Navagations, Engines and Travel

[Atlanteen]

Hi, I'm quite new to the game and will suggest some good ideas involving travel, engines and navagation.

travel in general in quite boring and lonesom for instance I'm travelling to a station and it's taking forever or my station is being attacked and I can't get there in time cause my ship is only traveling at 50km/h. So what I recommend is a few things such as teleporters to transport instantly a player (not there ship) to a diffrent sector or station or even a ship. You could also incorporate a Jumpgate system that is invincible like the shops for players to get to place to place. these jumpgates could be built as well for travels between user made stations. There could also be a "stargate" to generate a stable wormhole for travel of players (again not there ships).



Now for engines. I dont like how having a bigger ship means that i can not turn as fast as a small one or accelerate as fast. I find myself installing hundreds of thousands of engines just to move. I suggest a variety of engines for instants a "hyperdrive" which would put you in a diffrent layer of space that has nothing in it and then transport you from one part of the galaxy to another but not instant travel. There needs to be a faster engine in its self though such as an engine with a speed controll like 1/4 2/4 3/4 4/4 style throttle but with more then 50km/h speed. Then there is turning i would reccommend there be manouvering thrusters for turning.



Navagation is one of the biggest issues I have with the game. I cant find my ships if i leave them to go to a shop with a smaller ship no matter what I do so I suggest there be a navagtions computer that you buy from the shop which has all the locations of the factions units/stations and any enemy locations that you later add. This would be a great addition which would allow for easier navagations around the galaxy.



In conclusion this game is amazing but could do with the above things. I will be adding more suggestions soon.

I love this game and after finding out about it have been telling everyone I know about it I hope it get to be a great success

 

[DrJaska]

Indeed it\'s somewhat bothersome to travel very long distances. I would love to see jumpdrives that require charging massive amounts of energy dependent on distance and ship mass, with a cooldown time.

 

[Docithe]

There are a few topics coming out in this thread that I\'d like to comment on. Right now ships can go up to one set speed, and as has been stated, that isn\'t the most convenient or fun.


Engines could use some sort of power source that slowly replenishes. As such, traveling short distances, going a certain speed, your engines could be self-sustaining. But when you need to go faster to get somewhere fast or to escape from enemies, you need to rely on your stored energy. A \"Jump Drive\" was suggested, but I would suggest more of a light-speed system. If a ship meets certain requirements, you can go to light-speed, but your energy drains at a massive rate. Perhaps if your energy ever gets to 0, everything shuts down for a certain amount of time as a deterrent from constantly using up all your energy.


As for teleporting or stargates, I\'m very opposed. This seems like it defeats the purpose of space travel. If you can just teleport from place to place, you lose the feel of the game and that whole angle is gone. Especially in multiplayer scenarios.

 

[VZ Snipez08 Impactz]

1Teleporters,stargates,and jump gates can\'t be implimented due to physics tunneling effects.

2.If you don\'t like the current the current speed,change it in server config.

3.For the ship issue,just bring your big ship close to the shop where you can find it.

Now these are cool additions,but we are in APLHA people!Don\'t start asking for this kind of stuff until BETA.

 

[Docithe]

Just because we\'re in ALPHA doesn\'t mean we shouldn\'t make recommendations within reason. If an idea gets accepted, now might be the best time to lay the foundation even if it doesn\'t get implemented until BETA. Better to plan ahead than to re-write lots of code later, as with any software engineering project.

 

[DrJaska]

@VZ Snipez08 Impactz
Physics tunneling is only a problem when something is in motion. Why would you move a ship at physics-breaking speeds when you can go the easy way and just change its position instantly?

 

[Atlanteen]

Yes the ships could be torn apart but there could be a stable program that rewrites the command of physic braking speeds for example bringing point A to point B so that you only have to travel a short distance kind of like star trek. For teleporters and jumpgates I do like the idea of having them for user travel no their ships so you set them up at stations. This wouldn\'t take away the traveling through space part of the game because you could simply add in a range metre so that the gates and teleporters only work for a certain distance. For example you could have a 3 sector range for the gates and then the teleporters you have to be in a 500m range. All these things I think would make the game better.
And thanks for the comments I hope to be seeing some more.

 

[Defentrix]

Atlanteen your problem with navigation is easily solved. ITS CALLED THE NAVIGATION TAB! It\'s simple remember the sector your big ship was in, go to the shop, put in the sector to the WAYPOINT tab and it will direct you to big ship. If you already know this then y r u complaining. As for factionhomebase directions, go into the \"faction\" option and click on hub. Done. A list of the factions and there bases for you.

