While the system isn't too bad, there is still plenty of room for improvement. I don't like the jumps due to how bad/unnatural they feel, they take a ridiculous amount of time to charge it in most practical cases, and the jumping itself isn't really anything interesting, it's literally a teleport, rather than moving you a ludicrous speeds (as that is a simplified version of how it would work IRL). The system I proposed improves it massively, giving more of a natural feel and allowing another possible feature to be added, which is interdiction. At this point, it becomes more worth changing it than keeping the current system.But... you can get a jump drive down to a few second charge..
In fact, you can get it to charge so fast, that it's ready to use before you emerge from your last jump, think the lowest we got it was around 4 seconds (though jumping while jumping just discharges your drive, you gotta wait for the warp animation to finish).
Not only that, but if you don't want a dedicated jumper as described, you can just install multiple jump computers, and charge each while docked. I think the longest it ever took me to charge a drive was 40 seconds.
I have a ship which holds 30 jump drives, I call it "The Jump Stick", you simply dock your war ship to it, get in, and jump where you need to go, and very likely back (provided you're traveling less then 15 jumps). For longer trips, use more jump modules to get the cooldown lower. With our 4sec charge jumper, we made it to the galaxy below us in about 10 minutes?
It's really not as bad as people make it out to be.
It's been said before, but because it originated/was inspired by another game doesn't mean it's a bad system. This opens more possibilities, and that's why I'm rolling with it, rather than say a hyperdrive or wormhole creation.You guys are putting too much stock in EvE. From what I've heard, it is nothing but a spreadsheet simulator.
That being said, I like this suggestion. I really like any FTL suggestion that lets you get out of your ship and walk around while traveling - this is necessary for RP.
Back before FTL, I liked to spend my time traveling. I'd built my ship mid flight, talk with people, fix things, etc, and that's something I really missed.
Indeed it is. :pThis thread was 4 months old, I think the discussion is over at this point
Indeed, but the warp system is still yet to change. I'm currently hoping that they got the inhibitor strength vs warp drive strength from this thread, and thus will eventually change the warp to something that is far superior than a glorified /change_sector command :pWell, we do have interdictors now.
I imagined that the first idea would be how the warp system works, except it would load everything in your path as you go, however at more of a LOD level, so it would only load in the general shapes and colours, rather than all of the details. While that definitely could work well, it'd still be nice to see yourself move through the system, rather than just suddenly arrive. I would also imagine that the galaxy map changes it's position (when it's centered on you) to adjust to the warping.To get interdiction, we don't necessarily have to fly to the new area. Moving the ship at a high speed will eat up server resources - that's why there is a speed limit in the config file.
However, it could still be accomplished in the following way:
1) Player enters warp
2) Player ship is teleported to a 'null' sector where they see particle effects but nothing else. This is like the sectors where you 'test' a ship - it's not really space and has no structures.
3) The game determines the path that the ship is 'flying' and logs all the sectors through which it will have to 'pass'
4) For each sector, it checks if there is a structure with a warp inhibitor.
5A) If an inhibitor is found and is strong enough, the player's ship is placed in that sector.
5B) If an inhibitor is not strong enough, or there is no inhibitor found, then the player is placed at the normal destination
An alternative idea is to use something like the relationship in Minecraft between the Overworld and Nether. Moving 1 block in the Nether moves you 8 blocks in the Overworld; so Starmade needs a Hyperspace world where 1 meter in hyperspace is 8 meters in the normal universe.
1) Player enters warp
2) Player ship is teleported to 'hyperspace,' which is effectively an empty void and lots of particle effects.
3A) Player flies their ship around, but must maintain a minimum speed or be ejected back into normal space
3B) While the player flies around, the server checks the sectors that correspond with their hyperspace location for warp-inhibitor systems.
4) Player slows their ship and exits hyperspace.
5) The server determines how many meters the ship moved in hyperspace, multiplies by a scaler (for example, 8 times), and then teleports the ship to the correct location in the normal universe.
This would also allow us to stack hyperspace zones. I enter hyperspace and have an 8x scaler, but then I activate a second warp drive and enter the hyperspace of hyperspace and have a 16x scaler. Then I can do it again for a 24x scaler, etc. Stacking warp drives or having a quick reload means you can get to high hyperspace levels more quickly, but then you also have to slow down multiple times to get back to normal space.
This system would make jump-chases more like the Warp-battle in Star Trek: Into Darkness, and still allow for intercepting warp-traffic.