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The Problem: In their current state, jump drives are a largely uninteresting mechanic. They're slow and annoying to use normally, and become entirely too fast and too powerful as chain drives - the end result being that the vastness of space is effectively made obsolete, as players can simply skip over nearly all of it and even cross the vast gulf between galaxies in less time than it would take to walk to the nearby street corner. Directly removing chain drives by some mechanical alteration would simply put us back to where we started, with boring, slow, and short-ranged FTL drives.
If we increase charge speed instead, it simply becomes too easy to go too far too fast. Chain drives would no longer require long downtimes to power back up, and it would become quite feasible to build large drive array blocks that can jump infinitely without ever running out of charges and having to stop for a few minutes. (Large warships with smaller non-chain jump drives would also travel faster, even if chain drives were removed outright. This can arguably be considered a good thing, but it seems to go against Schine's intentions for travel speed in the game, and it also means that large assets can move around the galaxy quickly with little difficulty or risk. This seems counterproductive.)
Believe me, it will not, even if chain drives are eliminated from the game. Some of the more RP-oriented players might enjoy the ideal scenario that would come from the resulting balance, where jump drives are used for short-distance travel and long expeditions are required to explore deeper into the galaxy and place down warpgates, but the actual result is that travel just becomes even more boring and takes longer. Everyone will mostly have to stay within a few systems around spawn, which effectively reduces the size of the game area just as much as strong jump drives do. This approach also brings back an old issue of reclusive players simply drifting out into faraway territory and avoiding any and all PvP threats, as few people have the time to hold the left mouse button for an hour just to attack some dude's faction, and fewer still have the patience.
You also have to remember that creating a warp/hyperdrive mechanic that is fun, does not cause server performance issues, and does not make interstellar travel too easy... would probably take entirely too much time, with so many other pressing issues around for the devs to handle. A hyperdrive for capital ships would be an interesting thing to see later on, but for now this is beyond the scope of what we really need. Therefore...
I propose a solution unlike any I've seen yet - one which I hope will be neither too hard to implement, nor too rife with balance-related pitfalls.
I propose...
...drumroll please...
...That jump drives use stellar technobabble of some kind - stellar gravity well? Radiation? IDK. - to power their jumps.
If you jump while within the star's 'jump radius,' any other charged jump drive computers keep their charge, and your jump has a much longer maximum range - around three systems.
Larger stars have the same jump radius, but charging a jump drive at a large star results in 1.25 times the charging speed, and you jump 1.5 times as far as you would jump from a normal-sized star. Accordingly, you'd go half as far jumping out from a dwarf star, and would have .75x your normal charging speed. Double star systems would allow you to charge twice as fast and jump three times as far as a single normal star would, due to gravitational wave interactions between the two masses.
Up to three Jump Field Generators could be installed on a station, increasing jump range from the station from 0.5 up to 1x and then 1.5x normal star jump range, and charge time from 1x up to 1.5 then 2x, though of course this would also increase station power consumption.
Jump Field Generator effects would stack with a star's gravitational field, though the generator's effect would be divided in half. This means that jumping from a station with three Jump Field Generators in range of a normal star would give you (1.5 (station) / 2) = 0.75 + 1 (star) = 1.75x jump range, and a station with two Jump Field Generators in range of a dwarf star would yield (1 (station) / 2) = 0.5 + 0.5 (star) = 1.0x jump range, the same as a normal star with no station. Charge times would stack with no nerf, so a double star with a station that has all three field generators would result in a whopping 4x charge time. Combined with the 3.75x jump range, this makes such a station a great strategic asset, allowing for quick mobilization of a fleet to anywhere within a huge radius. Controlling such a station would be awesome, until you realize that everyone else wants one too, and they don't want to share the system...
OPTIONAL: When destroyed, Jump Field Generators could produce a 2km-wide pulse, discharging any jump drives within range.
Random Thoughts and After-edits
Nope. If we increase jump range, chain drives become incredibly fast, and normal drives are still uninteresting and will tend to take too long to function on most ships. Buffing jump drives to any meaningful extent also means that dedicated jump ships (light vessels made primarily out of jump modules and power systems) will go incredibly fast, crossing galaxies in the span of minutes with nothing to worry about. This reduces the size of the galaxy significantly; all those star systems and void systems become largely meaningless fluff on a map.
If we increase charge speed instead, it simply becomes too easy to go too far too fast. Chain drives would no longer require long downtimes to power back up, and it would become quite feasible to build large drive array blocks that can jump infinitely without ever running out of charges and having to stop for a few minutes. (Large warships with smaller non-chain jump drives would also travel faster, even if chain drives were removed outright. This can arguably be considered a good thing, but it seems to go against Schine's intentions for travel speed in the game, and it also means that large assets can move around the galaxy quickly with little difficulty or risk. This seems counterproductive.)
No.
Believe me, it will not, even if chain drives are eliminated from the game. Some of the more RP-oriented players might enjoy the ideal scenario that would come from the resulting balance, where jump drives are used for short-distance travel and long expeditions are required to explore deeper into the galaxy and place down warpgates, but the actual result is that travel just becomes even more boring and takes longer. Everyone will mostly have to stay within a few systems around spawn, which effectively reduces the size of the game area just as much as strong jump drives do. This approach also brings back an old issue of reclusive players simply drifting out into faraway territory and avoiding any and all PvP threats, as few people have the time to hold the left mouse button for an hour just to attack some dude's faction, and fewer still have the patience.