My opinion about the warp/hyperdrive stuff is that I agree and think that they are all great ideas but they would be extremely hard to implement on servers with COMPLETELY destroy fps. It would have to handle at one time up to maybe 19 different moving entities, at Probobly 10000 km. It would destroy a server.

 

[Atlanteen]

Yes I know about the navigations menu but I still think they could improve it because otherwise their would be a huge amount of sectors all written down on a piece of paper and it would just get confusing. If you could permanently add places to the navigations menu then that would be good. For the warp/hyperdrive that is an easy fix if the drive can only speed up to say 500km/s then it will not create much of a difference as most servers already rise the max speed of their ships.

 

[Fifthdread]

Mass Effect. Remember in mass effect you had the jump relays. What if in this game there were randomly placed jump relays sort of like shops, but harder to find. Maybe have one in every 10x10x10 or 20x20x20. Have it so you can \"jump\" from one to another. Make it so you have to type in the sector it is located, so you have to find out where they are before you jump. I feel like this is a better solution because you can travel decent distance without taking away from exploration and space travel by allowing insta warp to anywhere. Also, this wouldn\'t cause physics tunneling because it is essentially a teleport from A to B with maybe some special warp effects for a nice touch. No actual ship physics movement involved.



My 2 cents.

 

[Atlanteen]

That is a brilliant idea but still there needs to be some form of hyperdrive but not an instant jump such as you\'d have to slow down before crossing into other sectors to counter the lag created from it so therefore no lag.

 

[chimp_spanner]

It\'s like \"Into Darkness\"; why have space ships at all when you can just teleport halfway across the galaxy. The concept of building and using ships is kind of undermined if you can just go anywhere you want without one. So I\'m against it on that basis. I\'d agree though that there should be a way to get above a set speed. On the one hand I\'m inclined there should be no speed limit, but rather limits on acceleration based on the mass of your ship and the amount of power available. So if you had a huge 1bn credit ship with loads of thrust, you could just hold W and slowly build up to decent interplanetary speeds. But on the other hand you\'d need the same amount of time and power/thrust to decelerate too. Not practical for fast paced encounters. I\'d settle for something less realistic but that also takes into account the size and specs of your ship. Jump drives are a good solution for sure. There could be a new class of power module so you don\'t warp into a combat zone with no energy for shields or weapons perhaps?

 

[CMD_Renic]

I am for the idea of Transporters.
Being a huge trekkie It would be nice to have Trek style Transporters, that opeprate short range only. They would not be able to move a player from one sector to another, but maybe, from one ship to another, or to a station or plent and back. You would have a Transporter modual on the ship and it would come with a hand held item, much like the weapon yous tart with, you beam somewhere, and to get back, use the item, it would instantly return you. Thus you cannot \"Bounce\" from point to point, keeping the focus very much on ship building and travel. It would require a massive amount of energy to do so.

Also, being a trekkie, i am very much for some sort of hyperdrive or warp system. I feel a warp factor would be used here, the max being warp 9 (refere to a star trek warp factor chart for referance) each level requireing more power, and more warp coils or moduals. I dunno, its something. Maybe its taking Too much from star trek.

 

[VoxtehBox]

what if you had jumpdrives that intead of just teleporting to a sector of your chooseing you have to put in a direction x,y,z coordinates. you coul do it by sector, also adding to an element of uncertainty since you could jump into a star or planet and loose your ship

also you could have it be part of a system and a new type of engin. it would take time to spool up FTL drives and time to calculate for the jump drive to become active, disallowing comat jumps or at least making them risky cause you would have to remain stationary while the computer is calculating.

you could make it larger ships can FTL jump long distantances with long cooldowns and smaller ship shorter jump with smaller cooldowns.

it would also be nice to see it consume a resource, a fuel of somekind as well as energy.

 

[GeneralThomas4]

Say 50 quantagen per sector jumped, so L1 counts as 1 fuel unit and L2 counts as 10 units ect. Like in BSG where a jump requires some tillium. You have to load the fuel into the warp block so it doesnt just eat up a L5 ore that you could have sold for 1 mill creds in a single jump.

 

[TheDarkOne05]

That seems like a good idea, since it encourages mining and finding shops to go any significant distance.

 

[Legolas170]

I like the idea of fuel, it could lead to some interesting tactics, such as factions mining all of the recources in certan areas, so that ships cannot refuel and are stuck with sub light engines until they could find more recources. However, this could also be used to troll and grief.

 

[Atlanteen]

Yes I agree with CMD,

Meant for the teleporter a to be a quick and balanced way to get from ship or station. There should definitely not be a way of jumping sectors. The teleporter a could consume a certain amount of power and room aboard a ship therefore needing certain amount of space and energy.