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

    Ithirahad

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    Ah, right... Default sector sizes. They're way too small; I tend to forget about how small they are. For me, optimal sector size is somewhere between 20 and 50 km, so your "cross 7 star systems at sublight in the time it takes to walk to the store on the corner" won't happen.

    Derp. :P
     
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    Unless the vanilla sector size is (massively) changed though, and I've seen no indicator of that, it does happen and will continue to.

    EDIT: I do agree that default sector sizes are far too small.
     
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    I assume the current small sector size was selected to speed up gameplay simply to make development, testing, and debugging easier. Larger sectors will probably better for gameplay in the final game, but for now it would limit players in ways that make finding issues in the Alpha stage difficult. That's just my guess though.
     

    Ithirahad

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    From talking to some of the devs, it seems that they're keeping the sectors really small for fear of people packing too many entities in one sector... Which seems like an irrational fear to me, as sectors are already big enough that people can pack in tons of huge things if they want. Scaling them up won't make matters any worse.
     
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    And even packing them into adjacent sectors is bad since adjacent sectors load in if you're close enough.
     

    Ithirahad

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    And even packing them into adjacent sectors is bad since adjacent sectors load in if you're close enough.
    The alleged 'problem' in this case is not loading range; it's physics. The highest level of physics calculations in this game happen when two entities are in the same sector, presumably followed by when two entities' bounding boxes intersect, so a lot of entities in one sector means a lot of latent load on the server. For aforementioned reasons, though, this really does not matter.
     

    Lone_Puppy

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    So if you hear of a "lost ship" on a server, guess what, you have something to look for. If you are a server admin, you can seed great ships into the server right after restart by turning on a chain drive and letting it do it's work. Gives the scrubs a reason to explore rather than eat up all the asteroids.
    I've often thought about how cool it would be to explore and search for a lost ship. Now we have NPC factions, you could make this happen without a chain drive.
     
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    AtraUnam

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    Main thing I want out of FTL is mass/distance based gamma shock. Be cool to see a titan materialise in the middle of fight and vaporize a few fighters that were unlucky enough to be in the immediate viscinity.
     

    Ithirahad

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    Main thing I want out of FTL is mass/distance based gamma shock. Be cool to see a titan materialise in the middle of fight and vaporize a few fighters that were unlucky enough to be in the immediate viscinity.
    Meh. This would be awesome from afar, but for the fighter pilot it means a sudden death with no chance to escape or even see what happened to them.
     

    AtraUnam

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    Meh. This would be awesome from afar, but for the fighter pilot it means a sudden death with no chance to escape or even see what happened to them.
    We do have a transition animation, I'd imagine there to be some sort of warning at the arrival point lasting long enough for any quick witted fighter pilots to get out of the way.
     
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    Lone_Puppy

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    We do have a transition animation, I'd imagine there to be some sort of warning at the arrival point lasting long enough for any quick witted fighter pilots to get out of the way.
    Nah, I like the surprise death factor. :sneaky:
    [doublepost=1481663766,1481663698][/doublepost]You could just have push effect act on all objects to simulate some kind of displacement shockwave.
     
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    nightrune

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    I think I might be able to address Panpiper 's concerns. You are right that its pretty boring to fly in starmade, and really most space games when flying its mostly about atmosphere. Trying to take in everything. In your battle miner you have, you are trying to accomplish something. I think its a difference in play styles and either of them aren't bad. Starmade is likely to have to cater to both, due to its nature and direction.

    The way Ithirahad has laid it out I think is awesome. It really comes down to creating a buff/debuff for jump drives based on location. The how's and why's could change though. At the basic level I'd imagine jump drives staying basically the same. 8 sectors standard, but it might take a bit longer to charge on the outer rim of a system.

    The idea though is that you could jump "systems" not sectors if you ploted your course towards the sun in the inner ring. So in a certain radius of the sun of a system you get a jump buff based on the size of hte sun. As well as the jump field generator gives you a jump buff in a sector.

    On the opposite though. You add a debuff to the void sectors for being away from suns.

    The point is, being scrapy and playing the game gets you somewhere faster. If you get tired of doing it you use a warpgate to stop thinking. I think its great.
     
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    Ithirahad

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    It really comes down to creating a buff/debuff for jump drives based on location. The how's and why's could change though. At the basic level I'd imagine jump drives staying basically the same. 8 sectors standard, but it might take a bit longer to charge on the outer rim of a system.

    The idea though is that you could jump "systems" not sectors if you ploteed your course towards the sun in the inner ring. So in a certain raidus of the sun of a system you get a jump buff based on the size of hte sun. As well as the jump field generator gives you a jump buff in a sector.

    On the opposite though. You add a debuff to the void sectors for being away from suns.

