Warp and Distributed Galaxies

[GaeasSon]

This may well have been proposed, but I haven't seen it. What if "Warp" wasn't a maechanism for "go very fast", but for jumping between servers. Server owners could build their own webs of trust where you only accept inbound jumps from a specified list of servers run by friendly admins of like mind.

As a background process, servers share blueprints, and faction data with their peers. Each server represents a single star-system or stellar cluster, depending on the preferences of the server owner. Servers can be flagged as "open", or owned by a particular faction, or "Disputed". Disputed servers may change faction ownership based on who owns the star-base in the spawn/Warp arrival sector. All Ownership does is change arrival. If you are warping into a friendly system you arrive near the star-base. If you are warping into a hostile or neutral system, you arrive in an unpopulated void sector well removed from the srar base and friendly arrival point.

1. A player activates his warp drive from his "t" menu.
2. The client calls the server which does a quick echo/response test of listed peers.
3. The player is presented with a dialog box with a menu of available "systems" (servers), and a warning if the arrival sector contains hostile entities.
4. The user selects and approves the jump.
5. The server begins to dump the entity of the ship into a file.
6. Optional: During the process, the ship must pay a mass or volume based energy cost.
7. Optional: During the process, any damage taken to the structure aborts the jump.
8. When the encoding is complete, the file is transfered to the receiving server. Both the encapsulation and transfer are low-priority processes, so as not to slow game-play. Travel takes as long as it takes. A very large ship might arrive somewhat behind her escorts.
9. When the receiving server signals complete, the client is cueued to detach and reconnect to the receiving server. Similar instructions are issued to any clients of astronauts attached to ships systems, or within ships gravity.
10. When all transferred clients signal ready, (or after a reasonable time-out) the ship and all client-attached entities and astronauts are spawned on the receiving server.

Thoughts?