Scaling Jump Drive

[Edymnion]

Current jump drive distances are server set. Default I believe is only about 15 km, but I've seen some servers crank it up as high as 8 systems.

However, either way its a fixed value. What if we changed it to scale up like everything else does?

Have it so the ship needs a certain number of jump modules in order to even activate a jump drive, based on the mass of the ship. Then, every time you add that number of modules, its like a factory enhancer and increases your jump distance.

So lets say a smallish ship only needed 2 modules to activate it's jump drive, and the base jump distance was 15 km. If they put 4 modules in there, it would take twice as much energy to charge the drive, but they'd jump 30 km. If they put in 10 modules (assuming here that for most ships the mass added by the modules is inconsequential compared to overall mass), they'd drain 5x as much power to charge their drive, but would jump 75 km.

Might lead to the creation of an entire new basic genre of ship, a dedicated jump ship that has crazy high range, but that eats so much power it isn't really good for much else. Interstellar taxi service!

 

[SpaceChief]

In single-player, I've been experimenting with a jump drive limit of 64 sectors, and gate limit of 512. I really like this idea, and I think it should apply to gates too. No need for hyper-gates per se, gates could scale up as well, but require greater and greater power cost based on radius and ship mass.

 

[Edymnion]

If we apply scaling to the warp gates as well, might want to change it over to making it where you could slave overdrive to your jump/warp computers. Would net the same effect, would just have to allow for greater than 100% efficiency.

Kinda like that idea, actually, because it requires the extra computer to be on board, and it allows a new slave use for existing material.

 

[NeonSturm]

Perhaps give it configurable diminishing returns (like power generators in the config).

Maybe:

jumpDrive.ratio = blocks.jumpDrive / blocks.total
jumpDrive.distance = ((jumpDrive.ratio * jumpDrive.ratioMult) ^ jump.ratioPow * jump.maxDistance)
/*while charging*/ jumpDrive.chargeDecay = (jumpDrive.charge - jump.chargeDecayRate) * jump.chargeKeepMult

jump.requiredCharge =
  ( blocks.total * jump.requiredCharge{ _perBlockMult * _perBlock_perSectorMult }
  + jump.requiredCharge{ _toJump * _toJump_perSectorMult + _totalAdd } * (how many synchronized jumpDrives are used)
  ) * jump.requiredCharge_totalMult
jump.chargeTime = jump.requiredCharge / blocks.jumpDrive
jump.charge_energyConsumption = blocks.jumpDrive

More requiredCharge for multiple jump arrays (once jump.requiredCharge_{}).
Less decay while charging for multiple jump arrays.

Just some code somebody else might enhance with some more features.