    The point is, being scrapy and playing the game gets you somewhere faster. If you get tired of doing it you use a warpgate to stop thinking. I think its great.

    The primary issue I have with this is that it mitigates the usefulness of Jump Field Generators, which I intended to have as one way to #MakeStationsGreatAgain... unless, of course, charging up a jump drive out of star/jump field range would take impractically long, but then Panpiper's issue comes back up. As I said before, though, you won't really have to worry about jumping between sectors with your battle miner once asteroids are arranged in actual belts, at which point you will probably hate the game if you really hate actually flying your ships that much, Panpiper. :P
     

    nightrune

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    Well you can play with the numbers some. There is likely a balance to be had.

    Letting the jump field generator buff to one system in the presence of a star sounds like a good reason to still have a station.

    However the numbers work out, I still think this system adds to the game. Really at its core it's a game mechanic where you have buffs and debuffs based on the systems traits. Then how those get added or what they are based on determines many things.
     
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    Very inspired post, and the idea really tackles the issue from a new angle. I like your mention of capital ships, and when I think of space scifi I think of a capital ship warping the whole near by fleet. How would people feel about this: Capital ships can have a warp drive, and also can warp all nearby fleet ships to its target jump. All other ships other than properly constructed ships cannot warp on their own except with charged cells. They either have to use a jump gate (Making them more useful to build), request permission to join a nearby capital ship for its journey (this gives more to politics and cooperation, better have good standing with that faction), or use highly expensive warp cells. Warp cells can be recharged at stations and capital ships which have the proper tools to do so (lots of power, special factory?)

    Pros:
    - Make communities tighter knit in the vastness of space (Instead of players sprawling out evenly across the galaxy, pockets develop better within it)
    - Makes Stations and Capital ships much more valuable (If you faction only has one Capital ship capable of jumping, aka: the only viable transportation across the galaxy, you are less likely to risk it in major battles, and when you do its really thought after.
    - Adds more politics, cooperation, and adventure to space (Thinking being stranded at Alpha JigglyPuff 9 on the edge of the galaxy and finally a factions capital ship stops by at the local station to allow the crew to stretch their legs at the station and to resupply. You have been pissing this faction off lately and now you really need to jump for these guys to hith a ride on their warp journey. Dig your pockets or your favors deep!)
    - Makes the climb up the ladder from newb to galaxy warring faction leader more interesting in the early stages.
    - Makes warp gates much more valuable. (Build a warp gate along a popular trading route and charge toll for its use)
    - Doesn't take all possible modes of warping away from small fighters

    Cons:
    - Can be annoying to be stuck with out charges in your warp cell
    - Makes the early game harder
    - Takes away independence away from loners in the early stages of play
    - Require the implementation of yet another new feature, makes the game more complex
    - Tunnels players into thinking that striving for a capital ship is the goal of the game (puts traders, adventurers, and mercenaries at a disadvantage)


    I feel like this idea can be tweaked to remove some of the cons while keeping most of the pros. Maybe instead of just capital ships having the ability to charge warp cells, allow smaller ships to be designed in such a way to charge cells. I imagine a smaller ship requires less charge to warp, so a band of pirates for example, would have several fighters and a small trading vessel which is rigged entirely to charge the little fleet's cells. So this charger ship follows them around and works to charge their cells while they are stopped.

    Im not sure, but hopefully it contributes to the discussion.
     
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    Ithirahad

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    Capital ship warp drives are already planned, and it'd be a good idea if they could warp entire fleets... This is getting off topic, but I thought it would be better if capital ships used a similar system to the jumps. I envision two modes of capital ship FTL interaction:
    • Jump field Generators on capital ships, allowing smaller ships to charge their jump drive(s) from within the same sector as a capital ship. This is intended to allow capital ships to function as a mobile base of operations for smaller ships.
    • Micro-Wormhole Generators/Jump Bridge Generators, which would create a temporary one-way wormhole in front of the capital ship, allowing any ship through for a while. The max range of these would follow the same rules as jump drives, but with a higher base range, and the ability to charge outside of a jump field (though it would take a VERY long time).
     
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    Ithirahad

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    An excellent suggestion. Needs to be implemented IMO. Will make travelling so more enjoyable.
    ...Well, it could go either way. It can become more enjoyable, or a lot more frustrating. Depends on what stars are where, where you're trying to go, and whether or not you understand the system :P

    Come to think of it, the phrase "thank your lucky stars" would have a whole new meaning!
     
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    ...Well, it could go either way. It can become more enjoyable, or a lot more frustrating. Depends on what stars are where, where you're trying to go, and whether or not you understand the system :P

    Come to think of it, the phrase "thank your lucky stars" would have a whole new meaning!
    That would be part of the fun. You setup your base in a hard to rejoin star to make it that herder to come and get you.