Re-post, because I changed some things, and cleared some stuff up.
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I believe that FTL should be both ship-based and beacon-based.
In order to use a beacon, a ship would need an on-board system, the size of which would determine the amount of power that the FTL system could hold, and power fill rate. Larger ships would require more power to warp.
The FTL works similarly to weapons systems, in that there's the computer, and the system blocks. Also, the FTL system can be controlled by both the ship's captain, and/or anyone in the FTL computer (same as weps).
There are two types of computer for the FTL system
-Warp Beacons are one one, they can only be put on stations, and act as a waypoint; a destination, but also necessary to jump to most other beacons. They are named, and also have sector listed, so that you can find the one you want.
-Warp computers are the ship's FTL computer, and they control the destination of the warp.
Each FTL system block holds 50,000 e, and both the Warp Beacon and Warp Computer hold 200,000 e.
All warp system blocks and computers absorb 10,000 e/s.
The Warp Beacon determines the access bubble for the Beacon Jump, similar to the way the shop's access bubble is centered on the shop's center, only with a bigger range on the beacon.
There would be three types of jump:
1- Beacon Jumps
-Beacon to beacon
-Ship cost: About 1,000e/1 mass
-Completely safe
-Station cost: 1,000e/1 meter for both stations + Size Penalty
-If the ship or station runs out of energy, the jump does not occur, and no energy is drained.
-If the station you're jumping to is destroyed while the jump is charging, the jump energy stored will just disappear.
-If you leave the access bubble of the gate, then the stored energy dissipates, and the jump is canceled.
2- Emergency Jumps
-??? to ???
-Selects a random location within your possible jump sphere (margin of error of 50%)
-If you warp into a collision, it just deletes the part of the ship inside the collision. (If the core is deleted and the player is inside, the player is killed, and the ship explodes instantly.)
-Ship cost: About 5k/1 mass + additional penalty for ship size + penalty for distance jumped
-If your onboard FTL system can't hold enough power for the jump, (1/3 chance) it starts pulling from your normal power storage, when that runs out, bad things happen. (Warp tunnel collapse, things like that. Pieces of ship are damaged or missing, player may be killed, ship may be deleted, etc.)
3- Warp Jump
-??? to Beacon
-A safe jump, from space to a node, using your ship as the other node
-Your ship shoulders the energy price of both the ship, and the sending beacon.
-If the node you're teleporting to is gone, preform an emergency warp instead.
-The destination node is hardwired in an expensive block, linked to the Warp Computer. To set a warp to the block, activate it while in range of the node.
For all jumps:
-Stations use energy based on the size of the bounding box of the ship they're transporting. Eg. a 100 by 120 by 350 ship would require 4,200,000 e for both stations, on top of the distance cost.
-Ships will be quite venerable during charge up, as they will have little, if any, remaining e/s after the FTL system starts draining energy (it has top priority)
-Station FTL systems recharge over time, constantly filling, but ship FTL systems only charge when the ship is jumping.
-A safe jump (Warp Jump, or Beacon Jump) can be canceled at no cost, but an emergency jump cannot be canceled.
-Ships loose all shields and 50% remaining power stored during a jump. (rece ktore lecoz's idea - I stole it)
-Any entity in the gravity field of the ship, or docked to it, counts towards the energy calculations, and would be warped along with the ship.
-For any jump, a station must allow the connection. Connection settings can be set per faction, distance and player.
-Any stations that do not allow you, will not show up on your menu.
-If your Warp Computer or the Warp Beacon are destroyed while you're jumping, the jump is canceled, and the stored energy dissipates as particles.
Clearing up some things:
-Beacons are just beacons. All the limitations lie in the FTL system on the ship and station.
-The same FTL system blocks are used for both the station and ship.
-After the ship warps, it is placed, using the same logic code as buying a ship from the shop, to prevent lag spikes.
The Point of These Things
-You would have to have a good defense system for a jump gate, meaning that you couldn't just put up a jump gate anywhere, or quickly.
-The charge-up time ensures that no-one can battle jump, but emergency jumps give you a way out of really bad situations (for a price).
-Your faction can have a private jump network, that only they can use, but it would be expensive.
-A ship's jump time could be reduced by having energysupply beams from the station, but only up to a point.
-It is possable to force a ship to emergency FTL, if that system is compromised. Espionage!
-Part of the station charge being based off of ship dimensions is because you're opening a wormhole, not using light-travel.
-The reason the ship needs energy is because it has to protect itself while in the gravity well of a long-distance wormhole.
-You loose shields because of the gravity as well, and also so that you protect your station, and can't just warp-jump into combat.
-I left the ship cost at linear increase because I want all ships to be able to jump. That's why I also made the computer hold energy. Even the smallest fighter can jump, if it needs to.
-The gate is there to prevent battle warping, and also to effect the dynamics of civilizations. in Starmade. People will settle (relatively) close to a warp gate, most of the time, so that they can use it whenever they want. It also prevents everyone from warping to some far-away corner of the universe, and never meeting anyone ever again. It would also give an important resource for factions to control. You canalways find a new planet, station, whatever, but warp gates are not so easy to replace.
-The 10K e/s fill rate of the FTL system means it would be difficult (if at all possible) and very inefficient, to make a ship able to operate while charging a warp.
-The size cost for stations means that stations may also limit the size of the ship going through, to prevent blackouts, where the station is unable to warp a ship.
Some math:
Standard jump with a 50m wide, 75m tall, 125m long cargo ship:
Beacon Jump:
For the stations:
Distance cost: 16 sectors (star system width) = 16 sectors*1,000 m / sector (sector width)*1,000 e /m = 16,000,000 e or 16M e
Ship dimensions cost: 468,750 e
Total FTL jump cost: 16,468,750 e for both stations.
For the ship:
1,000 e/ mass * 0.1 mass/block (most ship blocks) * (468750/2 blocks, estimate) = 23,437,500
Average ship generation for a ship that size: 500K-1M e/s = 24s-47s charge up time, and need 465 system blocks, and 1 computer, and would pull ~5M e/s from the ship.
Warp Jump:
Distance cost: 16 sectors (star system width) = 16 sectors*1,000 m / sector (sector width)*1,000 e /m = 16,000,000 e or 16M e
Ship dimensions cost: 468,750 e
Mass cost: 1,000 e/ mass * 0.1 mass/block (most ship blocks) * (468750/2 blocks, estimate) = 23,437,500
Total: 39,906,250 e.
Average ship generation for a ship that size: 500K-1M e/s = 40s-80s charge up time, and need 795 system blocks, and 1 computer, and would pull 7.96M e/s from the ship.