My idea is to add two types of drives that allow quick travel over long distances at large energy requirements
Wall of text incoming
Overall functionality
Warp drives which allow travel very quickly (constant 10 seconds enroute?) to warp beacons. Energy requirement is exponential to distance and multiplied by ship mass divided by (500 or so) meaning that small ships get reduced energy requirements. Also to travel long distances you either need a lot of energy, or to make more segmented, shorter jumps. To assist small ships allow building of structures called warp gates which can store energy, be connected to a station for energy, or part of a large mothership (if code would allow mobile warp gates) Beacons should also be limited to the amount of ships coming in to prevent collision. They should require an open area (much like docking units now) that require a clear space to allow incoming ships to land. Upon activation the event horizons of the warp zones should create a visible repulsion effect that will push objects outside the incoming warp area away from the event horizon.
Hyperspace drives would allow ships to jump to any sector without a beacon, this would require even more energy than the warp drives and also be exponential to distance multiplied by mass of the ship divided by some constant. This drive will attempt to find a place to fit the ship in the destination sector, and create the same repulsion effect as that of the warp drive in the area.
Both drives would function by draining energy from your batteries (at a rate maybe 3/4 energy production) and using all the energy production of your ship until they have enough energy stored to warp/jump. This could leave your ship vulnerable if you are escaping with low shields or the enemy has power drains, that is intentional.
Blocks/ damage to blocks
Each drive would have a CPU and Warp or Hyperspace cores. One computer like weapons and missle systems. More cores would increase the range of the drive, Hyperspace (being made for going to undeveloped zones) would get more range per core block than warp, but not by much.
The blocks are also somewhat unstable so that on their destruction they will explode doing damage to nearby cores and the ship. Cores should have about 1500hp, and their explosion should have a radius of 2 and do 500 damage. Multiple cores exploding in a single iteration will increase the radius so maybe 2+.1*(cores 'sploding). Allowing for chain reactions if this critical system ends up taking direct hits.
Another effect of damaged cores or computers is a percent chance that the warp will disengage partway to the destination. On warp engage the most damaged core (being used, meaning connected to the computer operating it) the weakest core can sustain only 25% of its regular range at a theoretical, but unreachable 0% hp. If the ship's warp range is 10 for example and the core has 500hp (33% of max 1500hp) than the max range of the ship on jump is approximately 50% or 5 systems because the function
(100% warp_range) - (100% - core_hp_%) * 75%=Operational_range
where warp_range=10 and core_hp_%=33%.
If the ship attempts to jump anything under this value, here 5 systems, there is no chance it will be destroyed. If the ship tries to jump further than this there is a chance the ship will drop out of warp partway, somewhere random between the start and its destination (not 5 systems away and its destination). The chance of failure here is linear to 50% chance of failure at 2x operational range. Every core that has the lowest damage will go through the failure probability individually.
Probability= 50% * (Attempted_warp_range - Operational_Range) / (Operational_range)
In the event of failure the ship will only make some random partial distance between it and its destination with and the overloaded warp core (multiple if there was more than one core that went through the probability of failure and failed) will explode the same as before, but with a 1.25 multiplier to radius because the core was charged when it overloaded this time.
Operation
The warp drive computer once selected on the hotbar and activated will queue a GUI like navigation that will list the available warp beacons in max_range. This means warp beacons that are online and unblocked. Faction status can not prevent you from warping to a warp beacon, but enemy turrets may be on the other side. There could be a checkbox to display only beacons owned by your faction.
The Hyperspace drive could have its own GUI where it will display max_range, operational_range, and if a destination is typed in total power required, min time to spool up (meaning full battery drain time + time from power production), and max time to spool up (Meaning power from production). If there is no space for the ship at its destination sector it will display an error saying that there is no room to jump to that sector.
Warfare/Special Circumstances
I think damaged cores is pretty much covered here, but suggestions are welcome :D
If an object (ship/turret/mine/etc.) manages to gain enough momentum to throw itself into the incoming warp zone after it was engaged and past the repulsion of the event horizon than it will rapidly begin to disintegrate inside the zone and all the mass that is disintegrated will factor into an explosion once the warping ship arrives. Mass that is not disintegrated will be teleported to the departure point of the incoming ship. This only applies to blocks inside the event horizon. A ship larger than the incoming warp zone that is partially inside will partially disintegrate, and blocks inside the zone will be teleported allowing use against an enemy vessel to take out large chunks of enemy ships if used correctly :D.