You could, and I'd love to see something like that introduced into the game, but this would be hard to balance. 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. To mitigate this, hyperspace with dangerous properties and strange physics (as seen in Babylon 5 or the Warhammer 40k universe) is another potentially appealing option, but that comes with its own balance challenges - Too much risk or difficulty, and many players will find it too difficult or simply annoying to navigate hyperspace; too little and we are again left with a gold-plated chaindrive once players learn the mechanics.
You also have to remember that creating a warp/hyperdrive mechanic that is fun, does not cause server performance issues, and does not make interstellar travel too easy... would probably take entirely too much time, with so many other pressing issues around for the devs to handle. A hyperdrive for capital ships would be an interesting thing to see later on, but for now this is beyond the scope of what we really need. Therefore...
I propose...
...drumroll please...
...That jump drives use stellar technobabble of some kind - stellar gravity well? Radiation? IDK. - to power their jumps.
It means that jump drives would only work normally within a certain distance from stars, which could be displayed on the map. Outside of that radius, jump drives can't charge up, and jumps would be limited in range to around 10 sectors. Jumping from outside of the radius would also discharge all of the jump drives on a ship at once, so trying to blindly use a chaindrive the way that you used to would likely result in one long jump (away from whatever star you were charging up at), one short jump (from the middle of nowhere), and a long time charging your drives back up at whatever system you arrive in.
If you jump while within the star's 'jump radius,' any other charged jump drive computers keep their charge, and your jump has a much longer maximum range - around three systems.
Larger stars have the same jump radius, but charging a jump drive at a large star results in 1.25 times the charging speed, and you jump 1.5 times as far as you would jump from a normal-sized star. Accordingly, you'd go half as far jumping out from a dwarf star, and would have .75x your normal charging speed. Double star systems would allow you to charge twice as fast and jump three times as far as a single normal star would, due to gravitational wave interactions between the two masses.
Yeah, it would be boring, Random Person. To avoid this, I propose the addition of a Jump Field Generator block. This block could only be placed on stations (and eventually capital ships), and it would allow all allied ships in the station's sector to charge up your jump drive at the same speed as a normal star, although your jump range would be only half as far. It would cost something like 660,000 e/s, so it would require a fairly formidable power system to be installed before it could be deployed, but Trading Guild stations would provide a jump field to anyone for free, as long as they aren't an enemy, so jumping around in Trading Guild space is significantly easier.
Up to three Jump Field Generators could be installed on a station, increasing jump range from the station from 0.5 up to 1x and then 1.5x normal star jump range, and charge time from 1x up to 1.5 then 2x, though of course this would also increase station power consumption.
Jump Field Generator effects would stack with a star's gravitational field, though the generator's effect would be divided in half. This means that jumping from a station with three Jump Field Generators in range of a normal star would give you (1.5 (station) / 2) = 0.75 + 1 (star) = 1.75x jump range, and a station with two Jump Field Generators in range of a dwarf star would yield (1 (station) / 2) = 0.5 + 0.5 (star) = 1.0x jump range, the same as a normal star with no station. Charge times would stack with no nerf, so a double star with a station that has all three field generators would result in a whopping 4x charge time. Combined with the 3.75x jump range, this makes such a station a great strategic asset, allowing for quick mobilization of a fleet to anywhere within a huge radius. Controlling such a station would be awesome, until you realize that everyone else wants one too, and they don't want to share the system...
OPTIONAL: When destroyed, Jump Field Generators could produce a 2km-wide pulse, discharging any jump drives within range.
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I believe that these alterations of StarMade's FTL system would deal with most of the issues people would like to see covered in an FTL revamp - more interesting mechanics, more relevance for warpgates, nerfing of incredibly overpowered chain drives, and removal of easy void crossings - without the two undesirable aspects that often come up in many proposals for FTL rebalances: chain drives being entirely broken, or excessive amounts of coding work. With this system, efficient and effective jumping would require some strategy, warpgates would become the reliable, long-distance mode of travel they were always intended to be, and chain drives would preserve their utility as a very convenient, time-saving logic invention, while losing their incredibly OP ability to effortlessly cross entire galaxies faster than you can say "Schine plz nerf"._______________
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Random Thoughts and After-edits
- Hm, trans-galactic races would become very interesting under this system. Have a defined start point at one end of the galaxy, and a defined endpoint somewhere far away.
- May the best stellar navigator win! :D
- Trying to cross the void between galaxies using FTL under this system would be... interesting. You'd need to drop jump field generator structures every time you land in a system... That would get huge and expensive very fast :P
- Also, whenever station building is switched over to a shipyard-like mechanic, this would become very long and - likely - very impractical.
- At that point, you'd likely be better off just slow-boating through the void than trying this, but whenever Saber gets his spooky scary void terrors ingame that won't work so nicely either. It would become, at the very least... nontrivial. The image of an immense and heavily-armed colony ship comes to mind.
- Theoretically you could also use a "matryoshka doll"/"nesting doll" jump ship with a huge number of jump ships chain-docked, a marker beam, and a warpgate blueprint... You would then charge all the jump drives, then keep jumping until you run out of ships, then place down a warpgate, set the gate to send you back, and then get more ships and repeat the process starting from your new warpgate... But that would probably be inefficient compared to just hauling a ton of huge jump field generators with you.
- Perhaps charging up a jump drive from within a star's burn radius gives you a very large buff to charge speed, which would make small, heat-shielded jump ships ("sunships") the fastest mode of travel... Heatshielding would preferably have a high power cost, though, and be really heavy, otherwise everyone would use this.
- A warning message if you're going to jump into a void system might be good. Something similar to the message you get from dealigning or exiting from a ship that is traveling really fast. Otherwise players might do blind jumps and get themselves stuck between spiral arms or something.
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