and needs to be in the mass well of a giant star to activate. That would tend to turn giants into strategic resources, sort of an on-ramp for fast, long-distance (even intergalactic) travel.

Um, the point was to make intergalactic travel harder, not improve it or create an easy way to springboard yourself between galaxies. Of course, if there was a double star at the edge of the galaxy, you could get yourself a good 11.25 systems out into the void, but then you'd be stuck unless you brought a with you a means of constructing a warpgate. :P

People shouldn't be regularly holing themselves up outside of the galaxy on multiplayer servers; in that case they might as well be in singleplayer instead of wasting valuable server processing power.

 

[Who am I?]

This suggestion seems very similar to the lore of another game I play, whereas the FTL engines charge quickly near stars, and can charge if the galaxy is still visible, though at a very reduced rate. I propose instead that after solar panels are implemented IF they're implemented that we make it so that jump drives require solar panels to charge when not near a star. We could then go on to say that there could be stations owned by players and/or the Trading Guild near stars that send the energy collected through either cargo ships or some sort of inter-entity transfer block to a new type of power capacitor block group meant to hold star energy.

 

[pesce rocks]

All jump drives need to do is recharge alot faster and mayber aux power should do that like using Aux to divert power to systems. And they also need to run till you run out of power.

 

[Ithirahad]

This suggestion seems very similar to the lore of another game I play, whereas the FTL engines charge quickly near stars, and can charge if the galaxy is still visible, though at a very reduced rate. I propose instead that after solar panels are implemented IF they're implemented that we make it so that jump drives require solar panels to charge when not near a star. We could then go on to say that there could be stations owned by players and/or the Trading Guild near stars that send the energy collected through either cargo ships or some sort of inter-entity transfer block to a new type of power capacitor block group meant to hold star energy.

Ehh, no; solar panels, if implemented, should do exactly what they normally do: produce energy (of the normal variety) from sunlight, perhaps with better e/s/block than regular power lines with the tradeoff of needing to be exposed.

'Stellar radiation capacitors' don't make much sense, and besides I was trying to keep the amount of new blocks and mechanics to a minimum.
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All jump drives need to do is recharge alot faster and mayber aux power should do that like using Aux to divert power to systems. And they also need to run till you run out of power.

...No? They should not "run until you run out of power"; the way they work currently allows you to get a jump drive to charge even if you don't have enough power gen per second to run it continuously, and this is not a bad thing. Also, if they were made to recharge way faster with no limitations they'd be kind of overpowered, otherwise the devs would have already buffed them.

 

[pesce rocks]

keep it the same just faster,

 

[Ithirahad]

keep it the same just faster,

If you have your own ideas regarding jump drive balancing, make your own topic... :P

 

[Panpiper]

If you have your own ideas regarding jump drive balancing, make your own topic... :P

I took your advice.

 

[MacThule]

I like the proposal because, as titled, it expands the effective size of the playable galaxy by making areas farther from stars literally farther to travel to and from.

Not because it "fixes" jump drives, which are not broken and already charge very fast... if you add an obscene amount to your ship, which to me seems right anyway. In literature and film, jump drives and similar tech can take anywhere from minutes or hours to several days to be ready for another jump (it *IS* distorting the very fabric of space-time after all and completely bending physics, not just making a cell phone call). If it takes 3-5 minutes to charge a small jump drive then that seems appropriate. Of course this is a game and not everyone wants to RP, but tough. don't go live in the next galaxy if you can't be bothered with the travel time. It's there, you're "supposed" to be able to go, and you are, with a lot of work. I think the current system functions fine honestly, and if you're utterly impatient (and yet still insist on going to the next galaxy just... because... ) you can make a ship out of 60% jump drives and flick through jumps every 5 seconds and cross the gulf in 5 minutes (ohnoes! it's so slow!! then don't go... no one is making you). The current system functions fine and chaindrives aren't even an exploit, they are compound tech with unique vulnerabilities of their own. Personally, even with chaindrives available I've never found much use for them because there's rarely cause to travel so far. Even on the most populous MP servers, there are vast amounts of unclaimed and abandoned space within 5 jumps of spawn and no need to travel to the outer rim or neighboring galaxy. Ever. Except for RP-ish purposes or fetish, or out of complete terror of your fellow players, at which point I say "deal with it. deal with the suck." Because you have no need to go there. Your overdrives can move you across 3 star systems in almost as many minutes while you go make tea. At a certain point, being any more impatient is like saying you don't even want a procedural universe with space to travel, you want a point-to-point instant travel universe.

My support for Ithirahad's proposal is about the way that it adds texture to the map, un-flattens it. It creates mountains and valleys within the galaxy so that every sector isn't the same dull, flatness to pass through. It creates abundances and dearths of strategic value in certain sectors beyond the simple and ONLY current issue of mineral richness. It adds a strategic layer to both travel and station placement.

 

[Ithirahad]

I like the proposal because, as titled, it expands the effective size of the playable galaxy by making areas farther from stars literally farther to travel to and from.