More possibly adopted from replies :D
Power requirement graphs (examples) to be added
Wall of text incoming
Overall functionality
Warp drives which allow travel very quickly (constant 10 seconds enroute?) to warp beacons. Energy requirement is exponential to distance and multiplied by ship mass divided by (500 or so) meaning that small ships get reduced energy requirements. Also to travel long distances you either need a lot of energy, or to make more segmented, shorter jumps. To assist small ships allow building of structures called warp gates which can store energy, be connected to a station for energy, or part of a large mothership (if code would allow mobile warp gates) Beacons should also be limited to the amount of ships coming in to prevent collision. They should require an open area (much like docking units now) that require a clear space to allow incoming ships to land. Upon activation the event horizons of the warp zones should create a visible repulsion effect that will push objects outside the incoming warp area away from the event horizon.
Hyperspace drives would allow ships to jump to any sector without a beacon, this would require even more energy than the warp drives and also be exponential to distance multiplied by mass of the ship divided by some constant. This drive will attempt to find a place to fit the ship in the destination sector, and create the same repulsion effect as that of the warp drive in the area.
Both drives would function by draining energy from your batteries (at a rate maybe 3/4 energy production) and using all the energy production of your ship until they have enough energy stored to warp/jump. This could leave your ship vulnerable if you are escaping with low shields or the enemy has power drains, that is intentional.
Blocks/ damage to blocks
Each drive would have a CPU and Warp or Hyperspace cores. One computer like weapons and missle systems. More cores would increase the range of the drive, Hyperspace (being made for going to undeveloped zones) would get more range per core block than warp, but not by much.
The blocks are also somewhat unstable so that on their destruction they will explode doing damage to nearby cores and the ship. Cores should have about 1500hp, and their explosion should have a radius of 2 and do 500 damage. Multiple cores exploding in a single iteration will increase the radius so maybe 2+.1*(cores 'sploding). Allowing for chain reactions if this critical system ends up taking direct hits.
Another effect of damaged cores or computers is a percent chance that the warp will disengage partway to the destination. On warp engage the most damaged core (being used, meaning connected to the computer operating it) the weakest core can sustain only 25% of its regular range at a theoretical, but unreachable 0% hp. If the ship's warp range is 10 for example and the core has 500hp (33% of max 1500hp) than the max range of the ship on jump is approximately 50% or 5 systems because the function
(100% warp_range) - (100% - core_hp_%) * 75%=Operational_range
where warp_range=10 and core_hp_%=33%.
If the ship attempts to jump anything under this value, here 5 systems, there is no chance it will be destroyed. If the ship tries to jump further than this there is a chance the ship will drop out of warp partway, somewhere random between the start and its destination (not 5 systems away and its destination). The chance of failure here is linear to 50% chance of failure at 2x operational range. Every core that has the lowest damage will go through the failure probability individually.
Probability= 50% * (Attempted_warp_range - Operational_Range) / (Operational_range)
In the event of failure the ship will only make some random partial distance between it and its destination with and the overloaded warp core (multiple if there was more than one core that went through the probability of failure and failed) will explode the same as before, but with a 1.25 multiplier to radius because the core was charged when it overloaded this time.
Operation
The warp drive computer once selected on the hotbar and activated will queue a GUI like navigation that will list the available warp beacons in max_range. This means warp beacons that are online and unblocked. Faction status can not prevent you from warping to a warp beacon, but enemy turrets may be on the other side. There could be a checkbox to display only beacons owned by your faction.
The Hyperspace drive could have its own GUI where it will display max_range, operational_range, and if a destination is typed in total power required, min time to spool up (meaning full battery drain time + time from power production), and max time to spool up (Meaning power from production). If there is no space for the ship at its destination sector it will display an error saying that there is no room to jump to that sector.
Warfare/Special Circumstances
I think damaged cores is pretty much covered here, but suggestions are welcome :D
If an object (ship/turret/mine/etc.) manages to gain enough momentum to throw itself into the incoming warp zone after it was engaged and past the repulsion of the event horizon than it will rapidly begin to disintegrate inside the zone and all the mass that is disintegrated will factor into an explosion once the warping ship arrives. Mass that is not disintegrated will be teleported to the departure point of the incoming ship. This only applies to blocks inside the event horizon. A ship larger than the incoming warp zone that is partially inside will partially disintegrate, and blocks inside the zone will be teleported allowing use against an enemy vessel to take out large chunks of enemy ships if used correctly :D.
More possibly adopted from replies :D
Power requirement graphs (examples) to be added
