Suggestions for Transporters

[AnthonyAnderson]

Amongst the few positive/negative feedbacks, I haven't seen any suggestions on Distance, specifically how far out you want them to be viewable, or if you only want them viewable from inside the ship.

So two suggestions and implementations:

Using Activation blocks to control a transporters incoming/outgoing range. With railspeed controllers you can link 10 activation blocks. With 5 active and 5 inactive, you'll have a 50% speed setting. I propose the same for linking Activation blocks to Transporters computers. Given that the range is, at most, 4 or 5 (your sector+adjacent), it wouldn't be hard to set up a dozen activation blocks and only activate 1 or 2 to severely limit how far it can send/receive transports.

Using a "On Current Entity" on/off button would also be good, stopping your location from showing up on other vessels. If on only transporter pads on your ship and entities docked to it would be visible, whilst off would only display transporters that aren't on your ship. This would allow a designated "outbound" transporter while also allowing an inter-ship transport system to exist, with the outbound and inter-ship pads not being able to interact

 

[GaeasSon]

Transporter range:
I despise arbitrary hard limits. Why not make the transporter consume power based on the square of the distance?

Transporter relay:
If I can transport to the next sector... can my faction set up a transporter relay network that would allow me to travel from ship to ship stationed in open space so that I might travel between planets or even stars without a ship? If so, is this a bug or a feature?

 

[Asvarduil]

Transporter range:
I despise arbitrary hard limits. Why not make the transporter consume power based on the square of the distance?

Transporter relay:
If I can transport to the next sector... can my faction set up a transporter relay network that would allow me to travel from ship to ship stationed in open space so that I might travel between planets or even stars without a ship? If so, is this a bug or a feature?

I agree. In addition to power requirements, having adjacent pads is probably a good idea too - a more powerful transporter, with sufficient power, can transport an object further than a less powerful transporter with less power behind it.

 

[AnthonyAnderson]

Transporter range:
I despise arbitrary hard limits. Why not make the transporter consume power based on the square of the distance?

Transporter relay:
If I can transport to the next sector... can my faction set up a transporter relay network that would allow me to travel from ship to ship stationed in open space so that I might travel between planets or even stars without a ship? If so, is this a bug or a feature?

I'd imagine so that you're not picking up Transporter pads that are 200km away and having to filter through a ton of them.

As for a network, it may be more suitable to have small person-sized warpgates, Stargate Atlantis style between galaxies. Personally, I'm still not being "warped" right next to the gate like the update said, but still a hundred meters away.

 

[Blazio]

What about making use of the scanner antenna?

For example:
A transporter controller by its self has a range of 200m.
And GaeaSon thank you for the idea. But instead of the controller using power, the power could be 50 per pad.

So a 6 pad transporter with no antenna would have a range of 200m and use 300 power
Just enough range to (and depending on the ship/station power) to get to your location.

By adding a scanner antenna, it could increase the range by 50 to 100m. But also pull more power per antenna added to the ship/station.

Any thoughts on this?

 

[Darkkon]

With the thrust update, I believe the current plan is to add sliders that change how the thrust is distributed. Now before you say that has nothing to do with this conversation, I'm thinking maybe something similar for transporters. Instead of having block requirements, you could set the distance via the slider, and the larger the distance, the more power the pad takes up. You could also add in the larger pad requires more power to this in the form of each block having a base power requirement and the slider merely adding onto the systems power consumption.

In essence, you build a pad of 9 blocks that has a base range of 50. Uses up 50 energy for a transport. Move the slider up to 100 range, and maybe it uses 150 or 200 energy now.

now build a pad of 13 blocks, range of 50. Its now using 100 energy. Move the slider up to 100 range and its using 300 energy. (no i did not do any math for this so im probably getting ratios and stuff completely wrong)

Edit

Just wanted to add that i haven't had a chance to mess with transporters in-game yet so yeah >.>

 

[AnthonyAnderson]

Undoubtedly there would be numerous ways for changes to the way that transporters work. Personally, I'm really liking the idea of a slider, maybe somehow scalable with the scanner? Scanner is (supposedly) supposed to increase based on how long it is in relation to the ship. A transporter could be slaved to the scanner to increase its range beyond x meters (maybe give it much smaller default of 100 meters, 250m, maybe 500m? Incredibly short-ranged