Warp Drive

sorry for my bad spelling

I hate to say \"just copy this\" but making origonal ideas for FTL (or FT50 in this case) when there are a dozen versions used in assorted sci-fi media seems hard and frankly unnessisary. Personally, I don\'t like the idea of hitting a button and \"poof!\" Plus, writing in all of the power consumption and sheild/weapon disabling seems to be adding more problems than solutions. I think the Hyperspace/Slipspace method would be the best solution. It could work like the Nether from Minecraft (which is based off of the Hyperspace idea anyways) where your vessle is transported to a seperate world where space is compressed. 1 km in hyperspace may be 3-15 km in real space.

As for mounting the FT50 blocks, I would design it like the docking modules, have a warp core and enhancers. Any objects completely enveloped by the field would be transported. This makes it fit the generally used explanation of small ships dont have enough space for a warp drive but larger ships may transport multiple escort ships. It also allows for warp gates.

I like how the galactica looks when it warps in the new series. If that kind of distortion is not possible, I think it would be at least doable to settle for homeworld : )

I think you could have a system where you have a basic core block, that puts you at the base speed (Lets say warp 1), so smaller ships have the capacity for FT50, but aren\'t too OP, and you can have a more developed core for bigger, more powerful ships that can go up to say Warp 10 or 9.

This idea would be a lot like Star Trek, but you could make it so more fuel would be needed for every upgraded core. And you would need to use a different levelled ore in each upgrade, so a Level one ore for Warp one and 2, and a Level 2 ore for 3 and 4. this would go on until you have reached the max limit for the Warp drive (Warp 10) and that consumes Level 5 ores only, so you\'d need a huge amount of resources to make high-speed travel. This would make it less common and/or OP for newer players joining a server and being harrassed/ griefed by older and more experienced players.

\"smaller ships have the capacity for FT50, but aren\'t too OP\"

Hooray! I\'ve created a phrase! I call copyright, trademark, coin, ect. on FT50. Also dibs.

Back to the matter at hand, the problem with a Star Trek inspired engine is that the game limits the speed to prevent the game from slowing down. You can increase the speed limit easily by editing the game files, but it causes problems. The idea is (like normal FTL) to circumvent traveling in normal time/space.

I think that there should be a really expensive warp block (no ability to craft with factories)

that warps you into a chosen sector after an charging time.



my idea is that the ship charges the warp core so that it has e.g. 10000 energy per block stored.(all other systems should be deactivated)

this would take a long time, but you could jump thousands of sectors and explore untouched sectors on high traffic servers...

For all intents and purposes, I will be using a 100 and a 1000 block ship in the examples for simplicity.

Implementation: Upon activating your warp drive a menu appears that allows you to enter an x, y, and z for the sector you wish to warp to. After the drive charges up it will teleport your ship along with all other docked ships as close as possible to the center of that sector while making adjustments to avoid collision damage.

Charge Speed:
Charge speed is directly related to the percentage of blocks that are warp blocks.
100 block ship: 20 warp blocks=0.5s charge per km, 10=1s/km, 5=2s/km
1000 block ship: 200 warp blocks=0.5s charge per km, 100=1s/km, 50=2s/km
This makes it so a ship needs to be properly equipped to handle warp drive in a given situation and make it cheaper for smaller ships to be outfitted with warp drives.

Cooldown Speed:
Cooldown speed is directly dependent on how many warp blocks are on the ship.
100 block ship: 10 warp blocks=5 second cooldown before the ship allows another warp to be input.
1000 block ship: 100 warp blocks=50 second cooldown before the ship allows another warp to be input.
This would encourage people not to build ships out of thousands of warp blocks which would allow for near instant flee from battle and would also encourage large ships to be careful about using warps.

Maximum DIstance:
Maximum distance would also be determined by how many warp blocks are on the ship.
100 block ship: 10 warp blocks=2.5km in the direction of target sector.
1000 block ship: 100 warp blocks=25km in the direction of target sector.
This would make it possible to be short of arriving at your destination, a feature that would mainly be used to add excitement to the game. It would also make carrier ships a viable option for transporting a large number of small ships that have inferior warp drives or none at all. Small warp drives could be mainly used for escaping battle while large ones would be for interplanetary travel. This would also force the shipbuilder to decide whether they want to sacrifice distance or cooldown time for a small or large warp engine.

Power Consumption:
Power consumption would not take a certain amount of power, but rather decrease the maximum power of the ship for the duration of the warp charge-time, eventually reaching zero at the moment of warp.
100 block ship: 10 warp blocks=-10%max power per second for 10 seconds.
1000 block ship: 100 warp blocks=-10%max power per second for 10 seconds.
This would make warps unadvisable for battle, but still capable of being done in battle while balancing between both large and small ships. With your maximum power decreasing at a steady rate your systems would still be useful while becoming weaker until the point of warp. After warp, your maximum power level would immediately return to normal while your current power stored would remain zero and need to be charged back up. While this happened to a large ship the pilot would likely stop firing weapons and moving so all the power could be diverted to the shield systems. When happening to a small ship the ship will likely fly around and perhaps continue to attack, focusing more on evasion to avoid damage rather than shields. This allows it to be balanced between big and small ships while not completely dropping an entire ship system instantly.

Final Notes:
I think ships should release an effect when a warp drive begins to charge such as a yellow shimmer across the entire ship rather than the usual blue ripple of shields to let enemies know that a warp is about to occur. Perhaps the shimmer would grow brighter as the drive charged and at the moment of warp becomes a bright white across the entire ship. Any player within the gravity field of the ship that is warping would be warped with the ship, but could possibly be teleported out of the ship, warranting a rescue of overboarded passengers.
A radar block should also be added. Without a radar block, upon warp the ship will arrive either in the sector they typed in or in a sector directly adjacent to it. With a radar block the ship would always warp to the correct sector (unless the entire sector has collision errors, in which case it would be warped to the nearest possible sector that didn\'t). Any ship with a radar block would also recieve coordinates of any warps out of their current sector in their chat window. This would allow for chases, but would not encourage them as a ship that warps second will spend more time with it\'s shields, engines, and weapons down than one that warps first. A radar block also could be used in the hotbar to lock on to a ship that is charging their warp drive to try and get the coordinates earlier.
All-in-all, I believe this idea allows for an appropriate and balanced use of warp drives in both big and small ships with big ships relying on it for long distance travel and small ships using to zip in and out of battle while relying on larger docking platforms for long-distance travel.

Opinions on my idea?

I think it\'s a great idea to have another type of engine block.

There\'s countless people and threads debating the idea, \"oh, shouldn\'t more engine blocks make you go faster?\" or \"why don\'t they make it so you can go faster with more engine blocks.\"

The simple physics would dictate that engine power would only affect your accelleration in space.

But if there was some kind of warp engine, which might allow a second type of movement, a second type of movement where maybe the engine only bothers to render stars, and a more basic rendering of planets, and stops trying to detect collisions until the warp flight is over. Like some kind of hyperspace flight, or flying through the warp - to compare it to concepts that\'re around in SciFi.

People could get their fast travelling done. And there\'d be a reason for the much bigger ships to sacrifice engine blocks and accelleration for warp blocks and the power to supply them, and a reason for fighters to stick to sub-50 speeds (power supply). The really big 300m+ ships can get by with a large number of engine blocks, but need vast quantities to get the accelleration for speeds around 50, they could just replace that difference between a large number and vast quantities with their warp blocks - the finer details of the mechanics of which, I am not about to attempt to figure out.