Not because it "fixes" jump drives, which are not broken and already charge very fast... if you add an obscene amount to your ship, which to me seems right anyway. In literature and film, jump drives and similar tech can take anywhere from minutes or hours to several days to be ready for another jump (it *IS* distorting the very fabric of space-time after all and completely bending physics, not just making a cell phone call). If it takes 3-5 minutes to charge a small jump drive then that seems appropriate. Of course this is a game and not everyone wants to RP, but tough. don't go live in the next galaxy if you can't be bothered with the travel time.

There's a balance to be struck, though, even for RP purposes. In films where jump drives and the like take days to spool up, it's generally because it's an impressive feat to just hop to the nearest star system. In this game, everything occurs across multiple systems by design, so naturally it should be easy to move across two or three systems, hence my recommended default values of 3 systems as a base value, resulting in 1.5 systems from a jump field generator or dwarf star, 3 systems from a normal star or two jump field generators, 4.5 systems from a giant star, 9 systems from the rare double stars, and an impressive maximum of 11.25 systems from a double-star system with a three-generator jump station. (With a fortuitously-placed double star system, this would be enough to cross a spiral arm gap without a warpgate)

 

[MacThule]

In films where jump drives and the like take days to spool up, it's generally because it's an impressive feat to just hop to the nearest star system. In this game, everything occurs across multiple systems by design, so naturally it should be easy to move across two or three systems

Naturally it is - currently - easy. Very, very easy.

I can currently travel 7 star systems - without jumping once - in the time it takes for me to walk to the corner store in real life. With standard jumps I can cross an entire galaxy in that time.

That is... extremely easy.

I know of no fictional setting where space travel is as fast and efficient as it is in Starmade, and grant little credence to talk of "needing" faster travel. People will always want what they want though, regardless of the forethought they've put into it, and one of the downsides of this being an "Alpha" stage game is that some players seem consider everything challenging in the game to somehow be a flaw, or incomplete implementation rather than accepting that some things are simply intended regardless of development status label.

The farther afield players range in MP, the less interaction they have regardless of travel time/speed, because the volume of empty space in the interim between meaningful locations increases with travel ease. The faster and more efficient travel, the emptier the galaxy feels (this may, superficially, change a bit with the advent of NPC factions). This is not because travel speed needs to be increased, it's because players deliberately choose to base themselves far from each other under the expectation that "it should be so easy" to fly across the galaxy and do things in different places despite the experience of it actually being rather time consuming.

I can sympathize with Panpiper and not wanting to spend... well, any time, really, in transit between mining and refining. It isn't that simple though, because temporal overhead is one of the few checks that exist within Starmade against hyperscale building (i.e. the titan issue). I think that too many players see temporal overhead - in travel or in acquiring a certain volume of resources - as a problem, mistake, or flaw in the game, rather than a deliberate part of the game design. I am still actually hoping that at some point fleet miners can be sent to unloaded sectors to mine and return resources without ever doing it directly, for those players who can organize their faction well enough, but in that scenario as with the current situation, temporal overhead for automated miners to deliver x amount of resource y is of vital importance, and relative ease or difficulty with which a collection of systems are mined forms the basis of differential values for resources and in turn components. That is no different from the role of temporal overhead in mining manually, and making it any easier than a trip to the store to go and mine enough resources to build a large, space-faring vessel would not improve gameplay.

Requiring players to access to multiple systems is part of the design, as you say. The temporal overhead to achieve this is also a calculated part of the design though, which is very clearly evidenced by jump drives having a charge time (one more value edge for warp gates). Slash that temporal overhead, and materials - already too easily stockpiled in planetary quantities - lose real value, so ships and stations lose value. Everyone "should" be able to have a huge station and battleship... and does. Nothing is left to strive for. Ennui sets in, and players either lash out to relieve the boredom or drop the game for a while again. Personally, I find this game is most engaging when starting a new server or after a reset, when we can't easily spawn whatever we want, when everything takes extra effort and caution.

That is why we even bother with MP at all, rather than eternally hanging out in SP in creative mode - making everything too easy is a sure recipe for boredom and lackluster gameplay.

If travel time between systems to acquire necessary resources for construction seems excessive, perhaps it is because the standard of play some people are seeking is excessive for a single person or pair of friends. Perhaps it's not designed to be a reasonable task for a single player to mine, refine and assemble an entire battleship in MP (as opposed to in SP creative mode or SP with custom config or a niche, munchkin server). That would not be a game flaw, regardless of the Greek character we label the game with, that would be a deliberately set standard. Such massive scale war machines are meant to be epic co-operative projects - wonders of the galaxy, even - not something players churn out solo in a day or two or three, and certainly not something every player "deserves" to have. In MP, anyway.

Travel time and ease ties in deeply with every other major dynamic in the game. Your proposal is good because it adds character and complexity to space, but I firmly believe that the current travel dynamics are sufficient and players will eventually have to learn to accept certain temporal expenses in playing on MP servers at least.